Monday is gross and confusing
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Alice, 10/6/25
We all know of course about the various beloved characters in Alice, the normal comic strip we all read every day and fully understand: Alice, Alice’s friend, Alice’s boyfriend, Alice’s niece, and the late Kurt Vonnegut, who is both Alice’s doctor and her vet. Today’s strip features a couple of our more outlandish favorites, Alice’s robot antagonist and the space alien who’s in love with her, but also … someone new! A glowing orb of some sort who judges the living and the dead, or maybe just asks you where you’re from. Frankly there’s getting to be more of these guys than I would ideally like to keep track of! Yet I persist, for my faithful blog readers, for whom I read Alice and other comics so they don’t have to.
Hi and Lois, 10/6/25
Look, Hi, I think we all know that Ditto was saying “I wish you were a different sort of person than you actually are.” You don’t have to drop this philosophical bombshell on him about how he’s trying to wish himself into the void or whatever. He’s a child and not a particularly smart one. You’ve tricked him into being on hugging terms with you again at the end here, but you aren’t really playing fair.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/6/25
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m now nostalgic for the time when syndicated newspaper comics scat content was confined to Marvin, where you could at least argue that he was a baby and so it was normal for him to poop into his diaper. I get that Grimm is a talking dog, but I still think it crosses some kind of line to have a newspaper comics strip character yelling “I don’t get it, why don’t these big, manly football players start shitting in the middle of the field on live TV so we can all watch it the way I know we all want to????”
Mary Worth, 10/6/25
I’m honestly not comfortable with how pleased Stanley looks in panel two here. Sure, this could’ve ended in total disaster, but look at all these people who are now paying attention to Stanley, and concerned about his well being! Ha ha, Mary, ladies first, Stanley’s all right! Stanley’s as right as rain! There’s no such thing as a bad way to get attention, is what Stanley’s learning!
55 replies to “Monday is gross and confusing”
Hi reminds Ditto that his soul doesn’t exist pre-conception (otherwise, God would be creating souls with original sin). Ditto hugs his groin in thanks.
MW: RIP Stanley — 1950s-Thursday, I’m guessing.
HnL: Dude isn’t even happy his mentally deficient kid is hugging him. The look on his face says it all.
(#2 was me, BTW)
I’m thinking Stanley is gonna take the opportunity to relieve himself once the ladies are gone.
I know those droopy white shapes on either side of the cat’s face in Mother Goose and Grimm are his jowls, but it kind of looks like he’s clasping his paws to the sides of his face, and with that little open mouth, it makes it seem like he’s doing the classic “oh no” pose from Home Alone, and, well, that sort of fits what’s going on in the whole panel, frankly.
Oh, God, WE CAN’T SEE STANLEY’S HANDS.
@TK:
I’m thinking Stanley is gonna take the opportunity to relieve himself once the ladies are gone.
Looks like he’s already started.
“Um, Dad, you’re kind of poking me in the face.”
“I’m sorry, Ditto. Nothing gets the ball rolling for your old man like a good existential crisis.”
Grimm reminds me that there were what, four NFL Europe teams in Germany, and they all failed. Perhaps the dog is onto something, nein?
MW: Nice Tesla Cyber Fire Truck.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
Remember how in “The Fly,” the Jeff Goldblum character slowly morphs into an insect? — is Mother Goose and Grimm morphing into Marvin?
I’m not sure why exactly Mary and Olive apparently decided to gobble a fistful of Oxy before being rescued, but the ride down from the basket is gonna be SWEET.
MW: Stanley is going to let the ladies go first, much like the canary in the coal mines. Then he’ll untangle the balloon and laugh maniacally as he turns on the nitrous oxide and heads towards the skies to make the Hindenburg look like a footnote.
MW: Stanley isn’t quite ready to admit to himself that his plan for “suicide by hot air balloon” isn’t working out. And this is his fifth attempt.
H&L: Ditto is just faking an existential crisis in order to cut his punishment short. And Hi is clearly not fooled.
MW: “I think we should follow the rescuers’ instructions rather than decide for ourselves,” is what Stanley should say, if he wants Mary to murder him.
Phantom:
“By the way, ‘Cook,’ do you happen to have a real name; and, if so, what is it?”
“No, no. I’m simply a stylized cook, intended as a plot device — a meticulously-limned, large, brooding, hulking man shown as engaging in the entirely mundane task of peeling potatoes, but whose taciturn demeanor belies a rage inside him at the indignity of his predicament, a rage that is ready to explode in a fireball and to cause him to lash out at an opportunistic time. You know, like Alex Karras’ ‘Mongo’ was when he punched that horse in Blazing Saddles.”
