Ancient-ish times
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Hagar the Horrible, 8/30/25
Look, despite the fun (“fun”) I have here detailing all the anachronisms in Hagar the Horrible, I do in fact get that the anachronisms are the point of the strip, that it’s not a realistic historical drama but rather a comedy where half of its whole deal is “What if these Vikings acted like modern middle-class people sometimes?” But I feel like to pull this off you do need to maintain a narrative unity just within an individual strip, whereas today’s installment is all over the map. Hagar napping in a hammock in his fenced suburban yard? Sure, why not. Hagar interacting with some culture that uses smoke signals for communication, like Native Americans or medieval Italians? Fine, Vikings actually encountered both groups. But put the two together and it’s a mess. A mess, I say! Are we to believe that Hagar lives in Newfoundland or Apulia now? I don’t buy it!
Mary Worth, 8/30/25
Wow, Mary spends weeks gushing about how unique Olive is and all the special gifts she has, and then the girl does one little reincarnation fantasy at the Met and all of the sudden Mary’s like “Damn, this kid is a weirdo. Those bullies were right!”
97 replies to “Ancient-ish times”
MW:
“I’ll bet these ancient Greek urns were from ‘Crete and Barrel,’ Mary!”
“What an imagination!”
MW. You’d look uncomfortable too if you were actually a millennia old succubus who first rose from the depths of a Nile marsh.
MW: “Um, sure.” Mary considers her response carefully knowing she’ll want to connect with the kid’s future wellness grift.
“Scarabs are natural healers and only $9.95 each!”
MW: Past life regression won’t work for Mary. She’s been only herself since time began.
RMMD: I’m no expert, but mightn’t the leaf-blower provide a nice jolt, here? CLEAR!
H&L: I’m sure the company would jump at having Thirsty for a spokesperson. “No matter how drunk or stupid, you can still get ’em on!”
Mary Worth: “We can imagine we’re in ancient Egypt! Like, I’ll be the magician who protected and healed the pharaoh, then ended up getting buried with him to serve him in the afterlife!”
MW: *Meanwhile at an archaeological dig in Egypt* “Look at this inscription! A new pharaoh, previously unrecorded by history. If I’m reading this correctly, Mehr-ri the Meddler was a feared warrior queen known for sending her enemies’ chariots plunging off cliffs.”
MW: When was the last time Moy actually had a conversation with a teenage girl–or, for that matter, any human being under the age of fifty? This dialogue is so stilted that it’s qualified to be a circus performer.
M Worth – Oh Mary, Olive’s imagination isn’t that wild. To her, there’s not much difference between you and the mummified remains in the Egyptian wing.
MW: In a remote, shadowy corner of the Ancient Egypt exhibition hall, Olive suddenly turned on Mary and rammed her souvenir Egyptian brain hook up Mary’s nostrils, twisting it deftly and liquifying the woman’s brain. The girl’s swift movements truncated Mary’s last realization, that Olive was weird, after all….It took mere moments for the girl to remove the old woman’s organs into some nearby canonic jars, then to shove Mary’s hollowed corpse into the giant sarcophagus that stood open on a plinth. Tossing in some linen and a few amulets from a display case, Olive then slammed shut the heavily decorated lid. “So that’s how the Ancient Egyptians did it,” Olive mused. Satisfied with her impromptu funerary efforts, Olive left the museum and caught the midtown bus for home. Still, something didn’t feel right about what she’d just done. “I should have added a cat,” she sighed with regret.
MW:
“I remember a past life in which I was a professional helping to adjust people’s skeletal structures in ancient Egypt’s largest city, Mary!”
“No. Don’t say it, Olive.”
“Yep. A Cairopractor!”
MW: As they enter the Nordic exhibit, Mary notices tears in Olive’s eyes.
“Are you sad, dear?” Mary asks.
“No, it’s just smoke from those damn Apulians sending hate mail.”
“What’s an ancient Greek urn?”
“About $12.50 an hour.”
Slylock Fox:
Today’s SF denizens are in a state of merriment because they heard a pun about how Slylock was flummoxed by ending up in a cafe which caters to philosophers dabbling in metaphysics. Slylock protested to the Teutonic rodentine waiter: “Fleder, there’s a ‘why‘ in my soup!”
HtH: I’m waiting for Elmo to come in and spoil his nap.
Mary Worth Mashup: Josh had the right idea.
