If Alexander took his place, would anyone even notice
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Blondie, 3/26/26
Every once in a while, you get a hint that Alexander is recapitulating many of his father’s most distinctive traits. This makes sense, as the two are obviously genetically identical, and I assume Alexander was created by some sort of asexual budding process. Still, how does Dagwood feel about all this? Well, not great, if his facial expression in the last panel is any indication.
Wizard of Id, 3/26/26
Imagine if you were a second-generation comics creator, gifted with one of the shrinking number of viable newspaper comics out there, but feeling increasingly uninspired and desperate to find some way out of your situation. I’m not saying I know that’s what’s happening with the Wizard of Id, but I am saying that if you were trying to do the comics version of suicide by cop, then inviting a lawsuit from JK Rowling would be a good way to go about it.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/26/26
“I’m sick and tired of all this roots country bullshit!” you’re probably saying. “I want to get this strip’s focus back to its roots: contemporary medical issues!” Well, OK, buckle up for “Rex has pivoted his clinic to mostly writing GLP-1 scrips for anyone who asks and then directing them to a dodgy grey-market compounding pharmacy that he gets kickbacks from.”
162 replies to “If Alexander took his place, would anyone even notice”
MW: Mary pauses to reflect while doing her dailies;
“That H___y is such a fool! I’d like to smash this dish of hot glop right in his face!”
RMMD: These panels do *not* line up with the dialogue. I think the original lines were something like this:
P1: Mae Mae, you’re gorgeous! The purtiest gal I’ve seen this side of Wanda’s diner! What time does your shift end?
P2: I mean, I’d take you to dinner first! Wanda’s makes a mean meatloaf platter!
P3: Gee, is it gettin’ warm in here? Well, maybe some other time, adios!
GT: Again, fighting the urge to be an armchair philosopher/general/standard-issue crank and break the ‘no politics’ rule…
Wizard of Id:
“Eventually, he came out of his shell!”
RMMD-“A good doctor” Clearly Mud isn’t talking about Rex.
RMMD:
“In fact, I’ve been so successful at my weight loss regimen that I think I’m going to do an album of covers called ‘Slim White Man‘ does ‘Slim Whitman‘ !”
RMMD – Mae Mae’s expression makes it clear that Mud will be needing that hand for himself tonight. I hope he can get a good wank with those misshapen fingers.
RMMD:
“There’s no shame in having more avoirdupois than a Parisian phone book. No, wait a minute — that’s not the impossibly hackneyed turn of phrase, is it….”
Blondie : One thing that would explain Dagwood’s reply/expression combo would be if the final panel initially read “You, because you lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s”.
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Crankshaft : already HAD a biographer, but he’s now fully occupied listening to a guy pointless meander and ramble about what it was like just starting out as a cartoonist (and never elaborating on the rest of his 50+ year career).
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Wizard of Id :
a) Why not use the term “spirit animal” instead? Too controversial/old hat?
b) “This guy, who has vast magic powers, always struggled with women” could have gone to a VERY DIFFERENT place from “so his animal form betrays his introversion and cowardice”.
Alexander is such a nothing character. The only way Dagwood can tell him apart from his own reflection is by the absence of food stains on his clothing.
Blondie: Kids today and their grade inflation! The “A” was for spelling his name right. The first “plus” was for not being obvious about his use of AI; the second was for keeping his essay down to a tight two paragraphs; and the third was for naming his made-up sleep-related historical figure after the Spanish word for “dream.” (Meanwhile, the “honors” were for only falling asleep in class three times this week.)
Rex Morgan: I like the way our friend is nervously pulling at his collar as he realizes he’s insulted her and is struggling to back out of it. All he needs is a few beads of flop sweat, and he’d be doing a full Rodney Dangerfield.
Mary Worth: “He’s a lonely senior who needs to spend money in an attempt to get love! Unlike me, of course. I pay for affection with baked goods, casseroles, and the kind of sex that’s so unspeakable, this strip will never, ever, ever mention it.”
Apparently “awkward turtle” is a thing? And I hadn’t heard of it? Once again staring into the abyss in which The WIzard of Id writers are more with it than I am.
MW: Mary inhales the steaming aroma from Muffin’s freshly baked litter box, while a similar container filled with an uncooked casserole rests on the floor in a corner of the bathroom.
Anyway Mike seems happy and well adjusted and it’s a running gag that you hate your wife so who’s awkward now, Wiz.
Wait, nobody told Mary he sent money yet, right?
@matt w: I think it WAS a thing, but I’m certain that the reference is several years out of date. Don’t worry, none of us are with it!
So did the Blondie team deliberately rip off a joke from 2012 about the inventor of the snooze button, or did they get tricked by ChatGPT?
MW Well, now we know how Mary can afford an endless supply of those mauve cowlnecks (what? she doesn’t deign to do *laundry*, she discards them after one use!) – she, after all, has *met* Dr Jeff and therefore is permitted to ask him for endless funds!
DT Huh, we’ve got a “palace chop house”, hotel “goat”, and something about aces or spades… – can’t figure out the rebus, or are they gradually building to a Late night Cuisine recipe of dug-up fermented meat topped with goat cheese?
