I guess technically speaking they still have to get out of the tree first
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Mary Worth, 9/25/25
Wow, back in the day, you could write a long, crazy yarn about an unlikely trio hot-air-balloon-crashing into the remote woods, where they’d never be able to get back to civilization and have to turn to cannibalism to survive. But now they have cell phones and can just call an Uber to come get them or whatever. Boring!
Gearhead Gertie, 9/25/25
It seems particularly cruel for Gertie to use NASCAR analogies for defeating her husband in their arguments, since their arguments are inevitably about NASCAR. But I guess literally everything she says, does, and thinks about is NASCAR. She has no other context! It’s NASCAR all the way down!
Six Chix, 9/25/25
I of course am on the record as enjoying the Tuesday Chik’s sandwich sex strips. But when it comes to perversity, I have to say that I’m even more impressed with this one, which starts off as a corny, punny joke but very quickly gets to a place where we need to accept that this lady loves, has married, and, yes, has sex with a sentient set of stairs.
139 replies to “I guess technically speaking they still have to get out of the tree first”
MW:
“Are you okay, Mary?”
****
That is a question of such incredible depth and complexity that it is probably best answered in a doctoral dissertation.
Poetry Corner!
The Armadillo
By Elizabeth Bishop
for Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it’s still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
So, the stairs possess genitals? Do my stairs have genitals? Does the set of stairs hate being stepped upon? Or enjoy it FAR TOO MUCH? There’s too much to unpack here, I’m just gonna sit on the stai-NOOOOOOOOOOO!
Anyway “remote forest edge of Santa Royale”? I always thought Santa Royale was some minor California suburb but now it’s some kind of cRPG kingdom setting? Stanley is going to have to kill ten rats to be granted enough cellphone minutes to get out of there.
I love the emphasis Stanley puts on “phones,” like they are a grand, daresay exotic, new thing. No more smoke signals for us, no sir!
Six Chix-She married a futon?
MW-Can’t Olive use her Gifts to send out an SOS?
FC-Eh. Mommy polishes the neighbors’ doorknobs.
Six Chix:
“Now, that all goes well, kids, with your surname ‘Lively,’ which is the 33,406th most common last name internationally, shared by 1 out of 458,221 people — because, of course, that means that his full given name is ‘ “Step” Lively’ !”
MW: is about to show you smart ass pricks who are always complaining about the strips lack of and mal use of cell phones that in the forest they are as useful as tits on a bull. Take that haters!
6Cx: Just hire Bob Tice, already!
MW: The only casualty in this accident is June Brigman’s perspective. Olive just hit a growth spurt while Mary is shrinking like a dehydrated ficus plant in August. Meanwhile Stanley is debating whether or not he should just risk the fall and be done with it.
The flag in Gearhead Gertie today was a great move; really clarified everything. That had, truly, been the great question on my mind all along, and now I know.
CS: Thank God it wasn’t the Great White Buck!
MW:
“M.W. — phone home.”
–ET the Extraterrestrial
Oh. Wait a minute. It isn’t Sunday yet. And besides, Mary lives alone, so that wouldn’t do her any good.
MW: One good thing about landing in the previously unmentioned Santa Royale hinterlands is the C.H.U.D.s have killed and eaten all the large predator animals.
MW: It is pitifully obvious that Stanley will be the first one eaten.
GT: And no one is gasping because TOBIAS’ MOM HAS SPROUTED FANGS??
6CHX: At 5′ tall and shrinking every minute, I would TOTALLY hook up with a sentient set of stairs. They should be in The Pluggers Catalog.
MW: Oh please, like the cell phones will work in “the remote forest edge”. Nope, they’re going to have to
resort to cannibalismbe rescued by Max and Greta, as has been foretold.@Needless Exposition:
6Cx: Just hire Bob Tice, already!
He might object to the “Chix” label.
Dustin : alternate second and third panel :
“AI hallucinations!? Simone, *I* wrote all those lies by hand! I’m an english major, remember?”
“….You’re a credit to your generation, Dustin.”
***********
Luann : 2+2=7, this tuesday :
Also, wasn’t sharing some of the burden of this event supposed to be the whole point of recruiting Bernice to help out in the first place? (Bernice: “Hey! I bought multicolored binders! I did the hardest job of all!”)
How prescient.
***********
Six Chix : I’d like this strip better if there were THREE kids, and their heights were equal to the Stepdad’s individual steps. The implication being that her old husband left her when he discovered he wasn’t the father, and she got together with their REAL dad.
