Today’s women are allowed to wear pants, at least
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The Phantom, 7/30/26
The question of how an elected civilian government can keep control of its own security services is as old as democracy itself, and you have to imagine the issue is a delicate one in Bangalla, a relatively young post-colonial republic where the main paramilitary answers to a dude who lives in a cave and has much of the country believing he’s a ghost. Still, President Luaga is doing his best, letting the Ghost Who Could Probably Do A Coup If He Wanted know that he’s very disappointed about this whole “leave a supervillain in an open-air cage for years where it would be very easy for drones to free him” situation by glowering meaningfully during a Zoom call.
Six Chix, 7/30/26
Now, I’m not a doctor, but I am a comics blogger with literally decades of experience, and I can tell you that in both these scenarios that guy has Xes for eyes, which means he’s dead. Dead! Don’t worry, doctors, you don’t need to trouble yourselves, go about your business.
Gearhead Gertie, 7/30/26
I was going to do a joke about how all this time Gertie has yearned to be part of a throuple, and that the “3” t-shirts she wears constantly aren’t just about Dale Earnhardt, but I’m sorry, my heart’s not in it. Look at her face, free of any hint of guile or eroticism. She simply has done the minimum amount of mental processing necessary to respond — “husband not happy with wife? solution: husband get new wife” — while 99% of her brainpower continues to focus on watching and thinking about NASCAR, as per usual.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/26
The scam twins have decided to avenge their Uncle Rene by scamming the Morgans, despite the fact that he specifically told them not to, and have been staking out the Morgan house in order to plan their next scam move. Mainly what they’ve learned is that the Morgans are incredibly boring, which, no shit! Have you noticed that they’re barely in their own comic anymore? That’s because they’re even less interesting than whatever Buck or Auggie or Mud Mountain Murphy are up to. Do you know how uninteresting you have to be to make that happen?
126 replies to “Today’s women are allowed to wear pants, at least”
Mary Worth Mashup: Like father, like daughter’s boyfriend.
Gil Thorp: The wedding cake toppers…great work. They look exactly like Gil and Mrs. Gil. That’s not a compliment.
Pluggers: The questions aren’t getting harder on Jeopardy–you’re getting stupider, plugger.
Sally Forth: You’re a plugger if you get excited going to a Fotomat.
FC: “I’ll give you something to cry about! Now get back in there and find PJ!”
RMMD:
“There’s somethin’ happenin’ here.”
“What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
“There’s a man with his sons over there.”
“That’s no ‘man’ — that’s June!”
Rex Morgan: The boys are bored taking the eggs out of June’s refrigerator. She’s bringing them to WalMart to take their eggs out of their refrigerators. And not put them back!
Gearhead Gertie:
If this guy had any brains, he’d just get a small second TV. Of course, if he’d had any brains, he wouldn’t have married Gertie.
CS: Tom Batiuk’s idea of a modern game development team: Some guy with an undefined role, and a full-time writer whose job it is to write lines like “Ka-boom! Ker-blast!”
Luann: Well, Luann, let’s remember how we got here. You invited yourself to live in Phil’s apartment, applied for a promotion at Weenie World (from table wiper), then dropped it to spend two months at a summer camp for no clear reason. You’re also enrolled in a Career Paths class, where you seem completely clueless, and failed your one known assignment. And you’re surprised Phil is a little skeptical of your newfound direction? There’s only one thing holding this relationship together: Phil’s inability to break up with you.
RMMD: I take public transportation, so every once in a while, some panhandler tries to sell me second-hand bus tickets. Which cost $1.25 at full price. That’s the level of scam I feel like we’re watching here.
PHANTOM: A zoom call– thanks, Josh! I thought for sure the desk was talking.
6CX: vast improvement. He’s still dead but she’s got pants and a scrunchie. Tres chic.
Chix (sic): If you squint hard enough at the artwork, you can see that this couple is on stage performing Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph, AKA, a ‘two-hander’, but updating the dialogue with an AI reference is more distracting than enlightening.
Crankshaft : I remember a time where Stan Lee was interviewed (questioned?) about being a comic book writer, with the person asking the questions being all “Oh wow, being the WRITER of comic books must be hard, just scribbling down ‘BIFF!’ ‘BAM!’ ‘POW!’ and calling it a day”.