@Lester Edgar Helicopter:
As fun as it would be to have this nice Encyclopedia Brown moment outing Mary as having intimate knowledge of a crime she shouldn’t, he DID tell her about the money. It’s why he angrily stormed off; he didn’t like Mary’s insinuation of “Maybe don’t start sending money to a lover you’ve only been dating for a short while and haven’t met in person yet.”
MW: Even in her own internal monologue, Mary is narrating and justifying her meddling. It’s such a core part of her character that she can’t even think normally. I’d call it tragic, but the real tragedy is the neighbors having to put up with it.
RMMD: “I know you’ve repeatedly stated that you don’t want to be recognized and your weight aids in that goal, but if you want, I can get you skinny!” And that’s why they call him Fergus “Dumb As a Mountain of Mud” Murphy.
CS: CUT! Come on, Keesterman, don’t look at the camera! Ugh, could I get some professional actors here?
Pluggers are in denial about both their age and their ugliness. Usually the strip focuses on one flaw per day, but this a rare Double Pluggers.
Luann: This is just plain cruelty. You don’t overrule someone’s difficulty choice in a dangerous activity, because of some offhand comment they made a week ago. You also don’t overrule someone’s ability to the use the bathroom whenever they choose to, but here we are. Les is getting what he deserves for trying to get a date, which he should know is absolutely forbidden in the world of Luann. And is punishable by any form of humiliation the offended party deems appropriate. Which looks like it’s about to be three broken ribs.
RMMD: Panels 2 and 3 show the art of acting with the eyes is alive and well!
DT: What are these three useful for? Usually in these heist movies, everyone in the crew has some skill. Mumbling, beady vision, etc. don’t seem crucial to any sort of heist but I’m no criminal mastermind.
@Lester Edgar Helicopter: No one’s told her about the latest 200,000, but Hart did say he was sending Trixie money when he last came over to Mary. She told him to be careful and he stormed out.
“If you ever want to, that is. No pressure — I like my women chunky…er, um…you know, with a little meat on ’em. Er, some weather we’ve been having some weather lately, haven’t we?” (Gulp)
@Liam: Honest to goodness, it never occurred to me that he was referring to Rex. I don’t know if that says more about me or the strip.
Blondie: That day, Dagwood’s suspicions of Blondie’s dalliance with a much older school bus driver deepened. How much of his marriage had he missed while face-down in a pastrami and ham and turkey and pickle and hot pepper hamburger?
Also Blondie: “Juan Sueno” is cute and all, but everyone knows the snooze alarm was first invented by the German polymath Johann Schlummerweckerefinder, and later perfected by a sentient robot.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Awhile back, someone did a data analysis revealing that country music had the most drug references of any popular music genre, even more than gangsta rap. I had no idea that would include Ozempic. Or roots country. Or Rex Morgan, M.D.
@Bob Tice: “Eventually, he started drinking more water!”
JP: While her dad is a bourbon man, Ann appears to be a vodka chick, Svedka, judging by the shape of the bottle
Pluggers: Plugger’s can’t pass the
mirrorphoto ID test.Blondie: Dagwood’s words say proud! but his face says blah…. Meanwhile just offstage, a director is frantically waving his arms, mouthing the words; “Sell it! Sell it!”
Blondie: Dagwood looks nonplussed because, just like Alexander, he made up grades that didn’t exist when he was in high school. “A+++ with honors,” sir?
Wizard of Id: This strip belongs on the cover of Social Anxiety Illustrated. What happens the second you leave the room? People announce that you “always struggled with women” when you were younger, apparently!
“That’s Jennie, she had zits when she was 14.”
“Ben? Oh yeah, great guy, cured my cancer. Tripped when he was getting on the school bus once! That was thirty years ago, but it’s still how I introduce him!”
I know he’s not the Wizard of Superego, but… damn.
@Lauralot: Did she, though? All she said was “be careful about sending any money” which was enough to make HH angrily stomp out. Then she was more concerned with apologizing, and gossiping about the problem, than doing anything else. If Mary wanted to help, she should have meddled like she normally does. If she didn’t want to help, she should have thrown up her hands and said “ok, screw you, buddy, good luck.” She won’t be forceful enough to do anything useful, but she also won’t leave it alone.
And having a descendant the next town over would make this extremely easy. When you tell a young adult that someone is trying to steal from their extremely wealthy, near-death grandparent, they tend to get very involved.
Isn’t the “awkward turtle” a reference to the current Sherman’s Lagoon storyline?
Alex is a dumb teen, sure, but if his teacher can’t be arsed to run down the 11-year-old satircal quora post Alex used as his primary source and just slaps and A+++ on the top of the paper, Dagwood has every right to look so nonplussed.
Then again, perhaps this is a Never Let Me Go situation so Alex doesn’t actually need an education since just there for spare parts anyway, and knowing Dagwood and his food perversions, he’s probably going to eat those parts. Autocannibalism—the ultimate food taboo.
@Anonymous: Mary Worth is the Jessica Fletcher of the comics pages.
An A+++ with honours for an historical bio about an inventor he made up? I don’t know if we should congratulate Alexander or have mixed feelings about his teacher who has just given up and assumes every paper they get handed is written by ChatGPT now.
***
“Really, you look great! But if you want to lose some weight…” says every man who really wants a woman he’s interested in to lose some weight. If I had any respect for Mud this would make me lose it.
