They teach you the tip o’ the helmet in firefighter school
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Mary Worth, 10/10/25
Mary’s looking pretty frazzled in panel two, and who can blame her, what with her having just been in a freak balloon accident and then brushed off by a fireman who didn’t want to make small talk while he was in the middle of a complex rescue operation. Still, she has to realize that the scenario she’s describing makes no sense, right? Why would Saul and Eve send dogs to find her, when they didn’t even know she was missing? Soon enough she’s going to put two and two together, and then either set up a full-on cult that worships Olive, or sell her to a lab where her brain can be studied and possibly profited from.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/10/25
I guess I don’t know for sure that there’s no such thing as a physical drone store, though if I were buying a drone, I’d probably just get one online, like a normal person. But if there are such retail establishments, I feel confident in saying that the staff there does not wear tuxedos to work. I wish we lived in that glorious and classy world, but unfortunately we do not.
Judge Parker, 10/10/25
“She needs someplace where she can be just a kid again … you know, like a vast estate owned by the richest lady in town, where she can ride horses all day. Normal, relatable kid stuff. Will there be other children there for her to play with? Ha ha, goodness no.”
90 replies to “They teach you the tip o’ the helmet in firefighter school”
If there is a drone store, I hope it’s manned by that guy who says “Ee-yesss?”
MW:
Today’s second panel looks like a movie poster for A Chorus Line in Hades.
JP:
Another installment of Judge Parker, yet another day of strip inhabitants making frowny, pouty, angry faces at one another.
MW: With a strength born of love, Zeke the Fireman pulls two more to safe ground.
MG&G: A tuxedo t-shirt, on the other hand…
MW:
“Whew! Thank you, sir…and your crew!”
“No, no, ma’am. You’ve got me mixed up. I’m the Construction Worker in the Village People’s forthcoming ‘Concert Among the Pines’ !”
MW:
February 4, 1945: The Yalta Conference.
October 10, 2025, panel two: The Yenta Conference.
MW: Mary looks like she’s swinging two loose grapefruits in a sling under her shirt. A few hours in a balloon has stretched that Maidenform to its limit.
JP: Neddy shows some genuine insight here. I guess in the Marciuliano world the flatter the chest the higher the IQ.
MW: I could forgive Moy and Brigman for EVERYTHING if, in the next installment, Saul and Eve satisfy their curiosity about what it’s like to be in a balloon gondola by using the rescue crane to get up and into it just as the balloon frees itself from the trees and sails up and away.
MW: Psychic powers are a slippery slope. Ten years from now, when the strip has Mary and her sentient magic wand travelling through time in order to rescue Wilbur from cybernetic vampires, we’ll be able to look back on this arc as Mary Worth’s Garbage Ape Moment.
MW: Let’s not let Mary’s weird statement overshadow that fireman’s equally weird statement. You’ve got two more…people to rescue? Members of your teams? Days until retirement? What?
MGG: I’m really not sure what is going on here. Is Mother Goose returning the drone? It doesn’t look like that fancy retailer wants to put his hands on what’s likely evidence in an animal abuse case.
JP: Careful readers will notice that Neddy is not offering Charlotte a pony, just a pony ride. Singular.
MG&G: Is Grimm the dog? Is MG getting rid of his drone because she wants to de-anthropromorphise him? This could go badly for her, when she has to start buying poo bags by the case.
RMMD: Augie is about to announce that he has, platitudinally, quit his day job and will be moving in with Summer, along with his five, er, SIX unpublished novels.
FC: Mommy! Jeffy’s hungover again!
The Drone Store’s employee takes inspiration from his two great role models: Elon Musk and Dagwood Bumstead
Saul: “Mary! Thank goodness you’re okay!”
Mary: “Well, I’ll assume you meant to say ‘Mary! Thank goddess! You’re great!’ and let this one slide!”
Grimm uses high tech to harass a specific ethnic group/species. If he wants, he has great career opportunities!
Hagar is so wealthy from his raids that he can use books, incredibly valuable prestige objects in the Dark Ages, as kindling.
