Friday is for drugs
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Wizard of Id, 10/3/25
It absolutely makes sense that people hear “New York” and think of New York City — the city is a world cultural capital, is the economic engine of the state and indeed much of the country, and a majority of the state population lives either in the city itself or its immediately adjacent suburbs. Still, when you grow up (like I did) in a very different kind of city that happens to be at the complete opposite end of the state, you get a little whiplash when you hear about things happening in “New York.” For instance, when New York legalized marijuana for recreational use, I was already living in Los Angeles, another megacity that was ahead of the curve on that one, so the idea of people in Brooklyn or Manhattan being able to buy weed at some high-end hipster dispensary absolutely made sense. But legalization was a state decision, not a city one, and going home to the Buffalo area and seeing janky stores in suburban strip malls near where my parents live named things like “The Devil’s Lettuce” was significantly weirder. Anyway, that’s kind of how I feel about newspaper comics doing weed legalization jokes. This topic belongs in alternative comics on the seedy internet! Not in the newspaper in front of God and everybody!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/25
I was trying to imagine what hedonistic and shocking activity the assembled Ameripolitans would be engaged in when Rex and June turn around and sneak back to the wedding as it gets later and wilder to see if they can make off with enough wedding cake to satiate their greedy children. Honestly doesn’t seem like an orgy crowd, but maybe … cocaine? Hard rocking country musicians, many of whom are older guys who probably came of age in the ’80s … they’ve moved on from booze to coke at this point, right? Never mind what I said up above about the Wizard of Id, I’m a blogger on the seedy internet and I’m allowed to make these jokes.
Mary Worth, 10/3/25
Damn, Mary, can’t you just be pleased and satisfied that these dogs Incredible Journeyed it here to see you? Do you need their drippy human owners to show up too? Why is nothing anyone does ever good enough for you?
46 replies to “Friday is for drugs”
MW:
“But I don’t see Saul or Eve!…OMG — it’s the Amimalocalypse ! They’ve devoured Saul and Eve, and now they’re coming for us!”
Wizard of Id:
“Ow, wow! — look! I’ve conjured a classic Slylock Fox tableau, with random, disconnected and fractured things strewn all over the place!”
Mary Worth Mashups: I added a few more panels to amp up the drama a bit. Which do you prefer?
“Neither of us were ever in the entertainment business”–we know, Rex, we know!
RMMD:
“Neither of us were ever in the entertainment business, though!”
“Oh, I don’t know, Rex. I’ve always thought that you consider all those sigmoidoscope probes of yours to be pretty entertaining!”
MW:
“Max! Greta! Go cross-panel and get fellow comic strip character Krypto, from Superman, right away! I mean, there’s no way you can jump this high to retrieve us, and you can’t fly, but he can!”
MW: Stanley asks if Max happens to have one of those brandy casks around his neck.
@Baja Gaijin: The first one is excellent—although I do like a good bomb now and then.
Id: “This topic belongs in alternative comics on the seedy internet!” I disagree. It belongs in Alice, which is for square newspaper comics and seedy alternative comics what the Rosetta stone is for Ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
RMMD: When I see “the entertainment business” in bold as an obvious euphemism like that, I don’t think of roots rockabilly Ameripolitan. I think of stripping and/or porn. It makes sense that Rex and June aren’t involved – I don’t think there are any boredom fetishists hardcore enough – but I dread to think about what Mud Mountain videos are like.
I appreciate your honesty at least.
Wizard of I’d: At first glance, I thought the wizard had conjured up a panel from “Alice.”
MW: Loath as I am to find fault with The Amazing Olive, her telepathic message should have been, “Get help.” Now she has two cheerfully clueless dogs waiting for a treat, while their antediluvian owners have long since collapsed in the woods.
MW: Just in time, too. Judging from P2, Mary is down to her last gummy.
The fact that Olive was consciously attempting to reach Max and Greta, and there are four other humans to confirm what happened, makes me wonder what kind of quote about life’s mysteries/shutting the fuck up when the reporters arrive Mary is going to have to deploy to prevent this strip switching genres to sci-fi like the Funkverese did.
MW: Meanwhile, several miles away, Saul and Eve speed toward the vast, dense forest as they frantically scan their surroundings looking for Max and Greta, but instead of the dogs, they spy some Golden Arches, remember they have some senior discount coupons in the glove compartment, and decide to stop for lunch and a Big Gulp.