Rex Morgan – What a charmer! Next, he’ll tell her she sweats less than any fat girl he ever danced with.
MW: Off panel, a very distressed cat is trying to figure out why Mary just baked his litter box.
MW panel 3: “Yes, always ask for money after the first meeting, and they see the photos.”
@Comically Challenged:
Honest to goodness, it never occurred to me that he was referring to Rex. I don’t know if that says more about me or the strip.
Same reaction here. In fact, I thought Rene Belluso was setting up a weight-loss drug compounding operation in Room 204. . .
RMMD: Mud, Mud, Mud, you are living up to your name. Renee’s pickup artist seminar told you NOT to use the negging technique on someone you are already have a personal connection, but with random strange women. Get your head in The Game, playa!
RMMD – Mud’s exercise routine consists mainly of walking back inappropriate comments.
MW: I had a close online friend for many years, I subscribed to his patreon and would send him money via Ko-Fi here and there to help support him, as a friend.
If it turned out that he’s not only not real, but some scammer playing a very long game… I’d be kind of impressed actually.
JP: “Maybe this Bogdan t0rtured April right in front of Randy until he did exactly what he wanted. Pulled out her fingernails. Held matches to the soles of her feet. That’s what I would do.”
RMMD: Fergus desperately tries to change the subject.
“I once killed a man, uh…”
It suddenly hit me, that Mae Mae gives me Pam from “Archer” vibes.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: echt witzig
“I did my historical bio paper on Trofim Lysenko, the disgraced creator of Lysenkoism who may have been responsible for the deaths of millions! Everyone else did Louis Pasteur or Alexander Fleming or Jonas Salk, like nerds. Next semester I’m going to do RFK Jr.!”
@The Rambling Otter: If Maena goes on a violent rampage after eating an entire kilo of cocaine, I will take back every single bad thing I said about this strip.
Dustin: Once at a group lunch a young woman was talking about her ex. She said they were going out and she asked him how she looked. To which, he replied; ‘you look great in anything!’ She said she was so pissed that after all the effort she put into her outfit, and hair, and makeup, he would say that.
Trite rejoinders are just that: trite and lazy, but it does fit the strip’s mission statement.
Blondie: Say, did you know that the size and interaction of the clock gears meant that the first snooze alarm couldn’t be set for a nice round amount of time, forcing the creators to settle on a setting of nine minutes and change, and that’s why the standard snooze alarm is nine minutes even in our digital age? I didn’t either, but it’s true, or at least as true as Alexander’s biography of a General Electric employee so lost to history that he had to make up the obvious fake name of “Juan Sueno.”
RMMD: Wait…we’re supposed to believe Mudgus lost weight? I mean, not shaming him or anything, a healthy body isn’t always necessarily a thin one, but I don’t recall him being morbidly obese before.
MW: The colorist followed instructions to the letter, for a change. The casserole is made out of Mary’s old oven mitts.
FG: I don’t believe Queen Azura has been assigned escaping-Dragonman-spy-catching duty. Surely she has people for that.
RMMD – 3M should back off a little on the fat shaming there, especially since she has yet to bring him his food. She’s probably still buff enough to send him to go play on a swingset on the moon.
C’shaft: Oh God, please, NO! We’ve already endured Harry Dinkle’s memoirs and BatTom’s interminable interview with One-Armed Skip, we do not need another self-indulgent personal retrospective!
Dustin: Dustdad is only saying that in hopes that his wife will stop buying expensive beauty products and cooking healthy food for dinner.
Luann: I suppose if Les had just admitted from the first that he’d never gone rock climbing before but expressed an interest in it, and Tara encouraged that interest and took him to the gym to try it out, it wouldn’t be funny. But this isn’t funny either, so…
MW: Yeah, everyone knows you shouldn’t ask for money until the third date.
Pluggers’ dementia has advanced to the point where they don’t even recognize themselves.
Crankshaft – By all means, contact Skip Whatshisname and tell him you’re interested in an interview about your life. Everyone needs to see a rehash of that story of how you were tricked into not knowing that your name was on the roster, so you didn’t bother to show up when that major league scout was at the game. Skip will hang on every word. If he loves Batton Thomas’s blathering about every mundane part of his career, he’ll love your situation tragedy.
Frazz – We need to see Frazz and Mrs. Olsen insulting Caulfield behind his back for this stupid, off the wall observation, especially since Frazz let Caulfield believe that he was clever.
JP – I know there’s a way to tell Katherine and Ann apart, but I still can’t. The one questioning Bagdon’s reliability actually makes sense, for probably the first time ever in JP. The other one is typically dim witted, which is usual.
Mary Worth – Quick! Someone step on those butterflies! We’ll all turn into dinosaurs, but it’s worth it if this story disappears.
@The Rambling Otter: I’ll bet she has the same tattoos.
Don Abundio, translated:
“There goes the train!”
“You could have been on it, if you’d stopped arguing and bought a ticket”
“Your prices are outrageous. Find a cheaper way!”
“You’re in luck! Here comes an express!”
[On bag: MAIL]
@Banana Jr. 6000: You’re right, of course. I guess that’s the beautiful thing about making all your characters loathsome sociopaths; one can hate them all equally.
