Animals strike curious poses
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Mary Worth, 3/8/26
Five years ago, Mary tried to broach the question of whether Estelle was being grifted rather gingerly. With Harvey, she’s being somewhat more direct, and it immediately blew up in her face, though maybe that’s just his masculine pride kicking in and driving him to comically storm out of the room. It’s just like beloved [note to self: look up what kind of job “B.C. Forbes” has held or what sort of person they are before publishing this post and insert description here] “B.C. Forbes” says: if you don’t have your life savings drained every few years or so by a Cambodian-based criminal syndicate, you were leaving legitimate opportunities to have sex with hot babes much younger than you on the table!
Shoe, 3/8/26
I know, I know this is a perennial gripe of mine, but: You absolutely cannot do whimsical jokes about birds in a comic strip where everyone is a bird. This is a joke about a number of these characters’ peers committing violent, awful suicide! It’s pretty believable that they’d do it, since all the bird-people in this strip are very depressed, and with good reason, since they live in a world dominated by sapient birds where nevertheless KFC is a viable business.
Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/8/26
Now, this strip? Where Slylock Fox, a sapient animal cop in a world dominated by sapient animals, is providing enhanced security to a wealthy and influential sapient animal who is fairly obviously wearing a fur coat? That doesn’t make me mad at all. That’s just how the world works. That’s a mystery that kids need to learn how to solve a lot more than anything about gloves and how people won’t pick up just one lying there by itself no matter how lovely it is.
171 replies to “Animals strike curious poses”
MW:
“How dare you insult Trixie, Mary? — she says I put the ‘as’ in ‘ascot’ !”
Shoe-Sounds like we’ve got a news story about a group of birds willingly to commit suicide.
Slylock Fox-Need a knowledge of dropped gloves to solve this problem.
Slylock Fox-No one picked up the gloves because they are afraid Slylock will accuse them of stealing the gloves and arrest them on circumstantial evidence.
RMMD-“Also do you know anything about housekeeping? We also need a housekeeping staff.”
MW-Mary is in a long distance relationship too. Jeff only shows up at the end of the stories.
Slylock Fox:
Well, the owl didn’t give a hoot, so he didn’t pick them up.
Shoe:
“Why is it we always dress as if we’re cast extras from Les Miz?”
Shoe: [Having dinner at the local KFC] “Ugh, this wing tastes terrible.”
“Oh, that’s Uncle Harry. He was a carrion eater.”
Quality control at KFC/suicide centers is problematic.
MW: B.C. Forbes also offered up this more appropriate nugget: When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder.
MW: Is it just me, or does this story seem to be moving faster than usual? Here’s Mr. H storming out of Mary’s apartment already, when it took two weeks for Toby to get off a park bench in the last one.
MW: Others might have quailed before the task, but Mary easily summoned the courage to broach an uncomfortable and intimate topic with her luncheon guest, simply by gripping her emotional support meddling cylinder.
@Ken: Maybe Mary needed to have some parrots at the table.
MW: “You know nothing of me or Trixie, or my incredibly short left leg!”
Shoe: “And by ‘out there’ I also mean ‘here’, seeing as your office has no walls. Hmm, I guess we really should have had this conversation over at the fern bar, huh?”
SF: “Excelsior”? I haven’t heard that in ages, and even then it was a Rocky and Bullwinkle spoof of Longfellow’s poem. Hmm, I see from wiktionary it’s used as a greeting in comics fandom. This raises curious questions about the SF animalpocalypse, and of possible human collaborators.
Marvin: Marvin’s home is a surveillance state; Bitsy will pay for his crimes.
Luann, do you remember yesterday when you failed Career Paths class? Your parents are celebrating because you just gave them a valid reason to kick you out of their house.
Slylock Fox-Meanwhile the true crime of Lady Lynx murdering citizens and using their skins to make her fur coats will go unanswered.
Shoe-In the ‘Shoe’ world KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Cult and Colonel Sanders is the messianic figure they worship.
Mary Worth Mashup: No Mary Worth mashup–no way to make it more entertaining. They hit it out of the park today. *chef’s kiss*
@Banana Jr. 6000: It’s a Sunday strip, weekday continuity doesn’t always apply. Admittedly I’d still give odds that Luann’s “career paths” class will not be mentioned on Monday, or indeed ever again, because it’s a Luann strip and continuity doesn’t apply period.
@Ken: MW: Is it just me, or does this story seem to be moving faster than usual? Here’s Mr. H storming out of Mary’s apartment already, when it took two weeks for Toby to get off a park bench in the last one.
I feel we’re on the verge of passing a kind of narrative inflexion point, where the epilogues of new storylines become longer than the plots themselves. It’s hard to say what will happen after that, but its quite possible that time and space in the Maryverse will collapse completely, with new plots starting with Mary and Dr Jeff at the Bum Boat, speculating what might happen in the week to come.
@pugfuggly: Oh dear. You don’t suppose during the transition, the Maryverse will have a phase where the epilogue happens during the story? Will we see Mary on a plane to Cambodia to rescue “Trixie”, suddenly dropping into reverie and spending two weeks recapping the story thus far? The Olive storyline did that when Mary flew to New York.
