He’ll get that meth lab yet, I believe in him
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The Phantom, 5/4/26
President Goranda is, according to the extremely detailed Phantom wiki I just discovered, the leader of Ivory Lana, the country that was the setting of the storyline that just wrapped up, and, look, I get that it’s fun to be like, “Wow! There’s our friend! He’s on TV!” but if your friend is literally a president, he’s going to be on the news a fair amount. That’s like one of a president’s main jobs! So no need to get all worked up about it, is what I’m saying.
Mary Worth, 5/4/26
Oh hell yes it’s a Tommy storyline, everybody! A storyline where Tommy is sad! I don’t think we have to ask why he’s sad — the main driver of negative emotions in the Mary Worth universe is romantic failure, so I assume his onion ring fiancee just dumped him. The more fun question is how he’ll react. Will he turn to weed? Pills? Crack cocaine?
Our lord and savior Jesus Christ? I am very excited to find out!
Herb and Jamaal, 5/4/26
If you’re wondering “Which comics did a ‘May The Fourth Be With You’ joke today,” one of the answers is obviously that the dork-ass nerds over at Intelligent Life did it, which I’m not even going to bother showing you because you could’ve guessed that in advance. But if you’re wondering “Which comics did a ‘May The Fourth Be With You’ joke today and somehow managed to completely fuck up the phrasing in baffling ways,” then the possibly also not surprising answer is Herb and Jamaal, apparently.
Beetle Bailey, 5/4/26
OK, fine, newspaper comics are fundamentally an art form by and for old people at this point, but I still think that doing a strip whose punchline is “Everyone younger than 45 is literally an alien to me” is a little on the nose.
40 replies to “He’ll get that meth lab yet, I believe in him”
My money’s on Tommy and “Trixie” running into each other and bonding over their woes and long hair.
MW: Online romance, Tommy! What could go wrong?
Meanwhile at the Beedie apartment:
Tommy, alias “John Long”, alias Trixie: “I should have stayed on at the pig butchering scam centre! At least I had food and a job!”
Toby: “That’s why I make sure I’m never lonely! I have the parrots to talk to! What about you, Mary?”
Mary: “I have you parrots to talk to, too! Wait, did I say that out loud?”
BB: “I guess I could beat them into a mass of barely recognized fleshy pulp, but what even is the color of their blood? Are they toxic to us? Will it cause an intergalactic incident?”
Wrecks Moregone:
Ten minutes later Lonnie tries to climb in through Mae Mae’s window to blackmail her, mistakes the room, and is bashed over the noggin by Mud with a water jug.
Whatever is that pink light that’s reflecting off both Mae Mae’s and Mud’s faces, including grin underneath? Is Mud holding a torch between them, pointing up?
BB: That’s not what “green recruits” are.
Sarge’s problem with the new recruits is that they’re all naked.
JP … oh, forget whether you’re bad parents or friends, we’re stuck thinking that you’ve got the dumbest “sneaky way to get a message” tradecraft. A Little Orphan Annie decoder ring would have made more sense at this point. Actually, if April dug her CIA credentials out of a box of Crackerjacks, that would explain a lot.
DT Speaking of dumb, Tracy *really* went with doctored images of the imagined disguises of April 22, not a range of options, just… yeah, the *only* thing Doubleup would try is an anime biker get up, and BB wouldn’t be caught dead wandering Neo-Chicago in anything other than a barbershop quartet outfit. Sure. Right. Luckily the police didn’t have any imagination for Mumbles so put a hat on his pic making the ‘disguise’ photo vaguely recognizable *and* that he was the one going out!
Ph: “I happen to know he was just mentioned in the chronicles of the skull cave” What an oddly phrased sentence. Did you mean that you were just reading about it? Because you can just say that.
MW: Speaking of oddly phrased sentences, having two transitional phrases beginning your sentence just makes it confusing. Like, it almost sounds like you’re saying that Tommy is speaking of loneliness? Maybe he’s at his Camus literary discussion group.