HtH: Sorta disappointed that today’s Blondie isn’t about Dagwood invading England to raid the Earl of Sandwich’s kitchen.
Lockhorns: Some couples a marriage counselor takes a vested interest in helping, but D. Pullman is not to be blamed simply for putting up with these two for the hourly rate.
Gil Thorp: “Aging infrastructure”? This local radio sportstalk program will next the lack of luxury boxes & a $4M training facility, and complain about uppity kids with their NIL, like any normal slightly-upper-middle-class HS district.
BG&SS: The scarecrow is more industrious, and also a better listener, than Loweezy’s husband.
H&L: The “Thristy is lazy” team in Browne Comic-Like Industries Amalgamated catches up to the 20-aughts. This would have been more on point if we could the drawstring holding Thirsty’s sweatpants up.
MW:
“I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about the pharaohs, Mary1′
“Tut, Tut, Tut!”
@MKay on RMMD: You may be onto something. Cody can handle chest compressions but finds mouth-to-mouth with a dude unsettling, so he wedges the leaf blower into Jonah’s mouth and his chest inflates like a balloon.
JP: I swear, if this sequence ends with Ms. Sourpuss saying ‘yes, we were using April as a lure… but we didn’t ASK her to go to Norway!’….
@Charterstoned: Canopic jars.
MW “Let’s do some bog-standard imagination work that follows the typical questions to kids museums add to engage the Mr. Rogers set!” Mary shouldn’t be impressed by this teen’s imagination, if Olive really thinks this is ground-breaking Mary should probably be concerned about her mental development…
FG I would love it if Zarkov figured out they operate under comic strip rules with training montages, time skips and the rest … and managed to use that to their advantage
DtM: What’s up with the Mitchells constantly inviting unpaired men over the house? Are they looking for a sperm donor?
“Sorry, guys.” Points at Dennis “I’m not bringing another that into the world.”
MW: Olive…weirdo…ancient Egypt…tout uncommon…ah the hell with it. I cannot formulate a joke without more coffee.
RMMD-“Where do you keep your wallet?”
MW-Instead of visiting ancient Egypt why not visit ancient Greece.
MW: Is Groomer Mary starting to experience the consequences of isolating and enabling a self centered teenager who thinks that the world revolves around her? I sure hope so!
HtH: And thus we see the first domino fall in the eradication of the Beothuks.
Mw:
Olive: Also, ancient Egyptians worshipped anthropomorphic animals! They were almost like proto-furries, let’s make our own fursonas, Mary!
MW: This could be the setup for three months of strips set in ancient Egypt, with Mary and Olive’s “past selves” in the court of Pharaoh Wil-Bur and his daughter, Ra Rising Over the Nile. Mary’s advice will save the pharaoh from the machinations of his evil vizier, I-On-Kam and his wicked wife To-Bee.
And when it finishes and Mary and Olive are back in the art museum, Moy will undoubtedly insert a text box with a coy “It was all just Olive’s imagination… or was it??“
RMMD: Half-sister shows up, sees Cody pounding on Jonah’s chest, and accuses him of murder. Critics find new authenticity in Cody’s songs written from prison.
FC: Will the little melonhead still be looking at his ice cream cone at the end of that three-hour tour, a three-hour tour . . . . (and we know what happened to a more famous sightseeing cruise which was also supposed to last three hours!)
MW: Mary’s going to ancient Egypt and I can’t wait to see what minor god Wilbur was. Was there a slug god?
MW- it’s a good thing Moy de-aged Mary. I can’t imagine that old bitter looking Mary from about 15 years ago having anything to do with Olive.
Hagar – It was one of Wilde’s.
MW – “My parents ignore me, Mary. When we get to the Egyptian wing, will you be my new mummy?”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Is Don Abundio asleep again?”
“Dead to the world”
“Have you been feeding him sleeping pills?”
“No, there’s an easier way to keep him out of our hair”
“I just put on one of Juan S. Perfil’s old movies!”
Hagar’s started invading other comic strips! That’s Thirsty’s hammock, I tell ya! Or, well, it used to be. No hammocks in comic strip Hell.
MW:
‘I remember being chased by Yul Brynner in a chariot, Mary!”
“Oh, you’re authentic, all right!”
BCN – The normally sweetsy-poo tone of this strip paid off with a big laugh today.
FC – Sheesh, you tamp down the whining on one kid and it immediately pops up on another.