Luann: ‘Shake it up Baby, Now’ would put Frank and Nancy in the boomer age group.
It should be Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”. [Luann enters] “And here comes one now.”
Slylock Fox:
The gloves don’t fit, so they must, uh, split.
Shoe: “It’s cold out there. But not here, which is indoors presumably? I mean, I don’t see any walls and we’re all perching on a branch, but all your papers haven’t blown away so at least it’s not windy wherever we are.”
MW: “Wait! I was just going to suggest you use my new Crypto, Marycoin!”
@Ken: Then today’s Sunday strip was a bad choice, because it sure looks like it fits into the ongoing story.
Shoe: What is Skyler up to and why is he gaslighting the Perfessor. KFC doesn’t use deep fryers.
He opens a bucket of chicken. “It’s Fred; but I swear! he went voluntarily.”
SFox: No one picked up the gloves because they were dropped onto a pile of bear shit, poor guy couldn’t make it to the woods.
Thanks to June Brigman’s
lazinesshangoverutter disinterest in her jobcreative use of cut-and-paste, panel 4 has Mary eating splak with her fraternal twin.Blondie Don’t be silly – you’ll find the actual time Sunday morning on TV/ computers/ radio and be all ready to get to work properly on Monday!
Comics writers – Just because you want to make a ‘late for work with the clock shift’ joke doesn’t mean you get to Because being able to shake out everyone checking the time before the workweek is kinda why they do the shift in the *middle* of the weekend not the *end*.
BF She’s looking pretty miserable eating given the previous YUM when thinking of that burger. A dark turn about disordered food obsessions never being satisfied?
JP The last time Ann was there, it ended with her turning herself in and not causing trouble. Anybody know what she’s referring to other than general disapproval?
MW: I don’t know why, but there’s something adorable about Widower Hart yelling “You know NOTHING about me or Trixie!” while fleeing the scene like a pouting teenager with a girlfriend his parents don’t like. It probably has something to do with his old-school “genteel older man” vibe–if it were Wilbur Weston in this scene I would be throwing things at the screen and praying the “pig butchering” scam ends with him literally being slit open from groin to chin.
SFx: So…nobody saw Lady Lynx drop her glove, picked it up and gave it back to her? Nobody saw one glove lying on the ground, assumed that someone must be looking for it, and took it to a nearby lost and found? Whatever improvements the Glorious Animal Regime has on its predecessor, altruism is not one of them.
The real drama is desperate lollipop addict Max Mouse shaking down the concierge for an extra freebie.
And why does this hotel have a sign pointing to OOI OOZ?
C’shaft: And when’s the last time you looked at your wedding album, Pam? Hell, odds are it burned in one of the sixty fires your father sets every year and you never noticed.
Dustin: It is an unshakable tenet of Dustin that each generation must be significantly more lazy than the one before it. Hence we have Dustkid, who will gladly swim in an inch or so of dirty water filled with bits of coal and a carrot before putting in an effort to get clean water from the hose.
JP: Meanwhile, Ann’s working on a pig butchering scam of her own. Those Cambodian crime rings are able to deal in quantity, but they can’t match the level of service and care she brings to her scams!
Luann: You think your parents are immature, Luann? Any other stones you want to toss from that glass house of yours?
MW: B. C. Forbes died in 1954, so he’s clearly one of these dangerous new voices for the Mary Worth target demographic.
Slylock Fox: Does Cassandra Cat strike you as the sort of well-balanced person who’s OK with her occasional beau/occasional arresting officer assisting other felines? Fur’s gonna fly.
@matt w: fancy opening to a hallway toward rooms 100-200, not a mirror?
@Ken: It’s hard to know exactly what will happen but Quantum Narrative Theory suggests that as the plot to epilogue ratio inverses, it will be harder to maintain a linear structure. Bits of the epilogue will begin to loop through at random points in the story, interrupting flow and creating black plot holes. In extreme cases, the decomposition of narrative linear structure will start to cause issues in narrator objectivity, as characters will be describing events in the epilogue that technically have not occurred yet. At this point, a complete Rashomon Collapse is possible, and what lies beyond that is anyone’s guess…
How Dare You!
https://youtu.be/3Q9l8nI0xtA?si=nG1AflMNVxoohBZH
Shoe: “Soylent Green is Birds!”
@Liam: RMMD-“Also do you know anything about housekeeping? We also need a housekeeping staff.”
And a bellhop too.
Shylock Fox: But…Michael Jackson?
PBS: And no comics, and no PBS
The fur coat is from the Before Times, in Slylock’s society wearing them is seen as an act of reclamation.
MW- this intervention didn’t work because Mary really hasn’t meddled in the past few atories- she’s really out of practice.
Sfx- they didn’t pick them up because they smelled of cat piss
@Bob Tice: Whereas the rest of us know he puts the Pompous in Ascot
Mary Worth: Maybe once this is over, Hart should work on his anger issues while he’s in therapy being taught to not fall for blatant scams.
Also Mary Worth: It would be a lot easier to talk about this storyline if we didn’t have to dance around the name of it’s central character.