MW: Olive has mastered the self-satisfied expression. When will Mary get that the student has surpassed the master? When Jeff takes them on his boat, Olive tames a rogue wave and Jeff bows at her feet?
H&L: Since Hi never had “the talk” with him, Ditto can only interpret this as a death threat, and pleads for his life.
MG&G: If they were in Cleveland, they’d see pretty much every away team pooping on the home team.
Alice:
This could be a “This is your brain on drugs” montage from the old public service ad.
Mary Worth:
“But remember, there’s this thing called ‘sovereign immunity,’ and so if they drop you and you go SPLAT! on the ground, there isn’t a darned thing you can do about it!”
MW: This is the point at which Stanley reveals his abject fear of heights and then admits he’s not even a balloonivator but was only filling in for his cousin who is the balloon’s real owner/operator but that he felt sure he could manage it because as a children’s birthday party clown he deals with balloons every day but it turned out big balloons were different and he discovered his mistake when the airship left the ground and his acrophobia kicked in and that’s why he’s afraid to leave the gondola and the ladies should go first he’s fine.
Phantom:
“Okay, Muck Men! — join me in a rousing, Woodstockian call to arms. Give me an ‘M’ !”
“M!”
“Give me a ‘U’ !”
“U!”
“Give me a ‘C’ !”
“C!”
“Give me a ‘K’ !”
“K!”
“What’s that spell?”
“MUCK!”
“What’s that spell?”
“MUCK!”
“What’s that spell?”
“MUCK!”
“What’s that spell?”
“MUCK!”
…
Alice: /Editor/: “You know, some people find your strip a little hard to follow. Maybe you could take an opportunity to reintroduce your characters. You know, who they are, where they’re from…” /Writer of Alice/: “Sure thing! It’ll be completely clear after this!”
H&L: Ha, look at how bummed Hi looks in that last panel: his son only loves him because of the abstract threat of non-existence, and also he’s a bit of a dummy. Both very disappointing for a father.
MGG: I like the idea that this trio has been sitting down to Monday Night Football or years now telling themselves that surely — SURELY — this is the week where it finally happens.
MW: Hold the fuck on: the “vast dense forest” is sparse and flat enough for a firetruck to pull right through? Are we sure that they didn’t touch down in a Home Depot Garden Center?
@TK: @Hibbleton:
I’m imagining that he already let loose when they hit that tree and wants them to go down first to not draw attention to it…
Mary Worth:
“After Saul, Eve and their dogs find Mary and the others, they return with help…” [italics supplied]
Wait a minute. The dogs left and returned? I didn’t see that. Is the narrator commenting on some action in one of the constituent parts of the multiverse in which the dogs actually did leave?
FC: Dolly’s witticism is lost on PJ. She is trying to discern with her little pad and pencil whether time exists in distinct quantum ‘pieces’ or is a continuous stream of non divisible actions.
Hi and Lois:
“But if I didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have put me in the corner! — so we’re even.”
The “Hi and Lois” writer has heard our jokes about how Thirsty is the real father of Lois’ children and they are trying to counter them. Sorry, it’s not working. Indeed, Hi having to insist that he’s Ditto’s biological father… excusatio non petita accusatio manifesta
MW:
If I were dangling precariously in a damaged balloon 200 feet off the ground with a passel of rescue vehicles swarming on the ground beneath me, I wouldn’t exactly be sporting the coprophagous, self-satisfied grins that these three are displaying.
Just sayin’.
As a European, I never studied the rulebook of US sports, but I still learn some rules by pop cultural osmosis. Note to self: “American football players are not allowed to shit in the field”.
Ditto has his mind easily blown by obvious facts. Sorry Ditto, since legalisation, stoners are not charming anymore!
MW: Olive, the Swiss Army Knife of psychics, is apparently missing the we are going to crash blade.
MG&G: Based on the shocked looks in the third panel, we can assume Grimmy is pointing out a huge dump he previously laid on the carpet.
Hi and Lois: Well done, Hi! You’ve blasted Ditto from pre-operational thinking straight into the logical thought of concrete operationalism! Piaget would be so proud of you, and confused as to why you named your child Ditto!
MW This entire storyline could have been written by a not particularly gifted eight-year-old. I know comic strip writers don’t get paid much anymore, but WOW!
