Not-so-funny animals
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Dick Tracy, 12/14/25
For a month now, we’ve all been like, “Who or what is the Ghost Cat? We’ve been told he’ll appear when needed — obviously that will be some time during this storyline but when?” Well, today we’ve got answers. What is the Ghost Cat? He’s Batman, or at least as close to Batman as you can get without infringing on the intellectual property rights of DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Netflix/Paramount Skydance [TBD by 2027]. He’s close enough to the real deal to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, anyway, so much fear that they self-censor when saying even mild swear words. Who is the Ghost Cat? Well, it seems pretty clear that he’s just Buford, the lawman who showed up in Neo-Chicago with this case yammering about the Ghost Cat in the first place, in an elaborate costume.
Honestly the part I’m most unsure about is the “when” component. Sure, sometimes the conventional law enforcement apparatus can’t deal with a specific injustice and only a costumed vigilante can restore righteous order, that’s something we understand and believe, but Dick and Buford were in hot pursuit of some suspects after an informant planted a tracker on their vehicle, and then said suspects ran out to confront them while they were just parked legally at the curb, a scenario where I’m pretty sure the police-friendly Neo-Chicago courts would give retroactive license for them to go nuts, so I’m not sure why he felt like he had to go “Ghost Cat” mode. Who am I to judge, though? If he needs a fursuit to fight crime properly, that’s his business.
Mary Worth, 12/14/25
A lot of Sunday strips just pad out what could’ve been a two- or three-panel gag and don’t take full advantage of their length. Not today’s Mary Worth, though! Today’s strip takes us on an emotional roller coaster, from the highs of “Ha ha, Sunny shat in Ian’s shoe!” to the lows of “Oh, man, the reason Toby and Ian never had kids is because Toby knows, in her heart of hearts, that Ian would beat them.”
Marvin, 12/14/25
Speaking of shitting, Marvin is, of course, primarily about shitting and pissing. But it’s also about a set of characters who actively dislike each other, and that’s why I refuse to believe that Bitsy thinks of Jeff as “dad.” He almost certainly just refers to him by name, or, if he refuses to learn his name on principle, as “that asshole.”
71 replies to “Not-so-funny animals”
FC: “Instead of being stuck behind proles waiting to see Santa, how about enrolling in our SantaPlus Club? For a small investment you can get fastracked to a personal wants advisor who will curate a custom Under Tree Expectations experience with your name on it!”
H&L: She’s finally snapped and stole the Toys for Tots donation box from the mall. Merry Christmas to you, Lois. In jail!
Pluggers were around when rural barns and buildings advertized tourist spots and farmstands rather than cults.
Blondie: Wait, Elmo has a last name? And parents? And a residence of his own? When did this happen?
MW:
JPJones: “I have not yet begun to fight.”
Ian: “I’m going with another inspirational wartime saying.”
JPJ: “Which one?”
Ian: “Front towards enemy.”
Arlo & Janis: Context matters. I imagine this being a repeated groaner of a punchline for the likes of Lockhorns or Dustin.
Luann: Is “Prince and the Pauper” waiting to happen here?
HtH is getting pretty close to explaining feudalism.
BG&SS: What, exactly, does Snuffy contribute to this marriage, besides the random chicken for the stewpot? When I think “kept man”, he’s not exactly what comes to mind.
MW: It’s even better if you imagine Sunny’s ‘Ha Ha Ha’ as sounding like Pee Wee Herman. ‘Mad Dog! Mad Dog!’
MW2: I’d like to think that if Ian and Toby ever did have kids, said kids would also instinctively know to crap in Dad’s shoes, just on general principle.
JP: It’s what, 11 p.m. there in Cavelton, CA? That would make it about 8 a.m. there in Norway. Unless Emil had a wild night with some local girls and is sleeping it off (and if I were Emil I would totally not care if I was two-timing this neurotic, pissyfaced American dilletante), he’s probably already up.
RMMD: Next panel – ‘Welp, see ya!’