Slylock Fox: I like to think that fur coats in the post-Animalpocalypse world are made using human hair, just cuz that feels appropriately fucked up.
SFx – Dude, you’re in a tree. Don’t you mean “it’s cold out here”?
What do you mean “out there”?! Your desk is on a tree branch, there is no wall or roof, you are also “out there”!
“Estelle, Hank is making a terrible mistake! Could you tell him about your experience before he makes a fool out of himself?”
“I have to tell him not to date Wilbur?”
@Liam: On RMMD – ‘…and a resident s– worker. How’s your oral skills?’
@TheDiva: On MW – Be careful what you wish for, he could be making a beeline for Wilbur’s apartment for a little Mayo and Sympathy with his fellow ‘chick magnet’.
@Ken: Good thing too, because at least we’ll be moving away from this particularly infuriating glimpse into the Evansii’s attitude towards healthy balancing of life responsibilities and the need for joy and satisfaction.
@Hibbleton: the problem w/continuity (or in Luann’s case semi-continuity) is that these people should be a lot older than they are. If Luann graduated high school in 2014 (Wikipedia), she almost 30. Puddles should be dead by now.
As I’ve said many times, this isn’t a strip about a barely-functional young woman. It’s a strip about a HIGHLY-functioning young woman with a mental disability, which explains her menial labor job, living at home, the low demands of her classes, etc.
I think Phil is attracted to her because he has a disability too: specifically, some degree of autism. It’s why they relate to each other. Phil has that ASD tic of being super-organized (helpful to Luann’s disorganized mind), while her simplistic approach to relationships doesn’t demand too much of his shallow well of emotional response.
It’s quite sweet when you look at it my way.
MW- Maybe it’s just the cheddar/bran muffins kicking in, and Hardly suddenly had to go do the “Charterstone cha cha” followed by the “Santa Royal flush”? Mary: “Wait, Hardly! What do you want me to do with these chocolates?”
MW – It’s more common than you think for 22 yo Sports Illustrated swimsuits models to fall for 77 yo retired bank clerks….
Shoe – It’s so cold, witches are wearing goat fur braziers….
SFx – I think Longfellow said it best – Nothing says class better than white gloves with dirty truck tire imprints….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@brendancalling: That is rather sweet, and it could be a beautiful and uplifting story, in the right hands, that is.
Instead, it’s ‘Luann’ by Greg and Karen Evans, a hate read to which all other hate reads must be compared.
“Brrrrr! It’s cold out there!” Out WHERE?!?! You’re on a tree branch with no walls! Stop gaslighting us, Shoe, these are both birds in a tree outside!
***
Ah, an easy Slylock Fox! Nobody bothered to take them because people don’t pick up random items of clothing they see on the sidewalk, no matter how “fancy”. That would be gross. Now to confirm the answer in the upside down text… Oh, come on!
***
Searching up B.C. Forbes to see who that was is how I discovered that his grandson and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes’ full name is “Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr.” and that B.C.’s first name was “Bertie”. Just “Bertie,” not short for anything. The 19th century was wild. Forbes magazine was founded by Bertie Forbes.
***
Batty Forbes is pissed at Mary.
@Dennis Jimenez: On MW – Bank clerk? NotTommy the pig-butcher should be so lucky. He probably spent a lifetime in ‘The Theeah-taah’ thinking he was the next Tommy Steele, but never got past the Santa Royale Community Players.
But if “a single glove is of little or no use or value,” why has Slylock been picking them up? And having picked them up, how did he deduce their owner and her location? And having tracked her down, why does she greet him by exclaiming “Excelsior!”? And why does the hotel have room 200 on the first floor? So many more questions than answers!
Slylock Fox: On the other hand there was that old story, where Gandhi was at a train station, and his sandal came off falling under the track area. Instead of picking it up, he threw down his other sandal as well saying that if a homeless person finds it, they’ll have a matching pair.
@Classic David: He probably smelled Lady Lynx’s scent on it, then sniffed out the location of the other, to give them back to her as his job of professional buttkisser.
RMMD: To-do list —
1. Call agent and have her text me a fake social security card
2. Ask the cook why last waitress quit unexpectedly.
3. Order waitress outfits for overnight shipping. Don’t forget support hose. Maybe cute little headbands?
On Lady Lynx’s “fur coat”
I can only think of that old cartoon “Totally Spies”, where while most of the villains were ridiculous.
“I was fired from my job as a coffee barista so I’ll flood the entire planet with coffee!”
“Everyone hates mimes, so I’ll turn everyone in the world into a mime!”
“I’m very short, I’m the butt of many jokes, so I’ll shrink down cities!”
But one villain, was actually genuinely sinister.
This fashion designer would invite people to her cruise ship, put them through a process turning them into anthropomorphic animals against their will, then skin them alive for their coats!
(As she believes it makes better fur that way)
That’s probably one of the darkest turns that show went.
Shoe – But where’s the blank, Gene? Where’s the blank!?
Slylock – There’s something awfully sad about a penguin in a bellhop uniform. Like all penguins, he has a built-in tux, so I can only assume he got busted down to bellhop because he was a shockingly incompetent waiter.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Hurrah! I win again!”