Realistically how many miles (if not *tens of miles*) would these dogs had to have run to get from a suburban dog park to forest in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception? Any Santa Barbarans here who can provide insight? These dogs are basically Olympian-level athletes.
RMMD — It’s hard to imagine a more smug, condescending, and self-congratulatory conversation than the one the Morgans are having in the first panel. It’s sort of compensated for in panel two where Rex is glumly realizing that he’ll never hear the end of not bringing back cake for his demon spawn.
Oh, did you think he was going to go back to the reception? No way is Rex Morgan going to inconvenience himself, especially at the late, late hour of eight o’clock. . .
MW: to tone down the criticism of Olive, what I f I foresee she will go to Tanzania as a young woman to study and live with primates? Jane G apparently had a special bond with animals too. Note, Mary and balloonivator are still fair game.
BETTY: Mom, get your fricking feet off the freekin’ furniture! And does anyone know what Bubba is referring to?
MW: Luckily, Saul shows up in the all-terrain electric wheelchair he keeps in his trunk. Wide-eyed, Mary shields Olive’s view from Saul’s erection when Eve gets off his lap.
MW: The forest doesn’t look as dense (gulp!) as Saul said. More “parklike” from what we see today, with wide grassy stretches between the trees. At least it will make it easier to take the puce Buick off-road for the thrilling rescue.
@Charterstoned:
#11. I see your machine has as hardcore “I” autoincorrect as mine.
Wizard of Id: Why did you agree to legalizing this stuff, you ask? Because your core readership is aging and needs groovy patterns, man, for their crippling arthritis, glaucoma and chemo side effects, that’s why! (Also, the one dude called you a fink.)
RMMD Pfft! Just swing by your local Big Chain grocery’s bakery and grab one of those large single cake slices – they usually have white with white icing – and not only will the kids be none the wiser, it’s probably better than whatever the diner came up with!
You don’t see Saul or Eve because they’re trapped in the wreckage of their car, which Saul failed to drive through a tree. Next.
Wizard of Id, alt joke: Why did you agree to legalizing this stuff, you ask? Well, if you’re like most local governments, it was to increase tax revenue and redirect policing away from petty drug dealers to important stuff. You know, mid-level drug dealers and tamping down protests.
WoI: Is “that stuff” drugs or just dark magic? I always wondered why a (presumably) Christian king would permit such blasphemy in his court. Oh, right: money. Carry on.
RMMD: Ha, just look at Rex’s change in expression between those two panels. He is absolutely crestfallen at the thought of interacting with other people again this evening. Seriously June, you should probably be the one driving back or you might find yourselves ‘accidently’ in a ditch beside the highway.
MW: /Olive uses her psychic powers to see a horrific image of Saul and Eve being devoured by a bear/ “Uh…they’re fine, probably…”
@Activist: Huh. Didn’t notice that. I don’t often comment on that strip, but will probably miss it again next time. ?
WoI: I don’t get the point of the pitchforks. Are they part of the Wizard’s hallucination or has the revolution finally come? (Or do they just want some of the Wiz’s stash?)
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
I was going with the idea that the King legalized it because he thought the peasants were going to become too stoned to be revolting, or at least to put up a fight against his troops.
Instead, it turns out all his loyalists are blitzed out of their minds while the angry mob is stone cold sober. OOPS!
The irony is that the King of Id thought that legalizing weed would mellow out the hordes of angry peasants. Instead, they’ve just added “excessive excise tax on cannabis” to their list of grievances.
MT So instead of correcting Cherry that she’d be reporting about the hunters, not becoming one, the editor is equally deluded that the two are the same thing. Makes you wonder how they have any news reports about illegal activities in their world.
Curtis *Is* this canon? Barry was skipped a grade ahead of his older brother (minimum two grades even if they’re barely a year apart in age, but based on how they act, it’s more than that)?? You’d think it would come up in the strips with school stories all the time (like the bullies teasing Curtis about his wee little brother in the grade above them?).
Mary Worth: “But I don’t see Saul or Eve…” That’s because they’re both like 4’10” and struggling to raise a ladder below you, lady. Be patient!