@ValdVin: On Luann: In the name of all that’s reasonable, don’t give them any ideas! It would be an unholy mashup of Olivier’s performance of Othello and the movie ‘White Chicks’!
DT – Welp, this storyline has gone straight to “H-E-double-asterisks.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“It’ll be nice to have a day at the pool with no leering from Don Abundio”
“He assured me he’s going water-skiing today”
“Why, that sneaky bastard!”
DT: I normally wouldn’t encourage the estate of Bill Kane to get litigious, what with the whole Bill Finger business and all, but in this case I’d make an exception.
MW: And today’s Mary Worth-inspired rabbit hole: are birds truly incapable of controlling their own defecation?
(Googles)
Huh, apparently despite common presumption, they can control when they poop to a certain extent. So yes, it is theoretically possible that Sunny did his business in Ian’s shoes. And honestly, good for him. Pissing Ian off is the most legitimately entertaining thing that has happened in this strip in ages. I hope he never apologizes.
BCN: Yes, Iggy is playing Tiny Tim! My Christmas wish comes true!
Dustin: “No, I mean, where’s my horse? It’s the only thing getting me through the day anymore.”
FG: Okay, who let Mark Trail do the Sunday strip?
JP: Dude, you are taking your failson position of overseeing the family NPO way too seriously. You should take a tip from Sophie and half-ass everything.
Luann: So much for Dez’s sensitive, empathetic Earth Mother Magical Negro credentials.
Phantom: Speaking of not talking, we’re just going to ignore that you left a World War II ghost plane on the runway of a major airfield, calling into question the very nature of time and space? We are? Okay then.
RMMD: “Oh Hell, I can’t hold back the passion any longer! Let’s do it–let’s kiss with our lips touching!“
Blondie Mashup: Oh PUHLEEZ. Like Daggy’s putting up inflatable Santa Clauses and Snowmen outside his house. It should look more like the linked mashup.
Mary Worth: This whole arc is like a surrealist horror film in premise; a man goes away on business for a few days and comes back to find his wife has for some reason brought a stranger into his house and that stranger seems to exist purely to torment the man. But the stranger is a parrot and the victim is Ian which turns this from a psychological nightmare commenting on themes of masculinity to the feel-good comedy of the year.
Also Mary Worth: That being said, and I genuinely can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m kinda siding with Ian here. Sunny is a fucking asshole, goes out of his way to ruin Ian’s stuff, laughs obnoxiously nonstop about it, and Toby is a worthless idiot as always. Ian actually kinda deserves to beat that bird’s ass and dump Toby’s dumb ass.
Wary Morth:
Sunny (singing):
This is your time to pay
This is your judgement day
My family was sacrificed and so I get to ruin your life
I’ll laugh without a pun
I’ll tick off anyone
That’s really nothing new it’s just a thing I want to do
You’d better get ready to cry (ready to cry)
You’d better get ready to cry (ready to cry)
You’d better get ready to weep
Cause here I fly (oh oh)
You’d better get ready to cry.
Your wife is my slave now
Your wife has kicked you out
When your chinbeard stands on end
That’s when I’ll peck you again
I’ll ruin your bloody life
Make you pick up the knife
To feel it’s sweet bite
‘Cause you’re a parasite
You’d better get ready to cry (ready to cry)
You’d better get ready to cry (ready to cry)
You’d better get ready to weep
Cause here I fly (oh oh)
You’d better get ready to cry.
Phantom: OSS Officer Bauer is about to learn Irwin Allen’s First Law of Time Travel: You WILL be put in jail.
Ripley: Yesterday we got the U.S. Navy’s official WWII cat. Today it’s the U.S. Marines’ official WWII duck. How did we manage to beat the Axis when our armed forces spent all their time playing with the pets? Tomorrow: Official Coast Guard aardvark.
Mary Worth: “First he destroys my signed ‘Othello’ Playbill by Sir Richard Wellbottom… and now this!” “Ian, please, you are behaving like a child – just because you found the playbill and the shoe in that order doesn’t mean Sunny did it in that order.”