“I still think you’re making up the rules as we go along. Got any aces?”
“Go fish”
RMMD: The joke will be on you, Doug, when Lorna shows up for her first day on the job in a midriff-baring tank top and a pair of Daisy Duke shorts.
Rabbits always raise questions. Does the world after Animalapocalypse practice a form of Malthusianism to prevent the demographic explosion of rabbits and other rapidly breeding species? Elephant taxpayers might not be happy to finance child benefits for animals with much shorter pregnancies, but would a form of species-based eugenics be acceptable? Maybe this means that that coat is rabbit fur.
@Baja Gaijin: Add Dead Astaire’s “How dare you, Mary” panel to your file. It has so many potential future uses.
“If global warming is real, why are chickens waiting for their turn in the KFC’s deep fryer?!?!”
“Dad, that did not happen at all!”
“Really? Damn, AI is pretty convincing these days!”
“You did not watch a AI video, you read a newspaper comics and allucinated in your head! Really, the problem is not technology, it’s us!”
MW: “How dare you, Mary!” needs to be a recurring line in this strip. Every month or so, a suddenly-enraged side character needs to shout those words. I’d love to hear Dr. Jeff belt it out on the Bum Boat.
9CL: …..Aaaaaand we’re back inside the grand piano. That instrument has taken more abuse than anything played onstage by The Who.
“Excelsior”? Stan Lee reincarnated as a female cat after the Animalapocalypse! Was it reward for his work on comics? Or was it punishment for his work in the comics industry?
Can cat wear gloves? Won’t their claws ruin them? Speaking of which, can cats wear condoms given their spiky penis? There must be a business for that after the Animalapocalypse and I am glad few humans survived to see thia
Family Circus- While most of the Keane children are beckoned into misbehavior by cute little imps such as “Not Me” and “Ida Know,” Jeffy is tempted by horrific demons drawing him to a cake-like portal to hell. I think we now Jeffy is the young Anti-Christ, held only from his destiny by the fragile halo of Keane family sweetness.
Somewhere in the Afterlife, Johnny Carson wonders how “Shoe” got included on the speed dial for the heavenly fax machine he uses to send jokes to Letterman.
MW: When Mary and Harv sat down to eat lunch, there were three muffins on the table. Then, after they started eating their salad, there were suddenly five muffins. As Harv stormed away from the table, after having just a bite of salad, there were a total of four muffins left on the plate. WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING???
Prince Valiant: Aleta just straight up cut some dude’s throat, didn’t she?
Doonesbury: Meanwhile, some Heartland Patriot is on Facebook is frantically messaging the “woke” relatives who won’t speak to him anymore: “SEE? SEE? I TOLD YOU! THOSE COMMIES ARE ADMITTING IT!”
@Charterstoned: The muffin being a fundamental particle in the Worthiverse, it is subject to spontaneous creation and destruction out of the quantum vacuum state.
@36 lawoot: How dare you…share that hilarious skit!
RMMD: B.B. King named his guitar Lucille. Neil Young’s guitar is called Old Black. Woody Guthrie’s guitar was This Machine Kills Fascists.
We learn today that Truck Tyler’s guitar is named plink! I guess that’s fine, if it works for him. Not going to impress any chicks, though.
@Peanut Gallery: Well, that explains it. I couldn’t figure out how the extra ones got there, but I did wonder if Harv was holding one in his left fist, leaving with some carry-out.
@72 Charterstoned: Between the third and final panels, Muffin the Cat ate Muffin the (Disgusting) Food.
FG: You think you’re sweating now, Bok. Wait until Ming says you need a back rub. Bow-wow-wucka-chucka.
@Tom T.: The editors always take out ‘the good stuff’ (I was surprised they left in last week’s fanservice of Aleta’s dagger reveal).
Valmora goes old school ECW with the chair.
@Baja Gaijin: By that logic, between yesterday and today, Muffin the Cat must have also added Muffins (The Disgusting Food). However, you’re forgetting that Muffin the Cat is made of vulcanized rubber.
@82 Charterstoned: I haven’t seen a litter box in Mary’s condo. Muffin the Cat pooped out the added Muffin(s) (the Disgusting Food). Vulcanized rubber would explain a lot about Mary’s muffins.
Zits: If you’re going to do a comic about how a teen boy has a gross bathroom you’ve got to go all the way. It should be covered in dried semen urine and feces.
Mary Worth – “Occasionally cheated” is giving a couple of dollars when approached randomly by a questionable person with a sob story about how they’re stuck with no money to buy gas. It sounds like HH is beyond that.
I’m relieved to see sandwiches on the table, so at least there was more to eat than salad and muffins. However, it’s troubling that the menu is heavy on carbs, with the bread and muffins. Maybe HH was angry about that, and Mary’s sudden, overbearing meddling pushed him over the edge.
Crankshaft – Oh, FFS. They’ve been living together for years and have a child. Take some photos with your phone, print them, and put them in a scrapbook.
Mother Goose & Grimm – Yeah. Sigh.
@brendancalling:
Yes, I have a daughter on the spectrum and Luann reminds me of her in so many ways. It would be really sweet if that was an in-comic designation. Instead, it’s almost like they’re mocking the disabled the way she acts.
