Up up and away
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Mary Worth, 9/22/25
As promised/threatened, Mary has taken Olive to the Santa Royale Hot Air Balloon Festival! You know, hot air ballooning, the classic California Central Coast activity we all know and love. You’d think Stanley would be a trustworthy and experienced balloonivator (?), based on his old-timey turtleneck/suspenders combo, but he’s too set in his ways to handle Santa Royale’s increasingly erratic weather patterns, and is forgetting the old balloonivation adage: “Pink skies at night, balloonivator’s delight; pink skies at morning, balloonivator take warning.” I actually don’t know what time of day it’s supposed to be but feel free to swap those around to get the correct answer, which is that we are clearly about to see a tragic balloon accident that Olive’s powers, attuned as they are to New York City-specific dangers like air conditioning units falling from the sky, were simply unable to predict.
Dick Tracy, 9/22/25
Sorry I haven’t really covered the Dick Tracy plotline about the two lesbian scientists using their ray gun to kill various dubious men (cartoonish loan sharks, sexually predatory venture capitalists) who stand in their way, and probably some nice guys too. Still, today’s strip is important, in that we get to see some masterful and highly technical investigative work in action. “Hmm, this woman who seems to be at the center of our investigation … what if I looked her up … in the newspaper … on the computer?” Once Dick finds out that you can use the website “google dot com” to look up someone’s name on all publications simultaneously, it will truly be curtains for the villains of Neo-Chicago!
Crankshaft, 9/22/25
Crankshaft experiencing shame? No, I don’t accept or believe this. Crankshaft looking in the mirror and feeling the dull blade of despair? Yes, now we’re talking.
86 replies to “Up up and away”
Slylock Fox-Smitty was also arrested for driving while not wearing a seat belt.
MW-I’d be a bit worried too if large banks of pink clouds started to roll in.
FC-Then Thel demonstrates how to put the toilet seat down.
Gil Thorp: Is the audience gasping because Gil is ready to speak or are they gasping because that’s what Gil Thorp now looks like?
Mary Worth Mashups: Is a thunderstorm brewing or is it something else? Hm…(includes Bonus Rex Morgan mashup).
MW:
“Mary, I sense that our balloon pilot was an ancient emperor in a past life! — he fiddled while Rome burned!”
MW: Some people would face their apparent impending doom with panic, some with stoic bravery. Relatively few would half-smile and think “Hmm…”, but that’s what makes Mary special.
DT: You’d think lesbian scientists wouldn’t need LaKoyle, nor LaPille or LaKondome.
Crankshaft:
“Now, since it’s the ‘Fountain of Youth,’ I should have said ‘The Fountain of Age’ or ‘The Fountain of Old Age,’ not ‘The Fountain of Old,’ in the interest of grammatical parallelism!”
For the last time Dick, you’re not a Marvel character and can’t get in to the MCU. That being said, there’s probably an even chance Disney buys the Tribune syndicate at some point, so I guess it’s always possible we could see an aging Warren Beatty crammed somewhere into Avengers: Doomsday. It would be really depressing, but possible.
MW:
Perspicacious Stanley stares in a direction away from the looming cumulonimbus clouds to size up the approaching weather.
MW OK, who wants to lay some bets on how Olive powers will save the day this time? Will she find that she can talk to clouds too? Maybe she can convince a group of California condors to bring them to safety? Im personally betting that she talk to God Himself to save them and becomes Saint Olive of Tribeca.
Crankshaft will soon be making a guest appearance in “Pluggers.”
MW: Stanley’s life savings have been wiped out and his wife just ran off with the mailman. He truly is a man with nothing to lose.
GT: “GASP?” What’s with “GASP?” Who were they expecting, Knute Rockne?
CRANK: Crankshaft blaming it on someone else? Give it a munute.
MW:
Unbeknown to our unsuspecting Dynamic Duo, “Stanley” is one of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famed “Lotos-Eaters.” He simply doesn’t care one whit about any impending storm, and is content to live a life of indolence, in a state of drift, whether it’s in a balloon or otherwise.
Bizarro : “That was the good news. The bad news is that Heathcliff and Garfield are fictional, and you can’t meet them.”
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Crankshaft : drank from the False Grail.