MW: As if “spare the rod” isn’t toxic enough, Ian also embraces, “spare the roaster.” Either way, this guy shouldn’t be left alone with any living creature smaller than a Kodiak bear.
RMMD: And here I was sure that Summer would maintain the “No Checks, No Sex” rule.
H&L: The fact that your children inexplicably fail to grow up does not justify robbing The Marines’ donations box.
9CL: Oh, thank God! I had WAY worse thoughts about the fourth hand!
BLONDIE: I’ve always had the impression that Elmo’s parents were of the absentee variety. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see a frozen and forgotten Elmo decorating the front porch.
Flylock Socks:
Shady Shrew then sues the hell out of the red jackal when it turns out that his clock simply wound down and stopped at the exact same time the town clock shows, but the “great detective” didn’t bother to check if it was ticking.
My Hanukkah greetings to those who celebrate are changed to condolences for the mass shooting in Sydney. An injustice done to one is an injustice done to all.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
To the tune of this.
@TheDiva: MW: My partner’s evil bird stuck his butt out of the cage and pooped on me because we kissed near him. They both laughed.
DT: Bob Kane: “Why does everybody steal the B*atman schtick, but nobody steals Cool McCool? Is a puzzlement.”
I had no idea Led Zeppelin’s bass guitar player was so bellicose.
Do you suppose Brigman is using these strips to write off the expenses associated with her new pet parrot?
As for Marvin, how severe is the Marvin dad’s catatonia that he drives into a carwash with the windows down?
Beginning to side Ian with here. I suspect that, as in the 2009 film Orphan, Sunny is a murderous Estonian sex dwarf who only looks like a parrot.
MW-Something is the matter with Sunny if a lot of liquid shit is coming out of that shoe.
HnL: I appreciate the detail regarding the snow melt around the chimney but I also wonder what is going on in the area of the house that also shows snow melt.
When we were talking about The Shawshank Redemption, my barber once asked me to define “obtuse” for him.
Dick Tracy, the Platinum Age comic about murder cops, put a mask on a police officer in 2025 and it somehow isn’t about ICE?
Now I have a new definition.
@TheDiva: Having put an extra e in your comment, I reread the strip a couple of times thinking “What does this have to do with The Family Circus“?
@Ukulele Ike: re: Ripley – well, they also made them useful, like the Polish troops promoting their ammo-carrying bear to corporal! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)
We can all amuse ourselves by replacing the plebian sound effects in “Marvin” with ones Don Martin would have used. I’m going to start with “GA-SHKLURTZ,” “SKHLIK,” “GLINK PLINK GLUNK DINK,” and “THWiP,” respectively.
MW: Keep it together, Ian! Don’t let your anger cause your illusion glamour to slip! In panel 4, you almost revealed your true hideous Gollum-like goblin form!
JP 10PM Eastern = 4AM in Norway, so the question would be “are you up yet?”. Time zones – what are they?
Phantom Am I right that Stripey didn’t even warn the timelost pilot that he’s about to encounter the future??
Blondie Forget Dagwood’s clearly-intended-as-ironic “we’re not going overboard” actually being as “overboard” as any of the other decorated houses, after noting the 12-ft skeletons repurposed with elf costumes, and inflatable gingerbread men taller than a house, none of these are particularly “wild” themes
That parrot’s got quite the attitude for a creature with hollow bones.
Ian is an English professor, so he should have a good range of colourful insults to hurl at those who slight him! Let’s see! “Feathered menace”, “Flying, screaming menace”, “Feathered disaster”, “Stupid #«£€ bird”… Ugh. I guess it’s not just Ian’s students that need some linguistic help from a LLM!
@ectojazzmage: Yeah, no joke. “If he were a child, would you be so intolerant?” is a ludicrously asinine thing to say.
First, yes, Sunny is not a human child, he’s a parrot. The rules are different for dealing with humans and animals.
Second, Sunny has been foisted upon Ian by Toby. He had no hand in the parrot’s acquisition, and Toby didn’t even bother to let him know until he arrived home.
