Not even going to get into how sad having Buck as your best man would be
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Blondie, 9/20/25
My favorite part of this Blondie strip is “40 reps of what?” Like, she knows that this is some elaborate Dagwood bullshit and she’s trying to cut to the chase and find out exactly what kind of bullshit it is. Sadly, it’s dumber bullshit than she could’ve possibly guessed.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/25
We must of course never forget that the first time we met Mud Mountain Murphy, he was sharing a bill with Truck and pretended to shit his pants on stage just so he could get a better spot in the order. Subsequently he joined a scam cult that accidentally made him into a better person for real, and I think we can all agree that there would be no funnier time for his cult conditioning to abruptly wear off than right now, when he once again is on stage with Truck, and his ego might be a little bruised because he’s not the center of attention but he can fix that with one weird trick (the trick is pretending to shit his pants).
Crankshaft, 9/20/25
As America’s preeminent newspaper comics blogger, one of my important jobs is to point out when syndicated strip creative teams seemingly forget long-established lore. Take today’s Crankshaft, for instance, which features the title character experiencing shame, something he would simply never do!
76 replies to “Not even going to get into how sad having Buck as your best man would be”
RMMD:
“Say something pithy and poetic, Truck!”
“Okay then. Ahem.
“I see her diaphanous veil
But this wedding’s sure bound to fail
I’ll go take a whirl
With that playpark squirrel —
It’s time for this groom here to bail!”
Blondie – Wake me up, before you go-go. I want to make sure the bathroom door is closed….
RMMD – Come on back an’ tock ta Teddi Bayer….
Crank – I can tell they’re really fuckin’ good….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RMMD: In tomorrow’s strip, Shorty (of ‘Shorty and Beanpole’ fame!) crashes into the frame Durante-ing it up. ‘Stop da wedding! I say stop da wedding!’ He has no reason for doing so, Beatty just wants to drag out having to finally have a story line that actually features the title character.
JP: Independently rich, lazy as a doormat, and she’s a glutton to boot? I can see why you haven’t been in such a rush to kick her out. My current theory is Abbey is keeping her around so that the next time a mysterious arsonist, deranged judge, drunken detective, or CIApril comes around, Neddy can be her human shield and then seize control of her wealth.
MW: And they just drift off into the sky…. The End. It’s just like the ending of what I’m sure is one of Moy’s favorite movies, ‘Cats’!
RMMD:
“We are gathered here today to listen in on my recitation of a Looney Tunes ceremony. Ready, folks?
“Oh, for sure — flirtin’ sights
This is it, the rite of rites
No more becursing, dispersing our smarts
We know every snark by heart
“Oh, for sure — flirtin’ sights
This is it; you’ll hit the rites
And, oh, what rites we’ll hit —
On with the woe, this is it!
“Tonight, what rites we’ll hit
On with the woe, this is it!”
RMMD:
“Give yourselves a little time together 24/7, you two, and soon it’ll be ‘wholly matri-moany‘ !”
MW: Mary, not having been sufficiently praised by Olive or the grizzled balloon operator for her many fine qualities, draws a comparison to Olive and thus showers herself with well deserved adulation.
Luann’s only superpower would be having an I.Q in the negative numbers.
Blondie: Ooops, bad news Bumstead: ‘Napaerobics’ is already in use by a company that promoting exercise regimens with Asian cabbages, KimChiFit.
RMMD: I like how the narration box assumes this is an event we’ve all been waiting for with great anticipation. Honestly, I thought that they had already gotten married off-panel, in between gripping scenes of browsing genetic testing service companies online.
Cshaft: So, this is the church choir that fucks? Each other, I mean, at practice, and then stays mum about it? I think I’m reading that right…
MW: “Olive, you remind me of myself when I was young.”
You do?
“Yes, I can see you poverty stricken and selling apples in the streets.”
Crankshaft:
It would be eschatologically satisfying if a bolt of lightning were to strike Ed the instant after those naughty words escaped his lips in that sacred place.
