Mary is FAR too old to be these two’s mother by the way, I’m just going to say it
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Dennis the Menace, 5/31/26
I know that “Dennis isn’t being menacing at all in this one” is one of my (hopefully) beloved running bits, but I’m really not sure how they’re gonna top today’s installment, in which Henry is clearly starting to panic and Dennis with childlike innocence calms him down and offers a practical solution that quickly solves their problem. Dennis The Very Helpful Child would not be a very popular comic strip if marketed in that way but here we are!
Mary Worth, 5/31/26
Aw, isn’t that sweet! Mary is like a second mother to both Tommy and Dawn, which means they can’t hook up, that would be incest, please do not allow them to hook up. Anyway, “self-abuse” is usually a euphemism for masturbation, right? He’s running to make up for years of jerking off? I don’t think this is something I would tell to my newly discovered spiritual sister or a girl I was trying to hook up with. I think that would be bad either way.
Blondie, 5/31/26
Contemporary masculinity is constricting in really odd and unfortunate ways. Like, I think for most of the last 50 years or so we would’ve accepted a guy who likes to loudly sing old Dean Martin songs in the bathtub as being well within the boundaries of manhood, but apparently now we need to establish that Dagwood is using an extremely masc shampoo during this whole process. It doesn’t smell good, like shampoo a woman would use! Its odor is truly unpleasant. That’s how you know it’s for men!
165 replies to “Mary is FAR too old to be these two’s mother by the way, I’m just going to say it”
Mary Worth:
“She’s like a second mom to me. You know — like a ‘Mommie Dearest,’ or a ‘Ma‘ Barker.”
Mary Worth:
“If you arranged all of my worthless bromides in a three-dimensional display, would that be a ‘Dyerama’?”
— Wayne D.
MW: Extra negative points if he confesses said self-abuse was committed while thinking of any of the following people nekkid:
1) Dawn
2) Mary
3) Zach
4) Wilbur
5) Aldo
Blondie: The shampoo must smell like baking mozzarella cheese.
Luann: At least he didn’t spin around and collapse imitating a ‘dumb’ animal like his ‘smart’ daughter…
S4th: Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
JP: ‘The explanation is we need more booze money, Ann, because no one is going to hire two rummies like us. So hop to, woman!’
MW: They had learned to love Big Mother…
MW: Dawn is also unsure what Tommy means by “self-abuse.” That’s why she has a fist ready for action in the next-to-last panel.
Blondie:
“…that’s amore!”
“Wow! — the dude’s singing about eels!”
Mary Worth:
“She’s like a second mom to me!”
“That’s interesting — because when I asked her way back when what happened to you following your conviction, she said, ‘The only thing that beat him to the big house was the lights on the bus!’ “
DtM:
“Have you seen your mother, maybe, standing in the shadows?”
“Nah — she’s in our last panel, with a lot of other regular-looking people!”
Blondie: When you deliver a pizza to the Bumsteads, don’t even bother with a box. Just put it on the hood of your car to keep it warm. If you’re lucky, he’ll even put on a bathrobe when he runs out to get it.
MW – “Don’t worry, Dawn. I haven’t given up self-abuse forever, and I’ve just added you to my spank bank.”
The last two Blondie panels could easily have been a daily strip on their own. I’ve seen plenty of “daily strips stretched to Sunday length” in my day, but I haven’t seen one where the content used to stretch it out has such a tangential relationship with the punchline.
Blondie-“Macho, macho man I gotta be a macho man”
Slylock Fox-Slylock discovered that Shady was illiterate.
MW-About today’s quote. Everything in the universe is imperfect. The only perfect thing is Mary Worth.
MW-And I read nothing from Tommy and Brandy’s conversation implying a breakup.
FC-“Who posted pictures of me on the Internet,” Thel asks.
Family Circlejerk – I think it was Thursty Thurston who rang the doorbell although there are many other candidates out there.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – So Sideburns Guy is pimping Mae Mae out. Now we know the true story of the Glenwood Motel.
@Bob Tice: Don’t get me started, you’ll regret it.
“When an eel nips your heel and a-maka-you squeal, that’s a moray.”
“He’s a comic, a ham, and his name’s Amsterdam, that’s a Morey.”
“When our habits are strange and our customs deranged, that’s our mores.”
JP: With the sudden pivot to “let’s get Ann a job as a sassy waitress,” Judge Parker has outdone its previous record for dropped story lines. What happened to Bogdan and the stolen car? Is Charlotte still crying in the barn? Is the CIA still running a Norwegian operation?
Blondie: Daggy chose Manly-Man Shampoo™ in the Sweaty Gym Sock scent. It gets Blondie off.
Alice’s attempt to run away from her horrible husband and son was thwarted again. Keep on trying, Alice, I believe in you!
MW: “Me? Oh, I’ve just been lurking behind shrubbery and passing judgment, while contributing absolutely nothing to the world. Same old.”
BLONDIE: There’s manly, and then there’s Dagwood-manly. There’s no way that shampoo doesn’t reek of deli meats.
