The Biliad
Post Content
Turtle Carl is traveling. Slowly.
Family Circus, 7/26/26
The Biliad
Draw him, O Jeffy, and show us his exploits—first-born of the Keane clan,
Follow the long dashed line from his birth to his triumphs in Scottsdale.
Sing of the talented Billy Age Seven as substitute artist;
Tell of his prowess at baseball and schoolwork and elegant wordplay;
Speak of the pride with which Thel and his father must always esteem him!
What’s that you say, he’s a smug little jerk who oppresses his siblings,
Blaming his failures and sins on Not Me to avoid retribution,
Dumb as a rock and possessed of no gifts but a venomous mean streak?
Why then do you, O Jeff, spend your days documenting this jackass?
What is your own great sin that the gods have assigned you such torment?
“Listen, O Muse, it appears your assessment is missing some context!
“There was no choice in this job that I started in twenty-eleven.
“The circle, the kids, and the jokes were a fifty-year legacy burden:
“My readers would rise up in arms if I altered the tiniest detail!
“And Billy’s the price that I pay to maintain a respectable income.”
Mark Trail, 7/26/26
Species like cockroaches and sharks, well-adapted to stable ecological niches, often show decreased rates of biological diversification. Yet species like songbirds and tropical fish, equally well-protected from harsh selection pressures, differentiate lavishly in secondary sexual characteristics like song and coloration.
Mark Trail has survived 80 years in the brutal environment of the newspaper comics page: is he a shark or a songbird? On the one hand, he dominates the “outdoor adventure comic” niche with unassailable Nature Facts and Fists of Justice at the ready. On the other, he’s kinda cute. We should get Cherry to weigh in on this.
Thanks for a fun week and all the generous contributions to keep this fine blog strong and independent. Josh will be back tomorrow morning, rested and ready to deliver the Internet’s finest newspaper comics mockery!
—Uncle Lumpy
114 replies to “The Biliad”
Mark can literally talk underwater now.
Huh.
MW-“If only there was some group of people like me that we could talk about our struggles of addiction.”
RMMD-“How’s your food?” “It’s passable for Dying Mall Food Court food.”
Family Circus:
You hit a real “Homer” with that poem, Uncle Lumpy!
Mark Trail:
What exactly is “misunderstood” about sharks, anyway? — you go in the ocean, and there’s a meaningful risk that they might attack you, right?
Family Circus:
[Third panel]:
Jeffy thinks he’s Buddy Rich. Actually, he’s Duddy Poor.
Family Circus:
“Bill and Thal Keane begat me. I claim to be their son, and they sent me to cloy with ticked instructions: ever to raise hell, to spew better than others, and to bring “Sorry!” to their forbears, who indeed were harried late. This is my ancestry; this is the crud I am proud to inherit.”
— Billyous, Book Six
Mark Trail: Sharks are light and flexible and can live for as long as 100 years, yet Mark Trail can’t stop shaving for two days without looking like a bum. They certainly are a marvel of evolution, relative to Mark!
Hi and Lois: “There’s my old high school boyfriend — I’m sure glad I didn’t marry him!” “Why, because I’m so great?” “No, because he turned out ugly, and possibly poor!”
Mary Worth: “Who am I to judge Tommy?” wonders Wilbur. “Well, I do own my own condo, in a complex on these vast landscaped grounds, which even include a water feature during an exceptionally hot and dry summer! On the other hand, well, I personally suck and everyone knows it. Good thing Mary’s always around to remind me of that fact, or I might actually develop some self-esteem!”
Pluggers: “A plugger never wastes time trying to predict the weather, fish, or women… and also doesn’t bother trying to understand why his wife hates that joke.”
MW: Alien Wilbur clone checks if the real Wilbur is still submerged.
Yep, still here but maybe…just maybe…he was the wrong human to assimilate.”
Mark Trail has survived 80 years in the brutal environment of the newspaper comics page: is he a shark or a songbird?
___________
Mark’s a tree,acts wooden and is printed on their mutilated remains,for Pluggers everywhere.
@The Rambling Otter: Mark can literally talk underwater now.
Huh.
_______
Mark Trail is Aquaman7x’s secret identity….he refused Ted Turner’s offer of a night with Jane Fonda to leave “Super friends” and become Nature Consultant for “Captain Planet”.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT!