(Okay, this doesn’t make ANY sense, but my mind immediately went to an old joke I read in a magazine that went “Lucky Luke’s archenemies, the Dalton Brothers, look like that because Ma Dalton conceived them in a staircase”)@MKay: Stanley would see it as a mercy kill considering that the other two people are a nosy busybody and a “special” little narcissist.
MW: Stanley has to be the worst balloonivator in the history of balloonivating. Starting to think he’s just some random hobo who wandered onto the balloon after too much Mad Dog 20/20.
MW:
They’re stranded, to their great dismay
The pilot has little to say
This piteous nerd
Can’t grasp what occurred —
This “Stanley” ‘s no Montgolfier!
Six Chix:
“Mom, does this make each of us a ‘poor stepchild’ ?”
@astroboy: Maybe the organizers of the event thought that hiring a random hobo would cause Mary to die horribly in the hot air balloon version of the Hindenburg. Oh, the balloonmanity!
@MKay:
I thought she was frothing at the mouth, myself. Quick, somebody get something that looks like it could conceivably be a doctor!
6C: Hey, kids, he’s an early *riser.* (badum-bum!) So, *tread* lightly around him in the morning. (badum-bum!) Please stop *stairing* at him. (ka-shish!)
Thankyouthankyou. I’ll be here all night. Don’t forget to tip your waitstaff.
MW ” Yes…right…we have phones! That is definitely something I brought with us for emergencies, given how prepared I am.. heh heh. Sigh.”
6Cx: I like how the kids are so impressed by this development that their hair is literally blown back in awe. Usually you don’t see this kind of effect in kids outside of ads for a new Xtreme flavor of Mountain Dew.
MW:
I think that I shall never see
A gnome as ugly as these three
These three, whose grungy mouths are stressed —
And hence, Ms. Worth’s bleak-showing tress
These three, who look like clods all day
And lift their creaky arms to bray
These three who will, in sum, all bear
Some stressed-up noggins in their hair
Upon whose snoozin’ woe became
And infinitely live inane
Gnomes are made in pods of three
But only clods can scrape a tree
MW: “How could this have happened?” Good question, Stanley! Let’s ask the operators of all the other balloons in the festival, since apparently it didn’t happen to any of them!
@Needless Exposition: #22: Well, recruiting random hobos has always worked for Gil Thorp.
@astroboy: he’s going to regret this marriage. That family will walk all over him
Six Chix: “Ugh, my stepfather has such a terrible personality, so wooden.”
“Oh? How’s his relationship with your mom?”
“They have their ups and downs.”
@Bob Tice: I would have gone with Fred A. Stair.
MW – You literally cast your fate to the wind. How could this have happened, indeed….
GG – At my house, we call that running down the competition….
6C – Not to worry, though – you can walk all over him….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@astroboy: -Stanley shoves Mary out of the balloon-
Mary Worth: Psych! Those aren’t pine trees at all, they’re Remote Forest Edge Of Santa Royale Tarantula legs! …is what I would say if there were a way to make this interesting, which there is not.
6Cx: These kids look they’ve been introduced to a long string of potential stepfathers, all of whom were also Six Chix characters. “This is really messed up. This thing is worse than the sandwich and the pizza slice Mom brought home last year. Come on, me, hold it together! Keep your mouth closed so they can’t see you’re gritting your teeth!”
MW Odds on which reason Moy will pick for why the phones don’t work?
– They’re smashed despite everyone being uninjured
– Battery uncharged, which 3 separate people didn’t notice as they got ready for this
– Santa Royale is actually at the edge of the National Radio Quiet Zone, which is just about the only way to get “no signal” in the continental US now… which would be a nifty trick, since it’s in Virginia
JP “That’s not how we handle things” is presumably parroted from Charlotte’s dad telling her mom not to go assassin-y on the school bullies. This kid needs therapy, not a rich-girl babysitter
GT Speaking of needing therapy, we all know that Grandstanding Gil will get the school district to change the policy and all will be well. But in real life, airing sensitive topics in public like this is a *terrible* idea, even if Tobias already knew the details – that will affect how *everyone else* sees Tobias-and-Mom. If you think you have to blow up somebody else’s life to “fix” things, remember that you aren’t the headliner of a comic strip and seek help for your Main Character Syndrome
Also Mary Worth: “How could this have happened?” Come on, Stanley, this should be obvious. This was bound to happen, there was only so long Mary Freaking Worth was going to tolerate something being more full of hot air than herself.