Tommy and Dawn are correct. Many people, including me, when thinking about Mary say “she’s a real mother…”
Where did Dagwood get “shampoo… FOR MEN!”? Does the podcasters he listen to have a line of such products? Dagwood would not care about crypto or reactionary politics, but I guess he would religiously listen to a podcast preaching a highly caloric diet without vegetables
The perspective in “Blondie”’s last panel is terrible but at least we can be sure it is not AI, just legacy comics craftsmanship
@21 Ettorre: Is your question serious? Every major grocery store and large drugstore has a selection of shampoo for men.
Tommy uses the term “self-abuse” because Mary told Tommy he could learn something about addiction by watching the classic movie “The Man with a Golden Arm” but Tommy is a Gen Z who doesn’t watch black and white movies, so he assumed it was about masturbation
@Baja Gaijin: Sure the stores have shampoo designed for men’s scalps. But this is “manly-man shampoo”, which implies a product designed to prey on masculine insecurity
@Josh Ggbet: Interesting take on Mary’s age. It really makes you wonder about the dynamics in these stories.
It’s perhaps more revealing of the psycho-dynamics of the story creators.
The threat to Dagwood’s masculinity isn’t so much the Dean Martin songs as the “slutty French maid costume” bathrobe.
@25 Ettorre: Yeah, we’re not shopping at the same stores. I always laugh when read the labels.
@Ken:
“When you ask for the name/Of the treat in the flame/That’s ‘smore,’ eh?”
“What’s the word — not arcane — meaning ‘love,’ when in Spain?/That’s ‘amor,’ eh?”
“OK, dad, now Crazy Ivan! Uh, one ping only!! Sorry, that’s all I got from the memes. I’m way too young to have watched Red October or Run Silent Run Deep.”
@Ken: They’ve dropped tons of JP storylines, but they *did* note the car was found abandoned.
Blondie:
I’m fixated on the rubber duck in today’s strip. For one thing, it’s not yellow, and since this is a Sunday strip the odds are good that that is the cartoonist’s original vision. I’m sure there are plenty of white rubber ducks out there available for purchase, but in a visually conservative medium like comic strips it’s a shocking innovation. It’s also not floating on the water, instead sitting precariously on the edge of the bathtub while it’s forced to be audience to Dagwood’s off-key warbling. Finally, it just appears in the second panel of the second row—it’s not there in the previous panel, and Dagwood isn’t carrying it at any point. I’m not sure how or if these facts form a coherent whole, and you may think it’s pedantic to harp on such minor details, but considering Dagwood specifically mentions it I feel justified in focusing on it, especially since the alternative is to just pay attention to the quintillionth “ha ha, Dagwood sure likes food!” punchline.
Blondie: Second take. The first one was spoiled when the Pizza Guy said: “It’s that bum, Dagstead”
DtM: Funny that the artist includes a bit of Alice’s legs in the shot to show that she too isn’t riding on someone’s shoulders. Thereby removing the one interesting thought one might have about today’s comic.
@CanuckDownSouth: Which basically amounted to the same thing. Did the cops do any investigation as to who ‘stole’ it? Did they not question Ann about the ‘theft’ since she was the last person to be in charge of the vehicle? Did Bogdan keep the big honking wrench for a souvenir or did he leave it (and his fingerprints) behind? Further, if he ‘abandoned’ the car close enough to Cavelton for the local cops to find it (as opposed to the Highway Patrol or cops from two towns over) then doesn’t that mean Bogdan’s still somewhere in Cavelton, probably dying from internal injuries?
No time for all that! Judgey Wudgey needs his pleasant but tasty meal and meandering conversation with Ernest Borgnine at the local greasy spoon!
@Ken:
When I was in undergrad, I learned that the resident advisor for the dorm in which I was housed was none other than a burrowing rodent! “Vole R.A., whoa, oh! Vole R.A., whoa, oh, oh, oh!” I exclaimed upon making the discovery.
Wary Morth:
“Mary’s like a second mum to you too? Oh, so we’re like brother and sister! Thank heavens, I now have the perfect excuse to not submit to being your summer romance!”
____________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
“Keep this going? Are you crazy? How many days do you think people will be interested in coming here to eat your less than mediocre food just because some of it is being served by a washed out ex Hollywood actress?…..oh, right, I see why your café was a failure all these days now.”
____________________________________
Flylock Socks:
Shady: “Ha ha, the joke’s on you, jackal: shrews can’t read!”
____________________________________
Murky Tail:
“Rabid Rusty” would be a good name for a death metal band.
RMMD Are you going to stay around so we can keep this going? Because clearly everyone will find this ex-celeb waitress just as fascinating the 2nd, 3rd or 356th time and I’m already planning for this to be the new normal because I have as much business acumen as ability to check the identity of waitstaff I’m hiring.
DT I’m trying to figure out what’s more likely – Sam’s grabbing a baton because the way to survive a car crash in the Tracyverse is to punch out the impact, or he’s actually trying to get this newfangled “seatbelt” contraption to work in the split second before the collision.