Crankshaft: My Grandmother was a bitter miserable person who HATED her daughter-in-law (my Mom)
She also had dementia, so one day when my Mom went to visit her in the nursing home my Grandmother hugged her and said “We will always have each-other”
Either the home was drugging her up with some really good stuff, or she literally forgot that she didn’t like my Mom.
What I’m getting at is, this out-of-character moment for Crankshaft is probably dementia related.
Phantom:
The Phantom’s canine companion’s head is tilted in a slightly different direction from that of the armed guard approaching them, suggesting an ambiguity about whether he is concerned about the impending interaction. I guess you might call that a “Devil may care” attitude.
RMMD: New item for my Bucket List: attend a wedding that starts with, “Howdy.”
MW: These crushes of Mary’s are SO cringy. Last time, it was Neighbor Keith Hillend, who devoted his life to avoiding her. Now, it’s Olive, who, when all is said and done, is JUST A KID. It’s not like she’s bending spoons with her mind or anything.
RMMD: Mud Mountain Murphy is a minister?
Sounds more like forced bull**** just to squeeze as many characters in as possible, I guess drawing NEW characters is hard… even if all you need to do is put a generic face in priest robes.
Compare with when Iris and Zak got married, Brigman put a lot of detail into the minister to look like Morgan Freeman as much as possible.
That is dedication, and that is not something I would normally say about Mary Worth.
FC–Nope. Sorry but Jeffy gets the comic.
MW-Now Olive must learn how to meddle in people’s lives.
RMMD-What this writer has brought together may no man tear asunder at least until the next writer takes over.
I choose to believe Crankshaft’s shame is a sham. In truth, he’s flushed with the thrill of fucking with everybody and getting away with it, after he interrupted the song to inform everybody he messed up. Nobody who sings in a choir does that, you just keep singing and hope your mistakes don’t stand out too much in the chorus of voices, but of course Crankshaft’s only joy in life is ruining everyone’s day. A smooth bit of subtle menace that would impress Dennis.
RMMD — Are they getting married on stage? And is it normal to have a spotlight on the bride and groom as say their vows? Did they turn out all the other lights in the venue? Will Lilli Von Stupp throw open the curtain and begin her rendition of “Tired”?
Crankshaft: “Don’t worry…What happens at St. Spires choir practice, stays at St. Spires choir practice.” [extended fart noise]
@Amelie Wikström:
Yeah, Crankshaft’s embarassment being an act would track, it would be him going all “OH NO I SWORE IN CHURCH IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF LITTLE OLD LADIES WHAT A HORRIBLE FAUX PAS YOU LITTLE OLD LADIES MUST BE SOOOOOOOOO OUTRAGED”.
And because he got the “we don’t mind, you can do anything you like during practice”, he’s going to up his game by starting waving his arms wildly to “accidentally” shove a couple of them over the balcony the choir is performing in.
(Also : Weren’t the choir ladies all elderly women? Why is there a generic 20-something blonde woman in there? (and which is she? Mindy? Hannah? Jessica? Amelia? Bedelia? Cindy?))
C’shaft: “That rule also applies when we cut out your heart on the altar and offer it to our lord on Sunday.”
Excellent wrangling Lillian!
RMMD: I smell a plot twist. Mud is about to single a career/genre shift by breaking into his rendition of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”
RMMD: Years ago I, like Minister Mud Mountain Murphy here, got ordained online by the Universal Life Church to officiate my friend’s wedding. It’s free, and you’re legally allowed to perform marriages, last rites, and a couple other things. You also get a “Clergy” card for your windshield, which has helped me out of a parking ticket or two in a pinch.
Anyway, congrats Truck and Wanda. Now, can we PLEASE have an actual medical storyline? Maybe even surgery?
Um…”signal.” not “single.” (Though he might release it as a single.)
JP: As we all know, the best environment for workshopping your writing with an expert is while wrangling an energetic preschooler
@Bob Tice: and it would be scatologically satisfying if a giant turd fell out of the sky, like a safe or piano in a Bugs Bunny Cartoon, and landed right on Ed’s noggin.
It wouldn’t be a cacastrophe—it would make the strip excrementally more interesting.