MW: Try it on somebody else, Olive. Mary’s ancient enough to remember the first “Bridey Murphy” hoax.
JumpStart – “YAY! WOO! Lookit them lovers croak! Best tragic death scene ever!”
@Peanut Gallery: Oops. Heart of the City, not JumpStart.
HtH: He’s just upset his neighbor is barbecuing a moose, and he wasn’t invited.
MW: “I can be King Tut, and you can be B@tm@n. *KAPOW*”
Hagar the Horrible. Rather than depicting Hagar lounging in a tranquil suburban back yard, today’s installment bears a darker visage. Hagar actually is at L’Anse aux Meadows, the ancient Viking settlement that once existed in Newfoundland. What to the untrained eye is a backyard fence is really the wall of the palisade intended to defend against the local hostiles, a native people the Vikings called Skrælings. The smoke annoying Hagar either is the signal for the Skrælings to attack, or the burning of the palisade. Either way Hagar, who was supposed to be on guard duty, will soon perish in the destruction of the fort and all of its inhabitants.
DT: Sam’s right on this point! Is Tess a secret gambler? Does she blow money on fancy dye jobs?
RMMD: It is just a bad acid reflux attack!
JP: IF this is the real CIA then their whole “organization” is leaky like sieve with agents in the field telling random strangers “Hey, I’m a CIA agent and this is our safe house.” Please let the real scheme be that Pavel Jr. actually works for the DeskLady they are just trying to close off any loose ends with April.
GT: Nice close up but maybe better to back off and use a 100-110 mm portrait lense rather than upclose with a fisheye. Everyone does look nice and jowly.
@Ken:
Oh Dear God, I hope you’re wrong. The cringe….THE CRINGE!!!
Luann: And I quote, “Leviathan isn’t like that. It’s about protecting the sea. You get to create, design and decorate your world. You’d love it.”
CS: “He’s… B@tm@n!”
9CL: 9 Chickweed Lane == 9th Circle of Hell?
MW: I think Olive’s classmates are going to reconsider letting her hang out with them.
FC: Two seconds later, Jeffy gets up on the bow of the ship and yells, “I’m King of the…” *SPLOOSH*.
Dustin: I’m not sure how she can enjoy her show when the asshole next to her is sawing logs. Maybe she has selective hearing.
@rosa: Considering she’s still with the old lady who has worn out her welcome since she arrived, Little Orphan Knockoff and Cafe Latte (formerly the still unnamed Spicy Latina) have wised up and gone to the mall with Naomi.
Is that the same comb that the Plugger just used to groom his pubic hair?
@taig:
On Luann’s Gunship Leviathan : I think the thing here is that the Evansii have given
next to novery little thought to what kind of game it’s supposed to be, outside of what is necessary for that day’s particular punchline.Best I can discern, it evokes Fortnite but with a nautical/maritime theme and environmental messaging, but is played on what appears to be a Nintendo Switch ™… Splatoon?
Tom Batiuk- Had three terrible comics, now whittled it down to one terrible comic.
Bil Holbrook- Has three terrible comics, still continues to work on all three simultaneously and has for about twenty years now.
Well, something should be said about that. I kind of admire Holbrook for his workaholic tendencies, regardless of quality.
HtH: I’d assumed Hagar and company lived in Scandinavia, but it turns out they’ve settled in Vinland. We don’t see much of the indigenous population, but given both the overall arc of European/Native American relations and the characters of Hagar in general, I’m not surprised they’re giving a wide berth.
MW: So it’s been a few years since I’ve been to the Met, but I know the European paintings are on an upper level, while the Greco-Roman and Egyptian collections are both on the ground floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sunday has Mary and Olive deciding on a whim to pop on over to the Cloisters.
@Little Blue Bicycle: 31- We’ll just have to watch Svengoolie and find out.
@The Rambling Otter: Although Bil Holbrook did ban any fanart of his characters.
I don’t believe that Batiuk had ever done that. I would have given a point to Batiuk for that, but let’s face it, NO-ONE would actually want to draw Batiuk’s characters.
Actually, I don’t think anyone would want to draw Holbrook’s characters either, not even the furry/adult furry communities.
Hägar the Horrible: Just to make things that much more fun/convoluted, the patch on Hagar’s hammock clearly indicates that he’s displaced and murdered the residents of Hootin’ Holler.
