More like BogdGGUGH
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Judge Parker, 4/4/26
So I guess I haven’t fully spelled out what’s been going in on Judge Parker over the past few weeks: Bogdan, Randy’s lovable prison pal, showed up at the Parker manse with Randy’s proof of life video, in which Randy said he would return home at some future undetermined time, which was nice of him, but then Bogdan got weirdly aggressive about wanting to see Charlotte, so the Parkers kicked him out, and afterwards I guess he just started lurking around the vast Spencer horse ranch until he caught sight of her, but unfortunately he didn’t do it particularly subtly, which led to Neddy punching him directly in the throat. Now, Bogdan has always seemed nice, so maybe this will turn out to have all been a big misunderstanding, but for now, I’m presenting this strip to you, because when an old man gets punched in the throat in a syndicated newspaper comic, I will talk about it on my blog. That’s the joshreads dot com promise.
Dennis the Menace, 4/4/26
I get that Alice is supposed to be holding a baking pan of some sort, but personally I think the “Ha ha, it’s menacing that Dennis doesn’t know the phrase ‘square meal’ is a metaphor” joke is undermined a bit when we see that his mother is preparing a meal that is in fact literally square, or at least rectangular. Anyway, I’m not sure what prompted Henry to wear a white suit today, but since dinner appears to be some kind of brown glop, I think he’s going to live to regret it.
Blondie, 4/4/26
You keep forgetting that, Herb? You keep forgetting what’s literally the defining characteristic of your supposed best friend? Wow. Wow.
Gil Thorp, 4/4/26
“Is it golf? Wait, no, we just determined that it’s not golf. Well, I guess I’m going to have to keep watching you through these binoculars until I figure it out.”
203 replies to “More like BogdGGUGH”
JP:
“The kids were a lot nicer to me in…GGUGH!…’Miracle on 34th Street’ than you two are being right now!”
DtM:
“Dad’s wearing that white coat because he says you’re going to butcher our meal!”
Gil Thorp:
Boy, Carrot Top could sure use a makeover, couldn’t he?
@Activist
About yesterday’s discussion.
Yes, it would be just as funny if Black Spy won against White Spy, because neither is the designated hero or villain, and either can succeed over the other depending on the writers’ moods. Or heck sometimes they both lose, especially if Gray Spy is involved.
Also Black Spy is only dressed in black, he isn’t African American.
JP:
“Quick, Bogdan…before I render you senseless with this blow to your Adam’s apple — what was the last name of the Frank Fontaine character, first name ‘Crazy,’ who portrayed a lovable dipsomaniac with a golden voice on The Jackie Gleason Show?”
“GGUGHenheim!”
MW-Mention earlier some organizations that could help but don’t use them.
FC-Grandma brought Chick Tracts.
Phantom:
“Colonel and Patrolwoman, you know how it drives you crazy when you’re trying to think of something and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t quite summon it? — I’m trying to remember the animal after which the constellation Ursa Major was named…bear with me!”
DtM: Henry himself called Alice from work to tell her not to get pizza since he’d be wearing his ‘Stayin’ Alive’ suit jacket home whilst forgetting what kind of ungodly concoction she’d come up with. It’s the innocent child who’s the real victim here.
@Bob Tice: So does his Nephew “Broccoli Top” from Blondie the other day.
GT: Wait…
Darby and (o’) Gil?
When do the leprechauns show up?
GT: In panel three, it looks like he’s about to rip off his flesh mask to reveal…a face that can’t possibly be any more repellent than the one he currently has.
RMMD: Rex has his plastic hair helmet, June has the plastic cowlick/spitcurl/whatever, Mudgus has his plastic beard.
JP: Yesterday Neddy had the surprisingly intelligent plan to have the raspberry-haired brat bolt at the end of a quietly stated countdown before the man in the shadows (who yesterday was still quite a distance away) could get near. Today, Neddy’s screaming like a banshee who could be heard in the next county, completely losing the element of surprise. No matter though, because she’s apparently either a teleporter or can stretch her arms like Mr. Fantastic to suddenly have closed the distance between her and the totally-NOT-a-twist-villain.
@Pozzo: Or revealing a handsome face.
In which he is then banished to “Ugly Island”
JP – Alas, poor Bogdan. If he had just shaved the mustache, he could have been an academic with a dumb trophy wife and a couple of parrots.
Oh, and did April give a throat punching seminar at some point? Because this is a new skill for Neddy. Normally, her best defense is whining until her enemies saunter away in glum frustration.
GT: I spent a moment staring at that first panel and thinking “Darby? Who is ‘Darby’ in the context of Gil Thorp?” before landing on “Oh, yeah, the teen mom from 2012 or so who was the longstanding crush of the pitcher who lost Milford the playdowns.” Looking at this strip, I guess Darby is just some background character who happened to be named Darby, but wouldn’t it be more interesting if this was the return of a former teen mom, whose child is now himself a teen, now allied with the evil Coach Gerads and poised for zany hijinx? It’d be a LOT more interesting than using binoculars to surreptitiously watch Gil play golf.
If Dagwood would stop obsessing over food for one minute, he’d realize that Herb is developing his namesake’s tendency for uncontrollable nonspecificity.
Christ, Josh, please stop showing Gil Thorp. I read this blog first thing in the morning and I don’t really need to have the heebie jeebies for the rest of the day.
JP: RIP Santa Claus, 270 – 2026.
DTM: Detroit-style square pizza is the hot new trend right now, Dennis. Get with the program!
Say what you will about Coach Gerads with those binoculars but he is no Helen Moss…
DtM: Given that white jacket, I was wondering “Why is Henry cosplaying a GP while he sits in the living room reading some serious European novel?” (Looks like a Sellerio Editore from here–possibly an Andrea Camilleri? I think that would be the most mainstream Sellerio you could get in America.)