Les wasn’t simply ‘trying to get a date’. He was misrepresenting his interests and abilities in a way that hasn’t been cute or endearing since the days of Wally and the Beaver while also being a smarmy creep. Sure, his stepbrother is a self-righteous scold with Brillo hair who should be partnered with the other self-righteous scold with the glasses who’s friends with the other other self-righteous scold who’s dumber than a box of rocks, but no sympathy does he get from me.
RM, MF: those expressions in panels 2-3 show everyone’s REAL thoughts. Panel two Mae Mae May-I is clearly aware that behind his “friendly advice” Musmd-Manners just called her a tub; Mudhole’s expression in panel 3 indicates that whatever else therapy did for him, he’s now at least self-aware enough to recognize his faux pas.
@Comically Challenged:
My first instinct was Rex because the strip is named for him.
@Buck Ripsnort: Scuseme, “Mud-Manners.” One of these days this place is gonna get a delete comment button.
RMMD – Mae Mae’s expression in the second panel clearly says “What part of ‘I don’t want to be recognized’ did you not catch?”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: “You can’t break up with me! I’ve got hand!”
“And you’re gonna need it.”
@Charterstoned: Mary heard about kitty litter cake and didn’t bother to look for a recipe.
Mary Worth – Speaking of Mary, I’m guessing that the glop she’s taking out of the oven is a casserole. Who bakes a casserole in a metal 9 X 13 pan?
Beetle Bailey: One little nip and Otto will be sent to a farm upstate.
DtM: An attentive clerk has brought out several items for Master Dennis’ appraisal, as if he was picking out diamond jewelry.
Strangely enough, our 75-year-old imp was born into a world of self-serve department stores. This isn’t even a rerun strip, is it?
RMMD: It’s the GLP-1 peddlers like Rex who’ve driving all of Glenwood’s Pilates studio (no sic) out of business. That does explain its label, “BMI capital of (whatever state we’re in)”.
FC: As adult Jeff scans through old strips he notes how his brother adopts the straight, extended arm and exaggeratedly bent wrist playing style of Liberace. “Well, that explains a lot.” He thinks.
@ValdVin re: DTM: You can tell it’s a contemporary panel because they’re clearly in a twee hipster store that sells all kinds of ethically sourced artisanal crap such as these piggy banks for VHS cassettes.
Blondie: This feels to me like Dagwood was supposed to be smiling and genuine in the last panel but the person who does the clip-art for this series refused to put in the effort to make him emote. Thus, Dagwood looks as if his son’s school project is giving him flashbacks to losing his buddies to a VC ambush in Vietnam.
Wizard Of Id: There are so many nasty comments I could make about this comic reference to Harry Potter and Rowling, but I’m worried they’d brush up against this site’s rules against political content.
Rex Morgan: Mae Mae’s expression in panel two is the exact same one I made while reading this strip.
If only Ralphie had known the real secret to getting A+++.
If Blondie is going to make a joke that relies on the reader’s understanding of Spanish, they should probably learn how to use ñ correctly.
@The Quiet Man: I agree that Les is far from blameless here, but let’s make the punishment fit the crime. If Tara wanted to call his bluff and expose him as a fraud, fine. But putting him in risk of serious injury is going way too far. Someone who performs a dangerous sport, and has any respect for that sport (or the facility where it happens), wouldn’t do this.
Also, people who are college-aged in 2026 would be very familiar with dating apps and people who fudge their profile. It isn’t so a question or whether people do it, but how much they do. Dating candidates are always trying to make themselves seem cooler and more interesting than they actually are. So this is the pettiest of misdemeanors.
GA: in Walt’s World, he was not arrived in either Heaven or Hell.
It’s Election Day and Walt lives in a state with strict Voter ID laws.
Dagwood hoped his son would take up the family sin, gluttony, instead of sloth.
RMMD- Mud: “Tickle your ass with a feather?” Mae Mae:”WHAT!?” Mud:”Um,err,ahem, Particularly nice weather!”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Is that Ralphie Parker of “A Christmas Story” or Ralphie Wiggum of “The Simpsons”? (“I am learnding!”)
@Banana Jr. 6000, Luann: The in-joke in the Evansiiverse is that Tara believes him totally, and Les is too chicken to admit it, and the cycle feeds upon itself. So, in their logic, it’s Les’ fault when he gets hurt.
@Ukulele Ike: #52: re-FG: Azura wants to see if the stories Adrane told her of Bok’s prowess in bed are true.
Finally, someone says it: Mae-Mae is a perfect example of a hot, rubinesque woman. Of course, the remainder of this story arc will be about her losing the weight, because nothing gold can stay, but someone at least acknowledged it.
I respect the Wizard of Id hustle here. Did they need to introduce an entire character just for a joke that could have been done with Wiz reading his yearbook? No. Did they need to give him a name and backstory? Not at all. Did they need to cram two extremely dated millenial memes into a “punchline” that would have “worked” with one? Not in the least. But they did. That’s the professional difference.
@I speak Jive: Got the reference!
@UncleJeff: I’m going with Ralphie of A Christmas Story.
RMMD:
Like Mud the first thing I do when meeting someone from my past, who is now rich and famous and clearly looking to have a meaningless fling is to offer to help her lose weight so she can be worthy of my big fat unsexy, unfamous body.
