Saturday outrage
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Marvin, 2/28/26
OK, the question of “What the hell kind of school does Marvin go to” is always a live one, seeing as he’s a literal infant, but it’s really relevant here. What the hell kind of school does Marvin go to where he’s learning stuff about the history of pie? I took a seminar in college taught by a professor who specialized in the history and sociology of French food and I didn’t learn this! Sorry, comics gag writers: you can’t just learn a fun fact and then put it in the mouth of a child in your strip and say he learned it at school and then call it a day. And don’t look so smug, Jenny! It’s not like you invented chocolate pie.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/28/26
Oh, yeah, I haven’t told you about it, but there’s a new Rex Morgan, M.D., plot, where a former Hollywood starlet has been living in isolation in her mansion for more than a decade, hiding from the press by pretending to be her own maid. What would end up connecting this woman to our main cast? Something medical, perhaps? Some unique malady that only Rex Morgan, M.D., or perhaps his wife June Morgan, N.P., could solve? Or maybe [watches her turn on her inexplicably old-timey radio and roots country comes out of it] OH COME ON
62 replies to “Saturday outrage”
So after a week, Luann learned that her dad’s job is “crunching data in a cubicle.” So… he’s a accountant? Actuary? Data analyst? Statistician? Project manager? Database administrator? Seasonal temp help for H&R Block? Is he the only guy in his office who knows how to make Excel formulas? The Evanses are so out-of-touch people they probably still think that’s a viable career path.
The only possible ending to this story is an F in Career Paths class, and a serious conversation with Luann about her future.
Wary Morth:
At this point I’m hoping Trixie turns out to be not just real but exactly what she claims to be, just to wipe the anticipatory meddlegasm off Mary’s face.
RMMD:
“Maybe I could purchase a property with sandhills that I could traverse by tooling around in a buggy, and rename the place ‘Lorna Dunes’ !”
Marvin: Sorry Marvin, but I can’t read the word ‘chocolate’ in this strip without thinking of poop. You did this to yourself.
RMMD: /tomorrow on Rex Morgan M.D./ “Wow, this music sucks so much ass. Siri? What’s the city in America that listens to roots country the least?”
RMMD: As a lover of antiques and one who wishes more old things were reused instead of dumped in landfills or languishing in charity stores, I appreciate the details on that radio. It’s completely out of place and we probably should have seen the roots country connection coming a mile away, but I like it all the same.
JP: Welp, THAT was easy!
MW: Wow, they played the AI card much faster than I thought they would. I thought is was going to be weeks, even months, before the characters brought up that possibility.
Luann: B-wad’s still nursing that napkin, I see.
RMMD: Lorna thinks; “What place on earth is so backwards they never heard of me?”
RMMD:
“I just finished trying to post clever comments on The Comics Curmudgeon. Man, I’m exhausted trying to keep up with the witty repartee — those regulars are geniuses!”
Marvin-Marvin is making a chocolate pie in his diaper at that moment.
Blondie-“I suddenly have this urge for dog food,” Dagwood declares, “I’m going to Lou’s.”
FC-Father Forrest also says that life is like a box of chocolates.
MW-Just because you video-chat once doesn’t mean anything. Zoom is a terrible product.
RMMD-Darn it. If only ‘Hotel California’ was playing at that moment.
Crankshaft-And no follow up to the mystery of the cardboard boxes.
Marv: Interesting that Marvmom drives a jeep-like vehicle with a roll bar but no doors, side panels, or even a windshield. Maybe the history of “meat pies” is something you teach infants in The Bush.
Marvin:
“Not to mention when the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Hall of Fame third baseman’s parents decided to make ‘Pie’ Traynor!”
Is making a joke about the chocolate pie Marvin is making just TOO on the nose?
Bizarro : “Yeah, he took the One Ring. We’re here to claim it back.”
(“Fun” “Fact” : Walt Disney actually wanted to make a sequel for Snow White where he would “borrow” the plot of either Bilbo the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, but it never got off the ground because Tolkien outlived Walt, and Tolkien hated Disney’s Snow White because C.S. Lewis took him to the premiere to make fun of him (“See, this is what people are gonna think about when they read your dumb Bilbo book!”))
