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
182 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!”))
***************
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.
*************
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,
***
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.
@Anonymous: Hey, hey now. The “dumpy truckstop waitress” lifestyle is ultimate dream for everyone, particularly rich and famous people.
@ValdVin: I should have known better than to trust the artist would show the vacuum tubes. :-(
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: If you’ve ever seen pictures, Mr Ascot here could very well be Brooke McEldowney under an alias (The fact that his AI girlfriend is so busty does show that whatever scammy algorithm that makes it up knows how to target it’s mark.)
@32 Ken: I think he’s referring to the fact that the metal chassis was live with 120 volts at all times, even when the set it powered off. Touching a metal part of the radio was a shocking experience. Most of these radios had wood or plastic (Bakelite in this case) cases to eliminate access to the voltage-ridden metal. Even still, the shock hazard exists because the metal heads of the chassis mounting screws are exposed on the bottom of the case.
Why did all these radio manufacturers do this? It’s far cheaper to produce a radio without a transformer than with one. “Who cares if a few people are electrocuted? We saved a quarter on the bills of materials on millions of radios!”
Marvin: In my extensive (5 minute Google search) research into the history of pies, it appears that the first pies were in fact made by the Egyptians and contained honey, nuts, and fruit. Marvin needs to stay in his lane and just give us the history of people crapping on themselves.
@35 taig: on Luann: Yes, Luann does require a lot of hands-on parenting. Too bad her parents aren’t parenting her.
@Dmsilev:
COTW
RMMD- “It was a Saturday night, I was drunker than hell, and then I checked in to the Glenwood Hotel”…I get sort of a “Barefoot Contessa” vibe from Lorna. Maybe she gets a job as a cook at Nick’s Diner? Nah…too obvious. Cool radio though.
@48 Rube: Now you’re just talking crazy, insisting on consistency between artwork and captions.
@Ken: Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) with Dean Martin and Kim Novak. Absolutely awful, I gave up about an hour in.
It’s the last day of Black History Month so Marvin creator watched the 2011 movie “The Help” with Emma Stone and the only thing he learned from it was that he can put feces in chocolate pie.
@taig: My pleasure.
Marvin’s “school” is clearly the floor of an unlicensed daycare where the owners plop kids down in front of YouTube, unsupervised. It’s not Marvin’s fault that he can’t tell the difference. He’s a baby, and this is the only school he’s ever known!
At least “history of baking” is a relatively harmless algorithmic rabbit hole.
I give it a week before it turns into videos about cannibal cooking conspiracies, but it’s nice while it lasts.
@brendancalling: Perhaps my memory is failing me here, but has B-wad ever been shown actually *fighting* a fire? Are we sure he isn’t basically the mascot who they let run around in the coat and old-timey fire helmet like he’s actually doing something but in reality they don’t let him within 500 feet of the hoses, ladder controls or, God forbid, an axe…
@Ken: Yup, it was called ‘Ace in the Hole’. Technically it was released in 1951, but still a great movie although the plot ultimately didn’t work out so well for Kirk Douglas’ character.
@The Quiet Man:
I think he HAS, at least once in a sunday comic for a “Bwad and Toni brave the blazes without breaking a sweat, are huge wimps about something innocuous” gag (note that I am unsure this actually happened due to how unspecific I am beyond saying it was a sunday strip), and I *THINK* that one of the time Bwad’s house burned down
because TJ set fire to it for insurance fraud purposes, he found out because he was one of the first responders there.@The Quiet Man: Wrong Billy Wilder flick. See post #72.
Ace in the Hole was brilliant. By the time Billy made it to 1964, he was due for one shitty movie about breaking down in a small town. And that was Kiss Me, Stupid.
@Ukulele Ike: Maybe I would have thought of ‘Kiss Me, Stupid’ if I’d seen it before. Honestly, hearing how bad it is just makes me more curious to see it all the way through.