Third, while Ian is acting wildly unhinged, it’s pretty obvious that this parrot is destructive and that Toby is bad at keeping it contained.
All in all, Ian, despite all of his other issues, is the least wrong one here, and the only reason I hope he doesn’t dump Toby is that he might latch onto another twentysomething with daddy issues and Toby might get with somebody her own age, resulting in four people being miserable instead of two.
“Wordlaw”! What a cool surname for an officer of the law! He was born to be a cop! Oh, he died. That’s not cool, that’s just sad
“Should we tell the costumer that he left the window open AND there is a pet inside?”
“Nope! Get shitty wages, do shitty job!”
@20 Liam: Sunny was extra-motivated–he contacted Marvin for maximizing cloacal output. He may have invited his friends in for Loafer Shitfest 2025. They’re not mutually exclusive.
How old are Pluggers? The Burma Shave billboards started exactly 100 years ago.
@Pozzo: Thank you! It’s amazing how much those sound effects would improve this lame strip.
“Are you sure that it was Sunny that shat in your shoe? I was on mushroom last night, could have been me!”
@Rube: #34: Well, I’m 70 and I remember a lot of those Mail Pouch chewing tobacco ads on the sides of barns.
DT – I hope you’re right about those ballistic blubber penetration numbers, Tracy….
MW -Damn the guano, full speed ahead….
Marvin – Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep this strip from delivering its sub par brand of humor….
Adios Amigos,DJ.
Luann: I guess if Dez’s parents can afford to live in Manhattan they can afford to pay her out of state tuition.
RMMD: Looks likes it’s blue balls and vaseline for Augie tonight.
MT: So what you’re saying, Mark, we should save the environment by all going nude.
MW: This has got to be the most entertaining turn of events in this strip since the coffee throwing catfight between Trashlee and Shauna.
Mary Worth: Oh great, Toby is one of those pet nutters.
Next she is going to griping on Facebook how she heard a crying baby last time she was out.
MW:
Is there any particular reason why Ian seems to want to describe Sunny and Sunny’s actions with the elocution and phrasing of Edward Everett Horton? Consider these descriptions, all in the past week or so: “feathered disaster”; “avian menace”; “wild, violent, screaming bird”; “charming avian ways”; “screaming, violent, wild creature”; “feathered menace.”
MW:
Attaboy, Ian — pour the bird guano on the floor and carpet. It’ll do them wonders.
Marvin and Bitsy:
Is there some reason Dad didn’t notice the torrent of spray and foam coming through the window at any time during the wash? — does Dad have an autonomous vehicle that he commissioned to go to the car wash with only Bitsy in tow?
Mary Worth:
“I have not yet begun to fight. But if Robert Plant doesn’t button that damned shirt of his while he’s singing, I just might!”
— John Paul Jones
MW: Looks like Ian is going to rip Sunny a new cloaca.
Mary Worth: The Biblical proverb actually goes, “The one who will not use the rod hates his son, but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Luckily for Toby, the “rod” mentioned here is a shepherd’s staff, which was used to guide sheep, not hit them. Unfortunately, Ian seems to be going by a different old saying: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You pooped my shoe. Prepare to die!”
Sunday’s JUNGLE JIM!
And we all know what THAT means.
@Pozzo: #25- Please include “SKREE-SCRAW SKREE-SKRAW!”Don Martin was the best! (I think he was describing a rhinoplasty!)
A cat-themed superhero? You can defeat him with a laser pointer or a cardboard box, so he’s not going to strike much fear into the criminal underworld.
***
The parrot is a wild, untamed bird who has been allowed to fly freely. I refuse to believe that the only droppings are in Ian’s shoe and the entire condo isn’t a health hazard by now.
Dennis the Menace: “Maybe you should try sayin’ please first.”
Ah, c’mon, Dennis. You know that never works on you.
MT: Mark, at least you can’t blame pluggers for this mess. They’ve never bent their knees to Dame Fashion. They still wear their ratty, moth- eaten 50 year old rock band tour T-shirts.