@Needless Exposition: Is Groomer Mary starting to experience the consequences of isolating and enabling a self centered teenager who thinks that the world revolves around her?
If years of being around Dawn Weston haven’t taught her this, a couple weeks of Olive won’t.
Olive is probably going to drag Mary off to CleoCon, the annual convention for people who think they were reincarnated from Cleopatra. What a pain in the asp.
***
“Neighbor [sic]”? We can rule out Hagar living in Newfoundland.
Absolutely STONE cold of Mary to suddenly be judgy of Olive’s metaphysical beliefs after planting and encouraging them all this time
GIL THORPE- In the center panel, is that Cass Elliott? Or maybe Rex Ryan in disguise?
BCN: Yes, I laughed. I’m a cat owner of simple pleasures.
C’shaft: Pity he didn’t stay down there long enough to go full cave fish.
DT: Kasandra Enterprises: You won’t believe what we’ve been up to!
Dustin: God, look at how angry Dustdad is. He hates letting his wife watch what she wants, just like he hates her cooking and her hair and skin care products and everything else about her that indicates she’s a human being with different interests and priorities than him. He’d obviously dump her for a trophy wife if it weren’t for the fact that he’s the world’s crappiest lawyer and no trophy wife would touch him.
GT: What the hell is happening to Mimi? Her face is blowing up like Weird Al’s at the beginning of the “Fat” video!
JP: “Well, yes, but we were going to pay funeral expenses!”
Luann: How dare Tiffany not instantly be good at a game she just started playing? She is such a girl!
MW: Lots of good stuff here today re: Mary Worth and little Olive! I don’t know if anyone besides me remembers the original 2014 arc so vividly (I’ve been working with my therapist to eliminate these memories), but besides seeing the future, Olive also saw Flower Fairies. And I didn’t get the impression it was her imagination.
Zippy – So the mascots swapped shoulders for the last panel? I thought Griffy was too OCD to make a mistake like that!
@49 taig: on Family Circus: As soon as Jeffy breaks the water’s surface, the ocean’ll puke him back up onto the boat. Thel found that out the hard way. In 1972 when this strip was originally drawn.
Speaking of comics, this fall the Philippe Labaune Gallery in NYC will have a career exhibition of the work of Frank Cho, creator of “Liberty Meadows” and much else.
Pluggers hang onto that little comb that came with the lice-removal kit, because you never know when it might come in handy again.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Ah, right, it’s Mary Worth. Consequences don’t apply to her brand of Eldritch Horror which includes cuckolding, extortion, meddling, and thinking that she deserves better than everyone else simply because she exists.
GT: That’s Mimi? That’s Coach ex-Mrs. Coach Thorp? Her new lover must be a great cook.
“Mommy! Daddy’s not looking at the skyline, he’s looking at that naked woman on Floor 69!”
@GarrisonSkunk: <Don Adams voice> Missed it by THAT much!
Crank: And then Ed decided to stop doing the thing, because we reached the end of the story. It’s called writing!
Curtis: Resilient is right — a street festival just a couple of days after an all-night block party? I wouldn’t have had the energy even when I was a kid!
DT: “The basic premise of this entire storyline seems unlikely, Dick.”
“That’s right, Sam, but now that we’ve acknowledged that, it’s almost the same as fixing it!”
JP: What’s funny about this is that Randy is saying it was all about April leading the CIA to the arms dealer as though — from the CIA’s perspective — that justifies their complete failure to keep tabs on her. It doesn’t! In order for her to lead them to the arms dealer, they need to actually know where she is, and they don’t! They only know she even met the arms dealer because Sophie told them! The problem here isn’t that April’s safety isn’t their priority, it’s that they’re totally incompetent on every level!
MW: “I have to pay lip-service to the idea my parents have had any real say in my life since we first met, but they know how things really work!”
@lynn: Yep, I remember that. Also an angelic messenger.
MW: how does Creepy Mary hold her head up with that long, skinny neck?
@White Rabbit: Will it include displays (and token discussion) about his ‘Outrage’ covers?
…. Asking for a friend…
MW: Maybe Mary *isn’t* being sarcastic? Maybe she thinks this Olive rally is exhibiting an amazing imagination? I can see the eyeroll, but that’s not a reliable indicator of anything. To the artist, it’s Generic Face #11 picked out of the Colorforms set.