MW: Oh, Baja…! I saw this and for some reason immediately thought of you:
https://www.food.com/recipe/kitty-litter-casserole-74512
WoI: Imagine running into a friend you haven’t seen in a while and as you part you hear them throw shade your way to someone else by saying you suck at the Ladies game.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Also for lying (and being horrendously bad at it) and acting a smarmy douchebag up to this point in spite of the former. Um, Les, if you’re going to smugly “schmooze” your way through tough situations, you’re going to need way more charisma, bro.
LUANN: Also, Les isn’t the only one with (fake) protanopia (sidebar: there is no plausible way a slacker like Les would know what that is) since there has been no “red route” shown throughout this ridiculous plotline. I guess Les isn’t the only slacker here. (Artist: “The red wall is…um..somewhere way over there….I can’t put it on panel because I’m…um…wearing the wrong shoes to draw it…yeah that’s it….”)
Josh’s Wizard of Id comment : Josh, this is the middle ages, WE can sue HER! (Then Mel Brooks can sue us all)
@Guillermo el chiclero: Oh, Azura is gonna be so steamed when she finds out Bok got hold of the Amulet of Prowess.
(Oglaf link: mild cartoon nudity)
Blondie – The top marks were mostly due to the fact Alex didn’t use ChatGPT to write his report.
Wizard of Id – I think today’s strip creator isn’t trying to get a lawsuit, but instead trying to get a job at the Harry Potter spinoff comic that Warner Bros. (owner of DC Comics) is probably going to make. But this strip’s set-up and delivery is even more awkward than the discussion about how JK Rowling names ethnic characters.
Rex Morgan, MD – Mae Mae: “I am much happier at this weight than when I had to follow Hollywood’s unrealistic beauty standards.”
Mud: “Yes, but when you return to society’s expectations of a woman, I know a guy who can help!”
Mud might not be a qualified medical professional, but his refusal to believe a woman discussing her health is as good as any MD minted from Harvard or Yale medical schools.
What A Frazzhole!: I stand by my previous post yesterday…Caulfield and Frazzhole would wish everyone in the world was exactly like them and both would learn nothing from the fact that all the other Caulfields and Frazzholes were demeaning them behind their backs. Neither would push the Undo button.
REX MORGAN M.D.: You know, during the “cruise ship arc” I razzed Mud for succumbing to Glenwood’s “enschlubification virus.” One of the symptoms of that disease is apparently that you suddenly have no “game.” I mean can you imagine him flirting with Wanda way back then in this state (“I mean, I like your hair ok, but if you want a hairstyle that women in this century would wear, I know the name of a great stylist….”)
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): On the other hand, Les from Luann is suddenly breathing a sigh of relief that someone is more pathetic and inept at flirty banter than him.
@Charterstoned: I looked at it and remembered a buddy’s comment about the grossest dish in the world: Maggot pilaf, the self-mixing salad.
Awkward Turtle. Holy frick, that has to be over 20 years old at this point. I could feel a dust-covered box being unlocked in my brain the moment I read it. I suspect we’ll see Cookie or Alexander reference it in about 8 years or so.
True fact: Dagwood’s son Alexander was named for Alex Raymond, who assisted Chic Young in the early years of BLONDIE, and went on to create FLASH GORDON and RIP KIRBY!
Sex Organ, V.D.: Nice cameo by Thing Addams in the second panel, nice cringe reaction on his part to Mudd’s suggestion of doctor to Me!Me!, that Thing is the best hand model in the business! Master of his domain!
LUANN: For the record, neither of these two have yet been seen climbing a wall. It’s sort of like a mini Cold War, with both sides threatening to cross the point of no return, without actually following through.
CS: Write all the autobiographies you want, Ed. No one could read them even if they wanted to, because we have to give all our attention to Batton’s cartooning career.
@Liam:
Knowing a good doctor in RMMD is like knowing a good lawyer in Judge Parker.
RMMD: Since the feds shut down the hydrocodone prescription mill they were running (fortunately, they escaped charges), Mud and Rex have gotten into the GLP-1 business.
Mud’s clumsy remark to Mae Mae was just his standard opiate come-on that popped out due to lack of practice.
@Rover Berkeley:
On Luann : “Tara is falling for Les’ BS because she is also a fraud” is an interesting idea, though one I’m not sure the strip would ever do (despite the fact that I personally feel “Tara is a pathological liar* who’s made up most of her ‘adrenaline junkie’ anecdotes” would be a development that would make a lot of sense from what we’ve seen of her
(ie, we’ve never seen her do any of the extreme stuff she claims to do))*Okay, she’d have the excuse of trying to deliberately exclude Luann whenever she asked to hang out with her, but still…
@Old School Allie Cat: That line is “credited” to Alex Karras, who allegedly told that to a woman while in college. I’m guessing he was quite a student at Iowa.
Rex Morgan, MD – I’ve used both Ozempic and Oxycontin – used correctly, they’re both great at what they do. But you know what’s really good? Dilaudid. I got some of that in the ER while attempting to pass a kidney stone, and that shit’s amazing.
