It’s the greatly attractive pumpkin, Charlie Brown
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Mary Worth, 10/7/25
This polite jockeying about who should climb down from the balloon first is getting to “a farmer needs to get a chicken, a fox, and a bag of grain across the river in as few trips as possible” levels of complexity, but it seems like they’re failing Logic 101 very badly by ending up with a scenario where the lightest passenger is left in the balloon by herself in the final step, at which point the balloon will lift off from the tree and float away. Honestly this seems like the sort of thing that would be covered at balloonivation school and is another strike against Stanley’s skills. Anyway, presumably Olive will eventually land in some sort of magical realm on the other side of the rainbow, where she’ll seize power and rule behind a veil of trickery, so she won’t be our problem anymore.
Six Chix, 10/7/25
Remember, the Tuesday Chixiverse is the sandwich-fucking one, so it’s not clear if the pumpkin is saying “it’s our time” because the mysterious figures in the background are planning on taking them home to have sex with them, or to carve them up and/or eat them, which the pumpkins’ facial expressions make clear is regarded as a sexually-charged act. Either way, welcome to Six Chix spooky season, everybody!
Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/7/25
Look, fellas, when your wife tells you to put the toilet seat down, it’s not because she’s a shrew who likes nagging for nagging’s sake; it’s because she doesn’t want to accidentally sit down on the porcelain rim of the toilet bowl. If you, for instance, are a mythical dwarf, and your spouse isn’t, and you have your own specialized tiny toilet sized for your miniature hindquarters, she probably doesn’t care about the seat on that one. I guess it’s possible that the implication here is that the Seven Dwarfs only have a tiny toilet in their home, which would be reasonable given that they’re all tiny, and Snow White, who has moved in with them, resents this and brings it up at every opportunity. Either way, welcome to Mother Goose and Grimm scat joke season, everybody!
Flash Gordon, 10/7/25
I definitely enjoy the fact that Flash Gordon is, canonically, a Yale man, which adds flavor to today’s strip, in which he claims he’ll do well fighting in gladiatorial combat in the arena because he used to win “matches” back in college. Did you play tennis, Flash? Did you win a few tennis matches, back when you were in school, “in New Haven”?
Dick Tracy, 10/7/25
“Dr. Faust, is it? And you thought you could make some sort of deal to your advantage with an evil figure, did you? Not really much for classic literature, are you?”
68 replies to “It’s the greatly attractive pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
Six Chix:
[First pumpkin on the left]: “Well, although I’m sporting an expression of surprise, perhaps this won’t be an unpleasant experience after all!”
[Second and third pumpkins]: “You must be out of your gourd!”
MW: Tiny toilets do put a new wrinkle re Munchkin Land. I hope Olive can deal with it when she lands there.
MW: when Creepy Mary climbs out of the balloon people on the ground will be able to see her granny panties. Unless she’s commando.
“”Cause, you COULD object, Faust. I mean, me and Sam here could totally not come into the room right now. Hallway seems a fine place to wait for backup and stuff. Don’t feel any pressure, guy!”
Mary Worth:
“I’ll go down after Mrs. Worth, young lady, but I want to be sure that I take my coffee mug with me.”
“Why is that important to you, sir?”
“I don’t want to lose the ‘Stanley‘ cup!”
MW: It is nice to see that Stanley has rejected somewhat the old patriarchal and patronising idea of women and children first. Let the old smug broad go first, enough with her nattering. The child chose to remain in this dangerous situation despite my responsibility as operator of this contraption. Good enough for me!
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“Hi, kids! It’s Slylock Fox! Can you guess which of Snow White’s seven cohorts is depicted in today’s strip here? If you said ‘Happy,’ you’re at the perfect comprehension level for my strip!”
I always thought Nana was crazy and senile when she told us that one day the Earth would be overrun by an evil scarecrow and its terrible army of floating eyes and shit that might be corn, but here we are.
FLASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!: “Wolfgang’s tough, but he went to Harvard, and Hiza has five varsity letters from Swarthmore…”
Chix (sic): When you examine wear the voices are coming from, Bianca’s message regarding this and other strips comes through clearly.
It’s the weed talking.
Mary Worth:
I don’t believe that it’s “Stanley” who’s being depicted in today’s second panel. I believe that it’s Ed Asner, with a fake beard and mustache.
MW: I had an Olive in Oz reference too, but I bow to you, Josh.
RMMD: I get a definite right side/wrong side of the tracks vibe, here. Augie straddles the tracks.
Margaret appears to be Hulking out. I know I’m not alone in anticipating the smashing of The Menace.
MG&G: ” How many times do I have to tell you, Drippy?”
Stanley, this ain’t the Titanic. It’s women and children first. Didn’t take much to convince him, though. Maybe put Greta and Max onboard with Olive and cut the rope.