Overboard Spanish to English.
@Bob Tice: #42- I suggested this last week- put a little ready -mix concrete powder in Sunny’s pellets. Make sure he’s got plenty of water. C.O.D would be “Parrot-onitus”.
Periquita Spanish to English.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Spanish to English.
The Wizard of Id Spanish to English.
BoT: TFW you want to make a topical joke about Sesame Street‘s funding but you don’t remember anything about Sesame Street except that clip from the 90s with Zoe’s pet rock that went viral a couple of years ago.
Also, I know Sesame Street has been bouncing around channels, but does it actually have ad breaks now? When I was a bairn and it was on UK Channel 4, that was a commercial channel, but they wouldn’t have dreamed of putting adverts in Sesame Street.
Crank: Ah, the annual tradition of “Pam and Jeff decide to get an artificial tree for the first time ever”. I’m not entirely sure that works as an annual tradition, but I guess that’s why I’m not a professional comics writer.
MW: Moy is just going to keep having Chinbeard say “Sir Richard Wellbottom” until familiarity means it stops sounding funny. We may be here some time.
RMMD: “Autumn Rook doesn’t always do the sensible thing…”
“What was that, Augie?”
“Nothing.”
(I think it’s important that we remember Augie “I’ve got papers to grade” Shuster is at least as responsible for the sexlessness of this relationship as Summer is, but sometimes the gag is right there, y’know?)
S4th: Okay, so the Sundays have a continuity of their own, even though they can’t possibly be in continuity with the weekday strips. What is this, The Phantom? (I guess the 21st will either be Laura’s friends coming up with the Damon Runyon version of Frosty the Snowman, or Sal actually telling Bettina a nice Christmas story, and Bettina being bored to death.)
@Sequitur: Hey, they can’t show that in a family newspaper!
But Hawk Bruder is COOL. He has a cave hangout!
@58 Peanut Gallery:
Nothing like a cool cave hangout to impress the chicks.
Edge City: If you have to go to a party that will have a roomful of therapists the best thing to bring along is your angst.
Since when is it “Marvin and Bi–” oh, no, okay, I get it. See the cartoonist knows that sometimes one character, like Nancy, or Snuffy Smith, slowly takes over another character’s strip. But I don’t know if they get that it’s because the audience likes that character better, just hating Marvin isn’t enough.
Hi and Lois: That’s great, Lois. You bought boxes of stuff no one will want.
Slylock Fox: Also… there is nothing inside Shady Shrew’s luggage.
If Wilbur appeared in Six Chix.
@Sequitur: It got Kit Walker a busty United Nations receptionist for a wife, after all.
@Horace Broon: Harley Street Physician: “What seems to be the problem, Sir Richard?”
Sir Richard Wellbottom: “It’s my bottom, doc. It’s not well.”
Alternate Sir Richard Wellbottom scene:
Harley Street Physician: “What seems to be the problem?”
Sir Richard Wellbottom: “It’s my bottom. It’s not well.”
Harley Street Physician: “Sir Richard Wellbottom is in town. He is the finest Shakespearean actor in the world. Go and see him act. He will make your bottom well.”
Sir Richard Wellbottom: “Doctor….I am Sir Richard Wellbottom.”
(Organ sting)
MW: I see Ian puts on a coat and tie before he puts on his shoes. I am aware that there are people who remove their shoes as soon as they arrive home, so I guess this is just the other side of that coin.
CS: So your tree is too tall for the room, Jeff? No big deal. I’m sure your father-in-law is chomping at the bit to use his new L.L. Bean chain saw.
So are spray and rinse sound effects, or are splat and whooh steps in the carwashing process?
@White Rabbit: ”White white white is the color of our carpet.” — Carmen Ghia, The Producers (1967)
@Guillermo el chiclero:
CS: So your tree is too tall for the room, Jeff? No big deal. I’m sure your father-in-law is chomping at the bit to use his new L.L. Bean chain saw.
To do the obvious thing, and cut a hole in the ceiling, of course.