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Crankshaft : I like how Bat
iukTON THOMAS spouted six different, unconnected anecdotes, none of which he elaborated on*, and chooses to close the week with the most boring one : “I would personally deliver a finished week of strips to my editor, only to go right back to draw the next week!”.*Yeah, I don’t want any MORE of that interview, but couldn’t he spend a little more time on the stuff he says? He talked about how not actually owning his characters irked him, maybe tell us more about that?**************
Family Circus : PJ’s absence seems to imply that this is his origin story. That dust Jeffy is messing with is going to aggregate into his little brother.
Huh, this implies the melonheads are merely “as dumb as dirt”, unless some intelligence is lost in their forming process*************
Marvin : Marvin’s mom is happy her son is learning, while not realising that what her horrible poop-factory spawn REALLY learned is that there are several kinds of pie where he can replace the stuffing with his poop, and grown ups won’t notice before it’s too late.
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Rex Morgan M.D. : Not just roots country, Truck Tyler’s theme song. She’s specifically going to crash at their stupid diner undercover, using her weight gain to go incognito, isn’t she?
@Bob Tice:
Damn, Bob, nice Ball reference
My father, a cartoonishly cheap man, loved (or loves, he still might) using every appliance to its end. I was there, for the death of a like 1980 radio, in 2000 or so. My point? Fatty has either replaced the shit in that radio countless times, or that thing is a bullshit replica. Play Muddy Boots!
@A Grave Mind:
He was truly one of the greats.
Welp, the AI angle in Mary Worth is confirmed. We are now stuck with ascot man until the next Mary and Jeff wrap-up at the Bum Boat (having lived for a fair amount of time in England and being married to a Brit, this name always gives me a juvenile chuckle).
And not to be outdone in “being modern” I suspect a GLP-1 angle in RMMD…
RMMD: So the link took me down a short rabbit hole back to 2013 (https://joshreads.com/2013/10/jiggle-your-monitor-to-simulate-rexs-involuntary-shudder-of-disgust/) and one thing you have to give the current artist is that the characters look like they live in the present rather than the 1970s.
Phantom: “Okay, I’m going to get on my knees now so you can reach my chin to punch it. Ready? Go!”
BF: Something REALLY BAD had better happen to at least two of these bitches Monday morning, or I’ll be writing a stern letter to the head of the syndicate. And it better involve meteorites.
Crank: Don’t be so smug, cartoonist. The entire post office could go up in a flash fire.
Marvin: The recent-ish development of huge crash-proof toddler car seats becoming mandatory in cars must have been devastating for comics. You can save your old re-runs by sketching in seat belts, but a proper toddler seat means you have to draw a whole new strip. And, well, if these are the best jokes you’ve got…
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: I fear you’re right about the AI angle, but I’m still holding out hope that Trixie is a traditional gold-digger, who will show up in a couple of weeks with an unsigned life insurance policy in one hand and a bottle of arsenic in the other.
Fuck you, Marvin, meat pies are delicious. And no, I don’t care that I’m swearing at a child. You shit yourself but you’re fully verbal? Fuck you,
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Oh come on, Rex Morgan MD. If everyone’s a hipster, then no one is a hipster. This is just how things are in your weird hipsterverse. You live in an unsettling continuity where roots country is the pop music of a world of unsettling sideburns and people’s aesthetics never left the mid-20th century. No wonder Rex is the way he is. He’d probably turn into a really fun and chill dude if some trickster god Rick rolled his reality, pushing the planet into the 80s forty years late.
@Anonymous: re: RMMD: Not just crash at the Glenwood diner, Lorna Starr will be going undercover by joining the staff!
”Y’ever make it with a waitress? Big fat blondie waitress?” — Sam Diamond (Peter Falk) to Dick Charleston (David Niven), Murder by Death, 1976
I like the vintage radio, too, but if I had Lorna Starr’s bank account, I’d get me one of those huge art deco floor console radios from the 1930s. In for a penny, in for a pound.
RMMD – That radio is so old-timey it can’t even spell “CLICK” correctly.
@A Grave Mind: Hey, unless it started sounding like crap and he still refused to repair it (or indeed replace it if it was unfixable) that’s rather impressive that it lasted 20 years.
And yeah, I own a ‘bullshit’ replica. Had it since I was a teenager and it’s still working fine. Would love to have an authentic old one that’s been updated with modern, safer electronics, but until then what I have serves me quite well.