Originally Dagwood just enjoyed Sandwiches (and only sandwiches) until it flanderized into an unholy love of all foods…
I can’t wait for the end of the comic, where Dagwood is a huge immobile blob with Blondie continuing to gorge him with more and more food (actually I can wait…)
DtM: It looks like Alice is cooking brownies for dinner, so actually the joke is on Dennis!
GIL THORP: “Whatever’s Gil’s up to, I’m reporting him to school management!”
Blondie:
You might think that Dagwood’s response is simply an expression of his food-based monomania, but I think there’s more to it. It’s also an ingenious way to nip this line of conversation in the bud before Herb starts going on about prop bets or parlays or whatever.
@The Rambling Otter: I didn’t realize how kink-ish this sounded until after I posted :O
It wasn’t my intention really
(Saying before Sex-Negative Nellie pops in)
GT: Panel 1: I thought it was a spiteful Mimi. Panel 2: I thought, “Mimi needs to go to the ER!” Panel 3: I went and got myself some more coffee.
GT: Why does every character in this strip appear to be devolving? If this was a Sunday strip, the last panel would be “Ungh.”
Luann: Screw you, Gunther. Tara is trying to tell you you’re wrong, and you’re refusing to listen.
CS: No one under 75 uses “Meta” anymore, but “Meta” is still a vile cesspool. So this tracks.
Pluggers’ life savings are still small change. The real difference is that cars don’t have ashtrays anymore.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I thought similar, just replace “Devolving” with “Melting”
@The Rambling Otter:
That kid looked as if he had gotten his haircut from the Departmentb of Public Health.
MW: I see Mary is going the obvious route of calling in Mr. Hart’s daughter to help, but I suspect somehow Mr. Hart’s escape from the evils of online dating is going to dovetail with John Long’s escape from captivity, thanks to the fortuitous intervention of a psychic child and/or a heroic dog (or cat or parrot), who will lead the authorities to uncover the pig-butchering scam site in SantaRoyMart.
That’s fantastic news! I’ve been really enjoying Josh’s blog and would definitely be interested in reading his novel.
JP:
“GGUGH!”
“This is no time for you to be uttering a nonsense syllable from ‘I Am the Walrus,’ you sociopathic hirsute ne’er-do-well!!”
MW (after an email is spam-filtered and the internet-searched phone number is found…) “Hello? Who… my dad – is he in hospital?? Oh, neighbour, but… wait… Uh huh. Yeah. Well. Oh no, I’m not seeing him again until he promises not to badger me about what ‘girls my age’ want ‘in the apps’ and asks for dating profile tips and if his profile photo would attract my friends. And you can tell him losing big bucks to a scam serves him right for acting like a dirty old man! *click*”
GT Milford – where all sports including golf are full-contact which explains how everyone has broken, bashed-up noses
JP: There are so many punchable old men in the comics, why did it have to be poor Bogdan?
JP:
“You know, Neddy, we could have hastened our escape from the predicament here by jumping on horses like ‘Bailey’ and galloping off, but apparently they’ve all been rented outt to the lumpenproletariat!”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
On Crankshaft : the “comment slamming [the doghouse]” is meant to be something like “Wait, you guys make your dog sleep OUTSIDE, even when it gets really cold out!?” or “Why are you devoting so much time talking about renovating a doghouse for a dog we’ve never, ever seen
on panel, so as far as we know, doesn’t even exist!?” That’s the kind of negative comments Batiuk is decrying.(Also, weird, I could have sworn every other mention of social media used a fake name, but here Meta is referred to by its real name)
****************
On Luann : If Gunther so desperately wants to “win” this argument, he should be bringing up that Les has made fun of his and Bets relationship for this exact kind of thing (“Whh-ksshhh!”), or that Les spent several sunday comics going “I’m never getting a girlfriend because I don’t want another person to cramp my style, or worse, tell me what to do”.
JP: Bogdan reports back to Randy:
“Charlotte was with some psychotic twenty-something who attacked me without warning!”
“Oh, yeah. That would be Neddy.”
Dennis the Menace: Alice, dear, the Late Thread Cuisine posts are for fun, not inspirations for home meals. Unless…you’re purposely trying to gross out your rude, ungrateful son. Never mind.
Dick Tracy: Guts are needed for cutting edge crime? You’re talking to the wrong dudes, Card Boy. You need pluggers; they have guts for miles.
Family Circus: Oh. Thank. God. Holier than Though Gramma’s paper grocery bag doesn’t have stalks of celery protruding. I don’t want to see those granny-pannies. Also, how did she get a Holden Commodore in the US?
Pluggers: Maybe I’m missing something on this holiday weekend. Plugger savings accounts are their trucks’ ashtrays. Now they don’t remember this fact? Is this a dementia joke? It’s definitely a “pluggers are poverty-stricken” strip.
Rex Morgan: The hand in the final panel along with Mud’s face are strangely off model. Did I miss a “substitute artist” announcement?
Slylock Fox: That cow is higher than the time she jumped over the moon.
I don’t follow Gil Thorp, so I don’t know who’s who, but that face in the final panel final panel is going to haunt my nightmares.
and not in a good way.
Henry just got done coaching Louisville in a big game, show some respect!
@2+2=7: How can he report him to School Management when in this town for all intents and purposes he IS School Management?
Mary Worth Mashups: Who is waiting for Mary in Goleta? Four possibilities, which would you like Mary to meet?
FC: Adult Jeff looks back fondly on a time when his mom wore bellbottoms, his grandma drove a Chrysler Newport, and his siblings were still very punchable.
Judge Parker: Tune in next week for another episode of “Karate Santa Claus,” everyone!
Blondie-Given how much Dagwood eats, how has he not gone full Mr. Creosote by now?
Also, since all that food has to go somewhere, I’m guessing the Bumsteads have a plumber on speed dial.
JP- before I realized which strip this was, I thought it was Mary Worth, and someone was punching Ian in the throat.