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Mary Worth : If you asked me which
zombieLEGACY strip would lean into modern sequential art trends and turn into an Isekai, I would have said… Hagar the Horrible, I guess. I wouldn’t have guessed Mary Worth, through her finding herself stranded on a parallel world via balloon ride accident, like a reverse-Wizard of Oz situation.MW: As the updraft from the nimbus clouds pulls them up higher and higher towards their impending doom, Mary laments: “Were I not so blind to my own faults the weight of my guilty conscience might have brought us down safely.”
Crankshaft, you look old because you ARE old. You played AAA baseball before the term even existed. Civil War veterans could have attended your games. Get a shovel and start digging.
GT: Coach Thorp … you forgot to wear pants again, didn’t you?
DT: The new writer has brought in fresh ideas but seems to have a hard time sticking the landing. The insurance fraud ending occurred because of road construction and occurred off screen. The time travel picture sort of took care of itself without a good “after credits” scene.
JP: Please morph the strip into one about the little girl without parents and her self-absorbed party aunt. hmmm, where have i seen that before? Nancy?! Start off as Nifty Nancy, and then gradually as the antics of the little girl captivate the audience, switch to the title to her name.
MW: The betting is now wide open: Objects falling from space? Balloon or occupants crashing to earth? Weather sweeping MW and Olive like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz into a magical realm? Please go with the Wizard of Oz option. The Wicked Witch can be Belle Batsfree! Wilbur can be the Scarecrow…
MW: That’s Odd Stanley. As balloon operators go, Odd Stanley is a better choice than Flat Stanley, and a much better choice than Double Homicide Stanley.
“Tess LaKoyle”? I’ll allow it.
Mary Worth – There have been a confusing amount of “red lines” mentioned in reporting on climate science that supposedly indicate when we’ve crossed the critical threshold. But I have to say “Mary Worth faces death by climatic instability in a hot air balloon while hosting a narcissistic child” is certainly a sign we’ve lost the fight and must prepare for centuries of disruption.
Dick Tracy – Looks like Dick Tracy is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but due to Warren Beatty holding the rights that will have to br pried from his cold, dread hands, we won’t be seeing the detective pair with the X-Men any time soon.
Cranksahft – In a well-lived life age comes with experience, maturity, and wisdom, but whatever potion Crankshaft sold his soul for was from the Faustian Bargain Bin.
MW – If the story results in Olive taking over Wilbur’s I Shouldn’t Be Alive column, I approve.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
“Civil War veterans could have attended your games”
Theoretically someone in attendance at Ford’s Theater could have witness two utter slaughters in their lifetime when they were just hoping for an entertaining outing as a spectator.
BTW – though it might have been a rerun, I enjoyed Pig in Pearls before Swine yesterday.
MW: Just how many freakin’ times is Olive going to nearly be killed while hanging out with Mary before Ed and Evy say “enough?”
I guess the answer is: they don’t care as long as they get to boink like bunnies.
I really hope that the family sealed Crankshaft in the bathroom, The Cask of Amontillado-style with bricks, and he is forced to weakly mutter puns to himself in the mirror whilst slowly starving to death.
Crankshaft: Canonically he is a member of the Silent or Greatest Generation, but time is a slippery thing, as it always is in the Funkyverse. Today, Ed is the avatar of every Boomer still reading the daily newspaper.
Say what you will about verisimilitude in Mary Worth, I think the hills burning with a healthy pink glow from the latest round of wildfires is a nice touch.
MW: A looming balloon catastrophe is nothing to worry about. Olive will save the day—and a deflating balloon—when she suddenly remembers that she is, was, and has always been an airhead.
Pee Ess for Josh: I don’t know what time it’s supposed to be either, but balloonvinators tend to fly around dawn or dusk, when winds and (presumably) chances of murderous pink thunderstorms are low.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: You’ll probably like this prayer from Thomas Merton, then.
Olive and Mary are about to be transported to Oz, where Mary will install Olive as the new Wizard. Oz will be transitioning to a lavender color scheme, except for the food, which will be beige. No idea how Mary will explain all this to Olive’s parents when she returns.
@Charterstoned: Very nice, and probably right, but I can’t help thinking deflation is Dr. Jeff’s specialty.
MW: I see that Stanley is from Munchkinland and plans on steering them straight into a twister to return home.