RMMD — Neddy plays the “Pony” card!
MW: Was Mary involved in having the Santa Royale emergency vehicles painted salmon pink?
JP: Hey now, there’ll be other children for the raspberry-haired brat to play with! There’s that carrot-haired mute boy who became Abbey’s unpaid stable hand after his father got all dead from being cartel-assassinated with the collusion of the local police!
The two of them can swap trauma trope playing cards, assuming he wasn’t sent to the looney bin after going all ‘Equus’ on the horses.
RMMD: The really depressing thing is, I don’t think Summer’s being sarcastic here.
FC – Jeffy is sporting some morning wood.
MW- Mary is rocking that no-bra look.
JP/S4th: Bettina and Charlotte are going to meet, aren’t they?
“How dare you dismiss me like that! Do you even know who I am? I am going to meddle in your life sooooo hard now!”
***
Wait until Katherine and her very blue blouse finds out about about a lot of first time mothers of newborns. As long as Charlotte isn’t a teen, because she will have a lot to say about that very blue blouse… Ah, I see what the concern really is now.
Mother Goose and Grimm: “You can dispose of a Mavic-3 quadcopter and a few RDG-5 fish-baiting grenades, right? Maybe erase a little light war-on-cats crime videos?”
MG&G: In my experience, drone stores are one of the few types of stores that are growing. If a new shop opens at your local mall, it’s a drone shop, or a vape shop, or a weird shop that only sells TikTok trend hot chips for $20 a bag because an online influencer told them how to launder drug money amateurishly. I don’t think they normally wear tuxes, admittedly, but that could also be part of the influencer hustle.
JP: You know how people in times past used every part of the pig except the squeal? Judge Parker takes the same approach to its narrative. Not a single plot point goes past without being followed by seven weeks of ALL CAPS YELLING and weepy therapy-speak decompression.
Mary Worth: I used to visit a woman who liked to tell the story about falling in her home, which turned out not to be so bad because the responding EMTs were a pretty nice-looking bunch of guys. Also, Mary is looking pretty disheveled there in panel two. I bring these items up for no particular reason.
To be fair, “little girl gets a pony” is pretty much the core Judge Parker narrative we’ve been missing for the past few years.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: (Eagerly awaiting the return of Neddy fan service, but maybe that’s just me.)
MW-“Now why don’t you send the dogs after Wilbur?”
FC-“Do you want to get punched before I have my coffee?”
MW: Hour 19 of Mary’s Playtex 18-Hour Bra.
George Constanza: “The drone store called, and they’re running out of you!”
There was a short stretch there when Judge Parker was actually interesting. Norway, fights in cafes, international espionage, weird guest houses. Then, nothing. Just affluent suburbanites complaining to each other for the last two months. What happened to this strip? Did the interesting writer suffer the same fate as April?
MW: Little did Olive know, when she revealed her secret mental powers in a moment of existential stress, that dull suburban Santa Royale was not only home to a dense impenetrable forest, but deep within that forest was a secret U.S. government lab dedicated to weaponizing secret mental powers. Mary, look out — those aren’t firemen, they’re a federal goon squad bent on spiriting Olive away for highly invasive brain surgery!
Judge Parker: “Whoah, hold on there, Rockefeller! Are you telling me you might have the means to go into a riding stable and plunk down enough cash that they’ll let her ride a pony for an hour? Why would any riding stable agree to that? You’re going to threaten to kill them and burn the place down, aren’t you?”
“Drone Store” is actually a judgment value on the customers. The fact that they sell drones is a coincidence.
MW (squints) What the heck is that irregular rigid shape attached to the fireman’s back? Not set up to be an air tank holder – the only thing I see in fire gear photos – I can only conclude it’s an interdimensional phase shifting stabilizer, which has allowed them to safely navigate the fire truck through the trees, and have half of the truck merging with the pines in panel_1.
Oh yeah? Well, I had sex with your wife!
