To be fair, everyone in Marvin kind of hates each other
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Marvin, 4/10/26
Pixar’s beloved Toy Story movies are about, among other things, the complicated emotional relationship between toys and humans, especially when humans become too old for toys anymore. Marvin has been doing something similar this week, except that the toys and Marvin kind of hate each other, and now his parents have told him that he has to leave them in his toy box almost all the time, and they’re going to die.
Mary Worth, 4/10/26
Despite her fearsome reputation, Mary is, honestly, fairly conflict averse. She’s still reeling over the time Harvey stormed off because she gently suggested to him that maybe he’s not “in love,” he just got horny over a fake lady on his phone. So she’s really trying her darndest to get Sharon to show up at Charterstone without saying the words “scam” or “$200,000,” and it’s really quite impressive.
Hi and Lois, 4/10/26
I feel like this would make a little more sense if this was just a random young person for Hi to be scornful towards, but, you know what? I’m enjoying the scenario we’ve been given here, where he’s taking an elevator ride with his own son, who has turned his back on his father and is listening to music or a podcast or maybe even just white noise rather than trying to interact with him in any way.
52 replies to “To be fair, everyone in Marvin kind of hates each other”
And if they’re inside the toybox, the cartoonist (I can’t be bothered to look him up) doesn’t even have to bother drawing individual toys.
Archie-Mr. Weatherbee will send Archie to detention for this.
MW-Mary is taking her time savoring this meal.
Hi & Lois:
I find today’s strip pretty funny, although not for the intended reason (and to be quite honest I’m not completely sure there is an intended reason it’s funny). Hi’s just so sad about the death of elevator music. “It used to be they would pump in least-common-denominator trash whether you wanted it or not, and you had to listen to it for the duration of the ride! Now we all carry amazing futuristic devices that let us hear exactly the kind of music we want to hear instead! It fucking sucks!”
MW – Are we just going to have to put up with Mary’s cat gazing fondly and reverently at her now? Or is there still some lingering hope that they may eventually forget about the cat, like they did with Tommy’s deer in Apartment 3G?
H&L: Hi is both surprised and saddened by individual ear speakers. “Hey, where are the wires?”
Hi yearns for a world with elevator music again, because it was one of the few things universally acknowledged as more dull than Hi & Lois.
MW:
“Can you come to Charterstone this week?”
“Well, I’ll have to ask Dad for some gas money, because finances are a little tight.”
“Okay, so you’ll talk to him on the phone….”
MW:
An impressed Muffin grins approvingly at Mary’s ability to deflect what was an an extremely straightforward question from Sharon.
H&L: The reason that there’s no elevator music in that particular elevator is that it in fact isn’t an elevator at all. Based on the weird arrangement of buttons and other controls on the console panel, it appears that Hi and Chip are inside some sort of simulator designed to train its occupants to be astronauts on an Artemis mission to the moon, to operate defense shields in the war with Iran, or to use AI to generate a comic strip, except of course that the “punch line” button was left out.
Marvin: So Marvin’s toys are planning on killing him, is that what I’m getting? This strip has always been part horror story, but the non-excrement angle is new.
MW It’s already been said many times and many ways, but Mary’s phone holding technique is really something to behold. It’s like she’s about to use it as a throwing star against a band of ninjas just off panel.
H&L I’m sort of disappointed to see that this scene is actually taking place on about elevator, when there are many more options for a much funnier second panel reveal. A police lineup, a coroners lab, maybe one of those basement chambers in the Saw franchise…
MW: But, how will Mary, in all honesty, claim the win on her next date with Jeff? Good thing she’s practicing her pussyfooting.
MARVIN: Marvin’s mom has a garage sale and the toys are scooped up by the Keane family. You wanna talk fathead kids!
Hi and Lois:
Is wearing one’s baseball cap backwards a universal symbol for having had to take one’s SAT or ACT at least twice?
Luann: Give the baby his bottle, Bernice, and shut him up.
S4th: Why don’t they do anything? Because they don’t exist, just like Nona and Faye don’t exist unless they are on panel for Hilary to annoy. Besides, them existing would mean Ces creating four more characters to eventually turn into clones of the two of you and you wouldn’t want that now, would you?
JP: It ain’t over, she ain’t safe, and you being there ain’t no comfort, lady.
Marvin – I’ll bet he took a dump in th box. There’s always something there to remind you….
MW – Even the cat is anxious to see the expression on her face when she learns her sole inheritance will be an antique ascot collection….
H&L – You slackers have ruined everything – even the blessings of elevator music….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Hi and Lois:
“They also don’t have Muzak in elevators on farms that are used as foodstuff storage units, because that would cut against the grain!”
@Guts Dozier: Tommie’s deer wasn’t really forgotten, though, was it? She took it to some sort of animal sanctuary and spent months there mucking horse stalls and falling in love with the guy running the place. Granted, the deer was never mentioned again after she left, but that was also around the time that the strip devolved into a fever dream.