JP I wonder why the inking lines are so much thicker on the Sunday than the weekdays, I didn’t think they got shrunk more.
BF Look, if you still want to do dailies but don’t want to do the full week so you stick a couple on the Sunday you’ve pledged to continue, I get it. But please stick to top/bottom rows like last week not side-by-side 2x2s. This is confusing to read.
Archie—Ahh, stamping prices on cans. Nothing takes us back 50 years than having that clicker hanging around your waist and stamping everything. Fun fact: did you know that hairspray and Kleenex will remove the price? Spent many hours stamping and then later removing prices as they changed. None of those damn scanners for us!
Blondie: Yes, “That’s Amore” is nearly seventy-five years old at this point and long ceased to be culturally relevant except as a pun setup. But it’s been previously established that all of Dagwood’s musical selections are food-based, so it’s in character.
MW: Yeesh, we’re barely past the first plot point and the characters are already singing Mary’s praises! At this rate the three-week post-mortem will be unendurable.
(Discussion topic: Which title character is more aggressively shilled by their author, Mary Worth or Gil Thorp? Talk amongst yourselves.)
@MKay: “There’s no way that shampoo doesn’t reek of deli meats.”
You’ve also described Dagwood’s sweat, voided liquid, solid waste, and precious bodily fluids. With that kind of scent, how does Blondie know that he’s showered at all?
Blondie: What kind of accent is “When ze moon hits a-yoo eye” meant to be? It’s certainly not from within a thousand miles of Dean Martin’s. When I read it, I can only hear a Hogan’s Heroes comedy Nazi, perhaps making fun of one of his Italian Axis comrades.
DTM: And that was the last time the Mitchells ever dared step outside their gated suburb.
MW: Today’s strip made me realise an awful truth – Mary Worth is in fact closer in age to my mother than my grandmother. It would not sound weird if I referred to a 65-75 year old retiree as my second mother. Of course, I’m an aging millennial with two kids and a mortgage, and not a stoner slacker who is a plausible love interest to a college student, but you know.
I don’t think Mary is too old to be Tommy and Dawn’s mother. She has white hair and wrinkles, but that’s not unusual for people in their 60s. Certainly that was her age in 1934, when she started selling apples, and she hasn’t changed since then. Tommy and Dawn would be remarkably immature if they were in their 30s or 40s as they appear to be, but then again they would be remarkably immature if they were 15.
C’shaft: “By the way, I took out a second mortgage in your name to pay for all this. You don’t mind, do you?”
DT: Going by the throwaway panel, Ettinger is looking forward to the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Dustin: “My laziness and lack of motivation are better than your laziness and lack of motivation, because I’m a middle-aged white man and the universe revolves around me and my preferences.”
JP: “If only I knew someone who practiced law, or who did so for the balance of his adult life!”
@Voshkod: Henry does seem like the kind of guy who’d have a BluRay of Das Boot on a shelf. Maybe Dennis was forced to sit through that?
(Excellent movie, but not if you’re an eternal six year old with the attention span of a guppy)
DtM – What Dennis doesn’t know is that Henry is already planning to play submarine later that night when he gives her a torpedo amidships.
@Unca Bob: There are states where you still have to do that (as of 2012 at least). I worked at the corporate office of a low-end retail chain. Some stores had to stick prices on every individual candy bar, every tin of cat food, every 5-cent plastic impulse toy in the place. That sounds like one of the circles of hell.
Blondie: Know who really shouldn’t be using manly-man shampoo? The two-man pizza delivery team elbow -to-elbow in the tiny Pizza Shack car with the windows up: I hope they aren’t running the a/c, or that pile of pizzas in the back will be cold as well as soggy.
Gasoline Alley:
“You’ve seen Lorna Starr this week–do you want that to happen to you?”
“She’s got a pleasant demeanor, plus her sweet face and curvy plushness are easy on the eyes. So, yes.”
Zits: A pig and a zebra? One half of that pizza has evidence in a capital crime. Where is Slylock Fox when we need him, or would he rather devote his powers to solving petty, petty thievery instead of murders?
H&L: “You want to be Thirsty Thurston? Keep
gamblingplaying predictive markets on your phone while you’re drunk.” is the warning a lot of people need to hear.Blondie: I don’t think the shampoo qualifies as “Manly-Man” if it results in Dagwood’s usual hair style.
@Ken: Bogdan drove away, treating the car nicely and left it somewhere that it could be recovered with no damage or fuss. Alan has it back. He may have even driven it to the diner, I forget.
As for Charlotte, I’m really looking forward to forward to seeing the hilarity that must ensue. Charlotte’s theme these days is that she wants honesty above all from her caregivers, sees through bullshit likes it’s a dress being worn at the Oscars, and has found only Neddy to be worthy.
Can’t wait to see how this gets spun.