Also Six Chix! “Mom, this is not all what I had in mind when you said you were ‘working the steps.'”
Six Chix: I’m almost as shocked by this strip’s implications as the wide-eyed kids it’s depicting are! They’ve never met their step-dad before today? They didn’t even attend the wedding? And Steppy McStep-Step there is apparently part of their EMPTY PINK VOID of a house?
A+ parenting, Nameless Lady. No, my voice isn’t dripping with sarcasm, it’s dripping with… some other thing I don’t have time to identify right now.
Gearhead Gertie: You call it “Victory Lane,” others call it “vehicular assault with a deadly weapon.” Who’s to say who’s right?
Luann – More than 40 comments in and not one comment yet on Bernice’s expertise with one-inchers? Although maybe it’s Bets who has all the experience with those.
So how come Olive didn’t see this coming, huh? Answer me that!
Also, is anyone else reading the pilot’s line with a comic, vaudeville-Yiddish accent?
Gertie having only Nascar on her mind, is like in Dexter’s Lab, where one of his inventions backfires and all he can literally say is “Omelette Du Fromage”
You can change all of Gertie’s dialogue to just “Nascar Nascar Nascar” like she’s a Pokémon, and it wouldn’t change anything.
MW: I wish I were, or knew, an experienced balloonivator. I’m sure there’s a great deal of unintentional humor in the second frame, where the balloon’s basket lightly rests against the tree (but bends it?), while the still-inflated envelope hovers overhead. Speaking of which, seeing as they’re in a resinous conifer — and a rather dry-looking one, though that may be the colorist’s fault — they really check the balloon’s burner is off.
Six Chix: This is your new Step-Dad!… oh please don’t stare.
FC: Thel immediately assumes a drunk Bil is using a breakfast pancake and blackberry jam to polish his shoes, again.
@CanuckDownSouth: What makes you think there has to be a reason? We just saw Little Miss Special run right straight past a lifeguard into a dangerous riptide so she could be the center of attention.
Today’s Six Chix rivals the Doctor Who episode “Love and Monsters” for most disturbing relationship.
(The Doctor revives the guy’s girlfriend as a sentient slab of concrete)
When binging the revival with my Mom, I quietly skipped that episode.
Phantom: ‘The nail metaphor only comes up because it looks like I broke a nail punching this guy. Also, I’m suddenly really hungry for potatoes. How about one of you cooks whip me up a plate of hash browns?”
RMMD: ”Don’t just take the brown balls. Try some of the blue balls, too.”
Finally, a comic just for me.
Does anyone remember Rich Hall’s Sniglets? “Balloonivator” would be a great one. (Seriously, is there a word that mans “balloon operator”?)
MW- out in the boonies, they spot what looks like Bigfoot, but no, it’s Aldo Kerast!
GG- no wonder she’s fixated on nascar- anything to taker mind off that shitty car she drives.
@The Rambling Otter: There’s no way Step-Dad can support these childen. He doesn’t even have a handrail.
I made the exact submission to Pluggers as appeared today, years ago. Why didn’t I get published? Is it because I’m Canadian? Thanks, Trump.
MW: perhaps I missed it, but why didn’t Olive’s “tummy brain” alert her about this situation? Does it only activate if someone will actually die if she doesn’t intervene?
@Pozzo: #43: I see it delivered more as a William Bendix “What a revolting development!”
GH: Is anyone gonna tell Gertie that someone swiped the tires off of her truck? Looks like she needs a better pit crew.
GT: What is going on in P2? Is she sprouting downward fangs? Drooling? As bad as the art has been in this strip, I find this panel deeply disturbing.
And now for words that have never been uttered before – it’s too bad Wilbur isn’t in this Mary Worth story. It would have been enjoyable seeing him land in that tree for it to bounce back, launching him to another. We could have had an entire week of the forest tossing him from tree to tree.
***
The most disturbing thought is that those aren’t sentient stairs but a man in a costume he built because he gets off on people walking on him. It’s like introducing your new boyfriend to your kids while he’s wearing a gimp suit.
Slylock: “and don’t forget to kill all the other air breathing animals, kids.”
The Six Chix cartoon would have made more sense if the kids had the thousand yard stare typical of children whose father has abruptly been removed from the home and replaced by someone else.