I don’t drink much, I don’t use jazz cabbage, but pills… I can totally see how people get hooked on pills. And phonics.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
That line is “credited” to Alex Karras, who allegedly told that to a woman while in college.
I heard it as a punchline from my father when I was a kid. I have no idea where he heard it. It was one of his cleaner jokes.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I’m almost certain it was Oscar Wilde.
@Ukulele Ike: “You can attribute any quote to Twain, Wilde, or Churchill and no man will double-check.” – Samuel Clemons.
@GarrisonSkunk: What bugs me about the strips this week is that Frazz and Caulfield consider themselves to be superior to everyone else, yet Caulfield is behaving like a total asshole about the wish business. I would think that people who consider themselves to be morally superior would make altruistic wishes benefiting others or at least wishes for a good life for themselves. Instead, Caulfield wants to screw everything up and then undo it. Frazz thinks that’s clever.
I’m starting to feel like I’m in “Look at that bitch sitting there eating crackers like she owns the place” when it comes to Frazz. However, he and Caulfield are such awful people that my hatred for them is probably justified.
The arc about wishes reminds me of a bit in MAD magazine back in the 1960s. The magazine told kids that if a grandparent asks them what they wished for (blowing out birthday candles?), they should say that they really wanted a bike, but they wished for “no more wars” instead. “You will get the bike.”
@Voshkod: My first impulse was to attribute it to Dorothy Parker, but Wilde seemed funnier in this instance. That posh Trinity/Oxford accent and all.
@Bob Tice: “There’s no shame in having more avoirdupois than a Parisian phone book. No, wait a minute — that’s not the impossibly hackneyed turn of phrase, is it….”
Good save.
“If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.”
– Dorothy Parker
@2+2=7: Again, I agree that Les sucks, but I don’t think he deserves what he’s getting here. I also think Anonymous #97 is right, that Tara is just as full of shit as Les is. Which could be an interesting story, but Luann said goodbye to “interesting” long ago.
You know what this story reminds me of? The kind of women who complain about being “leered at” by any man who dares to exist in the same time zone as them.
Crank: I love the way there’s a hypen in “auto-biography”. Do we think Ralph really emphasised the “auto”, to set up Keesterman’s quasi-pun? Do we think they planned this all out while Crankshaft was in the bathroom, specifically to annoy him?
DT: Oh, good grief, I remember there being some character with an Ace of Spades trademark about a decade ago, but I don’t recall the details. To the Wiki!
Oh, that’s right, some masked dude called the Ace of Spades who was the leader of the vast crime syndicate called the Apparatus (apparently by dint of killing the previous Ace of Spades and inheriting the position along with the costume) and who for whatever reason had these specific dimwits as his most trusted lieutenants. Eh, probably a coincidence.
EC: I keep forgetting these are reruns; I’ve been spending all week assuming that Abby working from home would involve Zoom.
JP: This is the most sensible thing I’ve heard anyone in Judge Parker say
in a long timeever, so naturally it’s completely wrong in-universe. “Sensible” has no place in this world, Ann!RMMD: Mae Mae yesterday: I hated having to lose weight and I’m glad I ‘m not expected to do that any more.
Fergus today: So, I don’t think you need to lose weight, but if you wanted to, I could help. I mean, not that I’m saying you need to or anything, just if you thought it was a good idea. Do you think it’s a good idea?
I think we may have just learned how long it takes the Mirakle Method to wear off.
@matt w: Oh, good find!
Fun fact: While most of that article is amusing nonsense, the Great Binge, in which most of Victorian society was off its face on what are now class A drugs, is completely real.
9CL: What are they even talking about?
@Charterstone: Dune: And the Quora post was from a 2012 blog that I dug up an archived version for. See my post above. The Quora guy cited his work properly though, he gets his A+++.
DtM – man, Denise Huxtable’s husband is gonna straight up walk off this job. Thanks for next Thursday’s B Plot, Dennis!
@matt w: I was trying to find the source of the source! I’m leaning towards the ChatGPT explanation for sure!
@Tom T.: Gonna play a little CHAMBER MUSIC. After they smoke a few bowls of chamber pot.
To make it more challenging, they’re going to play duets for contrabass clarinet and cor anglais, neither of which they have the slightest idea how to operate.
Blondie:
One of the most famous prints in the history of Western art is Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, which can be translated equally well as The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters or The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters. Included as part of a series of prints satirizing Spanish society of the 18th century known as Los Caprichos, it depicts a man (possibly Goya’s self-portrait) with his head facedown on a table being harassed by owls, bats, and other creatures of the night. The traditional interpretation, which assumes the Sleep translation, is that the absence (“sleep”) of reason gives rise to monstrous superstition. An alternative view based on the possibility of Dream is that unrestricted reason itself creates monsters. Goya’s caption to the print, “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders”, suggests a position somewhere in between, acknowledging the destructive power of imagination when unguided by reason but also celebrating the creativity that results from their cooperation.
There is a similar bit of interpretive ambiguity hinging on the very same word in today’s Blondie. Is “Juan Sueno” supposed to be “John Sleep”, who was fated by nominative determinism to produce an invention allowing you to get more of his namesake? Or is he “John Dream”, a man whose bold creative vision allowed him to produce something that benefits his fellow dreamers despite society’s insistence they get up at a specific time? Unlike Goya’s work with its caption, we can expect no guidance from the other linguistic content of the strip itself, since reading Blondie has never clarified anything, ever.