FC – “Billy” grew up to be an Oscar-winning animator held in reverence by his peers, a true master of his craft, while Jeff learned to photocopy his dad’s work. It makes you wonder if Batiuk has an older brother who is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.
Slylick Fox and Komix For Kinky Kids :Max Mouse is literally in the back pocket of Slick Smitty.
Plus, why no name for Smitty’s Neighbor? Carla Coocoo was right there and could give Rachel Rabbit a run for her money as Forrestville’s Official Karen.
FC: But what about PJ, adult Jeff?
“He’s still in his anal retentive stage. Trust me. You don’t want to see his thought bubble.”
FOOB – Did Anthony just cut his dick off?
Zits – Is Pierce horny for Jeremy’s mom?
JP: I sense no danger here and can see nothing bad coming of this…
S4th: IS THERE A POINT TO ANY OF THIS???
CS: Ha ha! The *real* joke is in ten years this woman will be one of the vast mass of AI and ‘Climate Damage’ refugees fleeing The Burnings and won’t have the money or time to spend on something as frivolous as therapy! [continues ‘ha ha’ing with increasing intensity…]
FC: I had to zoom in on the comic because I initially thought Dolly was thinking of throwing herself off a bridge.
FC: Somewhere, somehow, Jeffy has seen Joe Morello play with the Dave Brubeck band. Or, maybe, just possibly, this strip dates back that far.
MT: My brain refuses to orient that last shark. Is it deformed?
H&L: How great would it be if Ratty Rummy Rodney became the Flagstons’ OTHER next door neighbor?
DtM: Poor George. So much for: “Spry senior couple seeks young gal for fun and frolic.”
MW: Trust Wilbur to wrap up all that introspection with some good, old Weston denial.
Thanks, Uncle Lumpy, for a great week!
@14 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: on FOOB: No, Lynn got that in the divorce settlement.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: That’s actually John Patterson, not Blandthony. Having Liz end up with a guy who could (apart from that moustache) be traced from her dad’s character sheet was something, wasn’t it?
@CanuckDownSouth: Thanks guys. I wondered if that was Blandthony or the dad. Good thing they did this after and not before April was born. Although if not for April, Farley would still be alive.
MW – After these epiphanies, I hope Wilbur gets home and walks in on Tommy rawdogging Dawn.
H&L is competing with RMMD in the Wilbur Weston Wannabe sweepstakes. There are no winners.
Dustin: Dustdad knows what to say once in a while.
FC: Looks like the Keane family is keeping their children well away from the devil’s rock-and-roll music, even that so-called “Christian rock” which attempts to turn sinful tools to holy purpose. If Jeffey wants to imagine himself a drummer, he has to imagine himself in a clean, all-white 1940s big band.
MT: Comic strips, on the other hand, can stagnate for years and still not die.
MT- Greenland sharks can get up to 400 years old-didn’t want to blow people’s mind
Also, the old Mark would have dropped a factoid about how many sharks are killed vs how many
Bite people. – get with the program Mark!
DT: “Brother WSOD”? He’s either a refugee from a 1970s blacksploitation movie or a Mormon.
C’shaft: “Also Ed Crankshaft indicated he’s going to die soon, which is a plus.”
Dustin: “A status symbol reflecting my own prosperity and virility.”
Luann: “I got her to do my homework for me and I’ve been reaping free labor from her ever since.”
MW: Oh yes you are, Wilbur. In addition to many other things, none of them good.
Pluggers are horribly sexist.
RMMD: Yeah, the guy who failed at every scheme he’s ever attempted and is currently in jail with a bum leg is the best con artist who ever lived.
I don’t know, Lumpy, if there’s selection pressure on the comics page how on earth are Crock reruns still happening?
@MKay: I’ve studied Hi and Lois more closely than… maybe anybody… and I don’t think it’s happening. They haven’t even come up with a name for the keyboardist in Chip’s band yet!
@MKay:
MT: Goblin Sharks have big snouts.
Biliary – Worthy of Homer…and Jethro!
The iron hour strikes the night,
The sleeping world is still and deep.
Upon the frost-rimmed parapet height,
A quiet vigil I must keep.