@CanuckDownSouth: It doesn’t go all the way to the floor, though.
@Hibbleton: Rare Luann defense: With thei son being in his mid-twenties, Frank and Nancy could easily be Xers, nostalgic for the “Twist and Shout” scene from Ferris Bueller. [source: am that old]
The advice of B.C. Forbes is not very sound, but what can you expect from a newspaper comics caveman?
@matt w:
Maybe that’s the office of Duuz Delax Rex.
(An old friend of mine)
FG: Those are bedroom eyes on Ming in the second to last panel. Bok better hope there’s plenty of lubricants in that wet bar. Back in the day the ding-a-ling of Emperor Ming was legend in the Mongovian leather bar and bath house scene.
Just realized why my previous comments are caught in moderation. Feel free to delete them.
Mary Worth: If flying off the handle and storming out is this guy’s usual reaction to being questioned in any way, shape, or form, I think we have a pretty good explanation for why his daughter isn’t talking to him much, or at all.
Also, B.C. Forbes was the guy who founded Forbes magazine, and while this quote is attributed to him I can’t find where he originally said it. That having been said, this is a weird one, considering that it’s already been established that this is a scam. Maybe the epilogue of this storyline is going to reveal that the woman pretending to be “Trixie” has actually fallen in love with this particular mark and he’s going to K-1 her over to the USA? That would at least be…different.
(Though if Moy went for the double plot twist and had him die of exhaustion on the honeymoon that would be darkly humorous.)
Crank: So when Hannah says she has no relatives worth mentioning, that means Batty never saw any reason to give her any kind of history before she became Max’s Girlfriend and certainly isn’t going to start now, right?
Curtis: No. You can’t say this woman has three sons, give two of them names that go together to form a reference, and then just not name the third one. You just can’t.
HtH: I mean, the idea coin hoards are the result of Vikings knowing these things were valued by their enemies but, living in a barter economy when they weren’t raiding, didn’t know why is almost certainly wrong, but it’s been a popular belief for long enough that I will reluctantly give the throwaway panels a pass on the historical accuracy front. The main strip just doesn’t make any sense, historical or otherwise.
MW: Is this the first time the quote box hasn’t been on Mary’s side? I know Moy doesn’t fact-check these things before copy and pasting the first result on BrainyQuote, but has she stopped even reading them?
(FWIW, I can’t find a source. It’s not in any of the Forbes books I found online, including a collection of epigraphs he wrote.)
Pluggers: Pluggers don’t know that, if it’s not raining, they can close the umbrella, apparently.
S4th: TFW you’ve had a long week making sure Judge Parker doesn’t make any sense and you just decide to rip off a joke from Hitchhiker’s Guide and call it a day.
@Myrtle: #58: The reason the last waitress quit unexpectedly was she was Trashlee and she got a call from her agent that the Indian princess photo spread that Dr. Jeff’s son took landed her a fat modeling contract.
C’mon Mary, you of all people should know that know that sharing at open talks may lead to feedback!
https://joshreads.com/2013/09/our-policy-guidelines-dont-say-what-kind-of-feedback-shannon-said-smugly/
Speaking of which:
https://www.cafepress.com/shopdetail/joshreads.100951342945?attr2=8915
S4th — reminds me of one of our past ‘mudges, Grand Emperor Chennux.
@matt w: I was thinking Rodney Dangerfield in Back To School.
Shoe: If it’s that cold, shouldn’t these birds fly south for the winter? (I guess that’s harder when you’re old, obese, you have a desk cluttered with papers that need organizing, and your article on “The Colonel’s 11 Herbs and Spices: Revealed!” is already a week past its deadline.)
Mary Worth: “Wait — I meant no offense! How was I supposed to know that prying into your life and then telling you how to live it was, I don’t know, insulting or something? Everyone else I’ve ever met was absolutely thrilled when I did that, I’m pretty sure!”
MW: Mary just got a sample of Big Dick Energy, something sorely lacking in her relationship with Dr. Jeff. You can count on this NOT being the end of the story arc. She has never been more turned on in her life, and will move heaven and earth to remain in the old fop’s orbit one way or another.
MW-“I meant offense. How dare that man send money to someone other than me.”
SFx: Because the gloves couldn’t be seen against the fresh snow on the sidewalk.
That’s better than the possibility that no one involved the lucrative secondhand glove market, but not so involved that they pick up unmatched singles for later matching, saw the two gloves together.
MW: I would once have said that no one storms off dramatically like that in real life, except a longtime friend of mine did the very same thing when I shared a political view she didn’t like.
@BigTed: How was I supposed to know that prying into your life and then telling you how to live it was, I don’t know, insulting or something?
I was just about to post that maybe I had missed a comment, but am I the only one who finds H*rv’s reaction to Mary’s meddling totally honest and natural and relatable? Sure, he is being an idiot with this online relationship, and desperately needs the advice – but idiots storm out all the time when casual acquaintances start giving unasked-for advice.
What isn’t honest and natural is that Mary will find some way to pursue this line of interrogation anyway.