Rex Morgan‘s last storyline ended with the heartwarming moment of Truck saying it wouldn’t feel right to get married without Cody there, “son,” setting up a solid week of Truck’s wedding and absolutely zero trace of Cody.
…and my inability to close an italics tag, apparently.
Phantom:
“It’s the silhouettes from Mystery Science Theater 3000! — they must be here to inject some badly-needed comic relief into this strip!”
@brendancalling: A fun fact I learned recently is that the owners of the cocaine bear’s stuffed corpse (which is probably the stuffed corpse of a completely unrelated bear) claim that it can officiate at weddings, which is not true, but in Kentucky a wedding performed by an unqualified officiant cannot be invalidated if the parties believe that the officiant was qualified, which means that spreading the story that the bear can solemnize marriages means that it actually can solemnize marriages. What I’m saying is Rex Morgan missed a trick.
Mary Worth Mashups: Which missing final panel do you like best?
MW: the similarity between Mary’s profile and Olive’s suggest that Olive was Mary in a past life. Wait…what?
DtM: Suitably menacing! Dennis has TRASHED the Mitchell’s home, leaving garbage and heaven knows what filth on the floor, and one of their books on top of it. Why is Martha smilint?
Fudge Packer – I am a writer. Whether I’m a good writer or not is an opinion I’ll leave to readers. But I’m enough of a writer that I know to run away when I hear someone say, “I’m a [fill in the blank], so I should be able to write.”
RMMD: “…I now pronounce you man and wife.” Mud Clunks Truck and Wanda’s heads together like the three stooges. “Sorry, Folks. I’m still not 100% douchebag free.”
MW: Mary lavishes praise on herself, and Olive. Olive returns the favor by lavishing praise on Mary, and herself.
Could these two just get a room alrea…oh, waitaminute. Strike that.
Rex Morgan Mashup: What the audience is thinking.
FC: Sorry, sweetie. My scent your father likes can’t be put in a bottle. Frankly, it’s kinda gross.
MW: “Look. How much more self praise do you need? We’re already this close. Why don’t you finish the deal?” Mary’s patience with the lord grows thin as she awaits the rapture.
@Baja Gaijin: The cosmic air conditioner is AWESOME.
MW: Mary is a step closer to canonizing herself, isn’t she…meanwhile the balloon’s pilot bailed out some time ago and the two passengers are being propelled toward the Karman Line never to be seen again.
Some people prefer to wake n bake rather than wake n nap.
Crankshaft: I’m an agnostic and the idea that I, a guy, would be allowed to wear my hat there is making me church-curious.
Also, is that any real hymn, or does the choir just warble wordlessly?
That throwaway line by Blondie about the idiom of “in his sleep” is legit good.
Lockhors: Loretta, can’t you beg the shelter to take him back?
Luann: Okay, Bernice is just the kind of woman I’d like to have known back at that point in my life.
Beetle Bailey and Miss Buxley are all of a sudden stationed in Europe, Japan, or a major North American metro area with real transit? This is a fascinating way to deliver the news.
Zits: I thought Jeremy’s relationship with Sara had progressed to where she wouldn’t be checking for five o’clock shadow with her hands.
FC:
Dolly: “Plus your pearl necklace?”
Thel: “That comes afterwa–”
Dolly: “What?”
Thel: “NOTHING.”
Blondie – So Dagwood is claiming to be a champion napper because he got up early and took a nap during the time he would’ve been asleep anyway. I’d compare that to claiming you’re on a strict diet because you haven’t been eating while you’re asleep, but in Dagwood’s case that really would be showing unusual restraint.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Monin is an unusual mixture of breeds!”
“How did you determine his ancestry?”
“By observing his behavior…”
“He’s part Portuguese Water Dog and part Chesapeake Bay Retriever!”
B. Bailey: Beetle asks “Can we have two tickets to Paradise”
“Two tickets to Pork Corner coming up (it’s on the sign).”
MW: Y’know, generally, the sentence “You remind me of myself when I was your age” is followed by some at least gentle criticism, to help the person you’re talking to learn from your own mistakes and experiences, but obviously Mary couldn’t pass up the chance for some self-aggrandizement.