Marvin: If my pre-verbal child starting spouting off information like this, I’d probably call an exorcist. That’s just me. I’m a bad parent, unlike those in Marvin. (/s)
RMMD: I’m astonished this isn’t a vacuum tube radio.
@Weaselboy:
Maybe that radio knew that Truck Tyler was about to come on, and tried to avoid a kerning accident where it unintentionally made fun of him over how his “long-lost son” turned out to be the son of his drummer.
@Ukulele Ike: See, you get it. I’d love to have one of those floor model radios too!
@taig: We haven’t seen it from the back so for all we know it very well could be.
I keep thinking of the Invention Exchange skit from MST3000 where Joel invents a radio that only plays movie exposition news (“FLASH! The First National Bank has just been robbed!…”) and stock big band music for dance scenes.
@Anonymous: From what I heard, Walt Disney hated sequels.
He believed that “They Lived Happily Ever After” actually meant something.
And when on his deathbed, he told his people to not make a sequel to any of his classic movies after he dies. Especially Snow White.
FC-“Well after the pods replace people we have to put their remains somewhere.”
@Schroduck: Recent?
I mean, the rule was around for decades, I guess they’re just double-enforcing it now?
@The Quiet Man: “Safer electronics”? But one of the benefits of the old radios and TVs was that they also functioned as space heaters.
@The Rambling Otter: Too bad his famously innovative mind couldn’t conceive of souless remakes filled with CGI, otherwise we might have been spared most of Disney’s output for the past 15 years or so.
@Ken: Well, sure, but at least replace the decrepit wax capacitors so the dang thing doesn’t blow up on you…
Luann: I know quite a few people who hold down a 9-5 job and perform in bands (including some posters here). I guess Luann required (and still requires) so much hands-on parenting, it’s impossible to get the time to pursue interests outside of work.
CS: I wonder how many times Batton was a jerk to the people at the post office, causing them to “accidentally” misfile his post. My guess is every other day.
9CL: A visit to a body of water? Check. Pretentious dialogue? Check. Weird apparel fetish? Check. It’s impossible to believe this is anything other than a 9 Chickweed Lane strip.
@The Quiet Man: Good point about the radio. Also, thanks for the happy memory about that MST3K bit.
luann If Brad *actually* passes on the interview by saying he can’t believe this is an assignment in a credit-bearing college course – *especially* if you aren’t required to seek out a range of people beyond your family – I will well, not call the strip *good*, but at least concede it can sometimes have a good moment.
FC: Dolly is rightfully fears the abominations Jeffy is contemplating.
MW: This story will suddenly swerve to Mary trying to deepfake salmon squares.
Dustin: I’m no professional comic strip writer who writes comic strips, but I think there should be a beat between “That’s unbelievable.” and “You took out the trash?” This presentation kills the strip’s already threadbare joke.
RMMD. According to panel 1 she at least has a pot to piss in.
RMMD: Roots country playing on an AM only radio fits. Everything mainstream has moved to FM or, more likely, streaming. AM’s been relegated to Spanish language, hate talk, gospel, and everything else with single digit listeners.
(You know it’s AM because the ID numbers are even)
Marvin: Marvin discussing chocolate pies makes me gag. Also, can this kid talk out loud or not? The inconsistency also upsets me.
Blondie: It’s funny because for a few moments there Dagwood thought Hallmark was getting into beastiality.
I shot Marvin in the face!
REX MORGAN M.D.: Good thing people in Glenwood have no idea of anything going on past 1959, so they won’t know who Lorna is!
REX MORGAN M.D.(2): This may backfire. I mean, Glenwood, is the entertainment capital of the world! It’s the “it” place crawling with big-time celebrities (A place that has Shorty & the Beanpole and old people who play at dive bars is just going to be filled with paparazzi!)
@taig: re: 9CL: Brooke’s been wanking to bikini models this week. Is that a step up or down from his regular meticulously-shaded legs kink?