Gil Thorp: Do the characters look like that on purpose? I mean, these are antagonists, so I guess it’s okay for them to be ugly, but ease up on the individually rendered teeth, wouldya fella?
@The Rambling Otter: That went by the wayside the day his failed sandwich shops screwed over all rhe franchisees.
Luann – Gunther is a crunt.
Blondie: This feels like a spare SuperBowl comic. They just changed it from football to sports generically and ran it.
@Baja Gaijin: No falling air conditioner?
What happens if Mary Worth and Charlotte Parker met? Imagine no more.
Yo, username link spam in comment 31 “Comicfan1988”
GT: I’m no golfer, but I’m pretty sure it’s a violation of golfing etiquette to plot out loud during someone else’s shot.
@Baja Gaijin: Alice doesn’t have a “deliberately trying to gross out my son” smile. She has a “finally poisoning my son” smile.
JP:
“Run! Get out of this strip as fast as you can!”
@The Rambling Otter: Just learned that the creator of Spy Vs. Spy was a Cuban political cartoonist who was first honored by Castro for his anti-Batista cartoons and then had to go into exile when his cartoons annoyed Castro. And that Spy vs. Spy was intended as a satire on the great power struggle of the Cold War, which makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.
@21 The Rambling Otter: Dagwood’s “picture of Dorian Gray” is a plugger.
@52 Ken: They’re regrouping for their next sortie.
@56 matt w: That works.
@The Rambling Otter:
Lol, is *that* what that post was about? I kept trying to figure out what difference it would make which spy does what. Black spy is actually black and magazines are raycisss lol; I had not thought of that. “Activist” might want to do even a slight amount of research so he doesn’t come off as a caricature
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a cup of “African American coffee” lol. See, it’s black; cream and sugar are for the Klan ? lol.
GT: “Since my cheap insurance no longer includes Vision Care, I have to use binoculars to spy on a golfer five feet away! But he’ll never spot me, because HE can’t afford glasses either! Fiendishly clever!
Blondie – “Seriously, Dag, do you think anyone else does this while watching the international Candy Land tournament?”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio is trying to harass you from a balloon?”
“Yeah. But it’s way too small to provide enough lift…”
“The little creep has no respect for the laws of physics!”
@The Rambling Otter: Indeed. Those are the cheapie binoculars from some army surplus store somewhere, not those Nikons from REI.
MW: @Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars! I guess that performance clause addendum I wrote for you did the trick. Nice to see Muffin again, after such a lengthy absence from the strip. The Ladies weren’t too pleased about having to sign it, but I told them they would otherwise be liable for significant penalties if they failed to include Muffin in a percentage of the condo scenes, since Muffin is an indoor-only cat and any absence in such a small condo would be noticeable. I hope this makes up for the earlier misunderstanding on the ink orders.
On another note, I understood from The Ladies that the Easter holiday might produce an egg or so in the Cameron household. Not completely confident that the parrots are reproducing, but since Toby is “of a certain age” it seems more likely than not. Unless The Ladies were referring to a menu item. Just a heads up, pal.
@The Rambling Otter: I wonder if Dagwood isn’t the prototype for Orion Lake in Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series.
El: What happened to all the mals?!?!
Orion: I ate them.
Judge Parker, 4/4/26: “…what’s been going IN ON Judge Parker…” Still refuse to PR00FR€€D eh kid?
PR00FR€€D vs PR00FR€@D, get it kid?
JP: There’s a missing middle panel where Neddy leaps high in the air yelling “FALCON PUNCH!”
GT: Ever watch the very good British series “Detectorists?” Remember the bad guys “Simon and Garfunkel?” If so, imagine them as hideously as possible and you have today’s Gil Thorp.
MW: Mary contacting Harv’s estranged daughter in Goleta is a pretty arrogant move, even for her. Not sure who will be most grateful: Lonely Harv, for having someone care enough about his situation to go behind his back; Sharon, for learning even more unpleasant things about her dad to add to all the reasons why she became estranged from him in the first place (as if the ascots weren’t enough); or Jeff, when Mary is able to embellish her usually boring recaps over dinner at the Bum Boat with more titillating personal details about people Jeff has never met, than he is used to getting after Mary has “resolved” issues with the usual suspects among her friends and tenants.
GT: Somehow everyone in Gil Thorp, regardless of their actual ethnicity, manages to look like an offensive racial caricature.
JP: I don’t care what Bogdan’s motivations are, if you lurk ominously in the bushes spying on a five-to-eight year old girl and her twenty-something female guardian, getting punched in the throat is probably the nicest way someone will respond to that.
Bogdan. “Bog”, the opposite of “tundra” as in “arctic tundra”. “Dan”, short for “Daniel” and the Book of Daniel is in the Bible, a tome that contains many saints. Arctic tundra saint? Bogdan is St. Nicholas, aka Santa Claus! All he wants to do is look in on Charlotte to see if she’s being naughty or nice, and for that he gets punched in the throat! Come on, it’s not like the whole Santa story is creepy or anything. Just for that, now he’s not going to come into their house while they’re all asleep.
***
The only explanation for Henry’s coat is that he’s practising unlicensed home dentistry. It turns out he has been the real menace all this time.
***
I’m sorry, Herb, but “My bet is on the underdog” isn’t vague enough. Have you considered “My bet is on the team that gets the most points”?
***
I didn’t know Gil is bad at golf. Once I click “POST COMMENT” I won’t know it again. I refuse to let Grill Throat take up any precious space in my memory.
@ComicFan1988: Greetings fellow Humans!
And Henry went to all the trouble of picking up a menu from Blank White Square Pizza Kitchen. He was getting really excited for one of their famous Indeterminate Black Splotch Combos, too.
Dustin: You spend every waking hour on your phone and insulting your brother, Meg. I don’t think you should be throwing stones.
HotC: Have we found the actual Spiders Georg?