@matt w: Apparently “awkward turtle” is a thing? And I hadn’t heard of it? Once again staring into the abyss in which The WIzard of Id writers are more with it than I am
________________________
Mr Lizard the Wizard kept sending him places. No, I’m not having acid flashbacks,I’m just recalling old cartoons.
9CL-“Mr. Van Hoesen, you’re trying to seduce me.”
Mary’s Worst: Is the big butterfly chasing the smaller butterfly symbolic?
Late Thread Cuisine: You think today’s Mary Worth is Cuisine-worthy. Wait until you see what’s at the other end of the link!
@Baja Gaijin: looks like a reasonable iteration of sangria? Is the horror that it’s made with spiked Crystal Light??
@Baja Gaijin:
So I’m drinking this before going to B-tman’s parents’ graves in Crime Alley? Sangria blows, but I’m with it.
@82 Charterstoned: Looks better than what Mary’s carrying.
@Banana Jr. 6000: LUANN: I wouldn’t call it “cruelty” here. Les is like Wile E. Coyote in that nobody is forcing him to do anything and he could put a stop to the whole thing at any time, but is too stubborn to do so. On his own head be it.
@Baja Gaijin:
Did you post the wrong card? That looks like decent a Sangria.
@Baja Gaijin: I vant to drink your blood, but let me add lemon and ice first.
Blondie: “What can I say? I made the whole report up and slapped a name translating to ‘John Sleep’ on it, but my history teacher really, really, really doesn’t want me repeating her class.”
RMMD: And Rex will theoretically be bound by HIPAA not to reveal who he’s treating, so that’s—again, theoretically—one less way for her cover to be blown.
An article on today’s The Daily Cartoonist website confirms that Between Friends is now a Sunday-only strip; similar to what Foxtrot, Doonesbury and Phoebe and Her Unicorn have done. BF dailies will be reruns going forward .. but the characters’ current storylines will continue with brand-new strips, each Sunday.
The funny thing is that I’d been poking around the internet for such an announcement throughout the past 2½ weeks (ever since I’d noticed daily reruns had begun), and hadn’t found anything, anywhere .. and then — one day after someone here queried about whether BF was in reruns, and I’d shared my observations here — BAM! confirmation, at last. XD
I’m very happy BF will be continuing, even if only weekly. It’s an enjoyable strip. ^_^
C-Shaft: The number or times Crankshaft’s bus has flattened Keesterman’s mailbox, you figure he’s entitled to steal the terrible pun thunder once in a while.
DT: Huh say what? “It’s goua place and time”? BB, you’re supposed to be the one without an obvious speech impediment.
Dustin: But would he have said the same thing if she were wearing a dress that didn’t make her breasts look ginormous?
JP: Ann sees Bogdan off by throwing an empty vodka bottle after him. It’s the Parker residence, so finding one was the easy part.
Luann: Nice to see Les making good use of that word-a-day calendar.
MW: It sounds like the Trixie thing is to love what that casserole is to food.
Phantom: Is this the Unknown Commander or just someone handing out religious pamphlets?
6C: I guess the theme of this restaurant is “horrible food combinations your four-year-old nephew might make that you take one bite of to be a good sport.” That doesn’t explain the marshmallow peeps that are the size of a rubber ducky, if not a real ducky.
@Baja Gaijin: Yeah, serving a rose as food is kinda silly, unless your guests are aphids.
@120 CanuckDownSouth: Nope, it’s just a typical sangria recipe. No Crystal Light, no cherry Jell-O, no olive slice eyes.
@121 A Grave Mind: I don’t get the reference.
@124 Deadly Goon Bugs: I couldn’t out-gross-out what Mary has in her hands so I didn’t even try.
@125 Dr. Pill: SNERK!
@droosan: It’s like the comics creators and syndicators have collectively decided that there’s no further reason to put out content for daily newspapers. As a resident of a city with one of the few remaining dead-tree editions, I’m saddened to see how many strips being featured — not only BF and Doonesbury but now Zits as well — have gone through zombification without a hint of the change.
@129 taig: That could be true. I prefer to think that the person who’s getting ready to quaff the sangria just set down the rose she carried in her teeth while tangoing.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
BLONDIE: Dagwood: “Who did you write about, son.”
Alexander: “My teacher, and how many orgasms I gave her.” (Hmmm, I wonder why he got that super-inflated grade….?)
@Dr. Larry Erhardt: I’ve read my comics exclusively online for the past 14 years (at Comics Kingdom, GoComics, etc) .. and a hefty percentage of what I read is very vintage reruns, anyway .. so, I don’t mind it so much.
But yeah; in a daily physical newspaper with limited space for comics, a strip becoming ‘daily reruns-only’ is essentially zombified, as you put it. It’d probably be better to only run just the new Sunday strips, and let some fresh up-and-coming strip title inhabit the dailies’ space .. but newspaper comic strip syndication isn’t set-up to work that way. -_-
The (very slightly) sinister thing about BF‘s transition into reruns was that the copyright year has been removed from the rerun strips; I had to dig into CK’s archives to discover that the reruns were from 2009. ^^;
LUANN: Don’t even experienced climbers have to use safety harnesses? Liability, people
GA: perhaps there’s a meta-theme: “Tech for old-timers is both good and bad.”