@Horace Broon: This is what I call the Batiuk Cut: when the story jumps from well before the climax to well after it, eliminating anything that might have been interesting to see.
Mary Worth: Wow, so we’re just outright confirming now that Mary Worth is bigoted towards other religious beliefs and views them with derision. I’m not surprised that she is, but I am pretty surprised at the confirmation. This whole arc is pretty much summing up Mary at her absolute worst.
CS: Yep. By the way, I left a weeks worth of my soiled Depends under the bed. I’d clean them up but I’m already late for work. Bye.
CS: Be a lot cooler if Pam and Jeff just let Ed die under the bed but didn’t tell anybody. Then they’d just seal off the room containing his rotting corpse and keep collecting his Social Security and pension checks.
@Peanut Gallery: @GarrisonSkunk: Missed it by THAT much!
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“Ah, yes, the old Ukulele Ike grabbing a quick 69 trick! 15th time I fell for it this year!”
@Ukulele Ike: #69: I believe that is Mimi. The problem with the new art is it’s hard to tell one character from another, or their gender, race, or species for that matter.
@Peanut Gallery: So, Is Zippy the mascot for the relaunch of NEW IMPROVED FIZZIES™ tablets?
@GarrisonSkunk: Dang. Only if you had been a little quicker and snagged the previous spot. Still, well played.
@Professor Well Actually: MW: how does Creepy Mary hold her head up with that long, skinny neck?
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With Olive Oil,naturally!
What an imagination! Everyone always assumes their past lives would have been in Egypt or Greece or Rome, as if those places were all that existed. But there are far more people alive than ever before so most souls would have to be new, and while I can easily believe Mary Worth’s isn’t, chances are that in the Late Bronze Age she lived in some little tribe that has been completely forgotten because she accidentally meddled them to extinction.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: @GarrisonSkunk: Dang. Only if you had been a little quicker and snagged the previous spot. Still, well played.
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Thanks, Scratchy.
@pachoo:
I’m also of the opinion that Mary Worth was around during the Late Bronze Age and that her meddling is what doomed an Ancient Civilization to extinction, but I personally am under the impression that she hasn’t reincarnated between then and now, the old (litteral!) fossil.
MW- Is Olive going to play Cleopatra? Is Wilbur gonna be Mark Antony? Seriously, is Mary starting to realize what we’ve known all along?That the only thing “special” about Olive is that she is a dingaling sandwich on nutjob bread? Maybe they should ask Wendy.
Six Chex And A Cat Named Frank Lloyd Wrong: “I’m visualizing the words, ‘SIX CHIX’ being formed by the grass stage left of us.” “Cool idea,but I’m afraid today’s artist isn’t talented enough to quite pull that off!”
Aw geez, I took 69 and didn’t even make feelthy joke.
Gassed Up Alleycats: Oh, just give Jay Leno the chef’s job!
@Ukulele Ike: Aw geez, I took 69 and didn’t even make feelthy joke.
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You can borrow mine if you want, no hard feelings.
69. Ukulele Ike: The Familliar Mucus:”Mommy! Daddy’s not looking at the skyline! He’s looking at that naked woman on Floor 69!” Pink Shirted Binocular Guy:”Which floor was that, little girl?”
@Victor Von:
This was definitely a Thirsty strip, but Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC quality control didn’t feel like smoke signals would work in the modern day (unless it was a convoluted bit about bad barbecuers), and just had Hagar redrawn over it
@Anonymous: MW- Is Olive going to play Cleopatra?
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She’d be a good match for pre- “Hogan’s Heroes” Bob Crane (Dick Van Dyke Show ref).
Hagar the Horrible – Even worse for Hagar is that he’s as illiterate of smoke signals as he is the written word. The confusion is similar to the people in the comment sections of gossip magazines social media pages demanding answers to why TMZ is talking about a celebrity popular with young people.
Mary Worth – Warning: This is the strip testing out possible reboots of Mary and Olive in different time periods, always behind the scenes but interacting with key figures in history. It’s like the darkest timeline of Forrest Gump.
@ectojazzmage: There’s a reason why Santa Royale is called “America’s WASP nest” and not because of entomology enthusiasts.
HtH: Hagar will be aghast to learn that his entire village has been burnt to the ground in a retaliatory attack, but at least he’ll feel refreshed.
MW: Fingers crossed that we see Olive’s wild imagination leading her to mummify a still-living Mary.