Luann: Maybe, and hear me out here, Les should be able to express an interest in the things Tara does without pretending to be an expert at them, be willing to try them out with her, and if it’s not his thing find other ways they can do things together while at the same time giving her space to pursue her own individual passions. And Gunther shouldn’t be a self-righteous nag about everything.
MW: Some people have a yes-man; Mary has a yes-cat.
Pluggers have always been dirt-poor.
That look on Alice’s face when she sees Henry’s white jacket? They’re planning an adult version of playing doctor.
DtM: Your dad is dressed as a doctor and is holding a book written in what appears to be Klingon. Dinner is the least of your worries, Dennis.
Its Saturday Night Family Fantasy Island Cosplay Night at the Mitchell’s. “Da menace,Boss,Da menace!”
@76 TheDiva: on Luann: Is this your first day on the planet? Have you never read Luann before? What’s this talk of “treating women like individual people” and “men don’t have to be pathetic playas all the time”?
Dennis The Menace: Poor Alice, spending day and night laboring over a hot stove to make her signature “literal human shit in a pan” dish just to get nothing but flack about it from her ungrateful family.
Blondie: “My bet is on the underdog! Make sure you’re equally vague as I am with your answer, Dag. We need to ensure this strip can be reran every year when a big sporting event is happening, and they can’t do that if we talk about specific teams!”
Gil Thorp: Darby doesn’t have much room to talk given the art makes it look like his golf-playing is just him preparing to smack the ground with his club like an angry caveman.
MW:
“Goleta…that’s what I shouted at Ms. Ford when I saw her in concert at the Santa Royale Civic Center and she did her guitar solo on ‘Kiss Me Deadly’!”
@Peanut Gallery: @Peanut GalleryDon Abundio, translated:
____________________________________
“Luckily, the borders of this laughing square are jagged enough the balloon will soon pop, sending the little creep down to his death. By the way, your pointy hat really goes nice with your pointy upper frontals.”
Dennis the Menace: Henry is trying out a passive-aggressive Lockhorns-style bit in which he dons a doctor’s coat to imply that the family will need medical attention once they eat Alice’s brown glop and fall ill.
The Familliar Mucus: “Ok everyone into the Panic Room and pretend we’re not here,maybe she’ll go away!”
@Patrick: Come on now.
Regardless of what we may assume their own assumption was. No need for the insults, we’re all friends here ^^
Gil Thorp, where everybody looks like a Dick Tracy villain but nobody gets the corresponding cool name.
Blondie, the Neighborhood Bumstead: “My bet is on the Underdog! Overcat is over hyped if you ask me.”
JP:
“Hey! You can’t punch me like that! You know how Pere Noel is France’s equivalent of the United States’ Santa Claus? — well, I’m Bosnia-Herzegovina’s answer to Sir John Falstaff!”
Gasoline Alley – Satan should have let Walt stay. He could annoy the other residents for eternity as their punishment, although it could be argued that that’s a bad punishment even for hell.
DtM – At best, that’s chunky peanut butter brownies drizzled with chocolate. At worst, that’s the same casserole that Mary Worth took to HH the other day.
Gil Thorp – Ye gods. That homunculus in the last panel looks like she just crawled out from under a bridge to threaten to eat the goats crossing it.
This “artwork” is beyond bad – it’s abominable. This is the worst, most incompetent drawing I have ever seen. I can’t believe that someone is paying this artist for this atrocious work.
FC – Holier than thou Grandma isn’t kissing them. She’s tasting them.
Thel hopes that she took that new bottle out of the closet where Grandma will hang her coat. It’s bad enough that she’ll get comments about her “harlot clothes.” She doesn’t need a sanctimonious lecture about drinking.
Mary Worth – Tell Sharon that $200,000 of her inheritance has vanished. That’ll get her attention.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Re Pluggers – He can dump his change in one of the cup holders.
@Baja Gaijin: MW mashups – I like the one with Blythe Danner. Maybe she could dispose of some of the characters.
MW: I know Mary got her cat a few weeks ago, but I missed how Jeff is suddenly no longer allergic to cats. Did Jeff get allergy shots? Maybe it doesn’t matter since Mary only sees him once every six months when he takes his megayacht out on the Santa Royale Inlet.
DT: “Guts are needed….for cutting edge crime!”
”Okay, cool, but then shouldn’t you be ‘The Knifester,’ or ‘Captain Razor?’ Why is your persona based on a card game associated with little old ladies from Pasadena? We’re fallin’ asleep just watching ya.”
@91 I speak Jive: Thanks. I’ve been waiting years to use that panel.
@92 Wool Worth: Jeff is still allergic to cats. No allergy shots or Pacagen (sorry, MeowMeow!). He has yet to show up at Mary’s opposite of “sex dungeon.” Then again, Mary bought a non-allergenic cat made of poseable plastic. Lucky for Sid, Mary Worth Productions couldn’t afford an actual poseable plastic cat to act as a fake feline.
DtM: Alice got her recipe for “pan of brown stuff” from her old friend Mary Worth, in exchange she gave Mary Worth the recipe for “random orange squares in a bowl”.
LUANN: From the Trufans files:
When Team Inner beauty knows more about romance than you, it’s time to take a good long look at yourself, Tara. Like, sweetie, the whole point of Les lying to you (besides trying to get out of the thing you kept claiming he was “trying”) was so he didn’t have to “put himself out there” or show any type of vulnerability to a situation that he couldn’t bluff his way out of. The strawman examples you raise aren’t really a counterpoint because, no, you shouldn’t want a man to compulsively lie to you at all, duh!
Of course Tara’s one-note characterization (besides being into EXTREME!!! sports) is being a bossy unreliable flake. She’s used to causing trouble for people around her and not taking any accountability for it, so maybe she does thinks this partner-subterfuge is just normal behavior in a relationship.
LUANN (2): “I dunno. Is that worse than taking me to to a ritzy restaurant he can’t afford and an opera he hates?”