@matt w: single step up from the lobby level to the rooms’ floor level? abnormal architecture, but maybe post-animalpocalypse renovations have suffered from creatures being in charge who never developed housing from first principles but just moved into whatever. Or they deliberately want to discourage snakes as part of the clientele and the reptilian civil rights movement hasn’t had any success in this state yet.
SFx: Neither Slylock nor Weber Junior seems to be familiar with Max Klinger’s great 1881 proto-Freudian proto-surrealist series, Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove.
A terrific fetish object like a solitary glove would have any 21-year-old Jugendstil artist from Leipzig all over it.
@UncleJeff: RE: Doonesbury — About half of the comments on the GoComics.com website are praising GWT for ‘coming to his senses and exposing The Left”.
@93 Horace Broon: on Pluggers: Alternate captions:
I can’t think of one that includes the “pluggers are old” trope.
@105 Ukulele Ike: Do any of the women have shopping bags with celery stalks sticking out?
If we think of chicken jokes in Shoe as the the equivalent of the “totally tasteless” Polish jokes of the late seventies/early eighties it’s a bit less disturbing if, yes, totally tasteless not unlike KFC
@Charterstoned:
Boy I sure hope somebody got fired for THAT blunder!
MW: Note to self: Catfishing the elderly is a surprisingly easy and financially lucrative business opportunity.
9CL: at some point a long time ago this strip became a parody of itself
@Baja Gaijin: The action is initiated at a roller skating rink. She dropped off the groceries — including celery and baguette — at home first. (The great thing about 1881 women’s fashion is that your panties could drop to your ankles and no one would notice.)
9CL: Impressive of Tall Amos to carry on with the piece at all with his future mother-in-law ensnarling herself in him. Will Lolly be upset her mom is two-timing both her and her dad? Is this a home practice session or a public performance?
@112 Ukulele Ike: Maybe that’s why women wore such long skirts: elastic wasn’t available for underwear?
I do like the spaceship in Sally Forth even if the rest of the sequence is absurd.
Phantoms do like to talk to themselves, don’t they? No one else listens, so they’re forced too, I guess.
Odd how Slylock found each of Lady Lynx’s gloves in separate places. He must be stalking her.
@Baja Gaijin: Before elastic, I believe both women’s and men’s underwear came equipped with buttons.
Who’s our resident expert on Victorian underpants, Fashion Police or Pervy McKinkerson?
@Anonymous:
#50. MW: “Hardly”, I hope we all agree to use this apt moniker for Mary’s misled neighbor.
LU: our protagonist sees reality– she surely did not mature in high school or college. For me, it was in stages– learning social norms, rejecting them and adopting my own beliefs, paying my own bills.
Lady Lynx is such a badass she killed some prey, ate her fill, and now wears their skin as a coat.
@CanuckDownSouth: Was also going to snark about the entrance being under the stairs, but I’ve seen weirder architectural choices than that even before the animals take over.
The Familliar Mucus: Tell the truth, Jeffy, you’ve been into Mommies cannabis stash, haven’t you?!?
Good work on Slylock Fox’s extras. The rabbit whose job is to politely refuse a lollipop to a detective who thinks that because he’s small he can get away with acting like a toddler has just the right doesn’t-get-paid-enough-for-this expression. Almost as good though is the penguin, who looks exactly like someone who was trying to get away with something when suddenly cops showed up. Fortunately they’re just there for some dropped gloves…with any luck he can go back to whatever interesting crime he had planned as soon as Max throws a tantrum.
9CL: I hope the pianos in this strip get cleaned and sterilized regularly.
@Just John: Not only will she continue this line of interrogation and meddling, but we all know he’ll thank her for it in the end. Such is the cult of Mary.
I am now rooting for this Mary Worth storyline to be about Mary getting this elderly drama queen to come out as gay, or learn to better control his impulses, either of those would be better than “elderly person is victim of catfishing, no, a different elderly person”.
@Terry Rhoden:
Imagine what they look like under black lights.
The Familliar Mucus: So, Thel made Dolly’s birthday cake out of Underwood Deviled Ham™?
@Ken: Plot twist: Mary flies to Cambodia, runs into Dr. Jeff on the arms of a pair of prostitutes. Bum Boat, indeed!
SlylickFox And Comix For Kinky Kidz: Sly found one glove in Count Weirdly’s Fruit of the Doom™ underwear, and the other in Slick Smitty’s BVDs™, Lady Lynx is a Party Girl! (More exclusive details tonight on “Forrestville After Dark”)
RIP Country Joe McDonald
SFx:
This is the worst kind of “puzzle” – one where the vital clue isn’t provided, so the solution could be literally anything. Other reasons I came up with include:
-They have her name sewn on them
-They’re out of fashion
-They are fitted to only her
-She was recently photographed wearing them
-It’s not cold enough for most people…animals…furries or whatever to wear gloves and she only had them on for style reasons
-They’re obvious knockoffs
-They’re torn, dirty, or stained on one side
-They were enchanted by Wanda Witch to only be noticed by someone who wanted to return them
And so on. All of which are equally as valid and supported by the story as “she dropped them in two different places”, and some seem MORE likely than her being so unobservant as to do the same thing twice and only notice much later.