The icy wind speaks low to stone,
The dark stretches long and lean.
Though standing silent and alone,
No shifting shadow goes unseen.
I wait.
I wait for Carl the Turtle.
“Eleven” and “burden” don’t rhyme.
@TheDiva:
On Luann : Frank DeGroot is an accountant who can’t math and has all of his household finances run by his wife (and his daughter’s best friend who just lives in his house now for some reason).
Also : This is the best Evansii could scrape up in terms of “Shannon visits” storyline that a) has Toni actually be nice to Shannon; b) ends with Bwad and Toni still looking forward to having kids of their own rather than having been discouraged of it by Shannon, huh?
Say what you will about the Keanes, at least they only expose Jeffy to respectable Big Band drummers.
***
That was a very impressive Biliad, Uncle Lumpy. You’ve inspired me to do something similar for Mark Trail…
Trail shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Trail shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Trail shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Trail shark!
Comic shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comic shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comic shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comic shark!
Comment snark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comment snark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comment snark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Comment snark!
DtM: George, you were not just asking for it, you were screaming and begging. Whatever torments Dennis has in store for you today, you absolutely deserve it.
JP: Interesting how Neddy tells Ann (in the backseat) to stay calm, when it’s Ronnie the driver who’s about to give herself a stroke in the throwaway panel.
PEANUTS: I thought today’s comic was funny, but my own experience owning beagles is a bit different. They know every second you’re gone who you are, and they will let you know all about it when they next see you.
Phantom: Nice, huh? I hope he brought along a lunch. No better place for a beach picnic and a good lie-down than right next to the rotted, waterlogged corpse.
MW: Wilbur should invite Tommy over for afternoon tea and watercress sandwiches — really get to know him. Be sure to lay out a nice buffet of illegal drugs to make him feel at home.
Thanks as always for being here for us, Uncle Lumpy. We always look forward to your commentary on America’s great art form, the daily comic strips.
I’m just going to say that poem is wonderful. It has meter and everything! Read it out loud, pals, it sounds good.
@Amelie Wikström:
Thank you! I’ll let Father Lawrence know that year of Greek wasn’t entirely wasted.
@Amelie Wikström:
Just for grins, I had my AI buddy translate my doggerel into Homeric Greek, and then back-translate into English. It doesn’t scan, but the language has a much more Homeric ring, and even substitutes the Odyssey’s “No-one” for “Not Me”:
Draw him, Jeff, and reveal him to us, glorious in deeds, / firstborn of Keane, excelling among the children; / follow the well-dotted line, long and deep, / from birth up to the victories he held in Scottsdale. / Sing, friend, of skilled Billy, seven years old, / who once, his lord absent, drew wondrous works; / tell too of his manhood at the ball, and his learning when taught, / and of him speaking many delightful things among men’s letters; / speak the glory with which Thel together with his father honors / ever her own dear son, greatly exulting over him.
But what do you say? Is he then overweening and unseemly, / who subdues his brothers, skilled in baneful things; / who casts all his own failures and grievous recklessness / onto No-one, that he may flee harsh retribution; / dull as solid rock, and ignorant of gifts, / save the venomous malice he bears in his heart? / Why then, Jeff, day after day / do you keep sketching this unseemly jackass forever? / What ruin is upon you yourself, by which the gods gave you such pain, / and command dishonor and a joyless task?
“Hear me, Muse: you seem to judge much feebly, / since you have left out the due measure of your own reckoning; / for it was no fate of mine to escape this work, / which I took up in the two-thousand-and-eleventh year. / The circle, the children, and the jokes were from the beginning / a heavy inheritance of fifty years, which they laid on me; / for the readers would rouse their spirit against me, / if I should change even the tiniest mark; / and Billy in turn is the price I pay, that there may be for me / sufficient wealth and a fitting living throughout the house.”
Crank: It’s funny because having to interact with Ed Crankshaft is inherently traumatic!
FC: Panel 3 doesn’t fit. The others are all about the Keane Kids imagining a concrete thing as being much grander than it actually is, this is them imagining a reification of an abstract concept. It doesn’t even work as an exaggeration, because a week-glass probably would be pretty big!
JP: So “Take as long as you need to think about it” meant “We’ve already booked the flight but you get to spend the entire trip wondering if you can still get out of this.” Got it.