MW: Olive is taken up in the Balloon Rapture, as prophesied by those who adhere to the belief: birthday party clowns, angioplasty doctors, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade organizers, and comic strip creators.
FG: “I used to wrestle … Greco-Roman style.”
“Why did you say it like that?”
“… No reason.”
MW: Wouldn’t the rescuers decide who goes first, and given that neither adult is in obvious distress, wouldn’t they absolutely take the child first?
Stanley sure has a cheery look for a guy who just got told he’s weaker than a little girl. BY said little girl, no less. Stanley, you’re gonna have to listen to Motorhead for the rest of the day to get some of your Man Tokens back from this one, buddy.
It’s women and children first, Stanley. Women and children first!
MG&G: Is it just me, or does the art look better today?
Like more effort put into it, than with the usual characters?
That’s a pretty good drawing of them, especially Grumpy.
Mary Worth:
“Are you going to consult a lawyer about the possibility of suing me for negligently piloting my craft, Ms. Worth?”
“Well, I might float that trial balloon!”
@Kirk Out:
I’m picking up what you’re putting down, Kirk.
FC: Thel tapes a max-pad over Jeffy’s mouth. “If I can wear it, so can you!”
If Flash went to Yale he was probably a squash player.
Mary Worth:
For a guy who nearly killed himself and two paying passengers, “Stanley” is awfully buoyant, isn’t he? — perhaps he’s an adherent of the Alfred E. Neuman school of epistemology.
“…the lightest passenger is left in the balloon by herself in the final step, at which point the balloon will lift off from the tree and float away…”
It’s explicitly a hot air, not helium, balloon, so, no, that is not going to happen.
DT: Wait, that’s Felix Faust, arch-enemy of the Justice League, isn’t it? Better give up, dick, or he’ll sic Abnegazar, Ghast, and Rath on you!
DT Dick and Sam came prepared by wearing rubber underwear.
Flash Gordon : I *think* Flash Gordon’s sports were fencing and polo (the horseback one)? Which offer very useful skills to have if the world where you’re transported to become the hero is strictly medieval-fantasy, but Planet Mongo is one of those settings where everyone is Conan-style underpants barbarians, but also have access to stun lasers, computers, robots, rocket ships…
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Frazz : I’d also be more concerned if Caufield had brought Mrs Olsen hard cider, but mostly because either a) the liquor store sold to a minor; b) his parents are definitely directly involved in his antics.
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Mary Worth : for a second there, I thought Olive had said “I’m the YOUNGEST and STRONGEST one there is!”, and that she had gotten her powers confused; you have ESP, Olive, you’re not the Hulk!
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Six Chix : Oh, we’re going back to Tuesday Chix wearing a slowly rotting pumpkin on her head well into January? Well, compared to that torrid affair with a sandwich, it’s nice to have some modicum of normalcy…
You know, I was going to argue that the joke in Mother Goose and Grimm was that the toilet has multiple seats, the dwarf has to use the tiny one, and Snow White is bugging him about it because she can’t use the toilet when the wrong seat is down. But they went to the trouble of drawing the toilet and showing its perfectly normal seat, up. So you’re on your own, Mother Goose and Grimm.
Hey sicko, I can out do that one. Just change the preposition in Stanley’s penultimate word from “after” to “on.”
6C: That scarecrow is looking pretty smug for someone who’s so bad at their job.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
Except this is Moyland where logic and the laws of physics don’t exist, so I’m putting my money on Josh’s prediction.
Flash Gordon:
Remindful of the joke by hack comedians everywhere:
I got in a fender bender with a dwarf. He said, “I’m not happy.”
So I said, “Then which one are you?”
Mary Worth: Well, Olive will need to reignite the balloon’s engine to go anywhere. So 50/50 odds that she floats off to Oz, or that she carbonizes the tree, herself, and half of Santa Royale’s vast, dense forest. Bit of a win/win situation, if you ask me.
DT: I guess being 2nd in command of a large military industrial death enterprise makes Faust quite nonchalant when people pull death ray guns at work and the police burst in. Just another Tuesday.
MW: Olive has foreseen the disaster that will befall her in the coming 3-4 days of strips!
Flash: Wasn’t Flash an All American Football player back from a time when the Ivy league actually had football players who could win an all-american designation.
Dick Tracy: Of course Dr. Faust has no objections! The Capital he represents is dead labor that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives better the more labor it sucks. He holds all the cards here, including the state security apparatus specifically written and drawn by the anti-Communist Chester Gould to defend the interest of Capital. Would the Devil care for a drink? The straw is free of charge.
@Ukranazi Stepan: This story left logic, reason and physics behind a long time ago, and with Olive so blatantly stating that she’ll be the last off, I think that’s *absolutely* what’s about to happen.