Mary Worth – “Yes…. Right…We have phones!” the balloon operator said, sadly having his dream of living in the woods with Mary and Olive as a new family dashed. He thought he was free of civilization for good.
Gearhead Gertie – Gertie’s husband keeps his truck in the driveway because if he puts it in the garage the intrusive thoughts about just closing the door, leaving the engine running, and never having to think about NASCAR ever again get louder and louder.
Six Chix – At least she isn’t engaged to Wilbur.
Chix (sic): Guess I’ve really misunderstood the term “bed stairs” all these years.
Yes, Mary, call for help. Then you’ll get to learn first hand how very not-amused the emergency services folks can get when they’re called out to bail some people out from the consequences of their own abject stupidity. Usually expressed as a bill for services rendered. What’s the hourly rate on a helicopter and rescue team?
@The Rambling Otter:
“Kids, ‘Pops’ here can help you with your math homework on ‘step’ functions!”
6C: This is the kind of Amelia Bedelia-level literalism that would show up in a “Billy draws the strip” installment of Family Circus. Which prompts the question: if one of the Chix let her child create the strip for her, how would you tell?
MW: I love how the balloon is still perfectly inflated, despite being blown out of the sky, lodged in a tree and probably punctured all over with the needles. It’s almost as if June Brigman knows how stupidly implausible this set-up is and is leaning into it.
Anyway, I’m normally not one to root for wildfires–I have friends in Altadena who lost their home earlier this year–but if a 15,000-acre conflagration set off by a balloon burner took out the two most self-congratulatory people in the world and the world’s stupidest balloonivator it would be a net positive for the world.
“Oh no… how could this have happened?”
Stanley the balloon pilot pulling a real “who shot Hannibal?”
6Chx: “Your new father is a Cossack. He grew up on the steppes.”
Six Chix: An old computer game I played, where you have to sneak out of an evil fairy’s castle, maneuvering your character down old curvy staircases with the arrow keys, one wrong step and you fall off to your doom.
You can also visit the Good Fairy’s castle, who also has staircases. To quote this one Let’s Player “You know that she’s the good fairy because she has RAILINGS!”
What I am getting at in context to Six Chix… actually aside from “Stairs” I don’t remember what I was getting at. I guess I can’t keep my ramble subsided like I promised.
Mary Worth: So, Olive has reached that time in every young girl’s life when she puts away the ability to foretell the future that would have kept them out of the damn tree and fully embraces the ability to communicate with forest animals that will get them down from the damn tree. Too bad that, when she wanders off from their makeshift camp to find a creek (or, as Californians call it, “the ocean”), she’ll come back to find that Stanley has skinned and dressed her new best forest friends. Who coulda foretold?!
Gearhead Gertie: Everyone in Gearhead Gertie is shortish and squat, but their houses and cars are stretched and elongated to an impossible degree. It’s like they ended up buying the products meant for the new character designs in Gil Thorp.
Six Chix: I unironically love Thursday Chick and it makes me laugh without fail. The goggle eyes of horror on the children and the sensitive caring look on the steps really work for me. This is high art, and I will hear no argument to the contrary.
Mary Worth: Tomorrow in Mary Worth, the pine tree snaps back upright like a trebuchet and sends them flying.
RMMD: I’d like to hear more about Jordan’s ‘Adults only’ restaurant.
Six Chix: “This is a big improvement over your actual father. He was a real doormat.”
@TheDiva: On Six Chix: I salute your observation, but at the same time I can only imagine that their kid’s writing would actually be better. The drawing… I’m not sure on.
@Banana Jr. 6000: The word is “aeronaut.”
MW – “It’s ok, we have phones! Let’s just hope this vast, uncharted wilderness has cellular towers! They do disguise those things as trees sometimes, right?”
@Drew Funk: I laughed so hard at your comment, I really should change my name to “The Rambling Hyena”
@Tom: Olive’s tummy brain was screaming a warning, but Mary was praising her at the same time, and guess which Olive would rather listen to?
@A Grave Mind: Be it foam or be it fangs, the guy next to her is totally oblivious.
MW: Yes, good thing you have cell phones, something that 90% of the population has. I mean, you could have used those earlier to, say, look up the weather and make sure nothing would happen during your balloon flight, but oh well
DT: If Dick and Sam drive right by Tess Lakoyle (oh God, I just got that) in her cherry-red sports car with the vintage plates without noticing, it…will pretty much be of a piece with the rest of their detective work thus far.