H&J: Sorry, I’ve only ever seen the Turkish version of Star Wars. That is the catchphrase, right?”
BB: Ooops, looks like those nuclear experiments at Camp Swampy have finally caught up with them. Well, if you can’t beat them, have them join you! That’s the phrase, right?
BB Sarge, if you’ve dealt with all those generations, you are decades past mandatory retirement age. Let the Pentagon know about their mistake and take your pension.
Today’s strip contains deep Beetle Bailey lore. Sarge has been alive since the 1960s at least (canonically, he was a WWII vet), so he has had to train and shape several generations of recruits, each with its own culture, all turned into pieces in the American tapestry. He embodies the eternal Sergeant, forever ready to serve the USA. But on this 250th anniversary, Sarge feels he cannot perform his duty anymore, he cannot make Americans of these aliens, they are too different. I expected Shoe to go full nativist first, but I am not surprised it is Beetle Bailey
GA: Meh. At least Scancarelli wasn’t dumped by a cheerleader in the pharmacy.
MW: Or is that Tommy’s mom? I mean, it’s hard to tell them apart.
The USA is readying for war, the meat grinder demands fresh blood, so the Army was forced to lower its standards to increase its recruitment rate. That they are aliens is not a problem, but they surely do not meet the minimum height requirements!
Monty: Why is it that a cartoon animal wearing a thong is somehow more obscene than when that animal just walks around naked?
Of course it is autoresponse! Regular church folks know all the rituals and repeat them like trained monkeys, but do not feel them in any deep sense, so that they cannot distinguish a mild joke from the celebration of the Last Supper. That’s savage ravaging of organised religion, kudos!
Phantom: And this President was the one who dissed Schmelon Schmusk 2-3 storylines ago, was he not?
JP: ‘… but since we’ve joined the Movementarians our lives are so much better! We invite you to join us on the spaceship to Blisstonia! Nana nana nana Lee-derrr!!!’
My last name is “Weiner” so I can give advice: No one will ever take “Tommy Beedie” seriously. Go with “Tom.”
Makes sense that the Phantom would use a standing desk to stay swole.
The Phantom:
Lord knows this strip gives a lot of opportunity, but still, no reason to kink-shame.
Ph: Why does our hero look like he’s checking reservations at a particularly fashionable cave-lit restaurant? Of course he can’t watch the president on television, he’s got dinner prep!
H&J: A few years ago, the Catholic Church retranslated the liturgy and changed “And also with you” to “And with your spirit”. Now every time I go to a wedding or funeral, I stumble over the words and briefly the world feels strange and alien. Almost as strange and alien as it feels when I read “Hey, Rev, you made it by today!” printed in the newspaper as if we should all know what it means.
Looking ahead at the May schedule for Mary Worth: Tomorrow: Tommy cries out for help. May 11: Tommy goes on a men’s encounter with Ian, Wilbur and Carlos Alora. May 18: Tommy dies during the naked drum circle. May 25: Mary and Toby return to the spa for another self-congratulatory getaway.
Also The Phantom: Wait, who writes the Chronicles of Skull Cave, and where do they get their information? If it’s not Mr. Walker himself, is the cave not just sentient, but omnipotent? Do they keep a series of Woruba monks imprisoned in a back chamber, ceaselessly reading the papers from around Africa and using parchment and quill pens to transcribe relevant tidbits for the Phantom’s daily security briefing? It’s…it’s that, isn’t it.
Blondie Wow, Mary Worth’s self-congratulatory victory lap for doing nothing has managed to annoy other comic strips this time!
Beatniks, hippies, punks and goths. All subcultures not especially aligned with the military’s ethos of obedience and conformity.
Then, they throw in ‘Gen Xers*’, as ostensibly the whole generation is comprised of undesirable and irregular schmoes. Actually, I suppose that checks out.