Mary Worth: “A captain goes down with his ship!” Stanley calls out, the firefighters saluting while his basket slowly slips below the pine-needle line. The wind blows gently over the trees as the last of the balloon disappears from sight. Mary and Olive embrace in grief. Max and Greta share a look. Saul and Eve shrug. “Hope you don’t mind a little dog hair in the back seat” Saul says, but Mary doesn’t hear him. The credits roll.
Slylock Fox-So Ms. Bear was jaywalking then?
MW-I was hoping for a week of Saul trying to tell the fire department what is going on.
FC-Hungover again?
MW-“No ladies first. I’m all right. I’ve got one bullet in the chamber saved for a moment like this if they can’t rescue me.”
Small points: 1) Don’t forget, Kurt Vonnegut also plays Alice’s AI-obsessed boss, and probably any male character in the strip who is not an alien or her boyfriend, but I possibly repeat myself. 2) Mother Goose and Grimm has been making urination/defecation jokes since its start in 1984, just two years after Marvin premiered, and God, what has our culture been doing for the past 40-some years?
(But we are grateful Josh reads the comics so we don’t have to, even if we choose to be as obsessive about it as he does.)
This is why I don’t have kids. I can’t afford to have a weirdly painted empty room to make them stand in for punishment. Props to Hi for not being a “spare the rod, spoil the child” type, but is giving them an existential crisis and years of therapy that much better.
***
I’m with you, Grimm. It would be disgusting, but not as much as watching large men giving each other CTE in stadiums built by taxpayers to make enormously wealthy people even richer.
Wrecks Moregone:
So who’s going to turn up dead from food poisoning at the next table and Auuuuughie blamed for it?
MG&G: fun fact everybody, during extended and vigorous bouts of physical activity your body will involuntarily release your bowels. We all know it happens to marathoners sometimes, but it also happens to football players, especially the linesmen, who have to explode into forceful action on every play. This includes the center, who snaps the ball to the quarterback, a ball that is frequently covered with… well. Mud, we hope, but so many fields are synthetic turf so it couldn’t be that.
What I’m saying is it’s quite likely some old the players are shitting on the field.
Mary Worth: Saul is over in panel one, pursuing his passion, narrating events to people in real-time, as they unfold.
MW: As captain of the hot air balloon, Stanley must remain and go
downup with his ship.Is anyone else having trouble getting GoComics on Chrome? I can get it on Explorer but not Chrome.
RMMD: Sure signals of a fine dining experience: exposed brick, framed Euro advertising posters, and plastic squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard on the table.
Either Jordan has committed the faux pas of serving white wines in cocktail glasses, or Mamma von Blonde is straight up drinking liquor throughout the meal.
Go Ask — Honestly, I think this strip would be just as true if the characters’ responses had been rearranged in any order. . ..
C’mon, a “Plugger’s dilemma” is whether to have an entire tub of ice cream or an entire pie for dessert. (Solution: they have both.)
MW The fireman’s unhappy expression in Panel 1 is less “how do we get them down safely?” and more “what unholy non-Euclidean geometric path got my firetruck into this mess of trees?”
SlyF – No, the garbage slid out of the tailgate when he punched the accelerator to take out Mrs. Bear. Because you’d rather be able to say “attempted murder” than “littering” when you’re sitting there on the group W bench.
Ph – Here’s a recipe for meat pies, you know what to do.
MW: Well, that wraps up the balloon arc (albeit with another week of people slooowly climbing down ladders). Anyone want to place bets on whether this also ends Olive’s mini-vacation, or will we next see Olive and Mary on Jeff’s boat as ominous clouds mass in the distance?
@Ukulele Ike:
I respect that they trotted out basically straight-up facsimiles of the Gay 90s food posters you find at EVERY (shudder) “gastropub” or, in my local case, Greek diner with terrific food and delusions of grandeur with decor. The Le Chat Noir and one with Pagliacci twirling a gigantic fork of pasta are just off-panel!
Also, nice to see Rex vanish again after one appearance by his asinine brood.
“I wanna be the Derpy Tiger!”
“All your life, kid.”
Local Doctor Kills Four, Then Self
Don’t fret, Grimm. I’ve just quintupled the amount of electrolytes in the teams’ sports drinks. You’ll get your wish early in the second quarter.
H&L:
“You’re mean!!”
AhabHi responds to Ditto: “Without me, you would not exist but still; you are just a mask, and the true target is the ‘malignant thing’ behind it—an ancient, hateful force that torments mankind without offering death.”