Blondie: Pizza delivery guys say things like “ain’t” and “that dude.” If they were educated, they would have nice office jobs where they can sleep in their wooden desk chairs until the boss comes in to kick them in the ass.
Dtm- careful Henry that Dennis doesn’t drop a depth charge whiles he’s on your shoulders.
@Ken: 15 “When your neighbor intrudes with her lame platitudes that’s a-Mary…when she’s bringing Salmon Squares and meddling in your affairs that’s a-Mary. .When both Dawn and Tommy think of her as a mommy that’s a-Mary…”
MW: “Do some push-ups, Pablo; it’ll go away!”
@Ettorre: There actually is “manly-man” shampoos (and other products) that are designed to turn basic gender-netural products into something specifically for the insecure male ego. I mean on this very website, I’ve seen ads for adult diapers…for HIM with packaging done up in all jet black and everything. I’m sure there’s a podcaster bro-dude whose feeling relieved that he can now shit himself without looking like a “sissy.” (Incidentally, I’ve also seen “targeted ads” here that imply that everyone reading this blog has large tits and (apparently) no bra. Josh you’ve got an…uh…interesting following here, that’s for sure.)
MARY WORTH: Tommy: “Mary is like a second mother to me. My first mother would never plant a vegetable garden or talk to me because she’s much too busy doing it with a guy that looks kinda like me, but richer.” Tommy stops jogging and looks like her had the wind knocked out of him as he digested what he just said and finally realized the implication.
Dawn (offering a comforting shoulder) : “Oh no, Tommy. Don’t be sad. My dad also neglects me for out-of-left-field sex partners.”
Tommy: “Oh, Dawn!” (They proceed to make out.)
DtM – Maybe Alice went to the moon….
MW – Everything is perfect in the universe – especially your desire to meddle with it….
Blondie – Dag left a big man-poo in the tube. Now there’s the perfect universe….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Blondie: I hope Dag took a bar of Irish Spring in there. Can’t have his armpits smelling like a bunch of violets while his hair smells like bacon.
JP: “We could use some extra income around here. And you can bring home the leftover food people leave on their plates. And some of those saltines wrapped in cellophane. A lot of those, come to think of it.”
DT: I bet Double Up wishes he’d asked for one of those semi-automatics NOW. You can’t swing a bullwhip from the back seat of a sedan.
RMMD: “If I hired an escaped serial killer to wait tables alongside you, I bet we’d draw in even more gawk— uh, customers.”
@Bob Tice: 29-“When you work half a day at a Motel Cafe that’s a- Mae Mae “
@Bob Tice: 29-“When you work half a day at a Motel Cafe that’s a- Mae Mae “
61 Sorry for the double post
Dennis the Menace: You know what would really help in a situation like this? Cell phones — the kind that all adults have with them all the time, and which make it really easy to find someone even when they’re out of your direct line of sight. Of course, given Henry’s “city living” outfit of a striped sweater-vest over a bold green shirt with a popped collar, this whole scenario might be taking place around 1983 — in which case, his brick-like portable phone device would be far too large for him to keep in his pocket on a trip downtown.
JP’s bringing back the crop top, I see. Back in the 2000s, it was nothing but crop tops. Abbey accidentally got high on marijuana brownies while cosplaying as Daisy Duke. Somewhere along the line, they got a new artist who drew everyone more conservatively…until now…!
Mary Worth – Brandy “wants space,” so they’re separated!? When did that happen?
JP – Waitressing is hard work. I would think that the judge would find Ann a little sinecure job where all she would have to do is sit around and try to look attractive. With his connections, Alan could surely persuade the office to ignore Ann’s pesky felony convictions.
Lockhorns – Everyone is wrong but him. The technical term for this is Frazzism.
– Compensating for tiny dick was also taken.
– Mr. Jive and I are currently bingeing the second season of The Pitt, so we got a kick out of the middle panel.
Rex Morgan – Yeah, People magazine scrapped their cover story on Taylor Swift’s upcoming wedding to do a thirty page story on this.
9CL – I can’t figure out if Brooke draws a new comic every time or if this is the 5000th rerun of the same strip.
Breaking Cat News – No snark, that is so sweet. I can imagine Georgia Dunn doing those drawings when she was in grade school.
FC – We know that it wasn’t the postman who rang the doorbell. He always rings twice.
@Ukulele Ike: On RMMD – Hey, if it worked for Norman Bates…
@2+2=7: Today my targeted ads are for La-Z-Boy recliners and Medicare. Sigh.
MW – Heh heh. He said “self-abuse.” Tommy’s been reading Science Fact for the Immature.
MW – Heh heh. He said “self-abuse.” Tommy’s been reading Science Facts for the Immature. (It’s serendipity that I nabbed the #69 spot by correcting a typo.)
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’m leaving soon to spend a month or two abroad”
“I had already deduced something of the sort”
“From certain subtle indications”
DT: Okay, so I guess “black cars” in inverted commas really doesn’t have anything to do with the colour of the cars. And I was correct in guessing one of them would be green! It still seems confusing.