Mary Worth: “I’m fine! Thanks for coming and for sending the dogs! Now, let us join arms and dance ’round this invisible maypole…”
You know, normal Mary Worth stuff.
Hagar: I thought the joke of Hagar burning an Amazon Kindle because he thinks you buy a new one every time you finish an ebook is a little anachronistic even for this strip but then I noticed the books on the shelf.
“I still don’t know how he learned to attached grenades to the drone, but eighteen dead cats later the neighbors are starting to get suspicious and the Ukrainian government has called him for suggestions.”
MW: Thanks for sending the DOGS? That’s no way to talk our brave first-responders!
DT: God damn it, Roberta, get in FRONT of that barrel! 87% of CC prognosticators have placed their bets on Tess LaKoyle accidentally zapping YOU to death, bursting into tears, and turning herself over to the law.
Ghost-Who-Stacks-‘Em-Up-Like-Cordwood: ”Because I prefer a nice risotto with white wine and shallots. Potatoes make me look all puffy. It’s the leotard.”
RMMD: Where did these two meet, again? Longtorsos’ Lonely Hearts Club?
MW: It wouldn’t be a Santa Royale Rescue if Mary wasn’t there to take the spotlight away from the people actually doing the work.
@CanuckDownSouth: It’s a parachute.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
Also, Mary is looking pretty disheveled there in panel two.
Moy: “D’uh”
@Bob Tice: Another installment of Judge Parker, yet another day of strip inhabitants making frowny, pouty, angry faces at one another.
This is the comic’s mission statement.
@27 I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: If it means the triumphant return of Melody Mare, I’m all for it. Even better if she has periodic spontaneous and totally random trampling attacks. She could take that show on the road to other strips. Think about it! Melody stomping Dagwood’s hair antennae! Trampling Crankshaft’s malapropism-spouting mouth and pockmarked potato nose! The mind wobbles.
@45 Hibbleton: AHHH! My EYES! I’m blind! WHY DID YOU EVEN INTRODUCE THAT CONCEPT INTO REALITY, HIBBLETON????
I’m thinking not, because her salmon squares are normally a greyish-brown.
@Lord Flatulence: “MW: Thanks for sending the DOGS? That’s no way to talk our brave first-responders!”
Perhaps Mary is a fan of the Slow Horses TV series or the books it’s based on? The “Dogs” are an MI5 tactical assault squad for whom collateral damage is a feature, not a bug. All, or at least some, will be forgiven if the Sunday strip shows the “rescue” team setting up a bunch of breaching charges prior to storming through the floor of the balloon basket.
JP: Katherine, at this point Charlotte’s problems are so obvious that Neddy has picked up on them. I’m just saying, you’re not exactly on the short list for Grandmother of the Year.
MW: Eve reluctantly accepts Mary’s side hug while trying to get away from the funk of dried fear sweat and pine needles.
Terminator: The comic goes online October 10th, 2025. Dennis becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah Connor: The Menace fights back.
Terminator: Yes, it evolves into a self-referential meta comic. It is to “menace” what Zippy is to “weird.”
John Connor: Why Zippy? Isn’t that strip completely defanged and separated from its subversive underground origins at this point? Does anyone even read it anymore? Did anyone ever read it?
Terminator: Because Dennis knows that Bill Griffith’s counterattack will do away with all attempts at humor and triple down on crosshatching and ham-fisted social commentary. TikTokers will discover the strip and will go viral performing his antics in public. Eventually all of Generation Alpha will unironically sport muumuu’s, go bowling, spout non-sequiturs, and undergo back-alley craniectomies.
@Needless Exposition: It wouldn’t be a Santa Royale Rescue if Mary wasn’t there to take the spotlight away from the people actually doing the work.
Unless that person is Olive. Then Mary will make sure nobody but Olive gets credit for it, because Olive is so much more special-er than everyone else.
Again, this story is about 80% of a child grooming story.
DT: Oooh, bad luck Tess. Destroying Dick Tracy’s signature hat is a hanging offense in this state.