Damn! Well back to the drawing board, thinks Les, as he subtly crosses off his plans for dates #3 and #4 while Tara and Gunther are arguing.
Phantom: The bust of Julius Caesar has already rattled Patrolwoman Han; today she’s spooked by the souvenir shop Maltese Falcon replica. Maybe she’s wondering about the Unknown Commander’s decorator. “I suppose the rug really does tie the room together.”
FG: Hurrah! Name of the Rose fanfic! Umberto Eco and Sean Connery smile down from Valhalla.
@2+2=7:
LUANN (2): “I dunno. Is that worse than taking me to to a ritzy restaurant he can’t afford[…]?”
Tara doesn’t know about the “using money he stole using charity fraud” and “DOUBLE couldn’t afford it because Frank DeGroot invited himself, his wife and daughter along to take advantage of Les’ sudden largesse” parts.
@Gil Bates: Followed by a scream of NUTSACK JAB!
@Anonymous: Batiuk inadvertently wrote the most honest Funkyverse strip of all time. Because Ed Crankshaft is such a jackass that any picture pertaining to him would instantly attract online vitriol. Or at least sarcasm: “Here’s a very rare photograph of the Crankshaft home – it’s not on fire for once.”
@I speak Jive: Well, the drinks Pluggers buy are way too large for cup holders anyway. You’ve probably seen those 44-ounce monstrosity cups some convenience stores have.
6Chx: So the joke is, this woman runner is gonna be eaten by a wolf? Can we do this story over in Frazz?
JP: Neddy exhibits the powerful punching muscles developed during her years in Paris, on a regular diet of white bread, Camembert, and inexpensive plonk.
RMMD: ”Oh, Doug LOVES movies. Just really hates your stuff, for some reason. He’s pretty clear on that.”
Flash Gordon: Next week, Flash and Dale go researching! As an old-school SF fan who thrilled to the library scenes in Foundation and Empire, I’m on the edge of my seat.
GT: The art is so aggressively repulsive now, that if you stopped covering it until the next artist change that would be fine with me!
GT: Coach Evil’s degeneration continues apace. Today he looks like John Barrymore as Mister Hyde. Keep small children and pregnant woman well away.
Ripley: What’s the tax levy on a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat?
(old Kyle Baker comic book joke: “87% of Rice-a-Roni eaters won it on game shows.”)
@Rick Rickover:
“I DON’T KNOW YOU! THAT’S MY PURSE!”
MW: Me-ow — The cat’s commentary about how catty Mary is being by ratting out the old man to his daughter.
Speaking of square (not to mention hideous), Mr. Mitchell’s white jacket clearly identifies him as such according to no less authority than Maynard G. Krebs.
Do they really make tables like the ones Dag & Herb are using? They actually look perfect for eating and simultaneously staring at the TV screen. But I can’t recall ever seeing one in real life. I always thought stuff like that went out with the ’50s.
First thing that stuck in my mind when I saw Henry’s white coat was that it matched the walls. The whole thing looks like the colorists ran out of time before deadline. “Nobody will notice ’cause Henry is is such a bland character anyway,” they said.
@Bob Tice: Alternative version for the snobbish:
“Quick, Bogdan…before I render you senseless with this blow to your Adam’s apple — what is the name of he famous museum in New York that twists around like a peel from an apple?”
“GGUGHenheim!”
JP:
In today’s second panel, Bogdan reacts violently to consuming a Mary Muffin as Neddy uses her fist to try to distract him from experiencing the rancid taste.
JP:
I saw Neddy punching Santa Claus.
Underneath the mistletoe tree.
FG: The one book Aegia didn’t save was “Fahrenheit 451”. That’s where Ming got some of his crazier ideas.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Are you….meta-ing? Right in front of God and Josh and everybody?
@richardf8:
#14. JP. I too feel sorry for Bogdan. He’s been in prison a spell and doesn’t know he’s supposed to text, then call, then meet in a public space before a private chat.
GT: “Everyone knows Rachel Merrill’s bad at computer art.”
Blondie: “Who do you think will win tonight? My bet is on Nondescript University in this nonspecific sportsball game.”
@Patrick:
#60: so clever. Yesterday Otter was mentioning perhaps a comic was discontinued perhaps because it was “politically incorrect”. I offered a test (known as reciprocity, or “the golden rule”) to tell if it was blatantly racist.
JP: “Run!” “Ggugh!” “Denouement!”
DtM: “Oh boy! Mom’s really baked tonight! Brownies for dinner again! “
@The Rambling Otter:
#86. Thanks, Otter.
@Baja Gaijin: Sexy ham FTW!
Blondie: I wonder how many bratwursts Dagwood and Herb consider a “snack.” If I manage to finish one Sheboygan-style double I don’t eat again for two days. And chicken wings? Four at the most at any one sitting.
GT: Out: comics characters who don’t know how to hold cell phones.
In: comics characters who don’t know how to hold binoculars.
JP: Seems like a bad sign when your onomatopoeia burst has bubbles floating up from it. Bogdan might get killed by Neddy without even working in her factory.
@The Rambling Otter: I didn’t realize how kink-ish this sounded until after I posted :O
It wasn’t my intention really
(Saying before Sex-Negative Nellie pops in)
It is gratifying to know my presence here helps foster a healthy measure of self-censorship of even the slightest ribaldry among the perverts, and is not taken simply as poorly-reallized satire or parody or caricature or what not. Hey, I get my gratification where and how I can.
Why is someone punching Theodore Bikel in the throat?
Alright, I was on a The Simpsons episode recap page online.
The episode had a reference to Funky Winkerbean (by which the intended joke was that Springfield gets all the crappy parade floats)
Reading the recap, TvTropes asks:
“Be honest, how many of you have even heard of Funky Winkerbean?”
Burn!! Take that Batiuk!
@Banana Jr. 6000: Yeah, I’m aware of them – and now I wonder what people do with them when they drive. Hold the cup between their knees?