MW: Oh, that’s the issue – Tommy has trouble with metaphorical language! He knows that he and Brandy are “seperated” in the literal sense that she is currently somewhere he isn’t, and he hopes that they’ll “get back together” in that she’ll return to where he is. And because those phrases can also refer to the ending or reignition of a relationship, he thinks it’s the same thing!
S4th: “You know, Hil’s past self told her about her graphic novel being a success. I guess if I’m broke in the future, you don’t have any good news about my novel?”
“The bad news is you never write the novel. The worse news is you end up writing a dumb comic strip that’s supposedly about a judge, and manage to make it even more implausible than the last writer did!”
@Bob Tice: Nice! and groan. But nice!
The Mitchells are a modern suburban family, so the big city is already a terrifying place full of danger and shadowy ne’er-do-wells to them (the visual metaphor in this strip is a little too on the nose, if you ask me). If you lose sight of your wife for a second, there’s a good chance she’s already been trafficked or invited to join a hippy commune. Also, Henry and Alice don’t have cell phones for some reason.
***
Uh oh. Asking “How ’bout you, Dawn? How’re you doin’ nowadays?” to the daughter of Wilbur Weston in a sure-fire way to careen off the road to recovery.
Crankshaft: Did the dream of the black hole inspire Ed to build himself a deep well into oblivion?
DT: So far Soly Tare’s plan is going great. Taking down the trio of Beady, Mumbles and Double up will occupy most of the day – what with the shoot out, recapping of the shoot out, and paperwork. He’ll be long gone by the time Tracy and the MCU remember there were many other crimes. The grid is till down. And the electrical company are going to priortize places like hospitals, nursing home facilities over banks, jewelry stores, so it will be awhile before some places will even be identified as being hit.
JP: The old judge just needed to walk out and get a jolt of reality – thank you helpful counterman!
RMMD: The novelty will wear out fast, and especially when it will barely last 24 hours in today’s news cycle
“Manly-man shampoo?” As in “for men”? I’m not buying it. The bottle isn’t slate blue or gun metal grey, nor does its shape have any hard edges or corners. The label is bereft of any wood grain or diamond plating. This is not a true mens lifestyle product. At best Dagwood is about to wash his weird antennae hair with regular old Irish Spring. Manly, yes, but I have it on good authority that Blondie likes it too.
@Horace Broon: …Hil’s past self…
Um, future self, obviously…
Dennis The Menace: This is actually pretty menacing because Dennis is foiling his mother’s attempt to abandon her family. Nobody escapes on his watch!
Mary Worth: Anyone remember that theory we bounced around here some years ago that Wilbur was actually Mary’s son, hence why treats him like she does? Just reminding.
Also Mary Worth: Is it just me, or is Tommy being transmogrified into a clone of Jared?
Blondie: The funniest part of this is that the artist is seriously trying to portray Dagwood as muscular even though he’s very blatantly a malnourished stringbean any other time. It’s like that gag in the anime “How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift” where the main male character looks like a cliche anime prettyboy until he takes off his shirt and suddenly has the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
@Anonymous: No problem. It was funny enough to read twice.
@Rover Berkeley: re: JP: Hey, remember when the two 21-year-old NYU girls got invited to a Hamptons party for embarrassingly rich people, and decided to dress in identical shapeless calf-length shifts?
“You wear the green one, and I’ll wear the pink.”
“Great! All those billionaires won’t be able to take their eyes off our completely concealed figures!”
This fucking comic. Ugh, here we go….
REX MORGAN M.D.: Panel #2: “I still prefer Mae Mae.” Well you can forget about that sweetie! No one wants a menu signed by “Mae Mae.” The entire selling point for the motel cafe is that Lorna Starr works there and that Lorna Starr is in Glenwood right now. So yeah, you’re back to the Hollywood grind but this time with a lot less pay! Winning!
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): Panel #3: Doug, the Guy With More Hair than Brains: “As the manager and owner of this establishment, naturally I’m the guy with the least awareness of what goes on inside it. So please tell the audience for the 100th fucking time what this story’s premise is, even though it’s thin and flimsy enough that
Luann Degroota child could have figured it out simply with context clues and common sense. And can you make sure that the recap is as pointless and meandering as possible? It’s a Sunday strip and we have panel space to waste.”@Rover Berkeley: Oh, so Judge Parker is going back to it’s roots!
Rex Morgan: Seven panels today, yet no word on if The Artist Formerly Known as “Mud Mountain” got his coffee refill. What a disappointment.
Blondie – “It’s that dude, Bumstead, who is single-handedly responsible for keeping Pizza Shack in business! Now help me stack these pizzas at his door and we’ll go back for the second load.”
@Ettorre: @Ken:
#16. JP: Ken, I LUV your amore homophones.
Dropped storylines:
April is indestructible so no need to worry about her, just try to save the people around her.
After finding Charlotte crying in barn, Ned did the responsible thing and took her to Abbey to console. However she failed to give Abbey info so Bogdan will knock at Abbeys door and collect Charlotte.