@Ukulele Ike: (Shoot, didn’t see your last post.) Indeed AITH is brilliant. I own the Criterion Blu-Ray of it. I was being a bit facetious in citing it since it does begin with Douglas’ broken-down car getting towed into the small town and he does find love, of a sort…
MW: I’m intrigued by the sudden Twilight Zone-esque possibilities this story is suggesting. I wonder how Rod Serling would handle 1) the resident who has apparently been living at Charterstone for at least a year without ever once having been seen, 2) the introduction of AI as an explanation for Trixie, and 3) the vague attendees at the pool party. Mary set the plot with her folksy observation that “HMMM. AI can make ANYTHING appear real nowadays….” I’d like to think that EVERYTHING associated with Charterstone is AI-generated, and that only Carlos Alora is real. The big wow finish comes when AI-Mary achieves a crushing moment of self-awareness, just as Carlos is turning off his computer.
@Bob Tice: # 7 –well, yes — yes indeed. In the meantime, there are the rest of us, are there are cultural & historical allusions to consider.
@Baja Gaijin: reference photo – careful tracing and viola!
Rex Morgan: There’s a horror movie, Grave Encounters 2, that has this really fantastically done twist sequence. After much of the plot has involved the protagonists trying to get out of a malicious haunted asylum, they seemingly escape and there’s a whole epilogue-esque scene of them going back to their hotel room and preparing to go home. Seems like the movie is unexpectedly over with a happy ending. But than when they open the door to leave said hotel room, they walk right back into the asylum’s hallways; they had never escaped, the evil force haunting the asylum was just screwing with their perceptions to make them think they had, giving them hope just to crush it.
That is what this Rex Morgan story is like. That last storyline with eye surgery and random appendix bursts made us dare to hope. To hope that we were free of the roots country scourge and would read stories about medical issues in this medical drama.
And than this happened. Hope is dead. We shall never escape the roots country.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Come on, Lorna. This is nothing a little dog-washing date with a guy named Ox can’t fix.
I will admit, I don’t care about most of the characters in RMMD, but for whatever reason I am entertained by Mud Murphy. So if this story bring him back in, I’ll allow it.
@The Quiet Man: If you do, tell me how it ends.
Peter Sellers was supposed to co-star with Dean Martin, but he had another one of his heart attacks and got replaced with Ray Walston. Much as I admire Ray Walston’s work, he’s not leading man material.
CS: But not before I stopped by Ralphie’s house to look at his dad’s leg lamp.
RMMD: I was kind of hoping that antique radio would announce that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. MAD Magazine once did a thing on cliche old movie props with a radio that did just that.
RMMD: My dad had a bakelite radio that looked like that when I was a kid, except it was off-white colored. My most vivid memory of it was listening to Muhammed Ali (then still Cassius Clay) take the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston.
Luann: Oh, bite me, Luann. At least your dad actually decided on a career unlike whatever crap you’ve been doing with your life.
Mary: Why do I get the feeling this a gender flipped version of the Estelle story where she got conned by an online lover?
RMMD: At least it’s not “Muddy Boots”
Considering the dominance of right-wing fundamentalist programming on AM radio, Lorna would emerge from her decade of seclusion no different from many celebrities who peaked some time ago. Blaming her descent on anti-white racism like Scott Adams, or espousing creationist nonscience like Kirk Cameron and his bananas.
FC: And what does Father Forrest say about those antennae growing out of Thel’s head?
FC: Bil was hoping Jeffy would bash his head against the top of the doorway.
DT: Was nitrate a snitch?
FG: No doubt Ming is an evil being yet he seems to draw a lot fanatical followers.
GT: Coach them up Gil!
MW: we can see the plot arc being laid out but where does Toby fit into this?
RMMD: There are plot holes but this is a sinkhole. Starr would probably use a streaming music app on her phone or computer. Is this a phase the creator is stuck in ? Alt roots country and can’t get back?
JP: please let the twist be the “Bogdan” is actually “Vladimi an old loose end the NotCIA April swore she tie off one day and surprise this is the day!
Phantom: Looks like Chum is tiring out – not enough Cardio and any moment the striped butt one will step in to declare a TKO.