To be fair, I have a Yeti mug that holds around fourteen ounces but is too wide to fit in my car’s cup holders.
@Rover Berkeley: They’re TV tray tables. When Mr. Jive and I got married in 1974, we won a set playing bingo. We used them as end tables until we could get real end tables. The ones we had had trays that detached from the legs, so the legs could be folded for storage. We still have the tables; they’re somewhere in the basement. I don’t know if anyone still makes or sells them.
I remember reading that when Eisenhower was president, he and Mamie sometimes had supper on tray tables while they watched television.
C-Shaft: “Mostly it’s a bunch of links to this site called The Comics Curmudgeon, and everybody is asking since when we’ve even had a dog.”
DT: The body language of the respective persons is less “criminal mastermind addresses the convicts he just broke out” than “would be entrepreneur trying to win over leery investors on Shark Tank.”
Dustin: If Dustin needs a synonym for lazy, there’s one floating at the top right corner of the second panel.
H&L: Today’s hardest sell: the idea that Dot and Ditto, two children still somewhere in the single digits, have entire sacks full of candy left over from Halloween in April. Protestant discipline and all that, but the Flagstons aren’t space aliens in disguise.
Luann: Jokes on Gunther. He’s going to bite it from an AC unit falling on his head. One hopes.
MW: I dearly hope that Mary isn’t one of those people who has to say things aloud as she types them, and that therefore the narration is for the benefit of the stuffed Hobbes figure who’s playing Muffin today.
RMMD: The biggest threat to Mae Mae’s secret identity continues to be her lack of understanding on how secret identities work.
@Baja Gaijin: Garfield’s choice, number !
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “The Flagstons aren’t space aliens in disguise”
Well… maybe “Sunbeam” is actually a light from the alien mothership, which Trixie reports to every day.
Crank: It took Batty all the time since the doghouse renovation story to come up with this highly original zinger?
Curtis: “I appreciate the sentiment. But I wouldn’t trust you with a goldfish, so please put me in a home!”
FG: “Wait, if you were the one who stored away all these books because destroying them was unjust, you must have read them first, to know how important they were? Otherwise, you might just be saving genuinely outdated information.”
“Of course.”
“So … if there’s something there that can help, shouldn’t you already know what it is and be able to just tell us?”
“Look, my role in this storyline is quest-giver. You can do the quest or you can try doing something else, but it’s not my job to ‘just tell you’ things!”
GT: While Rachel Merrill still isn’t putting much effort into the actual art, that doesn’t mean she’s not challenging herself. The challenge is can she make Coach Failed Perm look as grotesque in her art “style” as the guest artist managed by going hyper-realistic? This means making him look more grotesque than everyone else does in her art style, so it’s quite an achievement!
MW: Unfortunately, it turns out Sharon just doesn’t have time to respond to Mary’s overtures. She’s too busy with her management position in Goleta’s largest “online call centre”.
Phantom: Okay, so next week is the Ghost Who Trolls recapping the whole mission, and Han getting more and more certain she’s being fired, and then the week after (or possibly the week after that if DePaul can pad out the recap enough) he ve-e-e-ery slowly builds up to telling her she did good, actually, as I’ve been predicting he will since three seconds after Woboru put her on probation. The good news is, I can’t see how DePaul can work The Prophecy into this, although if he finds a way, that’s another week.
Late Thread Cuisine: A burger from Japan. Guess what the secret ingredient is?
@The Rambling Otter: “Trixie calling Orson, Trixie calling Orson.”
GT: I guess those, um, alien dimples are better than flop sweat. But not much. Also I’ve used and seen many kinds of binoculars over the past sixty-plus years, and those are the weirdest ever. How is Alien Dimple Dude even holding them?
@Baja Gaijin: re-ta-su baa-gaa is umm *quite* the lettuce burger, when what you really need is a sandwich of… crunch, I guess?
MT: The weekly MT Sunday Island-Of-Sanity Strip cannot be posted soon enough.
MW: This absolutely confirms that Mary knows enough about H@rvey’s personal bidness that she could have contacted the daughter BEFORE he flung $200,000 into the void. Mary has displayed incompetence in the past, of course, but you, Karen and June, have this current against-all-logic setup to answer for.
@Baja Gaijin: Miralax?
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re H&L My kids have Halloween candy left, but that’s because after Halloween night’s almost-unlimited candy nibbling it’s in clear bins where I can see it and they’re allowed very limited amounts for dessert (plus they like other desserts when given the option instead, Christmas candy took over for a while etc etc). If they had hidden stashes all bets are off (on both how fast they’d eat it and what I’d give as consequences when the rules-breaking would be discovered:)
@Baja Gaijin: I kind of like the idea that H’s daughter is also a scammer, and he just never realized it all these years.
@Baja Gaijin: It can’t be the lettuce. That’s not a secret at all.
@Goulde Fische, Attorney at Law: re MW: Hooboy, whatta day! Thanks to your legal help, we were able to get Muffin back into action – would ya look at that smile on her face? She has been gettin’ over her post-partum depression with some therapy as well as supervised use of ‘nip. Doesn’t she look like a new Cat? And her color seems to have stabilized.
It also helped that The Ladies were able to find good homes for most of her 17 orange Kittens – I say “most” because we had to take 5 of them here at the office. So, if anyone…
As to the “Easter Egg” possibility – you know our clients are spayed and neutered, even Muffin… now. But that’s a complex and high-risk procedure in Birds. We try to work with behavior modification and sometimes hypnosis to prevent the vody-o-doe-doe, but sometimes nature will take its own course… they did get married while on their Mexican vacation
Hey, Intern, could you check the litter boxes again? Maybe Goulde would like one (or more) of the bundles of joy…
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – Some kind of disgusting, gloppy sauce that’s hidden by all that lettuce?
I don’t want a lettuce sandwich, especially if it’s Iceberg lettuce. However, I’d be happy to eat those shrimp in the photo in the circle.