@The Quiet Man: My grandparents had a floor console radio in their living room up till the 1960s, next to the TV set. Too much trouble to haul it out to the garage, I guess. We little ones loved turning it on and waiting for the tubes to warm up, that big eye of a dial slowly starting to glow eerie green.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Frank; “I feel like getting out my guitar.” Yeah, the one we’ve never seen you play—which kind of explains why you never made it as a musicians. You’re lazy, like your daughter, choosing the safest, easiest path possible. And now you’re disappointed in your life and presumably your stupid(er) kid. At least Bwad has a job where you take risks, where you need to be dedicated to what you do, where lives actually do hang in the balance. Also note that Bwad refuses to play along w/Inner Lobotomy here. Heck, if anyone has a right to be embarrassed, it’s Bwad who—like Tiffany—is the only member of the whole cast to actually accomplish anything.
Frank probably struggles with “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”
Marvin: I could go on about how any child old enough to use a front-facing car seat, speak in complete sentence and go to school should not still be in diapers, but honestly all this talk about meat pies has me thinking of Sweeney Todd (or possibly “A Modest Proposal”) which is a much more appealing topic where Marvin is concerned. As long as you wash the meat thoroughly.
RMMD: Obviously there had to be some reason why Lorna is going to Glenwood to get away from it all and not, say, the Seychelles or Necker Island or whatever. But hearing one-hit-wonder roots country artist Truck Tyler on the radio ranks just below “threw a dart at a map of the US” in terms of contrivance.
If Pluggers is going to do a joke about bread having an odd number of slices, shouldn’t the art, well show an odd number of slices?
MW – This storyline could work if the person catfishing H*arvey H*rt is Brooke McEldowney.
False, Marvin. The first pies were cow pies.
RMMD: Count your blessings — she could have heard “Swingset on the Moon.”
C’shaft: This insight into BatTom’s creative process explains a great deal about his output.
Dustin: Oh shut up, Mr. “I expect my wife to do all the cooking and then complain when she makes healthy stuff instead of hamburgers.”
JP: You sure Bogdan is a nice guy, Randy? Dude looks like he’s ready to star in the music video for “The Night Santa Went Crazy.”
Luann: Passion? What passion? The last time anyone was passionate about anything in this strip was when Bets was a popular cosplay influencer, and she dropped that like a hot potato the minute a couple people started making mild comments about her relationship with Gunther (which, as we all know, is absolutely the worst thing a Black woman can be exposed to on the Internet). Passion is something for evil trampslutwhores, not good decent people like the deGroots.
MW: So, AI-enhanced pig butchering scam, or delusional old man whose dependence on a chatbot will lead him to murder, suicide, or both? The latter would be more interesting, which means the former is more likely.
RMMD: Hmm…art-inspired travel planning. She could go to the Heartbreak Hotel, the Hotel California or even the Bates Motel.
MARVIN: Sounds to me like a sneaky attempt to slide EVOLUTION into the curriculum. We’ll have none of that!
@TheDiva: They could have done the Doc Hollywood* setup where she’s going someplace interesting but breaks down in Glenwood, or even just stops at the diner. But when you have a plot-specific radio, why not use it?
* Also Cars. And I’m sure there’s some ur-movie from the 1940s where someone breaks down in a small town and finds true love.
Jenny knows all about the history of meat pies. That’s why she’s bringing Marvin to Sweeney Todd’s barber shop.
Hi and Lois: Irma’s dejected looks shows she’s given up trying to get Thursty to stop “whacking it” in the living room in front of the neighbors.
‘Pearls Before Swine’ tracks well with ‘Crankshaft’ today.
GT: “We have a lot of work to do, I mean without the best players this team is even more hopeless than I thought.”
CS: “Such an interesting story, I’m glad I haven’t been home in days so I could get this exclusive interview. I’m starting to chafe from sitting in this booth for hours on end and using disposable washcloths to clean up in the men’s room has lost it’s novelty.”
Rex Morgan: Wow, the artist did a great job drawing an 85 year old radio. Too bad he’s not as good at drawing human faces.
Marvin: Jenny’s smiling at the phrase “chocolate pie,” remembering her college experiences with Mabel, the militant Afro-lesbian.
@taig: Unless this is one of the cheap pieces of crap built under the (long-dead, now purchased) Crosley name, this is a vacuum tube radio. Norma Desmond could have owned one like it before WWII.
But it’s AM-only. “Tunes”? She’s lucky she got something which isn’t a thinly-veiled white power talk show.
Beetle Bailey: Sarge has been coaching Beetle for this moment ever since boot camp.
MW: “Video-chat”? Sometimes bland names pay off. Think of how old, passe, and out of touch Mary would sound if she said Picturephone again.