Pluggers don’t like waiting rooms. No one else can say that.
MW: “I don’t see Saul or Eve, but wait!. Oh, there’s the top of Charterstone roof and the parking lot. I can see my car. To think, we were home all the time and didn’t realize it. My, oh my, now there’s a life lesson for you, Olive. Olive? Olive? Oh, you are already down and almost at the parking lot.”
@But What Do I Know?: It’s hard to imagine a more smug, condescending, and self-congratulatory conversation than the one the Morgans are having in the first panel.
Clearly you haven’t read Crankshaft yet.
@Gareth Klieber: The fact that Olive was consciously attempting to reach Max and Greta, and there are four other humans to confirm what happened.
They can’t confirm the important part. All they know is that these dogs ran to them when they needed to be rescued. There are all kinds of stories like that floating around the Internet pet-stories-o-sophere. None of them are attributed to a teenage girl being really, really special.
WoI – The Devil’s Apprentice – Your Fired!!!
RMMD – Famous last words – Let them eat cake….
MW – Ida Know…maybe if it was Andy from old school MT, I’d take some comfort, but not this pair….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
The King should be more worried: the Wizard has been recruited by theOrder of Assassins with the lure of hashish! Soon he will kill Christian Monarchs that threaten the Ismaili faith! On the other hand, if the Assassins think Id is a threat to them, maybe they are not very competent. Must be the hashish
Look at his face. Rex is miserable that he has to interact with his children now instead of setting down some sugar-laden treats and retiring to his den. This is a man who certainly has a den and not some nonsense like a “man cave”.
***
Look at her face. Mary is just now realizing that Olive’s psychic powers are very real but terrifying in the hands of an absolute doorknob who didn’t think of maybe for calling for human help instead. Well, once this is over that’s going to be a problem for the scientists at the CIA black site the girl will be spending the rest of her life in, Mary will be washing her hands of this whole thing.
MW: Yesterday Josh commented on the ” vast, dense forest, with no cell reception” where the balloon has crashed. Yet Greta and her tiny little dachshund legs got to the crash site in about ten minutes, which both suggests that it is in fact a postage stamp of a park near the condos, and that Saul is simply lost and taking the long way around through Laguna Beach to avoid that big, busy intersection out by the Costco.
GT: “Adam Schefter here. In NFL Transactions, the Indianapolis Colts instantly traded quarterback Daniel Jones to the Milford Mudlarks in exchange for Torch, no last name ever given, after Leo Atazhoon (number 4) was injured while wearing number 5’s helmet. Sources hope that some ice will be enough to get Leo back in the game once his headache subsides and he dons his actual helmet, as number 5 has a small head. There is confusion, however, as the medevac helicopter usually stationed at Mudlark games has been replaced by a nurse on-call. We’ll get back to you when Nurse Twill gets through traffic. This is Adam Schefter, ESPN News.”
RMMD – Remember when comic books used to have ads with Spider-Man™ hawking Hostess snack cakes and fruit pies? Well, whichever ad agency has that account has decided the comics idea was good, but the approach needs to be WAY less exciting. You get a
big delightmild pleasure in every bite!“Max! Greta! And you brought friends! Lots of friends! Big doggies! Or are those wolves? Big . . . wolves? Wargs? With goblins on their backs? They’re singing a pretty catchy tune about burning birds in trees? Oh, my. Mary, you’re pretty grey, do you think you can channel your inner Gandalf right about now?”
Dustin A strip where everybody’s mission statement is the same: “Always be an asshole.”
Crankshaft:
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“On a Friday? Wouldn’t think of it.”
(h/t Walt Kelly, who knew how to use the word funny in a comic)
FC: Daddy Keane misses the opportunity to put Jeffy on the carousel and not claim him.
Zits: “And this Coach Thorp guy is pretty cool!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Phew! This heat wave is unprecedented!”
“And the air conditioning is off because the power grid is overloaded!”
“The whole city is suffocating! What can we do?”
“I own a private beach…”
“Now, to business… How to profit from these conditions!”
MARY WORTH: As if their dumbass human owners are going to do anything other than look expectantly toward their dogs for advice.
“But I don’t see Saul or Eve.” TFW the play about the Old Testament you bought tickets for is a very loose adaptation and frankly quite bad