Weren’t we all just yesterday wondering what’s going to happen during the rest of Olive’s ‘mini vacation’? Well, this is it, Olive’s going to pull a ‘The Chipmunk Adventure’ on us and go sailing off in the balloon by herself.
Maybe she’ll sail clear back to New York, where the balloon crashes through the ceiling of her parents’ house whilst they are in the midst of boinking.
‘Hi, Mom n’ Dad! Didja miss me?’
Mary Worth: Why, oh why, couldn’t Stanley be one of those craven “outta the way! No ‘women and children first! Me!” cowards? You know, with a personality and all?
Also Mary Worth: And what exactly did mentally summoning the dogs who brought the people who called the rescue squad add to their situation, aside from an audience?
MW: A real Halloween twist will be that once Stanley and Mary make it down she awakes back in New York City where she has been in a coma for weeks. That air conditioner had clipped her noggin and she has been in a hazy coma purgatory. Olive has been reaching out trying to guide her back. Nah, Olive has joined Wilbur in the pantheon of recurrent characters readers love to mock, so no way she is going to vanish.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: I think the implication is that Olive can make a psychic connection with the dogs, but not the people. Which doesn’t add much, to be honest.
MW: Don’t worry, after Olive floats off in the balloon, she’ll telepathically call her little bird friends to rescue her. And, because this is Moy writing and we are all in hell, they will.
6C: One of my favorite parts of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the cold open where Linus, on seeing Lucy beginning to carve the pumpkin they just picked out, howls “You didn’t tell me you were going to kill it!” Today’s Six Chix gives that line a really dark undertone.
DT: I cannot for the life of me figure out what Dr. Faust’s reaction to this situation is. Is he tacitly approving of Lakoyle taking a couple of Neo-Chicago’s finest hostage? Annoyed at a monkey wrench being thrown into the deal for the zappy gun? Hoping this meeting won’t cut into his lunch break?
MW: “You go first, Mary! You are so very old and feeble, after all, whereas I am young and vigorous!” And thus Olive’s passive-aggressive bid to usurp her master’s place begins.
(At this point I fully believe that the balloon could float away once the weight of the basket is lightened, even though logic suggests that a) the envelope would be too damaged, b) Stanley would have turned off the burner and/or vented the air and/or c) the rescuers on the ground would make sure the basket is secure before trying to get people out of it. Because when has logic had anything to do with this whole situation?)
Mother Goose: Without the “tiny,” it’s just “women sure are nags, right, fellahs?” With the “tiny” it’s just “Snow White, history’s greatest freeloader, never got over her height-ist mentality.”
MW- Alphonse and Gaston did it better.
MW — “As long as you’re OK, either Olive or I will go down first.” Mary Worth has long been known for passing off stale platitudes as wisdom, but she has now sunk to the level of stating obvious logical necessities.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I’d still like to see ten firemen spread around one of those circular trampoline net thingies to catch anyone who slips. Otherwise, they could have climbed down hours ago. I mean, the inevitable cocoa and blankets are a nice reception for those who survive, but. . .
@Anonymous: Seeing as DC regular Simon Stagg appeared in this comic (to be killed off by the villain Ghost Pepper)
I wouldn’t put it past me, honestly.
@The Quiet Man: The story also left any consistency about Olive’s powers far back in the dust. Why wouldn’t falling-air-conditioner-level Danger Sense also pick up on “balloon about to float away with you”?? But Olive’s power is now animal telepathy, and as far as the plot goes, appears to always have been.
I agree with others that the rescuers ought to have a thing or two to say about who gets down first, but I give that a pass because they’re all freaked out by the non-Euclidean geometric horror of a path that allowed their fire truck to get in between the trees, and just want to get out before they’re lost to the Fae/ aliens/ alternate dimension portal.
MW: This whole story, I’ve just been imagining what the questioning in the upcoming court cause will be like.
“So, Mr. Stanley, are you a trained balloon operator in any way?”
“So, you ‘crashed’? What caused this crash that didn’t affect anyone else in the balloon regatta?”
“So, when the balloon crashed, it landed safely a few feet off the ground, in a place with no cell service but a paved road coming up to it?”
“So, Mary, you invited this 16-year-old girl cross-country without any adult supervision? And the first thing you did was take her up in a balloon? With only this alleged balloon operator?”
“So, Olive, you’re seriously claiming you made a psychic connection with these two dogs? Oh, Mary told you you were ‘special’, did she? And you believed that?”
MG&G: Grumpy didn’t take a shit. Not surprising.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Mary Worth characters suffering consequences for their actions? That will certainly take the strip in a whole new direction.
GT: “This entire situation is tough. I feel like I’ve aged twenty years this week.”
“That’s just the guest artist coach.”
“True. Nice lips by the way. Guess I need to go over and congratulate Bob Keeshan and the late Heath Ledger.”