And then she takes the ginger Slylock upstairs to “thank” him at which point she gets stabby.
Fancy gloves, though, wears Lady Lynx babe, so there’s never, never a trace of red.
@Charterstoned: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING???
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Its like Star Trek’s tribbles…the muffins are baked pregnant, which is quite a time saver.
MW: Figures it would be one of Mary’s all time most innocuous meddles that would get her yelled at. Also, Dr. Bellows needs to be careful because it looks like his face is already sticking that way.
SFx: [Insert Michael Jackson joke here]
Shoe: We don’t get to see the galline Marshall Applewhite leading this exodus from the world and perhaps that’s for the best.
@Liam: Nah, Lady Lynx is of the “Modest Proposal” class.
C-Shaft: Mindy isn’t the daughter of John Darling, although if you switched her and Jessica Darling, no one would notice. So how are her parents gone? Ah, forget it, Jake. It’s Funkytown.
DT: Few remember how dark these late period Bob Hope specials got.
Dustin: Not sure you’re going to enjoy the pool when there’s a rotting carrot in the water.
Luann: Wanna feel old? Frank and Nancy learned “Twist and Shout” from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which they saw on cable a decade after its original release.
RMMD: Compared to the emotional masochists who flocked to the Heartbreak Hotel after Elvis and the wannabe druggies who made a beeline for the Eagles’ Hotel California, the Truck fans who went to see the Glenwood Hotel are fairly bland, but no one complains about the new revenue.
“Its better to find out clams got legs, then to be unexpectedly kicked by one.”– B.C. Forbes.
@teenchy: @Ken: Plot twist: Mary flies to Cambodia, runs into Dr. Jeff on the arms of a pair of prostitutes.
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Ewwwwwww! What did Dr Jeffy do with the rest of their bodies?!!? This is a case for Slylick “Finder of Lost Gloves” Fox!
Late Thread Cuisine: “[T]he eggs start out as ‘ordinary’ deviled eggs…” and then look what they become!
BG&SS: If this were the first Saturday in November it’d be a good Sadie Hawkins gag.
H&L: Dribbling the ball right past a stock-still teammate. Completing a behind-the-back pass of about four feet. A jump shot from ten feet in the air at arm’s length from the basket.
I miss “Chip’s in a rock band” gags. Have the Walkers even seen a basketball game?
FC: After decades of trying to make Casper interesting, these would-be mischief-spreaders are tasked with making Casper’s real-life predecessor something other than a drip. I feel for them.
Between Friends: I admire Susan going to a fast-food burgery and then pretending she’s considering a salad.
RMMD: Somewhere between “Smoky Mountain Rain”, “Wichita Lineman”, and “Galveston” exists a little town called “Glenwood”, with all the down home flavor of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie & Harriet, and Father Knows Best.
DtM: “Hey Mr. Wilson, what’s this article you circled about Castle Doctrine“?
@Ukulele Ike: Max Klinger’s great 1881 proto-Freudian proto-surrealist series, Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove.
____________
So THAT’S what Max Klinger was doing when not thinking up zany Section 8 scams!
@Baja Gaijin: Why on Earth did the publishers put “Tasteless Main Dishes” on that recipe?
Mary Worth – B.C. Forbes, founder of Forbes magazine, embraced a journalism philosophy of trusting whatever the subject of the article told him without doing fact-checking or other due diligence. Given that Forbes is infamous for many of their 30 Under 30 CEOs being convicted of various frauds later, Forbes has continued in its founder’s vision a century later.
Shoe – These bird people have been so domesticated by capitalism and modernity they don’t’ migrate or enter a torpor state like their wild ancestors. Instead they are coerced into being active in cold climates to continue to feed the machinery of society. That, more than the cold, is what’s driving the chickens to their demise.
Slylock Fox – If Slylock Fox were written by Victor Hugo, a Jean Valjean type character would have discovered the lost gloves and thought it would make a lovely gift to his wife. Slylock Fox, the Javert character, would come down hard on the Valjean and made sure he served an overlong prison sentence for daring to touch the lost property of the elite.
@Baja Gaijin: Say, if you want REALLY tasteless, substitute tomato aspic for the sauce. Also, it quivers more, gelatinously speaking.
@139 Lauralot: The publishers put “Meatless Main Dishes” on the recipe. I made it tasteless after reading how little flavor the result will be.
@141 Charterstoned: Don’t give them any ideas!
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – Breaking news bulletin – the Prime Minister of Spain just announced that Spain has nothing to do with this glop and demanded that all mention of Spain be removed.
Obviously it’s the work of Satan.
@Lauralot: By god, they did. Or is this possibly some of Baja’s sneaky Internets trickery?
I would never in a million years conceive of putting deviled eggs on top of a Spanish-y tomato sauce and adding toasted breadcrumbs, but….it’s not such a bad idea. Knife-and-fork it, serve with coupes of chilled fino or manzanilla, make it the main course of a tapas dinner, why not?
DT: BB Eyes may not have been able to murder Silver Nitrate, but he looks like he got at least a handjob back there. And what were you doing that was so important, Mumbles?