@Dmsilev: dark and subtle
Luann: I had an ex girlfriend whose oldest son was in a garage band with some of his high school buddies. I used to tell him that if he desired steady work as a guitar player learn to play a steel (or slide) guitar. I noticed from hanging out in enough Texas honkytonk bars that in about every country western band, no matter the age of the rest of the group, the steel guitar player was some old geezer. Apparently mastery of the steel guitar is a dying art and no new blood is coming in. Play one well and you’ll be guaranteed a gig in most country bands. Of course, it was the 90s grunge rock era and he wanted nothing to do with that hillbilly shit.
Not sure how you missed the possibility that Marvin could be using chocolate pies as a euphemism for poop
Marvin: In the year 2026, would a suburban mom really be feeding her toddler chocolate pies? How much sugar does this kid eat every day? Explains a lot behavior-wise, when you think about it. (On the plus side, his poop probably doesn’t actually smell that bad.)
Arlo & Janis – I love Arlo’s expression in the third panel. Thank goodness for this strip.
Crankshaft – No follow-up to the drama about taking someone else’s allegedly important cardboard boxes?
So this week Batton was going on and on about minutiae like cutting up cardboard and walking to the post office, while one armed Skip listens intently to his self indulgent, rambling monologue. Ye gods, a competent journalist would try to steer the interview into some kind of narrative with a point. A competent interview subject would try to highlight the important points about his career instead of delivering a pointless shaggy dog story, especially a subject who bragged, “It’s called writing.”
Rex Morgan – *Head desk* *Eye roll* *Face palm* simultaneously. Repeat.
Mary Worth – I’m impressed that Mary immediately recognized that Trixie is AI. Of course, given that Mary’s stilted, awkward speech isn’t generated by anything human, it’s not surprising. It takes one to know one.
FC – Jeffy would find enough for a basketball team in my house.
What’s up with Billy’s hair? It looks bizarre.
@2+2=7: We’ll know for sure when we see Trixie’s legs.
@rosa:” RMMD – At least it’s not Muddy Boots.”
Yet.
I refuse to accept that a person with hair that’s clearly not gray would use a radio to find “tunes.” She would start with her phone, obviously. Unless this faux tube radio is a whimsical IOT device connected to her Apple music library, it’s more likely she’s listening to the radio to discover the names of antidepressants she can name drop to her doctor to see if they are right for her
@CanuckDownSouth: Luann’s parents should have called that out. I’m their age, and there’s no way I would have been allowed to interview my own parents for a class assignment. Especially not in college! Sheesh. Luann’s life is a parade of red flags her parents are bending over backwards to ignore.
@CanuckDownSouth: Psst. No one tell Brad he can “pass” by simply by eating at his own goddamn home (like Bernice appears to have done, for once.)
@rosa:
On Luann : Nah, I think her pitying her dad over having given up a life of celebrity and success to end up in a thankless job barely scraping by to keep his two children fed is the reaction Frank DeGroot INTENDS her to have (Because it’s how HE feels about it
(Because he hates Luann and Bwad)and also it makes Luann realise that her dad can’t afford to pay for all the things SHE wants(because he doesn’t want to pay. Guy can afford buying a hobby RESTAURANT on a whim, remember?))@I speak Jive:
On Crankshaft : It’s weird how this “So, the second a week of drawing strips ended, I was right back to drawing the next week” anecdote is the weakest one, isn’t it? It’s like Batton kept throwing out feelers for Skip to latch on to, but when Skip didn’t interrupt him to ask him to elaborate, he just moved on to the next thing until he ran out of subjects/time.
(Personally, I would have asked him to elaborate on “it always pained me to put the copyright label, knowing it meant I no longer owned my own drawings and characters” and “It was while I was working in bed that I came up with my breakout character, Mr. Finkle. A success so great I wish I could turn that bed into a golden award for myself!”, maybe “And, of course, I could count on my loyal wife Cathy to help me color the sunday comics”)
@Baja Gaijin:
Why did all these radio manufacturers do this? It’s far cheaper to produce a radio without a transformer than with one. “Who cares if a few people are electrocuted? We saved a quarter on the bills of materials on millions of radios!”
There were still DC apartments in NYC when I was a kid. The transformer-less, 5 tube radios of the time could work on AC or DC.
Crank: I honestly can’t tell if Batty has stopped doing punchlines to these or not. I mean, none of it’s funny, obviously, but neither are the strips that definitely are meant to have punchlines.