Ripley: Ah, yes, the celebrated citrus orchards of Wiltshire, England. I hope Ms. Tammy Warren bought plenty of the locally-grown bananas at that farm stand while she was there.
Peanuts Begins: Wow, newspaper bridge columns. By the time I was a kid no one was playing bridge any more — looking at old cartoon collections (the best way to study pop history), the craze seems to have peaked in the ‘40s-early ‘50s — but I remember Omar Sharif’s column. And when I moved east in 1978, The NY Times still had a chess column and a steamship arrivals listing.
Now they have David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Ross Douthat. Kill me.
MW: Mary’s first line is one of those “suddenly the psychological profile leaps into sharp focus” moments.
MW: Mary is praising Olive by praising herself.
@But What Do I Know?: I do not care for this remake of “The Muppets Take Manhattan”
C’shaft: I deeply, deeply dislike “Crankshaft joins the St. Spires choir,” an idea predicated on an aptitude for/interest in vocal music the character has never once displayed in all his decades on the comics page, and which I’m convinced exists solely as a means to give Crankshaft a venue for mangling the lyrics of familiar hymns. However, credit where it’s due for the accurate depiction of a choir in a slowly dying suburban church, an ensemble that never has more than fifteen members and has at most one (1) man and (1) person under the age of fifty. (If the church is in an advanced state of decay the lone man and lone non-senior may be the same person, and may even be the music director.)
RMMD: Granted, if I were going to pick a Rex Morgan character who has ordination credentials of dubious provenance, Mud would be at the top of the list.
Fun fact:
One of Saint Nicholas’s miracles was bringing two murdered kids (who were butchered and pickled) back to life as if that never happened.
So the lesson for today kids, Santa Claus is a Necromancer and God (who gave him those powers) condones it.
Dennis the Menace: I am wondering how this situation came to be.
Crankshaft: One could reasonably make the case that Ed is feeling less shame than embarrassment and awkwardness at having violated a social norm in front of the potential objects of his horniness. But then one would have to actually read the strip and think the implications of its ongoing plot. So that rules out the writer or editors.
@The Rambling Otter: Lots of people have online credentials so they can officiate at weddings, including several Mudges, if I’m not mistaken. Occasionally, people have found out what I do for a living and said “Oh hey! I’m a minister too!” I give them a withering stare and ask if they’ve ever dealt with a church council.
Crankshaft may not be true to its characters, but give it credit where it’s due: the choir is always the problem. Always.
It takes a lot nerve to have the Rex Morgan, M.D. narration box say “At long last” anything. Just absolute fcking gall. I am irate! but too bored to do anything about it, so I guess you win through attrition again, Terry Beatty?
@41 ValdVin: on Family Circus: SNERK!
@51 The Rambling Otter: What inspired expounding on this topic? Christmas is just over 3 months away.
@52 BeckoningChasm: Judging by the bottle on the floor, Dennis got totally blotto. Mr. Wilson took advantage of Dennis’ inebriation to get him to break those horrible gifts that his and Mrs. Wilson’s families insist on giving them. That explains Mrs. Wilson’s little Mona Lisa smile. Now when anyone asks, they can truthfully say the Next Door Menace destroyed them.
DT: Because if there’s one thing the woman who has killed multiple people with her zappy zappy gun needs, it’s protection.
Dustin: I’ve taken to Googling Dustin’s “random combinations of healthy food words” to see if they’re actually a thing. (Today’s “okra and quinoa casserole” seems to be mostly a bust, although this Okra and Quinoa Mix comes pretty close.) gan This generally supports my headcanon that Helen Kudlik is actually a brilliant vegan cuisine chef, who needs to stop wasting her talents on her family’s unsophisticated palates and open a trendy restaurant in LA.
GT: “Even Coach Thorp is nice to me. Coach Thorp! I mean, he can barely remember the existence of his own kids from day to day!”
JP: A woman in desperate need of a job offers to nanny for an established author in a “mutually beneficial” arrangement? What could possibly go wrong?