Others have said car was found abandoned.
Alan realized that when he tried to coerce Ann into the diner job, he was repeating himself. Brain damaged by alcohol but not quite an idiot he abandoned idea because he wants different results
@Anonymous:
#62. RMMD: so nice, it was worth reading twice. Count me weird, but with this arc RMMD is first strip I open
@Ukulele Ike: 78-Thanks!
I found a coffee house that’s just up Ukulele Ike’s alley (not literally).
MW- Suppose Tommy and Dawn did get married. Wilbur would then be Tommy’s Father-in-law. So which one addresses the other as “Meathead”?
DTM: Sorry, Alice, this attempt to ditch your husband and son and start a new life has failed. Better luck next time, though!
MW: I’m just impressed that Dawn and Tommy can have a lengthy and quite wordy conversation while running through the mountains. Their conversation isn’t even interrupted by frequent, loud gasps of air.
Blondie: This Blondie ends just as it’s getting to the interesting part. Yeah, we know Dagwood is a self-indulgent manchild who likes his “me time.” That’s old news. What interests me is the weird Training Day for Pizza Delivery Guys scenario going on in the last panel. “Okay, this is the home of Dagwood Bumstead. Yeah, I didn’t believe it either, but that’s his name. Anyway, we call him the White Whale because he’s white and he eats pizza in large quantities. You know, like a whale might do if whales ate pizza.”
@Anonymous:
When your coiffure is poor, like a big pompadour/That’s a snore, eh?
Mary Worth:
“What kind of self-abuse, Tommy?”
“Well, I woul read, and then comnent daily on, comic strips!”
DtM: “Okay Dad now launch the torpedo!”
“Dennis….”
“I’m going to lay an oil slick and fool the enemy!”
“Dennis, no…”
“Now to rig for silent running!”
“Oh Dennis what did you eat?”
@Baja Gaijin: If they expect me to stay in there until I solve the puzzle, they had better get some comfortable chairs.
MW: “I’m running to make up for years of self abuse!”
“Wow, you do that too?”
DENNIS THE MENACE: I see they censored out Alice’s thought balloon.
Alice (thinking): Damn it! I was THIS close to escaping!
MW: So how’s everything with you, Dawn? Are you still the campus bicycle?
DtM: Dennis yells, “Torpedoes, los!” and with a whooshing sound drops a deuce on Henry’s head. Now that’s menacing.
Blondie: Back in the late 70s or early 80s a stand up comic made a joke about trying one of those “manly-man” soaps but his parents got tired of him singing pirate songs in the shower.
LUANN: Brad: Dad I’m.planning to chop off your arms later on, so I want you to get used to lifting yourself up without using your hands as support….”
Papa Degroot: “Wait, what’s this about my arms?”
Brad: “Oh nothing….” (Whistles inconspicuously and then walks away.)
LUANN (2): Brad is up to something “sus”, because that advice seems like a bunch of bologna. This dumb manoeuver would merely test your leg strength at most and it seems like it would be to the detriment of older people more than anything else.
Regarding “manly-man shampoo”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUjh4DE8FZA
By Allie Brosh, who is the best.
@Bob Tice: 90-” When you’re ogling young asses through coke bottle glasses/ That’s Wilbur, eh?”
@Anonymous:
If your post shows two times/And you’re seeking out rhymes/That’s a “foray.”
@Activist: 85- Thanks. Rex has always been my opener. My Sister and I used to have a lot of fun with RMMD-back in those days there was no internet. But we sure had typewriter white out! We would white out and re-write the captions and make um…let’s just say..certain artistic amendments!
@Anonymous: Bravo! Bravissimo!
@93 Ukulele Ike: You’re clever and they have comfortable chairs.
@Ukranazi Stepan: “Mary’s like a second mum to you too? Oh, so we’re like brother and sister! Thank heavens, I now have the perfect excuse to not submit to being your summer romance!”
The penny just dropped. We just finished a story where the lesson was that people in their 70s don’t need romantic or sexual love, if they just have a good relationship with their families. This is clearly the follow-on to that, where we learn the same is true of people in their 20s.
@Little Blue Bicycle: A submarine sandwich.
Don’t you remember? You paid for it.
@2+2=7: Quite possibly. Since it began in the ’50s, a few decades before my time, I don’t know much about early strips (aside from what Wikipedia says). But I wouldn’t be surprised.
@Rover Berkeley: I meant that there was an infamous era on this strip colloquially known as “Juggs Parker“
@treetown:
Where the painting displays/How his garden’s ablaze/That’s a Monet!
MW: Mary’s just like a mother to me, Dawn. She tells me a lot, like how you fuck your professors for decent grades.
PV: I’ve got a feeling the writers started this whole long, lost sister story to give Val a big foreign adventure but now as a afterthought they have to whip up a backstory as to how this sister became long, lost.
@Gil Bates: (6) Slylock Fox
The Familliar Mucus: Nice to see the Shmoo got a gig as “Nobody” after “Lil Abner” folded.