JP: “Funny story, Randolph, all this time I’ve been talking about how impossible it is to be standing up to the guards, and suddenly I think ‘What if I tried and see what happens?’ And it’s turning out remarkably easy, I don’t know what I was thinking before!”
MW: I dispute Mary’s claim that AI can make anything seem real. For example, I don’t believe the most sophisticated AI program ever created could be given the prompt “Write a comic strip about a lonely trophy wife who is randomly adopted by two parrots, one of which proves itself to her husband by saving his life” and even begin to come up with something that sounds real!
Pluggers: Pluggers also wonder why hot dogs come in packs of ten when hot dog buns come in packs of eight, why you park in a driveway but drive on a parkway, and why nobody talks to them any more.
Marvin-Mom has the desire for a chocolate cream pie.
@Horace Broon: re: JP: ”Turns out the wretched peasants coerced into slaving as gulag prison guards are, deep down, just a buncha cream puffs. Huh.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: “RMMD: I was kind of hoping that antique radio would announce that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. MAD Magazine once did a thing on cliche old movie props with a radio that did just that.”
I have an old Associated Press teletype machine.
I’ve always wished I had the skills to hook up a computer to it, turn it on in front of visitors and have it chunk-a-chunk-chunk out headlines.
(I heard only once the six bells on the teletype announcing a national emergency: the night that Richard Nixon resigned)
@104 Hibbleton: True, though that was small part of the radio market. Why should a hundred million people with AC power be subjected to the electrocution danger of these radios for the fraction of 7 million people in New York City who had DC power?
@105 Horace Broon: on Pluggers: Nobody talks to pluggers for the reasons you state plus their inability to get all their fat folds clean…
RMMD: nailed it! Not to brag, ok I’m bragging, but as soon as we learned the starlet yearned for privacy, I SAID she’d go to Glenwood and meet Mudd Mountain.
CURTIS: FOUL! Bones have little to do with crawling — its all in the muscles. Think of worms, Barry.
S4th: What’s a LIDL run?
LUANN: FOWL! As many mudges said, an artist can always do their art as a side gig. Unless you’re disorganized or a chicken who ducks initiative
@Tonio:
@Ukranazi Stepan:
#2. MW: agreed! Too much forewarning here, bet Trixie is just a real old fashioned gold digger.
@Activists: Lidl is a grocery store chain, originally founded in Germany (I think) that’s developed a reputation for inexpensive, no frills shopping. Basically the Volkswagen or IKEA of supermarkets.
Just more of Ces’ hipster nonsense, nothing to see here…
@The Quiet Man:
UK sketch comedy The Mitchell and Webb Look had a couple of brief adverts for a bargain supermarket chain called “Didldidi”, a parody of Lidl and Aldi (which has a considerable presence in the UK) – featuring bargain products like unlabeled canned food 10 for 1, bottles of murky “Value Water” (now with no bits), or “butter colored sandwich dressing”.
RMMD: Glenwood already has an old-timey diner and a roots country-based economy, but maybe Lorna Starr’s radio means she can add an element of dieselpunk modding.
Marvin – Is Marvin going vegan like Mutts? What would an American toddler have against savory meat pies?
Rex Morgan, MD – I hope Alan Jackson’s lawyers are drafting a cease-and-desist for unauthorized adaptation of his hit song “Gone Country“, as well as missing the obvious sarcasm in the lyrics.
C-Shaft: For a brief, shining moment I thought Battom meant that he left with a sigh of relief that no one noticed the resemblance between himself and any of the Wanted posters.
DT: How difficult it must be to hold a shotgun and yell “Say yer prayers” without adding “rabbit.”
JP: April must be changing her tune now that she knows Bogdan put his torturer out of commission. Hell, he might be her new daddy now.
Luann: A lucky break for Frank’s future survival that his highly visible rockstar fantasy shows him shredding on a guitar rather than getting nasty with three grouples.
MW: “Hmmm…AI can make anything appear real nowadays,” Mary mused just before brushing her hair back with a six-fingered hand.