Anne, blink twice if you want someone to call the cops and report a kidnapping. And blink three times if you’re being kidnapped but don’t want anyone to call the cops because of that other kidnapping you were involved in lately.
S4th: Calling it now: They get back to 2026 and discover that Aunt Katherine made up with Laura the following day and has been a much loved member of the family ever since, but absolutely nothing else has changed as a result, because of reasons.
@CanuckDownSouth: Years ago, before it actually happened, the FBOFW website listed the following on Elizabeth’s profile page:
“Aspirations: To someday become as great a teacher and inspiration as Ms. Edwards. To keep singing and be better at it. To marry a guy like Dad!”
Mark Trail: The discussion of sharks in this one reminds of me of Tumblr’s longtime “sharks are smooth” running gag that shows one of the best ways to troll assholes into psychosis is to just dig your heels in and keep saying something extremely stupid and wrong, then watch as they demand with increasing desperation that you respect their authority and rightness. In this case, you insist that sharks have smooth skin rather than sandpaper-like skin. What I’m saying is, Mark absolutely strikes me as the kind of guy who would give himself an ulcer trying to correct some rando on social media if they said sharks are smooth.
Luann: There’s been some debate on here this past week or so about whether or not Luann and strips similar to it (like Mary Worth) qualify as “fundamentalist propaganda” in the vein of media like Chick Tracts. My opinion on the matter is that they probably don’t really count, BUT they are in the same broad ballpark, and the only reason they don’t qualify outright is because the standards and practices of the funny pages means that strips like Luann mostly can’t say the quiet parts outloud. Oh sure, the Evans can make judgmental, conformist, natalist tripe all they want, but they can’t ever go to the Jack Chick level (and probably aren’t anywhere near that level of insanity as people), where they openly and flagrantly spew bigotry, slutshaming, and creepy yet impotent threats at anyone even slightly less fundie than them. Doing so would destroy their careers.
If this were some independant comic mostly pawned off to any (usually unaware of what they really are) church that will take them, sure they could do stuff like calling Bets a whore or having Luann constantly remind people that the end times are near, but they’re in a proper newspaper with troublesome things like quality control.
@TheDiva: Yeah, I wondered about that. I realise this is almost certainly a rerun, but the strip only started in 1960 and most of the reruns are more recent, so I’m pretty sure we could have had Jeffy as Ringo.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Farley was born in November 1980 and died in 1995. That would make him 45 by now if he hadn’t died in 1995, and unless Lorne Greene lied to us in Alpo commercials, that would be 315 years old to you and me. So, no, Farley wouldn’t still be alive if April hadn’t fallen in the river.
@ectojazzmage: I’m going to disagree with the idea that “Luann” is “fundamentalist propaganda.” The characters are never seen in church as far as I can recall, not even for humor (contrast “Dennis the Menace,” “The Family Circus,” “Curtis,” and “The Lockhorns,” for example). Brad and Toni didn’t even get married in a church!
@CanuckDownSouth: @Joshua K.: Finding out that FOOB accidentally(?) engaged in barely disguised incest kink is somehow unsurprising.
@Maltmash3r: I think Old Mark would’ve gone even further and suggested we ritually sacrifice a portion of the human population to atone for any harm civilization as a whole has done to sharks. Old Mark Trail gives me ecoterrorist vibes like that.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Back when me and my wife were dating, we had an incident where her mom walked into my then-girlfriend’s apartment while we were having sex in the kitchen. After me and wife got dressed faster than ever before or since – my now-mother-in-law tried (incredibly badly) to defuse the awkwardness by glibly saying she was actually happy to know our sex life was going fine. After the most uncomfortable conversation of my life as my wife gave her mother what she came for and hurried her out, we stood around for a moment in cringing silence… than got back to it. But we went to her bedroom this time and locked the door. It was hilarious, looking back, but I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone. Except Wilbur Weston, because it would cause him to suffer and Wilbur’s suffering is the purest good in this world.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Your comment prompted me to look up Tom Batiuk’s wikipedia page to see if that was the case (because I could totally believe it). He doesn’t have a brother as far as I can tell, but I did make the rather horrifying discovery that the entire Lisa’s Story thing in Funky was apparently made in response to Batiuk’s own wife battling breast cancer, which immediately makes everything about it even more cringe-inducing than it already was. Not least of all because Batiuk’s wife in real life SURVIVED her breast cancer unlike Lisa and is, in fact, still alive to today. Can’t help but wonder what she thinks of her husband writing a story where her self-insert dies tragically for the development of his self-insert, who then goes on to profit off her death with a self-aggrandizing book and movie.