I also remember a time, not too long ago, where Batiuk was patting himself on the back about how Crazy Harry and the Eliminator’s rivalry over the arcade game Defender made him a precursor in featuring video games in comics in a positive light.
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Gearhead Gertie : feels safe making these kind of jokes because she’s unemployed while her husband isn’t, and thus knows that anything short of an actual annulment means she gets alimony (to blow on NASCAR crap).
****************
Luann : he was the one who encouraged her to follow her heart because he could see how miserable she was at Weenie World, and now he’s the one telling her she’s wasted her time because the only jobs that matter are the ones where you take a 3-month correspondence course to work six days a week cleaning bedpans (ie, HIS job. What a “coincidence”!).
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Phantom : it’s funny, because in the sundays we’re being shown that the First Phantom almost IMMEDIATELY quit on his Solemn Vow of Revenge Against All Pirates because the corpse of the guy who had personally killed his dad washed up on shore, and he was all “Oh, I guess he died. Vengeance accomplished then, I guess.”
RMMD:
Have these two thought through exactly what payout it is that they’ll be getting if they’re successful, to be taking the risk of being convicted of a felony or misdemeanor if they’re not? They’ll go on their next prison visit ; they’ll tell “Uncle Jimmy” what they did to the Morgans; “Uncle Jimmy” will say “Ha, ha! That’s great!”; then prison visiting hours will be over, and he’ll remain in the hoosegow.
Ph: I love not knowing a thing about this strip, because then I can imagine this story is about a man losing his prized skull.
6Cx I feel like a joke more consistent with our present reality would be “Can someone ask ChatGPT what to do?” or “Vaxed?”
GG Its amazing that those two can watch anything at that angle. Those cars must look like two thin colored lines.
RMMD “Looks like they’re walking the boys? Is it weird that they seem to treat their children like pets?”
RMMD:
“What are they up to?”
“I’d say the taller of the two is 4’6″, maybe 4’7″; the shorter one is probably 4’5.” “
The Phantom:
“We’ll get him back, Mr. President. Even if I have to disguise myself in a fabric that actually breathes!”
@Baja Gaijin:
Maybe if he’s very lucky he’s overdosed and escaped like Aldo did. Permanently.
RMMD-June is putting the boys out for curbside pickup. Maybe the garbagemen will finally take the boys away.
GG: Dude, you finally challenge your wife’s obsession after 50? 60? 70? years? You don’t appear to be rich, so I think it’s NASCAR til death for you. And wait til you see your coffin!
RMMD: An alert June spots the miscreants and lets loose with an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” point-and -scream.
MW: Tommy, who’s been crouched in a corner eating pie for a week, is reluctant to open the door.
GG: In a parallel world, we’re all reading Basehead Bertie staring transfixed by the rhythmic thud of bat against ball, blankly telling his wife to get a new husband if she wants to watch the NASCAR.
6C: THEN: Time-consuming hairdo, feminine dress, high-heeled shoes, insanely conical bra that turns your breasts into two pyramids.
NOW: Relaxed pony tail, casual unisex clothes, comfortable sneakers, still a big pointy Madonna bra for some reason.
Six Chix: Bystander (after consulting Scott McCloud’s book on parsing comic strips): “He’s dead, Jim.”
@Baja Gaijin: On Pluggers – I remember once reading how if anything the questions on Jeopardy have gotten far *easier* than they were when the show first debuted in the 1960s, so yes, Pluggers are getting stupider.
Luann: Leaving aside for a moment Luann’s, er, *eagerness* to go do something she is not qualified to do and never will be, yes Phil, art teachers are still a thing. What rock have YOU been living under?
@Banana Jr. 6000: I’m guessing Luann is going to break up with *him* because he’s clearly about to suggest that she stick with Weenie World because it’s more ‘stable’ or ‘pays more’ or something like that. We already have Luann rehashing her ‘I wanna HELP people!’ daydream that’s been used twice already, why not pull another ‘Quill’?
Phantom: C’mon Ghost Who Condescends! You gotta up your communication game! You should have a bank of 60s era technology banks for your lair. Or go all steampunk to go with your fabulous treasure hoard! This lame flatscreen and speaker from Wal-Mart doesn’t do anything for your precious ‘mystique’.