MG&G: Well yes, she’s sitting in a bar, so getting her alcohol is a little “coals to Newcastle.” A bar that let her bring in her dog and cat, but when house pets can talk and you yourself are a talking goose, it adds a chaos factor to the various support animal policies.
Phantom: Not gonna ask where Stripey’s hands are now. Ick.
@The Quiet Man:
#112. Thanks for the education. Guess using Aldi would be too low brow.
@pugfuggly: Siri? What’s the city in America that listens to roots country the least?
All of them.
@UncleJeff: #108: Back in the late 1950s GM imported British Vauxhalls and sold them through Buick dealerships, like what they did with Opels in the late 60s. When he was in high school columnist Dave Barry’s dad bought one. Barry told what an antiquated-looking piece of crap it was and jokingly said whenever he turned the radio on it would only play Winston Churchill speeches.
@The Quiet Man: That’s Numberwang!
The Familliar Mucus: “That’s Jeffy 2.0”.
Low and Hi-less: “What’s that noise?” “Thursty’s whacking off in the living room.”
@Terry Rhoden: The National Lampoon produced a Sunday newspaper parody which included an ad for ‘Swillmart’ which featured similar products. My favorite is beef marked: “USDA Okey-Dokey”
@Guillermo el chiclero: #118: Correction: Vauxhalls were sold here through Pontiac dealers, Buick dealers in Canada.
JP: It does seem kinda unfair that Bogdan, having apparently kept his teeth in excellent condition despite being old and despite his years in prison and whatever happened to get him imprisoned, should lose a tooth for a stupid reason like tortu…OH no, I’m not going there again! A stupid reason like this storyline.
Also, “bogdan” is an ancient Siberian word that means “frowny face.”
@Philip: American children don’t know from savory meat pies, unless they’re in north Michigan and have access to Pasties.
No idea why meat pies never caught on in the USA; they figure in popular cuisine all over Europe, and we’re surrounded on our own continent by the Latin American empanada and the east Canadian tourtiere.
@Anonymous: Re Marvin: The Help to one side, I always figured that if you made that substitution in a “chocolate” pie, the smell would be an early giveaway.
Six Checks And A Cat Named Snuffy Smith: “We stole these blankets from some poor chicken thief! Happy house warming!”
@Guillermo el chiclero:
It’s a crossover with My Favorite Martian!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Hello, Abundio! So where are you going tonight, to the club again?”
“No… Your place”
“Oh! You wouldn’t really enjoy coming here, would you?”
“There’s nothing to do”
“Chocolate pie?!? So THAT’S why Marvin pooped in my pie crust!” ,thinks Jenny, as Truck Tyler’s new hit “Poop In My Pie crust” comes on the radio.
The Familliar Mucus: “Did Father Forrest also tell you to pull my toupee off?”
@Terry Rhoden: I also remember a John Finnemore monologue on the Radio 4 satire show The Now Show which was mostly about budget air travel, but segued into saying he got the same feeling from how cheap these flights were as he did when he was in Lidl or Aldi and suddenly thought “I could probably afford to buy all of this! That’s not right!” (The Thursday Next books, on the other hand, claim they come from a parallel universe where economics is different and supermarkets simply don’t massively hike their prices. This is also why they have brands that almost look like ones you’ve heard of.)
I’m embarrassed to admit I read yesterday’s Sally Forth and didn’t even wonder how well known Lidl was in the US.
LUANN: Gawd, Luann is dim. Soooooo very VERY dim. I’m used to her being dim, I know her being dim is a fundamental reality of the strip, she demonstrates her dimness in every possible way every time she appears. And yet every so often it really hits me that if she were competing on a quiz show with a box of rocks, my money would be on the rocks.
Marvin: Today we learned in school that soylent green pies are vegetarian because they are only made from people who are vegetarians, so don’t contain any meat.
Can we eat Soylent green meat pies at home mom so I can be a vegetarian? That way I get protein and eat chocolate pie and apple pie, which are vegetarian too.
Haven’t announced anything like this here before, but Cafe Irreal ran one of my stories, “The Hooded Executioner”. If any of y’all are interested, it’s here.