Also got some glimpses of how older Funky Winkerbean was, for all it’s problems, at least more edgy and less cloying than modern Funky-Verse dreck, willing to do things like openly shit-talk Johnny Hart’s B.C. after it went off the rails into fundie lecturing. Batiuk’s work has, in many ways, fallen pretty low.
@ectojazzmage: I know what you mean, but I feel like “quality control” is the wrong phrase, somehow…
@Joshua K.: Yeah, my take, for what it’s worth on a comic I avoid reading, is that Luann is what happens when “purity culture” goes secular (and ironically ends up in the same queasy “hee hee, aren’t we naughty with our intra-marital sex?” space as the other strip I avoid, just from the opposite direction.)
Mary Worth, on the other hand, in addition to today’s Bible quote, had a whole Secret Origins story back in the day, where Mary was a neglected child whose life was transformed when she went round to a friend’s house and discovered they said grace before meals.
@Horace Broon: I was trying to do the same thing as you did.
Bil’s point of reference about drummers being out-of-control bangers would be Buddy Rich.
Ringo or Charlie Watts would represent Bil trying to show his child as being successful and dignified.
But too much hair.
If this was drawn in the 1970s….can you imagine Bil showing Jeffy as Keith Moon or John “Bonzo” Bonham?
A Neil Peart tribute? Too many drums.
Jeffy working in a polka band with one small bass drum, a snare and a hi-hat kit? Maybe.
I see Jeffy as one of those toy chimps clanging a pair of cymbals.
@Joshua K.: I prefer 17 + (age × 4). A 15-year old dog is pretty common, not the equivalent of 105. This system puts a 15-year-old dog at 77, which makes a lot more sense.
Mary Wormtounge quote of the week:
“Here comes da judge!”
Pigmeat Markham
Family Circus:
[Panel 6; Barfy and the Keane family]:
“Arf! Arf!”
“What’s that you say, Barfy? — the whole Martin family’s in the well, not just Timmy?”
@GarrisonSkunk: Well, he’s good at punching people out, for one thing.
Don Abundio, translated:
[On tree: JUAN LOVES RUTH]
“I vandalized this tree for you, Ruth”
“Yeah”
“But Don Abundio’s going to clearcut all these old trees anyway”
[On tree: ABUNDIO LOGGING CO. LOVES RUTH]
Murky Tail:
Oh no! Wilbur drowned at sea when he fell off the cruise ship years ago, and his ghost has finally located his undead body and is staring up at him from the water!
______________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
Rene is such a great con artist that he’s in jail right now instead of conning his way to a trillion dollars or a very high position in politics where he’s untouchable, so, yes, he’s the greatest con artist ever, in the estimation of two mindless idiots.
______________________________________
Wary Morth:
Last Panel Goblin Shark: Right, this bozo is so busy talking that I managed to get close enough to suction his head right into my mouth.
Thanks for dinner, Murk!
@Ukranazi Stepan: accidentally transposed Wary Morth and Murky Tail.
MW- In panel 3, is Wilbur skipping rocks or throwing away a couple of empty bourbon bottles?
So, Turtle Carl is “traveling”, sure. Next you’ll be tellin’ us he’s swimming around having fun at some wetland downstate…. How old was he, anyway?
I heard some chatter that folks were concerned about Muffin’s absence. Well, the truth is she’s been furloughed, pink-slipped, laid off, put on hiatus, canned. Yeah, The Ladies said she wasn’t connecting with the audience, had no charisma, and was giving an inert performance. Like they weren’t the ones writin’ the script! So any future scenes with her, if there are any, will use the poseable rubberized Cat Model. I can’t share all the details, but Muffin came out OK financially, and she was just as glad to be outta there. Says Mary smells like rancid Salmon squares…
And you notice Willa hasn’t been seen lately, either, even though we had a scene in Wilbur’s digs. She’s saying she’ll never go back there… can you blame her after that near-sushi experience? Poor kid’s still in therapy – on the dime of Mary Worth Enterprises, of course. That was part of our exit deal with them. We did give them permission to use archival shots of Willa… with proper compensation. But I think Willa might be convinced to go back at some point if we’re given creative control over guest character casting.