Six Chix-Tuesday Chix is going to take one home and wear it’s corpse.
RMMD-Later that night a bigger splurge.
MW-Can we hurry up and get to the part where the balloon catches fire.
FC-“From you. I learned how to spit from you.”
FG – I’m guessing fencing. Totally Fencing. And he’s a Yale man? That totally explains yesterday’s strip where he used a stupid ruse to subject Bok to reputational harm, and maybe legal jeopardy. Such an Eli thing to do!
BCN: *adds “Go off, tiny queens” to the list of phrases to use in conversation at the earliest opportunity*
C’shaft: Give it up, Crankshaft’s Long-Suffering Regular Waitress. He’ll never learn.
Dustin: So when Dustin doesn’t do the job he was hired for, it’s because he’s a lazy good-for-nothing. But when Hateful Employment Office Lady doesn’t do the job she was hired for, it’s because Dustin is terrible and he deserves it. Got it.
GT: Credit where it’s due, if there’s anyone who knows about not giving up after losing, it’s Gil Thorp.
HotC: Wait, I thought this was a neighborhood thing, but they closed down a community center program? How much power does this HOA have?
JP: That’s still two more than you and Alan spend with her. Combined.
The art in this strip doesn’t usually affect me either way, but damn if Katherine isn’t sporting the ultimate indignant privileged white woman face in panel one. That’s the face of someone who demands to speak with a manager because she refuses to have dealings with the lower classes.
Luann: “Applicant is smug and full of crap.”
(Also, “Dezdemona”? Why am I not surprised this gal is the product of “we’re giving our kid the most fabulously unique name ever” parents?)
Phantom: “Trust me, the best thing you can do to fight for your freedom is to sit back and let the white man handle everything.”
RMMD: I refuse to believe Jordan’s is that upscale. At best it’s a
Mary Worth is a lot more entertaining if you think of each day’s strip being an actual day later with the rescue team going home each night begging them to please make up their minds on the rescue order by tomorrow.
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That’s not fair at all, Snow White.
FC-Because this is a family comic and Mommy can’t say “God damned you”.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Your comment presupposes a counter factual: That Moy knows how balloons work.
At this point, the only possible way to salvage the Mary Worth story is for it to end in a Viking funeral situation, by which I mean that after Mary has been lowered to the ground Olive’s powers spontaneously transmute the no-longer-hot air inside the balloon into hydrogen and paints flammable lacquer all over the envelope, and then Oh The Humanity!
Sorry, Stanley, you’re Olive’s entrance fee as she ascends to Valhalla.
In this house, we believe
You come in with your hands up
You put your guns on the table
The Marlowe version of Faust is the only one that counts
DT: “Dr. Faust” may be a bit on the nose for this villain, but it’s still an improvement over “Zitface” or “Pustule Mug” or whatever name he might have been given in 1955.
MG Midget: I commented yesterday on how Mike Peters has been picking up the slack now that Tom Armstrong’s made Marvin about something other than poop (since about Thanksgiving of 2023), but completely missed the fact that Jef Mallet has also been back-filling the diaper joke shortfall (sorry) with three strips about how the fraction of kids who were potty-trained by age 18 months dropped from 92% in 1957 to 4% today… and how this is probably because diapers are more comfortable now than they were then. Really, Jef? Sitting in your own filth is more comfortable than learning how to use modern sanitary facilities? I guess we now know how Frazz gets through those 100-mile bike races without a potty stop.
@Professor Well Actually: Aaaaaaaand now, against my will, I’m thinking waaay to habout Mary’s Sarlaac Pit.
FG: My first introduction to the term “Yale Man” was from the sitcom Gilligan Island. Mr Howell brings it upon himself to determine the college attended by a marooned nonverbal ‘apeman’. He puts a coconut creme pie in front of him and a fork on both sides. “If he eats with his left hand, he’s a Princeton man and if he eats with his right, he’s from Harvard.” Apeman picks up the whole pie and eats by sticking his face in it. “My word!” Says Howell. “He’s a Yale Man!”
TL; DR: Yalies are into sploshing.
DtM: Jesus Christ, Dennis, you’ve used your ungodly powers to fuse Margaret’s thighs together leaving her stunned and stranded on the sidewalk! That was a—very good thing to do, very good indeed! Now please send her to the cornfield!
FG – Flash Gordon is fighting the notorious Colonel Hiza Liar? The key to victory is simple, Flash: Don’t let him be the narrator!
DT – “Like most people, you didn’t read Part Two, did you, detective? At the end of this story, I’m going to Heaven. You know, the nightclub. You ought to come along. You’d fit right in, in that canary-yellow trenchcoat.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“The limo is nice, but don’t you prefer to drive your sports car, Abundio?”
“No… this is much more dignified”
“Plus, when I see some hot babes I can hang my head out the window and pant like a dog!”