Marvin obviously didn’t learn about meat pies as part of a curriculum. I can only assume someone at school is just being very particular and detailed about their threats.
@Ukulele Ike: I’m guessing hamburgers largely fill the role of meat pies in the US. They’re both portable, fattening, protein-and-carb food options that are cheap and easy to produce. You don’t even see shawarma very much in the US, even though it’s a common fast food option in places like the UK.
I just discovered my local Target has these frozen Jamaican meat pies that are quite good. I used to get them when I lived in Florida, and my local grocery store served a significant population of people from the Caribbean. We even had Crown brand seasonings, which is a Caribbean brand. Amusingly, they had a chicken seasoning they called… well, a word I probably can’t say here, but means “male chicken.” Huh-huh.
@Terry Rhoden: My favorite Mitchell and Webb skit was “Remain Indoors!”, the post-apocalyptic quiz show. It started funny but slowly got very dark.
@Anonymous: Today we learned in school that soylent green pies are vegetarian because they are only made from people who are vegetarians, so don’t contain any meat.
And, there’s no risk from secondhand meat!
REX MORGAN MD: My money’s on a romance with Mud Mountain Murphy, which will include a lecture by Rex on STDs.
GA: An entire long week spent griping about the Post Office, and not entertainingly. I dunno, maybe it’s time to think about switching back to 9CL.
@Poteet: You want to go back to the pharmacy for another week of griping about expired coupons and customer bitching?
@Banana Jr. 6000: I used to get house-made Jamaican patties in a tiny storefront on Flatbush Avenue — Brooklyn is rich in the culture and foodways of de Islands. It closed down about ten years ago, but I can still buy Tower Isles (factory baked on Atlantic Ave) meat pies in local grocery stores. Acceptable, but I miss that little shop.
@UncleJeff: #123: I remember the Swillmart Soviet made one size fits all two piece suit. I like how they used all the characters from the 1964 high school yearbook parody but now in their early thirties. The foreign exchange student was now the leader of a terrorist group. The only problem was if you weren’t familiar with the yearbook parody you didn’t get a lot of the inside jokes on the Sunday paper parody.
@NJPozner: Me too.
He’s a chaos agent, a Cookie Monster or Baby Huey type.
@Guillermo el chiclero: there’s a few young cats out there. Neil Jones from American Aquarium. Isaac Stanford.
Cranky: So, having become a cartoonist, the protagonist finds out it’s not that different from having a regular job.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
#136. Intriguing and puzzling story. It doesn’t have the reassurance of a graphic novel that the title character will survive. Lesson of course is to check Yelp reviews before going to a hotel or cabin. Congrats on getting published.
@Activist: Thank you. In retrospect, I guess I wanted to do a story about how easy it is to be seduced by evil.
If Yelp is available here, this resort may be in trouble. :)
@The Quiet Man: Didn’t matter regardless, as they did make crappy Direct-to-Video sequels to Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Bambi… etc… (Bambi 2 was a mid-quel but still)
Except Snow White, I guess they had enough of a soul to respect that wish.
Although some movies that could seriously have benefitted from sequels “The Sword in the Stone” “Alice in Wonderland” and infamously “The Black Cauldron” were ignored.
I mean, The Sword in the Stone especially as there is SO MUCH Arthurian lore they could have delved into.
@126 Ukulele Ike: When the only meat pies they see are these, you’ll understand why they didn’t catch on in the US.
@136 Artist formerly known as Ben: Will there be a Part II?
@138 Banana Jr. 6000: You could just link to it…
In a dying medium like the funny pages where your bosses don’t seem to care about what you do with your strip, it’s fascinating to see what the cartoonists really care about. We’ve seen Dick Tracy try to preserve comics history by hosting Little Orphan Annie. We’ve had Mary Worth tell us that ESP is totally real and unawakened in many people around the world. We’ve endured months on end of scrapbooking talk from Gasoline Alley. Of all of them, however, it seems so glaringly obvious that Terry Beatty would rather be writing “Buck & Truck: Titans of Roots Country (or Americana, if you prefer)”, instead of “Rex Morgan, M.D.” I can’t even remember the last time someone handed Rex a check, can you?