FG: “Hint — look for a small volume entitled Ming’s 101 Most Debilitating Phobias.”
”Hmmmmm. Number one: Spiders. Number two: Clowns. Number three: Peanut Butter Sticking to the Roof of his Mouth…..this could be it, Flash!”
@taig: If I was writing the comic, I would have his daughter (or a friend/lover of hers by her orders) be the one scamming him all along.
I mean, she would know him better than anyone, his likes, dislikes, insecurities…
She’ll get her inheritance faster that way.
Maybe she has gambling debts that she has to pay off, immediately.
REX MORGAN M.D.: You know the other day someone expressed concern over comments about Lorna/Mae Mae’s size. But I have to say a plotline where being overweight would make a woman completely unrecognizable in a way that changing her hair and makeup (or even just the acknowledgement of aging ten years) would not is probably a far greater diss to fat people than anything anyone could say here.
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): “Tee hee! The boss ‘likes’ me and wants to ‘see in his office’ later. There’s nothing creepy about that. Obviously, as a veteran of Hollywood, I am completely naive of employers using the workplace to push inappropriate relationships. (Giggle)”
REX MORGAN M.D. (3): By the way, I call for a ban on the obnoxious perspective shown in panel #2. It always makes me feel like I’m playing a FPS game where the weapon of choice is a pimp-slap.
Dustin-“What’s the matter? Jealous that you’re not the only one in this family that spends their entire time on their back?”
@Rover Berkeley: I have a pair of tray tables of fairly recent manufacture. They are all wood and the tray is fixed to the legs, but the whole unit folds flat.
Dustin: Meg accuses Dustin of being lazy but has she ever been shown holding down some kind of part time job? Even Jeremy Zits, who is also canonically a straight A student, has a part time hamburger flipper job and an occasional paying gig with his garage band.
LUANN: Tara: “I dunno. Is that worse than taking me to to a ritzy restaurant he can’t afford…like…say…just as for instance, he takes me to a restaurants his parents own and he can’t afford for me to live there so he doesn’t tell his parents that I’m squatting in their business and their reward for me staying there, rent-free, eating up their profits is that I carelessly leave the doors unlock so just any ne’er-do-well relatives of mine can come and ramshack the place anytime they please. So you tell me, Gunther, is that any.worse what me and Les was doing?”
Tara (after pausing to remember the climax of that little incident): “Er, ok fine, but the point is that plot requires that I like Les now for some reason. Got it?!”
Dennis the Menace – Henry believes in dressing for the job you want, and with Rex Morgan, MD being taken over by hillbillies and roots country, there is an opening for a new medical soap opera script.
Blondie – Herb’s deadly sin is greed, hoping to turn other’s feats of athletic excellence into some cash on his end, and no doubt hurling abuse at athletes on social media for failing to cover the spread. Dagwood’s is gluttony, but at least at home he isn’t taunting the athletes whose pursuit of excellence requires restricted diets.
Gil Thorp – “What’s you game, Gil Thorp?”. Look, man, Gil lost his last spouse to her golf pro, he’s just trying to keep this new marriage together.
@Baja Gaijin:
#133. Kermit! Poor guy was always a little flaky, er, leafy
@Baja Gaijin:
It’s the secret sauce, but instead of Thousand Island Dressing its tofu and soy sauce blended together with a liberal amount of Sansho Pepper.
@CanuckDownSouth: Well yeah, that’s the thing. The middle kids obviously have a large secret stash. Ditto doesn’t seem like he’d have a lot of self control about it, and Dot might have just enough to make her candy last a little longer/prove herself better.
@2+2=7: In fairness, the seeming improbability of an A-list movie star working as a waitress may do more to obscure her identity than the weight gain itself. If Timothee Chalamet grows a thick beard for a movie role, anyone who sees the publicity for it will say, “Yup, that’s Timothee Chalamet.” If he ditches everything, gets a job as a liquor store clerk, AND grows a thick beard, he might throw some more people.
@James:
With the piss poor artwork any figure can be anyone on any given day. This could be Gil’s ex-wife Mimi, it could be Coach Gerads, it could even be Dr Pearl and the colorist fucked up the hair color because they can’t tell either.
@CanuckDownSouth:
JP; It figures. They finally introduce a smpathetic character and he gets punched in the throat.
GT; Arrrrgh! The hedious melting face!
@Artist formerly known as Ben: If my waiter says “I’m actually Timothee Chalamet”
I would have two responses.
1: Who?
2: I’m ready to order now, I’ll have the liver and onions.
Beatup Bailey: Did Halftrack borrow Fred Flintstones car to go golfing?
@145 The Rambling Otter: Wait until tomorrow’s Mary Worth Mashups…
@136 CanuckDownSouth: This the weight loss burger for those who can’t afford Ozempic.
@138 Poteet: SNERK!
@141 taig: The lettuce is the secret ingredient much as meddling is Mary Worth’s secret superpower.
@The Rambling Otter: Originally Dagwood just enjoyed Sandwiches (and only sandwiches) until it flanderized into an unholy love of all foods…
__________________________
Actually, I believe it started as shorthand to show how rich and evil the Bumsteads were with obvious cheating on wartime food rations.
@143 I speak Jive: No disgusting gloppy sauce. A small amount of sauce near the shrimps and a small amount of mayo on the bottom bun.
@152 Activist: Do frogs eat lettuce? Carl the Turtle would absolutely chow down on this burger.
@153 Deadly Goon Bugs: I couldn’t find out what the shrimp-adjacent sauce is. There’s not much nor does it make much impact on the tongue, according to the review I read.
Late Thread Cuisine, Secret Ingredient: The company, Dom Dom Burger, calls this a burger. The secret ingredient is… the lack of actual “burger” between the buns. No patty, no meat. Just a handful of random shrimp among the half-head of iceberg lettuce.