What A Frazzhole!: “……I’m leaving Mallet and going to work for Bill Watterson!”
@GarrisonSkunk: It’s really blatant today, isn’t it? This doesn’t get enough attention, although there are so many other issues with Frazz that it gets lost.
Copying another artist’s style raises a lot of questions.
SlylickFox And Comix For Kinky Kids: 1) “One small step for a duck, One giant leap for quicker kind!”
2) Hey Bonoco Bill/ Who did you kill?
Late Thread Cuisine: Is this recipe a rerun?
@GarrisonSkunk: Quacker kind, spell check!
@Baja Gaijin: Late Thread Cuisine: Is this recipe a rerun?
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Technically, it just gives you the runs.
@I speak Jive: Has Watterson made any public comments about Mallett’s “tribute” to his work?
Maybe you and your girlfriend will get back together when she’s finished her family quest! Yes, you’re geometrically separated since she wanted to move through space, but that sort of temporary occurrence doesn’t always mean the end of a relationship! I mean, I also don’t want to rule out that she’s sick of you not understanding simple concepts like how partners don’t have to be in the same room every second, but you never know!
@GarrisonSkunk: From what I can see, Watterson doesn’t make public comments about anything much. He must know about this, but his own life has moved on.
Dennis Minus Menace: The menace comes into play when they come near a beautiful girl and Dennis yells, “LOCK AND LOAD TORPEDOES, DAD!”
@Rube: He must know about this, but his own life has moved on.
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Good for him.I hope he doesn’t give up cartooning.
@Baja Gaijin: that’s just up Ukulele Ike’s alley
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My favorite Old time radio show, I loved when Fred Allen would hold town hall meetings!
@Baja Gaijin: What’s the yen/dollar conversion rate?
Dennis is Menacing me in particular by making me think of the “Jason! Jason!” scene from pretentious 2010 “video game” Heavy Rain. So, uh… good job?
@125 GarrisonSkunk: 100 yen equals 67 cents.
Did anyone else see the Blondie throw away panel and for a second think Dag was wearing one of Blondie’s dresses,and was excited about attending some kind of cross dressing shindig? Just me,huh?
@Baja Gaijin: Thank you, Baja.
@Dmsilev: Where’s the boot, dad? Where’s the damn boot?
@2+2=7: Aha. I see. I wonder if the Juggs Parker era was early to mid 2000s.
MW: As the family of land clams looks on, the father land clam nudges the mother land clam and grins knowingly. “Those two have rocks in their heads.”
Blondie: You know, I’ve never seen two guys partnered up like uniform cops to make pizza deliveries. On the other hand, I don’t live in a town that also has Dagwood Bumstead. And since Dagwood seems like he’s going to order a pizza while naked, maybe it is a hazardous job.
MW: “At this point though…we don’t know what will happen.” Isn’t this pretty much still the point where Brandy is picking up her rental car in Orlando?
@GarrisonSkunk: I don’t know, either.
When I first saw the Frazz comic, I wondered if he was intended to be a grown up Calvin. The ripped off art style bothered me a lot at first, but I soon discovered that there were so many other issues about the strip that I hated.
@Rube: Do you remember when he collaborated with Stephan Pastis several years ago on a few Pearls Before Swine strips?
My favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips were the realistically drawn ones with Calvin and Susie Derkins looking like adults in a soap opera strip. In one, Susie said that she stopped at the hospital on her way home to have a baby.
@Rover Berkeley: There was a memorable JP scene around 2008 where a busty private detective (“Rusty?”) wore a gown three sizes too small to a formal party and the bodice exploded during dinner. I don’t remember quite how Josh handled it.
(As the anecdote goes, “with two warmed spoons.”)
@Rover Berkeley: Yep. Pretty much the timeframe of when this blog began all the way until the Marciuliano reign of terror. (Although Manley did try to keep hope alive with his boobsocks and sweater puppies.
@I speak Jive: “Our baby is a RABBIT?”
C-Shaft: Crankshaft makes a lot of orders from Bean’s End, you say? Next you’ll tell me that Andy Capp is always at the pub but never buys a round.
FC: If you say that “Nobody wanted to see Thel naked” it does make more sense if you’re talking about a sawed-off ghost.
JP: The old adage that “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead” now has the addendum “as long as the one that survives isn’t Alan Parker.”
Luann: Leave lines like “Good job dad! You’re still a stud!” in extremely dodgy online erotica where they belong.
Phantom: If two Bandar can narrate your thoughts when only one of them is even kind of looking at you, stay away from the poker tables.
RMMD: “Because God knows the food isn’t enough to keep the customers coming back.”
S4th: Future Ted thinks he can improve his lot by robbing his past self, so I guess Ted’s plateaued mentally.
@Ken: Thanks!
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: FC: The neighbors (male) are praying for the wind to blow the door shut and lock automatically.
Nice to know it’s all hopeless because Trudeau tells us so. Jesus, this strip has lost all value beyond shrieking.