Dustin: “Do you even know what an ‘AI hallucination’ is, or is it just a buzzword that you picked out solely for the purpose of insulting me?”
“Of course I know what it is! It’s…it’s when an AI….you know, hallucinates…”
“That’s what I thought.”
GT: As always, Gil manages to make this all about himself. (And gaaah, what the hell is going on with Tobias’ mom in panel two? Foaming at the mouth? Turning into a saber-tooth tiger?)
Luann: Gunther wearing a stupid dog costume and eagerly discussing office supplies while his nominal girlfriend struts around in the most blatantly fetishistic Catwoman costume in the canon tells you everything you need to know about him.
JP: Very telling that Charlotte’s first assumption is that if she points out her school bully Neddy will put a hit out on her.
Pluggers do things in the stupidest ways.
H&L: I think Ditto’s trying to tell us something. It’s okay, kid. CC is a safe space.
MW: I got a kick out of the balloon appearing to be a solid object, like maybe a wet sack of oatmeal. No wonder they couldn’t stay aloft.
Gearhead Gertie: A real NASCAR fan drives a pickup you can’t hide a dozen eight-year-olds in front of? She’s a poseur.
Luann: I did laugh at Bets saying “accordion folder” with quotation marks. Little things like this make a gag work.
Lockhorns: Don’t blame the kale, Leroy. As if Loretta knows how to cook broccoli or Brussels sprouts worth a damn. “I say it’s spinach, and I say ‘to hell with it’!” is about a century old. You’re not improving on the original.
MW: The phones won’t work because nobody—and I mean NOBODY—in the Worthiverse knows how to hold one. I know, because I’ve tried to hold my own cell phone the way these people always do, and it can’t be done. So unless the laws of physics have ceased to exist in that balloon, the phone must needs drop to the forest floor.
Also, they won’t have any reception in that remote suburban forest.
ME: This might be a good time for some desperation born of love.
MW: That is not how hot air balloons, trees, or hot air balloon crashes work.
SFx: Then, they must jury-rig a lithium hydroxide canister to scrub the carbon dioxide from the air.
Wizard of Id Classics: This one literally made me laugh out loud. Just a great little gag.
GT- I negotiate for a living. My response would be “I’m sorry Coach Thorp, but I missed the part where you had leverage here. So, sorry, but the policy remains.” Then watch GT retreat like a puppy with its tail tucked between its legs, wetting itself.
@Charterstoned: Make that “strength born of love”—although there’s nobody above them who can pull these folks to safety, the way Iris saved Zak at Piccadee Falls. Maybe they should just jump and get it over with.
MW – If this is going to be a Stanley and Olive situation, it seems like the roles must be reversed. Stanley flaps his arms in exasperation and says “DO something to HELP me!” So Olive cuts the gondola loose from the balloon and they all fall to the ground. Mary shakes her fist and does the James Finlayson “D’ooooooh!” Stanley picks pine needles out of his hair and says “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!” Olive scrunches up her face and cries.
Wow, nearly 100 comments in and no one has made a Laurel & Hardy reference?
‘Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into, Stanley!!’
MW:
How disappointing! I was hoping for a Mysterious Island scenario where the balloon is swept far out to an uncharted island and Mary is beset by giant crabs and volcanic explosions. But I guess that’s more in Wilbur’s domain.
Don Abundio, translated:
“This is the joint right here!”
“Okay, but… why does it look just like a diner?”
“At a normal strip club you get all sleepy on cheap booze”
“But here the coffee keeps you alert so you don’t miss a thing!”
@Peanut Gallery: THANK you!
I hearby withdraw my prior complaint.
@The Quiet Man: I got in ahead of you by mere seconds!
The pine trees whispered in the breeze, conspiring, chuckling. The palm trees had protected Mary Worth at Charterstone but here, in the mountains, they had no power. Mary was in the hands of the pines, and those hands bristled with needles.
“How did this happen?”
I admit I’m not an expert in ballooning, but I think I can solve this one without Slylock. If I had to make a wild guess, Sir, you steered your balloon into a tree.
6C- New step Dad implies there’s an old step Dad. How many flights of stairs has this lady been stepping on?
Today’s Six Chix features a fun cameo appearance by TV’s Bart Simpson.
Anyways, who do you think is going to be the first of the stranded balloon trio to suggest cannibalism? My money is on Olive.