Mary is ready, with one flick of her wrist, to decapitate an intruder with the phone’s specially sharpened edges.
MW:
“I’ll be there in a few days — which, let’s not kid ourselves, with this strip is going to be like a few months in real time!”
MW: A few days later, Sharon arrives to find that the remainder of her father’s savings have been given to scammers posing as private investigators, as the latest step in Hart’s desperate bid to find Trixie. This could have been avoided had Mary bothered to tell her that her father was being fleeced, which would have resulted in her coming over that same day.
@Vulpes: I ate breakfast at McDonald’s today, and the background music was a song with a chorus about women “shaking their ass.” I’ve also heard things like “Welcome To The Jungle” and gangsta rap in grocery stores. So yeah, I would welcome the return of Muzak. If only to get rid of spoken lyrics, which defeat the purpose of background music anyway.
Family Circus: Peanuts had the kite eating tree. Family Circus has the Whomping Willow. For some reason, that warms my heart.
Luann: It’s kind of funny that a neurodivergent 12-year-old boy correctly discerned Bernice’s motives. Her panel 2 expression seems to be “am I really this obvious and desperate?” Yes, Bernice, you are.
CS: It turns out the “info” they fed into this AI was Lillian’s past appearances in Crankshaft. And it’s reacting to Lillian’s appearances the same way we do. Good thing they didn’t feed it Batton Thomas, or SkyNet might become self-aware.
Pluggers suck at everything, even making their own coffee.
MW: “A few days” to RECONNECT is good. That should give Mary time to get next month’s condo fees in advance.
Marvin’s parents told him he has to leave his toys in the toy box all the time so the artist can copy-and-paste the same panel and change the dialogue to bang out this week’s strips before hitting the golf course.
I feel like Sharon was about to bolt into action, but then Mary uttered the fateful words, “And both of you could reconnect,” and Sharon had to recalculate on the fly. “Um… plane tickets usually get cheaper on Tuesdays…”
Fudge Packer – In keeping with the great tradition of Mr. Tuggle, Mike Manley makes it appear that Mr. Ed and not Neddie is asking Charlotte if everything is ok.
“Fathead”? We know they did not say “fat” but the thing Marvin constantly makes!
I’m sure you all know the one about a guy being bit in the penis by a rattlesnake, his friend running off to get help and being told he has to suck the poison out and returning to tell his friend, “You gonna die.” That’s the joke in Shoe today.
Today on Hi and Lois: No Exit, but with a teenage son who ignores you, and set in a turquoise elevator. Tomorrow: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in a midcentury modern with Lois and Irma as the titular characters, featuring Trixie as Hamlet.
Mary Worth: I love the way Mary’s cat stares at its owner, thinking, “I can see right up your nose!”
Marvin: The artist thought he’d figured out a way to draw next-to-nothing today, but then his editor told him, “It’s too static. Try zooming in on nothing for the middle panel.”
Sharon seems resigned more than angry. How many times has Harv-y wasted his savings on obvious scams? Is Sharon considering not only the money her family has lost but also how they have contributed to keeping an industry based on human slavery alive?
H&L: The “kids these days and their personal listening devices” thing is particularly bizarre coming from Hi, who as the father of a high-school-aged child would have himself grown up in the Walkman/Discman era. It’s all part of the same strange alchemy that keeps comic book characters from aging but also keeps the adults in that Boomer-era mindset.
MW: Mary will spill Widower Hart’s dirty laundry to Toby or Dr. Jeff, but when it comes to informing his (only?) child who has a much larger stake in her father’s well-being, she can’t bring herself to broach the subject. “Just…come visit him for a few days, would you? No particular reason…”
At last, Mary’s plan is revealed. Here we thought it was about the immorality of online dating, or penetrating Harv’s delusions about his fake girlfriend, or getting back the money since it’s just unfair some people could give away $200,000 and get nothing for it. But no, it was the daughter all along. An adult woman having a busy life in another city doesn’t have all the time in the world for her widowed father? That won’t do. Doesn’t she realize he’s is lonely? Time for them to reconnect.
Mary Worth: “A few days? You’re like 15 minutes away, half an hour, tops.” “I know, but it takes time to find two doctors and a lawyer for the incapacitation paperwork.”
H&L: Kudos to Hi for showing up to support his son’s new job as elevator operator but he loses the kudos for shit talking about the ambience.
Also Mary Worth: Why is Mary saying the out-loud part quietly? Why is she not being direct with Sharon about what’s happened? Oh, right: because then how would we squeeze a week’s worth of awkwardly-held phones out of it?
“Oooooh, there’s gonna be DRAMA!” that cat’s thinking. Or maybe just, “Meow.” Or it’s not forming any thoughts, per se, but more of a hope this human will feed it. I don’t know what cats think, or even if they’re anywhere near as being sentient in the same way we are, no matter what Mary’s weird teenage friend tries to tell us.