@Ukulele Ike:
Deep dive, well done!
@Ukulele Ike: I know! I have to laugh just thinking of that strip.
@A Grave Mind: Exploding bodice or rabbit baby? Hey, those were two of MY favorites, too.
@Baja Gaijin:
I see capers, that is an excellent start
Blondie: My Old Spice shampoo/conditioner says “Man-ificent clean hair”
Am I…. Dagwood???
@Artist formerly known as Ben: When I was a kid, watching Full House….
One of the few episodes I remember (i.e didn’t block out) is when Uncle Joey took a bath, and wouldn’t finish it.
The others are saying “He has to eat sometime”
Then a pizza delivery guy hands Joey a pizza from the bathroom window.
@The Rambling Otter: Never really considered John Stamos as a candidate for live action Dagwood before.
@2+2=7: Nope, the sit-to-rise test made a splash (checking) in spring 2025 with a study following thousands of patients middle-aged and older for years. It was a strong predictor of cardiovascular health (and death risk) in the next decade.
MW: Why does Dawn have such a long neck? In order to reach her head, obviously.
MW: Self-abuse. Tommy’s got an Only Fans page that Dawn doesn’t know about (yet).
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Wrong actor, you mean Dave Coulier. Does that change the visualization any?
@Baja Gaijin: Vitello tonnato is still delicious, a day later!
June is just around the corner. Go to your local retro south Italian restaurant and order Vitello tonnato NOW! A lusty white wine, too.
@The Quiet Man: Dave Coulier is the guy that cartoon characters dread to be voiced by.
Not because he has an annoying voice, per say. He’s just… ugh.
Maybe I’m biased because he replaced Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman by Bill Murray’s request.
My Mom always said she hated Bill Murray because he comes off as such an sleazy asshole.
Young innocent me years back: He just constantly plays sleazy assholes, he’s probably a nice person in real life.
Me now: Hahaha……. -cries-
@145 A Grave Mind: This recipe has a much better photo than yesterthread’s.
@153 Ukulele Ike: Not me. I can deal with Chicken of the Sea and the other US market tuna. I hate Italian tuna. I don’t know how they do it but their tuna is extra fishy. Massively stinky. It even craps up pizza. Yes, Italians make pizze tonno. Yucko.
I wonder how likely it is that “Jef Mallett” is a phoney name Bill Watterson is using so he can continue Calvin and not look like he was going back on his principles.
@Everybody Posts, Nobody Reads: I’d say she’s lucky she doesn’t know about it, but this is Depraved Dawn we’re talking about.
@The Quiet Man: It does, yeah. I think I’ve watched, like, 45 seconds of Full House in all.
@The Rambling Otter: #154: I don’t care what kind of person Bill Murray is in real life. I still stand that SNL got the better deal when that overrated, one-dimensional Chevy Chase left and they got Murray instead. So fight me, all you Chevy Chase fans, by the Laws of Toa.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Meme of the little Hispanic Girl
“Why not hate both?”
@Guillermo el chiclero: Also ANOTHER actor who plays an complete asshole and is an asshole in real life.
I never truly got over that episode of Community where this one student at the college was suicidally depressed (mostly due to being overweight). So the study group decides to hold an intervention to help cheer him up by playing Dungeons and Dragons with him.
They purposely leave Pierce (Chase’s character) out, because he’s a conniving piece of shit and they don’t want him ruining it, but he doesn’t like being snubbed and crashed the game anyway. Being a complete dick throughout, not just constantly making fun of the guy’s weight, but being cheap in D&D and killing the guy’s character that he worked on building up for years.
Despite all of the terrible things that Chevy Chase did in his life, that role (that specific episode) infuriated me so much.
But… to its credit.
Christmas Vacation is still one of my favourite Christmas movies, despite Heavy Ass.
MW: So Tommy will be played by Matt LeBlanc in the live action film
@Ettorre: @Baja Gaijin: Sure the stores have shampoo designed for men’s scalps. But this is “manly-man shampoo”, which implies a product designed to prey on masculine insecurity
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That would be Schwartzenpoo™ by Arnold. Not for girleyman!
@Ukulele Ike: Bwahaha! That strip was superb.
Sure, I think we all agree that nothing says “manly man” like taking a bath in your claw foot bathtub, but if you want to know who the real Alphas are look for a scrub brush and rubber ducky. The kids call it “Erniemaxxing” and it’s absolutely taking over the TikTok manosphere.
MW: Who knows, perhaps Dawn has fantasies about self-abuse. Tommy must’ve been in a drug haze doing all those years Friends was on (and all the years it was rerun), because he’s totally flubbing that surefire “How YOU doin’?” line that the ladies can’t resist.
Blondie: For a moment, I thought Dagwood’s bathrobe was a French maid outfit. That, coupled with “I’ve been looking forward to this all day,” just about made me leave daily comic strips forever, never to return. I just… don’t want to see where that hypothetical strip was going, okay?