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
#150. Your reminder about ease of evil is especially timely… it would have been of even greater use last night.
@The Rambling Otter: True enough, but I considered those ‘cheapquels’ more of an annoyance than anything. Yes, they were attempting to continue stories that didn’t need to be told, but they still needed the originals out in the public conscious to build off of. I found them easy enough to ignore. They also weren’t being put in theaters and heralded as some sort of new Disney canon.
Now? When people talk about almost any Disney ‘animated’ movie, from ‘Snow White’ clear through ‘Lilo & Stitch’, chances are they are talking about the ‘live-action’ remake. The originals are now at risk of being buried, like the majority of the classic animated shorts that were the studios bread-and-butter while the features were in production.
Marvin is listening to Benny the Bouncer by Emerson Lake and Palmer? Not sure why, but that worries me.
@The Quiet Man: I personally disagree.
The animated movies are timeless.
And most of the live-action stuff were pretty crappy in comparison.
People only talk about them more these days, because they’re recent (and in turn more relevant) not because they’re more loved.
@Poteet: Ah, you remembered that the T-word pretty much guarantees hours in moderation purgatory.
@Baja Gaijin: I don’t have one planned, but you never know.
@Activist: I’ll just say that some things happened last night that I hoped against hope wouldn’t happen and leave it at that.
What A Frazzhole!: “Snuffy Smith: Origins”
We eat meat pies at school (and everywhere else) in Australia. And we never call pizza “pie”.
@Baja Gaijin:
@126 Ukulele Ike: When the only meat pies they see are these, you’ll understand why they didn’t catch on in the US.
__________
Those are the pies the Joker would throw at Flying Rodent Man in comic book ads.
So there’s a motel. It’s in Glenwood. They call it “the Glenwood Motel.”
Yeah, that merits a song, all right.
@160 Artist formerly known as Ben: You sorta left me hanging there.
@162 Atticus Dogsbody: I bet they taste far better than those monstrosities Uke mentioned upthread in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I had one. Once. So bland. So very very bland. Not at all like the pasties in England.
@163 GarrisonSkunk: Whaaaa?
Andy Capp: Black is the new Orange.
@The Rambling Otter: Respectively
@Artist formerly known as Ben: I’m picking up what you’re putting down
@Atticus Dogsbody: Kinda like ‘tuna fish’?
@Guillermo el chiclero: I was lucky and I had both (the pantsless cheerleader yum).
It was a nearly flawless pair.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Yes, and just in time. Yay. And congrats on getting published.
Mary’s Worst: Mary is glad she let that scratchy salesman talk her into installing a hallo suite in Charterstone so all the residents can have sexytimes with their imagined lovers.
@UncleJe: You’re right. All recent options are unappealing.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Amusingly, they had a chicken seasoning they called… well, a word I probably can’t say here, but means “male chicken.” Huh-huh.
__________________________
“Marty McFry”?
@UncleJeff: #170: Back in 1984 the NatLamp did a 20 year class reunion piece with the old gang from Estes Kefauver High.
@The Quiet Man: Kiss Me Stupid is stunningly bad, and I say that as a huge fan of Billy Wilder, Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston, the character the movie hinges on. The roles Novak and Walston played were intended for Marilyn Monroe and Peter Sellers. Would have been a different movie, especially with Sellers. Walston was an old Broadway ham, a master at chewing scenery, which is how he approached this movie.
@The Quiet Man: @The Rambling Otter: @Yup:
Right, right. My apologies. “I respectively disagree” is what I meant. Thank you Yup!
@Poteet: Thank you, Poteet.
@Charterstoned: Or maybe Mary is a reality warper. She says Trixie is AI. So Trixie is now AI regardless of what she was before.
“That’s a good thing Mary did…”
@Vince Vega: I shot Marvin in the face!
___________________
When Josh remasteres and rereleases the blog, he’ll make Marvin shoot first.
“Trixie is a hologram only Ascot Man can see and hear.
@Anonymous: Tolkien hated Disney’s Snow White because C.S. Lewis took him to the premiere to make fun of him
_________________
Then Lewis got real evil and produced a copy of Leonard Nimoy’s “Bilbo Baggins”.