Since the first Late Thread Cuisine was mainly lettuce, here’s a
Bonus Late Late Thread Cuisine: This burger has a patty, a fried chicken patty. And what else?
@Baja Gaijin: I know I’m responding a little late, but April’s mom has got it goin’ on.
Gil Twerp: “My game? Mainly squatting here on the comics page, keeping “Tank McNamara” on the Want Ads page where he belongs!”
@Baja Gaijin: Is it supposed to be a take on Cashew Chicken? That looks like a topping of nuts swimming in Chinese-fast-food-brown-sauce.
Blondie,the Neighborhood Bumstead:” It’s the Easter What Kind Of Dog Is Daisy Supposed To Be, Anyway, Charlie Brown!”
@Baja Gaijin: DtM – I’m afraid this is a circular reference with temporal implications. The late thread cuisine recipe cards actually sit in a card file in Alice’s kitchen. Well, except for the Japanese Fast Food ads which would
Blow
Her
Mind!
@CanuckDownSouth: @Baja Gaijin: Is it supposed to be a take on Cashew Chicken?
__________________________________________
Its actually Ah-Chew Chicken, almost as rare as Fugu.Only a handful of chefs are licenced to sneeze on it in the final preparation.
@Baja Gaijin:
Nuts that came out a civet cat’s ass?
LUANN: a month or so ago Washington Post asked, what was the good life?”. Their answer was that people have three definitions — happiness (pleasure), meaning, and emotional richness (stimulation). Intrigued, I checked online and found article sounded like one in Popular Psychology.
Team Evans clearly displays Gunther’s desire for a safe, pleasant life whereas for Tara a good life has richness, adventure. Guess Delta leading protests at Howard is seeking a life with meaning.
It’s just a comic, but I’m glad they’re showing it’s good we have different goals.
@168 CanuckDownSouth: You got it in one! It’s miso sauce, not the miscellaneous American Chinese fast food brown sauce.
@170 richardf8: Hmmmm…
@171 GarrisonSkunk: AhChew. Ha ha HA!
@172 Deadly Goon Bugs: The peanuts are not covered in civet cat ass juice. I don’t think. The translation didn’t mention anything about asses of any kind.
@matt w: I’m apparently a plugger.
@Gil Bates:
Brilliant!
Mary’s Worst: With all due respect to fan favorite Libby,I’ve got to hand it to Muffin in today’s strip. Not every cat can suck its thumb.
@TheDiva: Melting Silly Putty is a race now?
@Baja Gaijin:
I will face these sandwiches, I will let them pass through me. When these sandwiches have passed, they will be gone, only I will remain.
Honestly, I’m totally down with these.
@179 A Grave Mind: The fried chicken and peanut burger is probably far more delicious than the photo would imply.
@TheDiva: Hi, My name is Les, and this is Tara. She, uh, drives me to the ER. A lot.
That, Diva, is the best we can hope for. But we won’t get even that.
Frazzhole: Is Caulfield about to talk trash about handicapped people taking up all the good parking spaces behind their backs? I didn’t think even he were that low.
@richardf8:
I’d go more “Encino Man,” but yours works, too
@Baja Gaijin:
Hell, the Japanese totally called it with Nintendo.
@Lord Flatulence: GT; Arrrrgh! The hedious melting face!
______________________________
A double feature, tonight on “Svengoolie”!
Blondie – Herb wants to bet on the Underdog, but don’t take the other side of that bet, Dagwood! Simon Bar Sinister always loses!
As for today’s Pluggers, I totally remember when we could buy lunch for two…buttons? Perhaps it’s wampum? Yeah, good old days, eatin’ my McDonald’s Value Meal #2 (the kickass one, with two cheeseburgers), bought with two pieces of wampum. Then a pterodactyl and Raiden from Mortal Kombat flew by.
Slylick Fox And Comix For Kinky Kids : Fly the Furry Skies with United™
@GarrisonSkunk: First paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Tank McNamara:
This is the kind of thing you can only get from Wikipedia. A professionally edited encyclopedia would find it sufficient to say “Hinds took over writing after Millar’s death,” and maybe put the details farther down under Millar’s section. But apparently someone who edited this page really, really wanted to get “bile duct cancer” into the first paragraph!
@Tim Pendergast: Because he’s a universalist?
@GarrisonSkunk: Frazzhole: Is Caulfield about to talk trash about handicapped people taking up all the good parking spaces behind their backs? I didn’t think even he were that low.
In case you’re serious, I took Mallett’s potshot as being aimed toward Tesla Cybertrucks and their owners. If you were joking, well, you got me because I don’t get it. If there’s another target the cartoonist probably intended more, I’m all ears.
@Horace Broon: Ph – The prophecy is subverted when Kit thinks “Heloise is a hothead, Junior is a doofus, and Han Li is the next Phantom!”
@Baja Gaijin: It’s a Po’Boy? On a sesame seed bun?
@193 richardf8: A Lettuce Po’Boy? Are you high?
@Peanut Gallery: The bastard!
@Baja Gaijin: After consuming that much “lettuce,” wouldn’t you be?
@196 richardf8: I’m pretty sure it’s not THAT kind of lettuce. I wonder what was going through the company’s marketing department to develop that sandwich. Maybe they asked a broken Chat GPT model for ideas?
@Baja Gaijin: sandwichifying the iceberg wedge salad, maybe?
@The Rambling Otter: “A bold choice, Mr. Otter.”
@Peanut Gallery: Wikipedia still hasn’t deigned Millar and Hinds’ other strip, Second Chances, to be worth an entry. It’s nice that they sneaked a reference in the Tank write-up, otherwise I might have thought I had imagined the thing.
@198 CanuckDownSouth: I can’t argue with that logic.
JP:
“Darn it all! — I was aiming for his solar plexus, like the Hardy Boys always do!”
GT – The artwork is progressing rapidly toward cubism. Who the hell *are* these characters?