JP: Wow, I’m surprised everyone is still in their seats after the pivot Ces just pulled.
RMMD — “What are they up to?”
I’d say they’re headed back to the logoless monochrome pastel and black T-shirt store,”
The Ghost Who Thinks Inside the Box — President Luaga is annoyed that his search for a “lasting” solution to the ethnic rebel problem has been interrupted to explain to a costumed vigilante why he didn’t just put a bullet in the Python years ago. At least his Oxford professors have drilled into him not to use the world “final” in that context!
MW: Dawn’s being set up to follow in her father’s footsteps. Tomorrow or Saturday she gets the door open and whatever she sees will make her go ‘AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!’
What could it be?
A) Tommy splayed on the couch, in a coma, surrounded by drug paraphernalia.
B) Tommy goin’ at it with Brandy, freshly returned from Florida all tan and terrific.
C) A note from Tommy saying he’s fled Charterstone and is going to fight with Flash Gordon on some foreign planet.
I could add more, but I know most of you are eating breakfast right now…
GG — I loathe Gertie as much as the next mudge, but is watching a baseball game really a better choice than watching a NASCAR race?
Six Chex:”Is there a plastic surgeon in the house? I need my upper frontals done!”
MT It must be nice to live in the writer’s reality, where large apes are being trafficked to petting zoos and butler gorilla training, instead of the actual black market of butchery for bush meat and traditional medicine.
GT A custom cake topper would usually match the couple in fancy clothes to commemorate the wedding, so I guess in Milford a coaching polo shirt is a step *up* in formality from a tuxedo
Pluggers: “What is Velveta?”
MW: Tommy, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay, Tommy?
RMMD: Think of all the fake-violin busking money these two could be making right now. Think of all the TVs they could have taken by claiming to be from corporate. No one can say these girls aren’t willing to suffer for their art.
Six Chix: Now: Plastic surgery hasn’t improved in decades. Her breasts are still triangular and mere centimeters apart.
6Cx: So the only change in men’s fashion is shorter sleeves?
RMMD: What are the odds that Jean and Jane being twins actually factors in to whatever scam they’re going to try on the Morgans? I get that writing identical people is a perfect excuse to copy/paste the art, but Beatty. My guy. You could have just made one character.
@Hibbleton: Judging by the artwork in the Now panel, it’s not a two-hander anymore.
GG: I would love it if Mr. Gertie called his wife’s bluff, divorced her and took the majority of their pension with him, leaving her to beg for scraps outside of Daytona.
Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks’ mind isn’t on the current arc, but his own rehashed origin story which has been playing out in the Sunday strips.
RMMD: The Doublemint Twins realize that the tedium in which the Morgans live is its own punishment, decide the best revenge is living well, and drive off into the distance.
You say “Buck” but where is Buck? Have we seen Buck lately? Many times over the past months I’ve seen Rex Morgan and thought, “I wish Buck would come back.” That’s what I’ve been reduced to.
Ladies, if you’ll indulge me for a mo, would you do me a real quick favor and lower your arms to your sides? I just want to make sure that they’re both the same length and that the left one isn’t actually some grotesque spaghetti/arm hybrid that’s going to end up draped across the sta– Oh. Oh, no.
@Lauralot: On MW – Tommy, can you hear me? Can you feel me near you?
Is this actually a Zoom call, or is the Phantom holding a conversation with President Luaga over the phone in front of a giant portrait of him? Note how the dialogue balloon doesn’t point to the President directly, but to some sort of gray box directly below his image. I suppose the question of whether a dialogue balloon should point to the person actually speaking on screen or to the speaker his audio is coming out of is one that comics haven’t really confronted, but I would think the ones that have would have gone with the former.
Is it weird that the difference in Six Chix (the Six Chix-ferences?) I was most transfixed by was the woman’s different positioning relative to the man, such that her shoes seem to blend into the man’s pants in the “Now” scenario?
Gertie’s husband does realize they play baseball games almost every day of the week, right? NASCAR only runs three races a week on its major nationally-televised series, and even if Gertie’s enough of a freak to watch all the practice and qualifying sessions, that adds another day at most. Even if his team isn’t playing on Monday, that’s two blissfully NASCAR-free days where he should have the TV all to himself, and that’s not getting into how NASCAR doesn’t necessarily race at the same time as baseball; at the least, he should be able to watch Sunday Night Baseball most weeks even if his team’s not playing in it. At the least, you do know you can watch all the baseball you want on the computer now, right? You have to have broadband internet where you live, if only because they have NASCAR races on Prime Video now.