GT: Wow, food for thought for…Tobias? Leo? Entirely new character?
Luann: These girls are all young adults; surely they’ve had pets before? Known someone who has pets? Took a turn feeding the fourth grade class guinea pig for a week?
Pluggers have parasocial connections with the birds in their backyard.
JP – “… and so much outdoors. Do you know how easy it is for a child to wander off and get lost? Listen to me, Katherine – I’m offering solutions here “
MW: I’ve been expecting the balloon was going to sail off with Olive — and was chuckling at the naïve fireman thinking there were two more to rescue — but Mary’s “sending the dogs” line has made me rethink. Clearly Olive hasn’t told Mary about her telepathic dog whistle yet, and it’ll be far more important to have that scene, with Mary’s praise of how extra-special Olive is, in the Sunday strip.
In Mary Worth, Saul and Eve send the dogs. In Judge Parker, Abby releases the hounds.
GT: “This technique is called ‘the comics.’ I could have used ‘Action Comics #1’ or ‘Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,’ but I think ‘Persepolis’ makes for a classier example, don’t you?”
Alley Oop wins the funny papers today as Doc Wonmug destroys the village in order to save it.
Next week in Pluggers: “Pluggers don’t need emotional support animals, they’re married.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: The other 20% is sheer narcissism with both Mary and Olive practically masturbating over how amazing and great and perfect they think they are. Olive literally can’t get through a conversation without talking about how special and unique she is while a smug, self satisfied smile is Mary’s default expression. And the Olive praise is relative to how great Mary is because Olive is her “kindred spirit” from past lives.
GT: This strip mentioned Persepolis? Okay, big credit for that from my perspective.
Crankshaft: Don’t get too attached to your little town hospital, gang.
Lockhorns: Leroy, you brought this on yourself. And basketball end-of-game minutes are longer.
H&L: “Rock star” is something which, statistically, doesn’t exist for people Chip’s age anymore. And “pop standards”? I’m betting neither he nor Hi can name five songs from any show older than Mamma Mia. This entry is not a tryhard, but a try-not-at-all.
Zits: Connie, on the other hand, has earned the right to say “pop standards”. All I do the whole day through is dream of a woman who knows her way around the Brown and Freed catalog.
BG&SS: Remember when seltzer and alcohol met in a can? Well, soup and moonshine is next.
Judge Parker: In Panel 2, did Neddy take a bold “in your face” stride forward to place herself in front of the white refrigerator, or did she shrink back and cringe to fit her face into the frame of the white microwave/toaster over/picture frame/ white rectangle of mystery?
@Needless Exposition: Nah, I think that’s part of the 80%. We’re certainly seeing plenty of narcissism.
The 20% that’s missing is where Mary actually makes her move. She flew an underage girl cross-country by herself, appealed to her vanity and feelings of isolation, made her feel special, and got her into an isolated place where she couldn’t call for help, and did all this in way that created genuine danger. You don’t need to interview Ghislaine Maxwell to know what happens next.
Hey Crankshaft, did you hear Sister Jean died? She was the same age as you. So maybe you could shut up about how inconvenient it is to get health care.
“Ahem. Ma’am. First rescue is free, on the house, gratis. However, we gotta charge for the other two. We take cash, cards, Zelle, Paypal. Anyone? You know this is a volunteer fire department and we rely on the generosity of victims.”
@Vanya: In some alternate universe there is an exciting Norwegian espionage plot going on, with explosions, snowmobile chases, and April and the ex-coeds in latex bodysuits. But we have been Bad, so WE get two months of Katherine and Flat Neddy headshot conversation.
More JP: Neddy spends the day crawling on all fours with Charlotte perched on her back when Abbey refuses to let them use any of her fancy horses.