To make things worse, The Ladies have used their influence with the other soap comics to discourage using Animal-centric storylines. Yeah whatcha gonna do? We’re still doin’ a good business with the one-panels, and of course our long-term deal with Mark Trail for Foreground Fauna and special Sunday guest stars. How ’bout those Sharks, amirite?
Intern, did I hear the phone ring? WHAT?? It’s Mary Worth HERSELF on the line?!!! Tell her I’m traveling…
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:
Bah! Carl isn’t a day over 105—just a kid! He’s returning from Lily Venizelos’s retirement party, and it’s a heck of a swim back from Athens.
MW: Wilbur, other than cutting back on your alcohol consumption you haven’t done jack squat to improve yourself as a person. At least when you were drunk you could blame the booze for your churlish, petulant, manbaby behavior.
@Mike Ainsworth:
Turtle Carl is so slow that he wouldn’t make it from point A to point B, even without Zeno’s paradox.
Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!
@Uncle Lumpy: Oh yeah, that has some teeth, even if the poetry is somewhat lessened.
The Billiad and the Dollisy?
@Acacia: “Eleven” and “burden” don’t rhyme.
______________________
They do when it’s pronounced “Elerven”.
@lynn: FC: Somewhere, somehow, Jeffy has seen Joe Morello play with the Dave Brubeck band.
____________________
…..Or Animal from The Muppets.
MT: Once again a reasonable interesting Sunday strip is presented amid the weekday madness.
MW: I had never thought of California as a state where total boundless solitude on trails is readily available even in cities, but here we are.
RMMD: These two alleged humans make no sense at all except as fever-dreams of some AI project gone very wrong.
I know we CCers have been advised to click on ads occasionally to help this site, and I’m willing to do that. *stares at inexplicable disrobing an*ime maiden* But maybe not that one.
@GarrisonSkunk:
The Boddessy—it’s about Blondie Bumstead.
AC: They’re playing soccer–sorry, football, but they’re clearly kicking around a volleyball.
PV: Not so fast, Gundar Harl. Tide, shmide, wimmin be shoppin’. Maybe Cassia can find a merchant who’ll fix you up with a better prosthetic hand.
Phantom: After a long, harrowing hike, fraught with dangers, Kit the First finally makes it to Mombasa, where he’s immediately abducted by Arab slave traders.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that the grown-up Jeffy at the drum kit would resemble Neil Peart or John Bonham.
@Tonio: More like Gene Krupa. Who looked pretty darn sexy after a hot solo when he was all sweaty and disheveled. And had smoked a few reefers with the bass player.
Pluggers – Many a plugger fishing trip ends up as a rain-soaked rout.
@Peanut Gallery: And sharks are smarter than pluggers.
@ectojazzmage: After the most uncomfortable conversation of my life as my wife gave her mother what she came for and hurried her out, we stood around for a moment in cringing silence… than got back to it.
IOW she gave her mother what she came for and then gave you what you came for too. Such a giving person.
Slylock Fox-What Slylock found was a bunch of valuable coins that he kept as evidence.
H&L – Meanwhile, Lois is thinking, “I wish I had married Rodney’s brother Rick. He was a big deal print journalist back in the day!”
@Peanut Gallery: I think Chip looks like Rodney. Maybe Rick, too.
@Poteet:
MW-It’s Wilbur. People have to learned to avoid him.
@The Quiet Man:
#15. S4th: yeah, point seems to be forgive old grudges and make nice. Especially if she’s your sister.
Childhood Returns
– LUANN- we had these probably blems in grades 3-6, I think. Luann has them for community college? I used to love word problems as I thought these were real adult work.
– and I’ve forgotten the second one
@Ukulele Ike: Hmmm….
The Koopa-lings in Mario “Lemmy, Iggy, Morton, Ludwig, Wendy, Roy and Larry” were all based off of famous musicians.