Crankshaft – What? Her parents are “gone,” but she hasn’t written a maudlin book to exploit their deaths?
Mary Worth – I suspect that Mary won’t be able to leave this alone, and that her next move will be to find Hardly’s daughter and guilt trip her into “vetting” her father’s girlfriend. In the real world this would result in a restraining order, but here it just means one more participant in the Praise Mary part of the story.
@Charterstoned:
There. Are. Four. Muffins!
@popamatic: NOW!
@popamatic: Maybe they’re the Four Great Muffins. At any one time in the world, there are only four great muffins. Maybe these are those four. Of course, that still doesn’t explain what happened to the fifth one, or how the fourth and fifth ones suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
@Ukulele Ike: the “why not” is baked in the sauce, not placed on top. The mayo-yolk concoction’s tastiness is … questionable when heated
@Baja Gaijin: I saw your change to the recipe subtitle (as well as the changes you made yesterday, but I couldn’t comment on the thread). I pondered whether you substituted “crusty” in for something describing the French bread but realized the plausibility of the writer(s) meaning this as a compliment.
Anyway, the eggs do become unusual as stated on the card.
@popamatic:
Applause, brilliant!
@143 I speak Jive: Not surprised.
@150 taig: Nope, no changes to the body text, only the headline. This time.
@I speak Jive:
Market must have been saturated.
@Ettorre: If Rachel Rabbit is any indicator, female rabbits are obnoxious Karens who have trouble attracting a mate. You’ll note she just has that one kid that Slick Smitty is forever stealing candy from.
@richardf8: And taking other rabbits from various media.
Judy Hopps from Zootopia: Was racist towards foxes (even if she didn’t realize it) and did other insensitive things like trying to rush sloths.
Squint from the “Ice Age” franchise: Was a sociopathic pirate who took great pleasure in hurting others, and in the Ice Age Easter special, he stole all of the eggs from Manny’s neighbours (i.e unborn babies) and hid/buried them under the snow across the settlement to blackmail Manny into building him his own ship.
The rabbit monks from the fantasy novel “Son of Spellsinger”: Were so tired of being considered “cute” they decided to create a mutant army to take over the world with, by kidnapping kids from nearby settlements and permanently fusing them together, raising them into cold-blooded killers.
Okay, that’s it. Rabbits officially suck…
Snuffy – Wouldn’t she be Mary Bef Smif? In fact, why isn’t she Mary Bef Hawkins right now? I want to see the rule book on this!
@Ukulele Ike: that panel annoys me, because the low E doesn’t go “plink” when you tune it. It’s more of a “boinnnng.”
@The Rambling Otter: Don’t forget Watership Down which, for some unfathomable reason, was made into a children’s animated film.
@popamatic: The Worthiverse suddenly makes total sense, once you realize Mary is a Cardassian.
SFX: “A single glove is of little or no use or value on its own.”
In the words of The Dude, “Obviously, you’re not a golfer.”
@159 Charterstoned: Mary Worth is a Cardassian? Makes sense: Kim and Khloe live in Calabassas, not far down the 101 from Santa Barbara/Royale.
SLYLOCK: The only pair of high heels I ever bought were worn for an hour and then left in the closet for the next several decades because they hurt like hell and I wobbled like I was drunk. But I do understand why other humans wear them. What I don’t understand is why a lynx would wear them. Especially since most SLYLOCK animals are happily barefoot. Ditch the dumb shoes, Lady Lynx! As for Max, someone really should buy him a fancy dessert so just once in his life, he wouldn’t be settling for whatever he could get.
@Ken: Right ^^
I thought of Watership Down after I posted (and the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I felt too lazy to add them.
Also, in that same sense, the Redwall novels. Which are medieval fantasy with animal characters, it’s extremely violent with characters dying left and right. So what station do they show the animated series on? PBS of course!
But the rabbits in that, very rarely show up and when they do, they’re prissy fops, compared to the much more common and badass Hares.
@The Rambling Otter: “Okay, that’s it. Rabbits officially suck…”
Gosh, ain’t they stinkers?
@brendancalling: That’s because no one, not even Wandawandabobondabananafanafofondamimymomonda, wants to see Truck’s boing…
@Roscoe: “A single glove is of little or no use or value on its own.”
What? How Dare You?™
LUANN: Blearrgh, but it’s still better than reading Luann’s awful writing and watching her be proud of it, per yesterday. Please, Evansii, give us at least a few months before you do that again.
@CanuckDownSouth: I remember thinking that Ann was intensely irritating, but not why. Also that entire family is irritating, so maybe Ann was just trying too hard to fit in.
@Baja Gaijin: Oy. The BG&H test kitchens were not at their best that day.
@Ettorre: And one question raised is what the Slylockian animals eat, besides giant lollipops? Are they all or mostly vegan?
MW: So how much apologetic groveling will H@rvey be doing by the time this story ends? And will he be groveling in a refrigerator box or a small tent? Will we ever find out what happens to Desperate Captive Scammer? Most important of all, when will we find out more about Mary’s cat?
Maybe it’s Kentucky Fried Caterpillars in this parallel world. There’s just so much we still don’t know.