GT I fear just how bad this Very Special Episode is about to get, given Gil’s recent “this controversy is my fault” recap of Tobias’ origins. It bothered me a lot how it seemed to be saying “this kid shouldn’t exist” as … a solution??
C’shaft: That’s not the bathroom mirror. That’s Crankshaft’s Dorian Gray portrait, but his soul is so vile and repugnant that it’s only able to take on about half of the physical effects.
DT: Poor Dick Tracy! Detective work used to be easy: you just found the guy with the weirdly deformed face and bizarre personal tick, and you shot him. Now he has to do all this investigating before he can even draw his weapon. It’s hard!
MW: So Olive can recognize a substance abusing doctor on sight, but can’t tell her balloon pilot doesn’t have a) the literal sense to come in out of the rain or b) a ground crew who can tell him the weather’s taking a bad turn and they should look for a place to land? Maybe he “tummy brain” would be more in tune if Stanley had an ominous last name like Krash or Lightningstrike.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Maybe
@astroboy: Just how many freakin’ times is someone else going to nearly be killed while hanging out with Olive, before Mary says “enough?” We’re up to six now: the drowning girl, Olive herself as she foolishly leapt into a riptide, Mary from the falling air conditioner, and now Mary and Olive again, plus the balloon operator.
Dustin: Dustmom hates her son as much as her husband does; she’s just more passive-aggressive in her expression of it.
GT: Gil Thorp, taking an interest in his students? “GASP!” indeed!
Pluggers don’t know what a “sugar momma” is, thank God.
RMMD: Uh-oh, better not let Mary Worth hear Rex Morgan is coming for her “doing absolutely nothing and taking all the credit” crown.
@matt w: “Tess LaKoyle”? I just now got that.
@AmazingLabyrinth: How convenient, that Oz gets a new Wizard and a new Wicked Witch at the same time.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Don’t forget almost drowning in the Charterstone pool! That’s 7.
GT: Barajas decides this is the time to bring back LORD GOD THORP, Scourge of Sellers of Bootleg Knockoffs.
Hmmm… Maybe it’s not so much that Olive is psychic but that she is cursed, a living broken mirror that reflects all of Mary’s grandiose self-esteem back at her while bringing her some comically timed bad luck. Perhaps sending the kid to a nunnery is just best for everyone.
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It’s 2025. If Dick tried searching for someone on Google he’d just get some AI slop in return. A newspaper archive might be spared that right now so this is his best bet to avoid accidentally shooting the wrong person short of, ugh, detective work.
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Crankshaft has been so busy making everyone else’s life miserable he never noticed the passage of time.
MW – The ballooning world is a world that embraces airships. And once you have airships, can air monsters be far away? I’m just asking because that doesn’t look like a storm cloud so much as an air-Kraken!
GT: “Pardon me while I whip this out” is already taken.
@TheDiva: My headcanon is that Mary engineered this entire scenario. She paid the balloon operator to crash so Olive can “rescue” them all with her tummy-brained special psychic-ness-stuff.
Mary Worth: Looks like Mary’s making a prediction of her own. Exciting! In the grand tradition of prophets everywhere, it’s a silent prediction she’s not acting on in any way! In the end, she won’t use her powers for good or evil, but to say, “I told you so.”
DT: Tracy keeps a certificate on his wall signed by (squints)…my doctor?
If this arc ends with Stanley the balloonivator jumping from the basket into the fluffy pink clouds, shouting “I’M KING OF THE WORLD” at the top of his lungs, all will be forgiven.
“. . . . but I wouldn’t worry about it. I packed a parachute. You, on the other hand, should worry about it. Geranimooooooooooo!”
@astroboy: I was limiting it to this arc. But you’re right, this is Olive’s third near-death. Fourth if you count the air conditioner, which didn’t miss Olive by much.
GT: I know the new Gil Thorp likes celebrity cameos, but I’m truly surprised that Isaac Higgintoot dropped in to the Milford mass indignation meeting on a trans kid in their midst. Perhaps he’s visiting Pop’s ghost in the locker room. Is Milford near Woodstone Manor? Gasp, indeed.
DT — If he’s going to search on that new-fangled “google dot com” site, doesn’t he need to type http:\\ ahead of it? (Or is it front slash? I always get that wrong. . . )
MW: Isn’t the whole point that Olive can see the future? She’s not worried Mary. Relax and flirt with the balloon guy.