They could have squeezed in “Gene Koopa” in there somewhere.
Late Thread Cuisine: You’ve heard of deviled eggs and deviled crab. How about deviled lettuce?
FC: If you can afford a lawn that ridiculously wide. You might as well be living in a castle.
FC: Jeffy Keane brings us “When I was a small child I thought I’d be the Buddy Rich but instead [sigh] here I am.”
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
Buddy Poor.
C-Shaft: Batiuk hits reverse and runs over the joke again at 80MPH just to make 100% sure that it’s dead.
DT: The Nyle logo looks nothing like the Amazon logo. Costello and Ettinger aren’t taking any chances here.
H&L: Hi is speeding right past “good” while on the road to “insufferably smug”, but Lois is somehow tuning it out.
Luann: In other words, whatever slender thread the Fuze is hanging on depends on Nancy’s deft number work, and probably Wite-Out.
MW: The last demon Wilbur faced was very much external to him and he didn’t overcome her so much as her creepily Wilbur-resembling brother came to bring her back to someplace where she wouldn’t be a danger to herself or others.
Phantom: What if Hamlet was really petty and had no sense of smell?
RMMD: It’s been a strange journey for Rene Belluso. He was introduced as Sara’s art tutor, legit except for who was paying his fee. Then he became the strip’s all-purpose villain. Now he’s being pushed out of that role by two dumb-but-lucky relatives.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “I thought I’d be Buddy Rich but instead I’m just a ruddy bitch.”
“Look, mister, you’ve called this number three days in a row asking to talk to Buddy Rich. I’m telling you again, Buddy’s DEAD!”
”I know….I just like hearing it.”
@Peanut Gallery: Nice.
(The Buddy Rich joke)
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Phantom: What if Hamlet was really petty and had no sense of smell?
_______________________________
He’d be Willburp Weston.
@Ukulele Ike:
(The Buddy Rich joke)
_________________________________
Just as cold as Vivian Vance ordering a round of drinks for the house in the Brown Derby upon hearing of William Frawley’s death.
@GarrisonSkunk: Gotta wonder what Bette Davis did on the day Joan Crawford died. Put on a drum majorette’s uniform and lead a marching band down the streets of Hollywood?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
reFOOB — yes, but not in this edition.
Zits — yes
@GarrisonSkunk: Or Red Skelton on the huge crowd at Harry Cohn’s funeral: “Give the public what they want…”
@Baja Gaijin:
#83. Ah, there’s the rub– mayo or miracle whip (salad dressing)? Whether tis nobler in the mouth to taste the rich blandness of mayo or, to take arms against a sea of uncooked egg, and use the piquancy of vinegar and oil.
@Rube: I heard that was Louis B. Mayer, who was an even bigger asshole. (And CANADIAN…too bad Kate Beaton didn’t give him the treatment)
Belated thanks to Uncle Lumpy, who held down the fort in inimitable style this week.
Just going to say, I feel very very good tonight.
I feel better than I have in AGES!
@100 The Rambling Otter: Congrats! Keep it up!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Which comic is FOOB?
Thanks for keeping the candle burning, Uncle Lumpy!
@Chris Trey: For Better or For Worse
@Chris Trey: “For Better or for Worse”
“FOOB” was a nickname given to the comic, after April attempted to explain in-universe slang, such as “FOOB”
(A fool and a boob)
@105 The Rambling Otter: You have a great memory!
@The Rambling Otter: Be careful. Cocaine can be a terrible drug.
@Ukulele Ike: Nah, just in good spirits.
And I don’t mean alcohol xD
@The Rambling Otter: Ah, yes… For Better or For Worse, creator of such snark vernacular like “foob”, “starey eyed HOO guy”, and “roadside”.
@The Rambling Otter: That’s very good to hear. I hope that it continues for you. :)
FC: No kid thinks their own house is some sort of fantastical castle. Especially if it’s just an ordinary split level.
@The Rambling Otter: @The Rambling Otter: Coolness,Rambling! Congrats.
@The Rambling Otter: @The Rambling Otter: Coolness,Rambling! Congrats.
@Horace Broon: Turns out it was originally a reference to something really obscure and dated even at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/comicstriphistory/s/ZIBJuAJVRB