Pluggers: If there’s a power outage, and the cell towers are down, then a landline is the only way to call out.
Six Chix. I, uh, think the trademarked name “Stairmaster” just took on a whole new BDSM-related meaning.
GG – “My husband performed cunnilingus on me today.” “In my house I call that a victory lap.”
CS: Ed, there’s this thing called comprehensive that covers stuff like theft, vandalism, storm damage, uninsured motorists, uninsured wildlife, etc. Since Crankshaft’s own car is what appears to be a 20 year old Chevy Cavalier I can’t fault him for carrying only liability.
Mary Worth: I would give up each and every possession I own for that tree to fall over and crush Mary and Olive to death.
Gearhead Gertie: Gertie’s arguments with her husband probably consist of tying him to a chair and reading her NASCAR-based marxist manifesto at him until he breaks down crying and reaffirms allegience to the coming revolution.
FC: Mommy, Daddy’s giving PJ a stiffy!
MW: Oliver will channel her previous life as mountain man Grizzly Adams and enlist the aid of a friendly sasquatch.
MARY WORTH: Oh dear, it looks like some of you still haven’t learned to be quicker on the uptake from the “Wilbur” stories, I see. We should all know how this goes by now:
Today: Mary, Olive, and Balloon guy are lost in the forrest after crashing.
Tommorow: The threesome realize their cellphones don’t work for some plot-allowance reason (insert your favorite contrivance here!) and they start climbing down the tree and wander around exploring with renewed determination for survival due to Mary’s litany of platitudes (which was just to get her to shut up, but it worked so….)
Saturday: The trio discovered that they actually landed in “Forrest” Santa Royale’s newest five-star resort (they landed on the “Woodsy Wonderland” side of the hotel, only a 5 minute walk away from the casino entrance and spa section.) Add comedy stinger music cue here!
I’m just saying, I do hope we get on the ball for 2027 before we start really believing that, say, Toby is lost in ancient Rome when she starts wandering around the perimeter of Ceaser’s Palace in a daze or something.
Not enough racing references in today’s GG. She needs a black and white checkered flag at the end of the driveway, a pithy yard sign that says “In This House We Believe: Nascar”, and a gazing ball adorned with Dale Earnhardt Jr’s face, at the very LEAST.
SIX CHIX: The kids look more freaked out about this then they should. They should be happy. I mean it looks like they can walk all over their new stepdaddy!*
*So I guess Gearhead Gertie’s husband is a bigamist now eh? ;-)
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Please, this is Crankshaft we’re talking about. Of course he has only liability–any damage caused to his or anyone else’s vehicle is going to be his fault. Even if he hits a deer on the road, you know it’s because he sped up and aimed.
@astroboy: Well that’s what Santa Royale gets for hiring Dorothy’s ex husband. They should have known from his history that he’s a yutz!
@Cleve Barrister: Gil’s leverage is that he’s GIL THORP, the greatest coach in the history of the universe and the most important human being in all of Milford, whom all the ladies adore and all the men envy, and the school board will tie themselves into knots in order to keep him around.
MW – Not a cloud in the sky and nary a breeze to ruffle the leaves.
What a great day for a balloon ride!
My compliments to the commentariat, I would never have thought there were so many puns involving staircases fathering children. I wonder if we’ll see any of them
stolenadapted for Six Chix in the coming weeks?REX MORGAN M.D.: Ha! These are just the “upscale”, “white-collar” version of Mary Worth’s tan spheroid food-like objects!
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): I love how this strip just confirms my early theory about the lack of inner lives among the nothings that make of this strip’s supporting cast, as Jordan is essentially the gender-flipped (for “wokeness” balance I guess) version of nobodies like Yvonne and Wanda, characters who’s entire personality revolves around cooking and serving people. Appearing in a wedding setting is even better, as it just reminds us that Rex has no use for Jordan outside his designated “role” in the bland milquetoast tapestry the threads their universe together (much like this wedding, Rex attended Jordan’s nuptials, where Jordan declares his heartfelt devotion to his chosen life-partner, just to get a free meal, because he’s a great and caring friend!) Maybe you should have chosen to be Heather’s potential concubine after all, eh, Jordan? At least you might have kept some sliver of a personality.
And in case you forgotten how shallow and transactional all of Rex’s relationships are, he mentions finding a sitter and I hope it’s their blond kid’s grandparents since I’m sure that’s the only way the Morgan’s would ever spend any time with or even talk to these “important” people in their child’s life.