***
Screw you, Hi. The Sony Walkman was released in 1979, we are approaching the 50th anniversary of personal, portable music that lets people tune out the world. You are not canonically old enough to have been alive before this, and you have probably never heard elevator in your life! Nostalgia is bad enough, but nostalgia for a time before you were born is mind rot. Screw you, Hi!
H&L Chip actually heard his dad’s comment perfectly well through his well-set music/podcast volume, he’s just befuddled and wondering whether he misheard it completely because Musak in elevators hasn’t been common for much, much longer than AirPod sensory bubbles. Heck, I think in the *80s* we were figuring out the background stuff at grocery stores and whatnot was called “elevator music” because that *used* to be its main venue.
MT Every so often I come back to this one to goggle at the authour’s grasp of a land zoning/ development dispute. Keeping in mind it’s been said that Ted crass owns the land the solar energy project wants. Does… does the writer think a property owner can be *forced* to build something from somebody else’s plans? or that he wouldn’t be compensated if the city tried to expropriate the land (and better yet, get a nice profit by threatening to tie it up in court and therefore be able to sell the land for $$)? that *solar energy projects* are just plopped up out of the goodness of some environmental group’s hearts and don’t make profits?? My toddlers setting up rival dragon / magic pony / LEGO kingdoms had a better grasp of property rights than this!
@Bob Tice: “Well, I’ll have to ask Dad for some gas money, because finances are a little tight.”
“Yes, ever since my husband, John, disappeared while on a business trip to Thailand…”
(I will continue to predict this, even though I think it’s unlikely even for Mary Worth, just to have bragging rights if it is the big “twist” of this story.)
JP: Charlotte keeps weighing her options:
Keep sitting on this pile of horse manure or rejoin the Parker household? There has to be a third option!
FC: Would have drawn Jeffy with his head completely encased in a hornets nest but that’s just me.
BCN: Can confirm the debate is like that. (I’m Team Indoor Cat myself, because we have coyotes and foxes and large prey birds in the area in addition to cars.)
C’shaft: If knowledge of Lilian’s existence brings an LLM to terminate its own, I will never say a word against her ever again.
Dustin: Dustin immediately recognizes his boss has set a vague goal with no definable metrics, and opts to quit now rather than bust his ass and have his boss fire him anyway for some equally vague shortcoming.
GT: Yeesh, even by Gil Thorp standards that was a half-assed way of dealing with an Issue Facing Young People Today. Isis (Iris?) is vaguely threatened with deportation by a cop, her family goes into hiding while her teammates do a performative protest and the strip focuses on the really important matters (ie. White Male Protagoinist Gil Thorp, specifically White Male Protagonist Gil Thorp’s beef with his ex) and now everything’s okay. On to golf season!
Luann: Of course Luann doesn’t do Wordle. She struggles with the maze on a Happy Meal Box.
@TheDiva:
Dustin: Dustin immediately recognizes his boss has set a vague goal with no definable metrics, and opts to quit now rather than bust his ass and have his boss fire him anyway for some equally vague shortcoming.
He’s so much on the same wavelength as his boss he magically changed the color of his shirt to match his.
Muffin looks on approvingly. “Atta girl, Mary. Lure them in slowly and surely. Then when they are in your Charterstone lair, meddle like you’ve never meddled before.”
Once again Pluggers pivots from “literally everybody in the world is a Plugger” to “Exactly one person with an extremely odd gripe is a Plugger.”
MW – “But, Sharon, take your time. I’m sure there’s no correlation between the speed at which you react and the likelihood of recovering the funds.”
MW:
“Just before I left for Goleta, Dad and I got into a pitched battle about whether ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny — I sure hope we can mend fences!”
Crankshaft – She spends all day in a room by herself because Lillian is a loathsome hag.
In case anyone has forgotten.
Non Sequitur – The answer to the follow-up question is Pilgrims.
Pluggers – He hasn’t washed the mug or run vinegar through the coffee maker since 2012. Duh.
Jump Start – I usually read this and move on to the next strip without thinking about it, but I do enjoy Frank’s devotion to Klondike Ike.
Rex Morgan – Ye gods, didn’t we spend a couple of weeks on this “plot” point already?
FC – Better call an ambulance. The fall knocked Jeffy’s head backwards.
RMMD:
When one’s eyes are as close together as Mae Mae’s are in today’s second panel, that’s usually a sign that there’s an extra chromosome lurking around. Just sayin’.
“Hi and Lois,” the comic strip about bipolar disorder, is definitely in a “depression” phase lately, huh
MW: Mary’s dialogue is a perfect match with her cuisine: a sea of featureless beige punctuated by the occasional indistinct lump.
FC: Jeffy has fewer talents than a chimpanzee.
Phantom: Jeez, Worubu, why so smirky? I’m going to enjoy tomorrow, when the Unknown Commander crushes you like the booger you are.