MW: Mr Ballooner realizes he’s suddenly too short to reach any of the overhead controls on his airship.
“Aye, what kind of witchcraft be this!?” He cries in a Scottish brogue.
Olive laughs and says; “I’m just fucking with ya.” As she returns him to full height.
So, after all of this, the lesson of Mary Worth is that it’s dangerous when cold air falls and also dangerous when hot air rises.
Damn you, thermodynamics!
love is... playing “Muddy Boots” for her.
CS: The (surprisingly angry) face in the mirror talks back; “better yet, instead of drinking from it, how about you use the fountain to wash that blackhead infested nose of yours!?”
Dern newfangled apps!
@Bob Tice: Or “The Fountain of Aging” from Futurama.
He left his bed, he left that room
He made paces toward the bathroom
He saw the toilet water blue,
He saw the mirror and the view,
He look’d at the old old sot.
Out flew his hair and floated wide;
The mirror crank’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Visage of the Shaft.
MW:
What Moy writes, and Mary echoes afterward: Olive’s psychic powers tell her to leap up and pull the emergency air release, guiding the balloon to safety and making her a Very Special Heroic Child.
What we see: Olive panics and grabs a random cord, and only Stanley’s expertise and quick action prevent a fatal crash.
GT: As Gil enters the arena, a confused Barajas starts his next “sports” story:
“I bid six quatloos!”
MW: aha, I see the plan. A mention of “getting unpredictable in terms of weather”… a right-wing pundit calls for a boycott of this woke strip… thousands of followers who’ve never heard of the strip click on the web site to find out what they should be outraged about… traffic goes up by a factor of LOTS… advertising impressions bonanza!
Mary Worth: “Hmm,” murmurs Mary as she plots to throw Olive over the edge before the psychic girl becomes too un-normal for Mary’s tastes.
Dick Tracy: Dick could employ the complex surveillance state panopticon that makes up Neo-Chicago’s infrastructure to look up information on this woman, but he really doesn’t want to deal with the paperwork.
@matt w: I’m a fan of her (unseen) partner, Farah Day Cage.
Gil Thorp-Gil is there to tell them about Sweet Lady Propane.
Crankshaft-He chose poorly.
MW While the dictionary word for those who travel by balloon is “aeronaut” I must say I like “balloonivator.”
In fact, the missus and I once did balloonivate in California’s Central Coast. We met the Balloon Guy and his assistant in a field just outside San Luis Obispo (SLO to us SoCal types) and had a pleasant 45-minute journal over the hills and vineyards. The descent was a tad dramatic as we ended up landing in a grove of trees and had to be disentangled by Balloon Assistant guy, who had been following us on the ground in his truck.
Fun fact: every commercial balloon has a small plaque on the inside of the basket that proves that it has been certified airworthy by the FAA.
Luann: 3 costume changes in 3 minutes. Gunther is even an overachiever at being a cosplayer.
MW: “Weather around here’s getting weird. I wouldn’t worry about it. Unless we need to set down in the middle of one of the wildfires.”
EC: First rule of small business ownership: Don’t put all your parcels in one basket.
Phantom: ”Uh, are they boys or girls?”
“Does it matter?”
@Pozzo:
PLUGGERS: If you’re a wife, would you be pleased or pissed if hubby gave you this on an anniversary card?
CS: It’s a new week, and I don’t see Skip & Batton in sight! >Phew<
Mary Worth: It’s time for Mary to admit that Olive doesn’t predict disaster — she attracts it. When this teen thinks something terrible is going to happen, it is, because she’s always the cause. In fact, we could even call her a lightning rod for danger — or, in the specific case of causing this balloon to crash on what was supposed to be a mild and sunny day, she’s just a lightning rod.
MW – I stopped at the dispensary before we took off. I wouldn’t worry about it….
DT – It’s a sure fire way to speed things up, when all it does is slow me down….
Crank – Age is just a number. A very large, depressing number….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Balloons are pretty safe unless there are power lines nearby…
Olive, if you look inside that tall building you can see Edda and Amos going all the way!
MW: I’d figure special and bright Olive would have second thoughts when Stanley invited her into a lighter-than-air craft called the R-101, but here we are.