6C: Stop her before she gets into a downward spiral.
Gil Thorp – Add me to the list of Mudges who noticed that the woman in panel two has fangs. Maybe turning GT into ‘Salem’s Lot will be a big improvement. The cast has to remember that you have to invite them in the first time. The same applies to Mary Worth. (“Now I can meddle at will!)
9CL – I love Alistair’s enormous head and his swimming trunks pulled up to his armpits. Seriously, get help, Brooke.
Mary Worth – I bet that the rescuers will arrive, pull the balloon out of the tree, and then the balloon will lift off and return to Santa Royale. I don’t think that balloons work that way.
@2+2=7: Yup, the blond kid’s grandparents are babysitting. I remembered but looked it up to confirm. It’s in the September 14 strip.
@2+2=7:
Southern Gator: You’re going to marry my many daughters.
Buster Bunny: That’s Bigamy.
Southern Gator: No, that’s big of me.
@L’esprit de l’escalier: Shouldn’t you have posted this on Friday?
(Jeez. I should talk…)
Gil Thorp, All American: Can you quit a job you don’t actually do?
You know what would have been amazing? If it turned out this was happening at the same time Iris and Zak were dangling over that cliff, and she dropped him, but he miraculously fell into Mary and Olive’s crashing balloon basket. The Remote Forest Edge of Santa Royale should be where stories get weird.
I appreciate this Gearhead Gertie for reminding us that, Marvin-like, every character in this strip lives a miserable existence. “I won an argument with my alleged life partner! I’m so excited, I’m going to tell my insufferable friend about it!” A NASCAR fixation isn’t the only way to grind a marriage into dust over decades.
FC: “PJ’s humping Daddy’s leg!”
@I speak Jive: That takes me back to the Frank McLaughlin days, when he always made the artistically bold decision to not draw pupils on faces in profile, so they all looked like vampires about to move in for the kill. Sigh, the memories.
Six Chix – “Only three steps? Mom, you promised to get into a twelve-step program!”
@2+2=7: It’s why I chose to focus on how Olive is now the same height as Mary who has shrunk a few inches while Stanley is trying to get out of the basket before the obviously rubber tree straightens up and they’re launched into the stratosphere.
The bent-over pine tree silently cries out in agony. Miles away, old old ears hear the plea.
Treebeard straightens, rises up, and turns towards the pines. Once again, the Ents are going to war.
GT: That’s right, Tobias. Your mother was going to flush you down the toilet while still in the fetal stage. You’re only here because of me. You owe me, man, for life. No wonder the mom is frothing in rabid rage.
GT: Coach Luke is looking at Tobias mom with trepidation thinking, ” She’s turning into a chupacabra before my eyes! I knew I should’ve brought my Santaria voodoo emergency kit!”
@MKay: Well, the strip has often hit the cutting edge issues and topics a little late, so they are just catching up to the whole Twilight vampire saga thing….
MW: I believe they have landed in the Los Padres National Forest. If so, they’re in the mountains. Unless Charterstone is located in Montecito, where the forest area is nearer. Come to think of it, Montecito would be a good fit, a wealthy enclave with amenities denied to the rest of us proles.
Today I saw the first hot air balloon of the Balloon Fiesta season here in Albuquerque. Last year I saw a downed balloon in the shape of a giant penguin collapsing on the side of the freeway. Such is life in these here parts.
MW: “With one mighty bound, the balloon was free!”
@Austria:
Right? Not ONE thing with “Valvoline” on it, the Hell?
GT: Yesterday I asked Rachel Merrill if she could draw her female characters any uglier. She must’ve read that and said, “Hold my beer.”
@Guillermo el Chiclero:
Isn’t he like, a priest now, or something (that’s a thing that just happens)? The Church might not have the right man, but dammit, he’s in the right place at the right time!
I’m beginning to suspect that the Tuesday Chik is actually Dr. Chuck Tingle
H & L: I actually kind of feel sorry for Ditto here. Usually, characters in this strip just react with a big dopey surprised face, but today’s reaction seems to have slightly more depth.
CS: You can hit a deer and still be covered if you have the right insurance. I once rammed two at the same time, and only had to pay $500 on a $9,500 repair job (although I’m sure the autobody guys fixed stuff that didn’t need fixing since they knew they’d get paid for it anyhow).