*Hat tip to all Gen X folks named Jennifer and the amazing puns they’ve created with their name and ‘generation’.
The Ghost Who Influences — Chronicles of the Skull Cave is trending! Especially their new app Only Phantoms — what can Mr. Walker do for you today?
MW –After a long weekend with Mary, Toby had run through her limited conversation topics and was forced to repeat herself in an effort to fill the gaping maw of silence. Little did she suspect that the Vortex of Clumsy Transition would settle on Tommy
Herb and Jamaal, translated: “On May the fourth I’ll be with you” => “May the fourth, I’ll be with you” => “The fourth, I’ll be with you” => “The Lord be with you.” “Thank you, Rev. Croom, but we’re Pentecostals, we don’t use liturgy.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: That’s the part we’re supposed to wonder about before they plop down a mundane explanation – the Phantoms write the Chronicles, it’s sometimes shown in the strip. So, is it “I wrote it myself during an amnesiac phase”, “the guy’s actually waayyy older than he looks and my dad wrote about his youth”, or “there’s a Bandar prophecy about Ivory Lana and i’m jealous of the elders my ancestor got the work with because *this* one isn’t Nostradamus-vague but gave specific details of his name, date of birth and the assassination that will kill him in 8 days if we don’t do something”. But like a guy in an alien mask, somehow they’ll make it less interesting than it first appears.
@Ettorre: Side eye, but also every preacher knows shouting out “The Lord be with you!” is how you get people’s attention so you can start the potluck dinner after church.
The Phantom: What kind of smug-ass response is that, Walker? “I happen to know Goranda was mentioned in the Chronicles of the Skull Cave, a thing that I write. Me, The Phantom!”
MW: Oh, good, I wasn’t the only one who briefly thought Tommy was the escaped John “Trixie” Long.
But Not Cthulhu, I think you’re being overly optimistic with the timeline — even the relatively-brief Harv and Trixie story took over two months.
@pugfuggly: I suspect the odd phrasing of just mentioned in the chronicles” is because The Phantom is about to go into a flashback, where we see a young Goranda’s adventure with the current Phantom’s predecessor.
Herb and Jamaal:
While the phrase “the Lord be with you” (Dominus vobiscum in Latin) is used by a variety of Christian denominations, it is most closely associated with Roman Catholicism. The response, Et cum spiritu tuo, is traditionally rendered in English as “and also with you”, which is the version used by Reverend Croom’s unseen parishioner. However, in 2011 the Vatican changed the official translation to “and with your spirit” to more accurately reflect the original Latin. From this evidence I am forced to conclude that Reverend Croom is running a reactionary Sedevacantist church that regards the Second Vatican Council and all subsequent innovations as heretical.
OMG TOBY! You’re still talking about Dick Cravat?!? Is life with Ian that tedious that you can carry this single topic of conversation through an entire spa day through to the next morning?!?! Both of you know Wilbur Wilkins! Surely even when he’s not being the central character he’s getting his head stuck in a vase or something!
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Beatniks? Beatniks? Snorkle is, at his possible oldest, a Gen Xer himself because… yeah, that tracks (but weird lumping an entire generation in with lifestyle choices). He might have come across a hippy or two which would be weird because nobody in the US would have been drafted since he was old enough to join the army, but beatniks? I don’t dig it, daddy-o.
I hope Toby remembers to take the cucumber slices off her eyes before she drives home.
Phantom:
“Say, what’s to eat for Devil and me, honey? — I’m ready for a Duran Duran dinner.”
“A ‘Duran Duran’ dinner?!?”
“Yep. I’m hungry, like the wolf!”
@Tabby Lavalamp: Also, I remain convinced that there were more beatniks in the comic strips than in San Francisco.
MW:
It stands to reason that Mary would have brought her purple cowl to Claremont. Otherwise, her streak of having worn it for 853 consecutive days would have been interrupted.