Beetle Bailey: Tearing a jar in two? Is this a Popeye gag? Or a crossover with Family Circus?
BG&SS: Snuffy, the magic phrase you’re looking for is “Fifth Circuit”.
@BigTed: Like Richard Burton’s character in The Medusa Touch, who has telekinetic powers but can only use them to cause disasters. It raises some difficult questions, like “Is it moral to
push such a person out of a balloonbeat such a person’s head in, in order to save others?”LUANN: So Gunther’s an early bird needing two minutes to rise, dress, eat breakfast, and put on clown gear whereas Bets is a night owl. Deal breaker? (Honestly, I mistook Gunther for Brad in first panel)
BB: in my mother’s generation, women said they needed a man to open jars and set / empty mouse traps. Were male egos really that fragile postwar?
@Voshkod: Bravo! If I can just add an ending. . .
But Lancelot, he mused again
And said, he had an awful brain
God in his vengeance send him pain
The Visage of the ‘Shaft
Mary Worth – Olive is oblivious to any sense of danger because she’s thinking about how special she is.
Pluggers – Dog man’s expression isn’t thinking sweet. He’s thinking savory.
Andertoons – This reminds me of an exchange on the old Hollywood Squares.
Peter Marshall: Who said, “I’m late! I’m late!”?
Paul Lynde: Alice, and her mother’s worried sick about it.
Crankshaft – Anyone who attends a fiftieth high school reunion: Who are these old people?
MARY WORTH: My prediction (not for the story, but for the audience reading it) was that everyone would gleefully or angrily (glangrily?) ASSume that Mary and Olive are into some time of mortal danger here, but I suspect that, as usual this will turn out to be a false alarm and they’ll be a more logical explanation for weather. My guess is that the pink clouds are just the people watch this “exciting event” simultaneously getting high when they realized that they’re spending their afternoon watching a balloon festival (See, looked how baked Mary and Olive look about this “tumultuous cloud of cannibals. The only “danger” they’re in is a bad case of the munchies when they land and they know it.)
MARY WORTH (2): Given that the point of this storyline is to
kill time until the next Wilburventure or “Dogs are good” mega-archave Mary and Olive trade pseudo-spiritual philosophical bullshit, I’m guess those clouds are just elaborate visual metaphor to punctuate the discussion. Apparently someone in the balloon is experiencing doubt and uncertainly (probably Dorothy’s ex-husband, Stanley there, the yutz!) so “stormy clouds of doom” is rolling in (get it?) But we can see it’s actually still kinda clear and sunny, and so Olive’s “boundless optimism and enthusiasm” (or whatever Karen Moy insist her self-centered obnoxiousness is supposed to be called) will kept the balloon lifted up over the dark clouds while Mary will use her special ability of Trite Platitude Incantation (the phrase “looking on the bright side” is guaranteed to be in there somewhere) which will make all the clouds disperse. When they land Mary launches in some dumb homily about having faith and trusting your judgement and boom, there done.LUANN: Oh I get it. For this charity event, they’re cosplaying as Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat. I can dig that.
@ValdVin: Oooooh, the R-101! Its 1930 crash killed more people than the Hindenburg, but it’s not as famous because it didn’t explode in mid-air, on camera.
The Brits built a better prototype in 1919 with the R-34, using technology stolen from the Germans during the War. You can win bar bets with people who think Lindbergh was the first guy to fly across the Atlantic — two English air aces did it first (in essentially a flying gasoline tank with an engine and wings), followed a couple weeks later by the R-34 carrying 30 men, plus a cat. Once they made it to North America, they turned around and flew back to Britain.
So Lindy followed 62 transoceanic airmen. Plus a cat.
Daddy Daze: (Gag courtesy of Foghorn Leghorn)
A: ba za wa ba
B: Speak up, son! I can’t understand a word you’re sayin’! Have you lost your mind, boy? You’re not makin’ any sense there!
@Ukulele Ike: True, but Alcock and Brown, the two aces, were British. Lindbergh was American. So there!
(Bonus: Alcock and Brown landed in Newfoundland, so, you know, insert Newfie joke here.)
@Ken: I’ve never heard of that movie, but it apparently came out right after Richard Burton received his seventh Oscar nomination (for something else).