@TheDiva:
On Luann : this storyline is going to be a parable about how it’s a bad idea to do a charitable act while going completely half-cocked and having no idea what you’re actually doing… by pointing out how Bets founded a group based entirely around cosplaying as superheroes to raise awareness on pet abandonment while she herself has no interest, knowledge or skill in how to take care of a pet. The fact that Dez caused this situation by impulsively deciding to ACTIVELY LIE to be given custody of a foster dog? Nah, that’s okay, it’s only her roommates who are bad for being unsuited to this task she volunteered them for (over their OBJECTIONS).
P. S. nice 180-rule screw-up today; Steffi and Bets switch positions between panel, because they shouldn’t be in the same order both from the front POV and back POV@Hibbleton: “And your crew!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, do you have all these games in your office to create a more enjoyable working environment?”
“Certainly not!”
“You obviously know nothing about management!”
“This stuff is here to show everyone I’m the boss!”
MW: “You’re welcome, ma’am. No, no salmon squares for me, thanks, even the fire engine is a healthier colour.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: I’ve said it before but Olive is a character that is impossible to like, let alone tolerate. Obviously we’re supposed to find her cute and endearing except for the fact that her character is equal parts a cliche and a teenage girl’s self fulfillment. She has no flaws, everyone adores her (and those who don’t are deemed “bad” or “wrong”), and she collects psychic abilities like Pokémon cards. And in execution, she comes off as a self absorbed spoiled brat who everyone is expected to cater to with a simpering smile on their face.
Compare her to Madi who is supposed to be portrayed as a bratty and unlikable kid because how dare she not think Charterstone is like Disneyland and not fall to her knees in adoration for Saul’s dog. Madi actually has a good reason why she’s sulky and unhappy: she just lost her grandmother who raised her after her mother died and her dad is too busy for her. And rather than have her problems be taken seriously, they’re downplayed and dismissed with even Greta the dog’s abandonment issues treated with more seriousness. Poor Madi is even forced to accept that she’s such a low priority and it’s why I can’t stand Saul as a character.
JP. It’s all cool. Charlotte can play with the red-headed kid Abbey and Sam adopted after his crooked drug dealing judge father was killed. What? You don’t remember that kid? That’s okay. Neither, apparently, do the JP writers.
REX MORGAN M.D.: In Panel #2, Auggie is actually talking about losing his virginity (“All those people I slept with to try to get the book published were ‘practice’, so they don’t really count. You’ll be the first, Summer!”)
@Needless Exposition: And then there’s Wilbur….
Mary Worth: “We’ve got two more”? Seriously? Three whole hot air balloons crashed in trees on this day and were tracked down by psychically-directed dogs? When it rains, it pours, I guess.
Judge Parker: Yeah, this’ll last about a week before Charlotte gets shipped off to a nunnery or something because she annoyed Neddy with her constant whining about stupid nitpicks like needing food to eat or such.
@Charterstoned: Wilbur is an absolute joke at this point. The audience is supposed to take his pity parties and every bad thing that happens to him seriously while also snickering at how much he shoots himself in the foot. Moy can’t make up her mind about what direction she wants to go but also acts like she’s in on the joke by giving hard nudges to the ribs. Every moment where Wilbur is mocked for doing something stupid, we’re immediately meant to feel bad for him when he doesn’t deserve it. He treats every woman he’s dated like garbage, gets jealous at the drop of a hat, constantly takes advantage of his daughter (who is starting to act like him) while acting like he’s father of the year, goes out of his way constantly to not do anything productive, and yet we’re supposed to side with him because he’s Mary’s friend.
GT – Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is a cogent account of Iran during the disintegration of secular society. Persepolis II, on the other hand, is an incoherent account of the author’s college years’ descent into drug fueled dissolution. We can guess which volume is going to inspire the teens of the closed world of Milford.
@ValdVin: I’m betting neither he nor Hi can name five songs from any show older than Mamma Mia.
Chip’s got a Led Zeppelin poster in his room because there’s nothing Kids Today love more than Jimmy Page cranking out Battle of Evermore on the Hurdy Gurdy, or Robert Plant ramming Appalachian Folk Muic through the blues-rock machine to see what comes out
@Banana Jr. 6000: @Needless Exposition: Ok, y’all need to chill with your hatred of Olive. I mean she hasn’t even been here the last couple of days. Right now everyone else has moved on to heaping unnecessary, unwarranted praise on other people who don’t deserve it.