– prior arc was Gertie’s taking ng Walt to corner pharmacy, where system rejected her coupon. Long lines of angry customers and a hand & script transaction ensued
– current arc has Walt being rejected from hell because he lacks Real ID . Yay.
RMMD: not sure Mae Mae is frowning at Fergus (though she should). She may instead be frowning at that other customer who is taking pictures of them rather than eating breakfast.
WoI: At first glance I thought the other wizard was female, as he’s drawn to look like Witchhazel from the Disney cartoons.
@Baja Gaijin:
B-tman lays roses in Crime Alley to commemorate his parents. Jokes are never funny after explanations, next time.
@138 A Grave Mind: I still don’t get the reference. Where is Crime Alley and who’s parents get the roses?
I went out to a restaurant, thanks to your recommendations a few days ago, I had Liver and Onions for the first time.
It was WONDERFUL!
It tasted kind of like a very thin steak (or brisket?) I absolutely loved it :3
@Deadly Goon Bugs: 95- Or a non – knucklehead neighbor in Mary Worth.
@Baja Gaijin: Sangria drinkers are more likely to break into flamenco, which is Spanish. Tango is South American. Tango is also more fun to watch and has better music.
(Do they drink sangria in Argentina-Uruguay?)
@The Rambling Otter: “…It tasted kind of like a very thin steak (or brisket?)…”
I think, what they gave you, it wasn’t liver….
Wizard of Id: A friend from ‘Wizard School’ refers to the title character as ‘Wiz’. Is that his name, then? Is his full name actually Wizard Of Id?
@Johnny Q: 92- Rip Kirby was cool. So were Desmond and Honey.
@Ukulele Ike: Tasted good anyway :3
Even if I didn’t get a real liver experience, I still got my money’s worth.
@Deadly Goon Bugs: I was going to make a quip about a good advisor in Mary Worth, when I realized.
We never actually saw Wilbur’s “Ask Wendy” responses. Despite Wilbur being Wilbur… he might actually be better at dispensing advice than Mary herself? I mean his advice column is still running… so he must be doing something right.
Ok so what we’ve learned here is that the Mirakle Method is all about some hard negging, cause damn Mud
@The Rambling Otter: Glad you enjoyed it! Just wondering how they cooked liver to make you think it tasted like beefsteak. If I unlock this mystery I could — dare I say it? — RULE THE WORLD.
Eat at Ukulele Ike’s Extremely Expensive Steak House, for the Very Best in Prime Beef! “Hello, Smith’s Wholesale Abbatoir? I’d like to order 1,500 pounds of liver for afternoon delivery. Cheapest possible quality, yes.”
@Ukulele Ike: Not beefsteak per say, while I compared the texture being similar.
The meat was soft and gentle, very thin, may have been braised. (I know nothing of meat preparation so I can’t say if braised is the right word)
@Ukulele Ike:
Why don’t they make the whole plane out of the same material as the flight recorder? And if I have to use oven mitts to pick up a hot casserole, why don’t we just make the whole casserole out of oven mitts?
@Peanut Gallery: You’ve parsed my thought process precisely, you amazing kreskin, you.
@Hibbleton:
#1 MW: Casserole or hot dish is a silly gift to a stranger. To a fish lover, you can take fish. To a broccoli lover, you can take broccoli. But do NOT take tuna- broccoli casserole unless you know for a fact the giftee likes tuna AND broccoli AND the substance uniting them.
JP: Does this mean there is still a possibility that April might end up dead? *tries to keep the note of eagerness out of her voice*
@151 Peanut Gallery: They don’t make planes out of the black box material because it would never get off the ground. Because of weight. They don’t make planes out of Mary Worth’s oven mitt casseroles because they’d never get off the ground. Because no one would go near that fetid stinking mass of sadness. Except maybe Dagwood. Or Sergeant Snorkel. Maybe.
@153 Activist: Tuna-broccoli casserole. Do not take it unless you know for a fact the giftee likes producing massive quantities of chemical weapon-grade flatus.
@Activist: For Gift Food, go as bland as possible, the giftee can always spice things up. A tureen of split pea soup would be nice. You can even make it vegan by leaving out the hambone, and it still tastes DAMN good on a chilly day.
MW- Since Hardly’s initials are”HH”, Mary could just make some Hamburger Helper.
@Ukulele Ike:
#156.sybe to hats what thoughtful Mary took out of her oven– split pea soup with a topping of tasty brown sugar meringue.
Actually a decent extra joke in BLONDIE: Sueño is Spanish for dream, so appropriate for the alleged inventor of the snooze alarm.
Blondie: Even Daisy doesn’t give a shit today about this strip, falling asleep after the 1st panel.
A&J: Interesting. In Mississippi, Janis and Arlo are working hard to make their wild land tamer. Iowa is so uber-tamed already that it’s exciting to make tame land wilder.
“This makes sense, as the two are obviously genetically identical,”
Actually, if you look closely, you’ll see that Alexander has Blondie’s nose rather than Dagwood, indicating that rather than being a clone, he is the result of some other bizarre method of combining genes from TWO different people.