Hey, she has monomania and you choose monogamy. She has the TV monopoly now but the monotony is on you.
***
Now: Just call 911, you doorknob.
Either Gertie’s watching some “alternative” advertisement-free version of NASCAR, or she’s watching a generic version of Wacky Races because there’s no NASCAR on at the moment.
Based on everything I know about NASCAR and Gertie, the first option is impossible. She’s chilling to crudely animated cars while she laughs at her husband’s desires. Dennis, take notes; this is some weapons-grade menacing.
BC: Nice to see that even in the stone age (and amongst the ants, no less), there were democratically elected officials. Of course, they were incompetent bozos, too, but even so…
@The Quiet Man: Yeah, if Phil was going to take a stand, he’s already blown two chances: When Luann declared she was moving into his apartment, and when she went to summer camp instead of working her Weenie Hut job that was supposed to help pay for it. So that does seem logical in light of how this world works.
When Luann isn’t fundamentalist propaganda, it’s shilling Luann as some kind of manic pixie dream girl, when she is the most boring scoop of store brand vanilla ice cream in Mediocre-Mart.
@matt w:
“I wish Buck would come back.” That’s what I’ve been reduced to.
Honestly, the adventures of Buck and Mindy were at least medical-adjacent and occasionally involved Rex or June. I was all in on Buck and Mindy when that whole meet-cute started. I decided their couple name would be “Muck” (rather than “Bindy”). Now, his weird long-hair kid and the friend (Beanpole and Shorty)? They can piss off.
C’shaft: Hell, it’s better than anything Batiuk has written in the past month at least.
DT: Sam and Fritzi exchanged doubtful looks. They’d expected to have to work this sting for months, building up the target’s trust, subtly introducing openings for him to betray himself, and he’d went and snapped at the first bit of bait they laid out. Maybe this wasn’t the genius hacker they’d been looking for, after all. (They were still going to entrap and arrest him, of course. Had to justify the budget for the top-of-the-line computer, after all.)
Dustin: “Of course you could support policies that promote accessible career pathways, livable wages, and affordable housing…”
“With my tax dollars? Forget it, just take the twenty-one bucks.”
JP: Why not do both? Use the money from the option to set up a non-profit, talk about your struggle in promotional interviews, encourage women to take hope in your story then do the work to help them out. This isn’t the zero-sum game your Morganian self-righteous indignation is making it out to be.
Luann: My niece was a special ed paraprofessional for a few years; she was good at the work and seemed to enjoy it. But she recently decided not to pursue it as a career, as the time and especially the money that would be involved in getting her certification were more than she could put in. So today’s Luann is making me mad not only for the “dur hur, pursuing a career in art education is unrealistic” commentary but because Clan Evans is completely dismissing the actual stumbling blocks in a socially vital career pathway in favor of tired liberal arts major jokes.
Pluggers: As a Jeopardy fan/former contestant myself, I’ve found that the clues that stump me usually aren’t esoterica like this but a) recent pop culture that I don’t pay much attention to or b) clues that are so opaquely written that I can’t figure out what they’re trying to allude to (this is a recurring problem with Jennings-era Final Jeopardy, IMO). So I’m torn between both relating to the Plugger in today’s strip and wanting to tell him that no, he really is that stupid.
“We’ll get him back, Mister President,” the Phantom says, thinking back to the last tragic escape from Bangalla’s prison system which ended in a tragic and ill-advised nude performance of Hamlet.
RxMD: It was sure nice of the artist to have one twin with sunglasses up and the other with sunglasses down so that we could tell them apart. Or, it would have been if the author had bothered to refer to them by name at any point in this story so far.
RxMD: “What are they up to?” Sure it looks like the daughter left with the dogs and the mom left with the boys, leaving the house vulnerable and empty, but what if they are “up” to something? They’re surely “up” to something, right? Because everybody must always be “up” to something. Perhaps it’s the old Double-Dog Double-Back Double-Cross, or maybe it’s the classic Three-Card Mommy, or maybe the time-honored Empty House Humbug, or maybe you girls are just morons.