Indeed the delightful absurdity of it all is that this time, the opposite happened and apparently Olive told NOBODY that she was using her super special animal telepathy (“tele-PET-thy” more like it! Wocka, wocka!) to send aid! Which in this case you think she would have if only to reassure the fretful frazzled sexagenarians she’s stuck with, but I guess she wanted them to twist in the wind for a bit (or “in the tress”, as it were. Ha ha, again!) Good thing she didn’t, because this leads to the most hilarious part where everyone has somehow jumped to the conclusion that the dogs are the ones with the psychic powers. Like I guess they’re thinking that Greta and Max just do regular telepathic scans for rescue victims in between taking a shit on the magnolias (as you do), got a mental “ping” and just ran 0.1-100 miles all the way to Santa Royale Enchanted Forrest from the dog park on their own volition.
Of course the other reason to cool it is because if there is one thing X-Men has taught me, it’s that you do not want to piss off psychics! I mean today it’s balloons coincidentally getting caught in trees. Tomorrow it’s a planet full of broccoli-people dying in a planetary explosion. It’s a slipper slope.
@Needless Exposition: Which is why I think Mot and Bridgman should do more with Carlos Alora. What’s HIS story? And how come he’s Alora one day and then Allora the next? What’s he trying to hide?
Look at this way, Katherine: with no kid around it’s safe to go on a bender again!
@Ukulele Ike: The geometry of the scene is off. Tess’s arm is being swept to her left, yet, the zap seems to going towards her right. Did the image get flipped or is it just a good?
@2+2=7: I can’t help but think that they’re more like sexless-genarians. And of course we can’t forget that Mary regularly needs to remind the audience that she’s the star of the show and should be given her usual heaping amounts of undeserved praise lest she be like those giant advertisement mascots on that Simpsons episode and have her meddling powers sapped away from her due to no one paying attention to her.
@Charterstoned: Poor Carlos is an outlier in the WASPy paradise of Santa Royale. Even that insufferable Sweet Valley had more POC tokens to pretend to care about.
@Needless Exposition: I don’t understand who this story as for. I get that some people find Mary relatable. But I don’t think those people want to see Mary indulging a snotty teenager. I’m usually opposed to intergenerational cheap shots* but Olive is BEGGING to be taken down a peg. Mary should be telling Olive she needs to stop a Zoomer instead of indulging her, but here are we are.
* – Dustin, I’m looking at you.
JP: Protip to Neddy: the horseys are your best selling point by some distance, no offense to your stepparents, but come on. Anyway, lead with the horseys.
MW: The second panel depicts the scene six hours later when Mary, Saul, and Eve—each of them 3-4 beers in—take to the stage at the karaoke bar for a very loose harmonization on Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: I don’t know if we’re supposed to see this story as Moy trying to bring back a “beloved” character before shoving her back in the closet with Dr. Jeff’s true self or as a passive aggressive way to make us want more Wilbur and Company feat. Mary Worth by making Olive as glurgey and insufferable as possible.
@2+2=7: Yeah, that *is* the part that doesn’t make sense. Olive’s “pet-telepathy” is completely unprovable, especially since she never mentioned it out loud until after it worked. The Internet is full of glurge-y, exaggerated “miraculous pet” stories. This would fit right in.
@Needless Exposition: And one big problem with Moy using Wilbur both as a joke and an object of pity is that he does some really bad stuff which is neither. I’m particularly thinking of the stalking of Estelle, which should not be at all funny but was largely played for laughs.
@Needless Exposition: Yeah, it does feel like Moy is making a meta-point here. “Oh, you think Wilbur’s insufferable, do you? I’ll show you insufferable!” But the interviews I’ve read suggest that she doesn’t think like that at all. And the inadvertent success of Aldo Kelrast was completely unintentional.
love is... giving him a hint that he sucks.