MW: Meanwhile the elderly balloon operator prepares to throw himself over the side to get away from these insufferable, self-congratulatory bores.
Pluggers have a) severe hearing loss, b) auditory processing disorders or c) deep contempt for their spouses.
@Bob Tice: RMMD – “The day ended on a sad note; The guests saw no need to linger. For when Truck gave her the ring, Wanda gave Truck the finger!”
Isn’t Crankshaft illiterate? How is he able to read the lyrics sheet?
@Lord Flatulence: Crankshaft used to be illiterate. He learned to read some years ago, before I even started reading the strip.
The newlyweds are going to have their honeymoon in a specially kitted out 1953 Ford F100 that Wanda gave a special name to. She is going to fuck Truck in the Fuck Truck. It was a close call though because if Cody was his son, then fuck Truck.
***
The choir is so in tune with each other they all manage to look smug when one of them thinks they’re saying something witty.
@Joshua K.: Oh wow, thanks for the update.
@BeckoningChasm:
Dennis straight-up dumped the Wilsons’ trash can all over the floor directly in front of the front door before sauntering out with a smart-ass grin and a wave. Which is…not so much menacing as just plain assholery.
@Lord Flatulence:
Crankshaft has known how to read for a while now; he learnt to read IMMEDIATELY after the storyline where it was revealed he had been illiterate this entire time.
The real issue is that, during that storyline, Crankshaft realised his illiteracy was a problem that had held him back his entire life… from reading an article in the newspaper. Crankshaft figured out how much NOT BEING ABLE TO READ cost him… by READING IT IN THE NEWSPAPER.
@TheDiva: Re: Judge Parker: I mean, she could be a research assistant for David Brooks, or his in-world equivalent…
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: DAVID BROOKS!!!
Slowly, I turned….
@The Quiet Man: re: MW — More like the ending of “Grease” with John Travolta’s magical car flying off the unseen ramp into the sky.
Where’s a damn powerline when you need one?
@62 Tabby Lavalamp: The Fuck Truck’s OK unless they bring it into the living room like the creepy fuck tent in Luann.
@68 UncleJeff: Hey! I dropped an air conditioning unit on the balloon. It has a power cord. Does that count?
@Baja Gaijin: Both are absolutely wonderful.
@ValdVin: The hymn is “In The Garden of Eden” by I. Ron Butterfly
@70 UncleJeff: Did you notice I replaced Fergus’ head with Mud’s?
FC – I can’t remember which dog is which. Is that Sam or Barfy? Whichever he is, he looks like he was sniffing around the closet and found Thel’s vodka stash. She’s going to be very upset in around ten minutes.
Mary Worth – If anyone wants an example of humblebragging, this isn’t it. There’s nothing humble about this orgy of self-congatulatory patting themselves on the back. It is a good example of two unwarrantedly massive egos.
If Moy is trying to write characters that are more off putting by the minute, she’s successful.
9CL – Wasn’t Amos adamant that music was music, with no symbolic meaning?
Andertoons – One of my favorite tropes.
JP – I can see it now. “Neddy, let me tell you how to crank out an instant best seller over a weekend with time left over to watch sports all day Saturday. And be sure to go ballistic over any critic who has the nerve to write a bad review.”
Meanwhile, Charlotte has slipped away and set fire to the kitchen.
@73 I speak Jive: on Family Circus: That’s Sam. He typically has a smug expression on his snout.
on Judge Parker: Maybe Charlotte can take “kid” lessons from Shannon in Luann.
@I speak Jive: re: JP — Is Alan Parker Donald Trump?
@Baja Gaijin: Thanks for identifying the dog. I suspected that was Sam, but I wasn’t sure.
@UncleJeff: As I was writing my comment I thought that it could be interpreted that way. However, there was a story several years ago in which a critic had the audacity to write a review panning Alan’s book, The Chambers Affair. Alan happened to meet the critic (I think it was on a cruise), and he pretty much tore her a new one expressing his displeasure at her review. The worst part was that her husband jumped in and agreed with Alan. That episode permanently soured me on Judge Parker, both the character and the strip.