RxMD: You can tell the trickster twins here have never seen The Prestige because if they had they’d be leveraging their twinsiness to run a much longer, complex and more interesting con than whatever it is they think they’re doing now.
With the Lockhorns, you know they enjoy their masochism tango and probably the sex is amazing. I really don’t get why Gertie’s husband is still in this marriage. If he asked counsel to Reddit (switching the sex) about her husband being too obsessed with sport, they’d tell her she is in an abusive relationship!
MW: Ian, naked except for a bath towel, opens the door next door. “Sorry. I thought it was my DoorDash.”
JP: “…when I could be helping women like me, out of prison, trying to write the next chapter in their lives!
Of course, there’s no money in that so back to the script.”
Gearhead Gertie:
There are surely plenty of baseball games that aren’t scheduled for the same time as a NASCAR race, so I have to assume Gertie has placed a blanket ban on all other sports in her household. I can’t entirely blame her, if NASCAR was about cars that floated three feet off the ground in defiance of physics like it apparently is in her universe, other sports wouldn’t have much appeal in comparison.
Phantom – Alas, poor Charles Taylor – I knew him well. He’d give you the shoes off his feet….
6C – Is there a ChatGPT in the house…how ‘bout an Archie Laff Generator 3000….
GG – So… I guess a blow job is out of the question….
RMMD – The Morgans are being stalked by the Double Mint Gum twins….
Adios Amigos, DJ
RMMD: The twins try to pull the same scam on the Morgans that they use in the mall. They wear their badges to the Clinic and announce they’re from the AMA and demand Rex demonstrate his plastic surgical skills. The jokes on them when they come out looking like Timothée Chalamet. “Twins? I thought you said ‘twinks.”
Six Chix:
This strip is of course trying to make a joke about how nowadays anyone can look up signs and symptoms on the internet to come up with a questionable medical diagnosis with no involvement from doctors, but not only is this joke at least 15 years past being cutting-edge, I’m afraid it doesn’t really work here. If the whole point is that anybody can do this now, it makes no sense to ask a bunch of people if such a person is present. What, you think it’s possible none of these people have their phone with them? Ludicrous! And to make matters worse, the woman asking such an insulting question isn’t even facing the crowd she’s addressing.
GG: What kind of NASCAR cars have no numbers or corporate logos on the side? I don’t even think the shape of the cars is correct.
GT: The bride and groom look more like cake figurines than they do actual people. I spent a minute wondering how they changed their clothes so quickly.
Pluggers only pretend that they watch Jeopardy!, as evidenced by calling the clues “questions” instead of “answers”.
Beetle Bailey: “Talking is a free action”, but that Sarge got the four seconds of hang time needed to say all that is a big lift (maybe pun intended).
@TheDiva: On JP – With the Spencer-Driver-Parker tax dollars? Forget it! Besides, I’m guessing Ann’s only interested in rehabilitating white-collar criminals, emphasis on *white*.
“We’ll get him, Mr President! But first, do you want to watch my ventriloquism bit?”
Early Thread Cuisine: Cold hotdog pie.
RMMD:
“Those kids must have a hankering to cook Chinese food, because they’re taking a wok!”
Under normal circumstances, Gertie’s husband could just watch baseball in another room. This implies 1) They don’t have money to buy a second TV because they spent it all on Nascar merchandise; 2) Gertie FORCES him to watch Nascar because she thinks it will increase the ratings for the the event, even though everyone explained to her that that’s not how ratings work!
We are very harsh on Dennis’s lack of menaceness, but considering how the Morgan boys have the agency of a piece of wood, we should grade him on a curve
If this were the Tuesday Chix, there would be no need for a doctor for the diagnosis. What’s wrong with this person would be either depression or capitalism or both
Ah yes, I was too focused on the long-term problem and I ignored short-term considerations. So typical of politicians!
Baseball is stereotypically a very boring sport. Of course, Nascar is even more monotonous but baseball doesn’t give you the remote thrill that the broadcast could suddenly turn into a snuff movie!
9CL- “Move over girls, I gotta gargle!”
@The Quiet Man:
#20. LUANN: Hmmm, thinking back to strip lore, didn’t Mr. Evans want to be an art teacher at one time and have difficulty finding good jobs? (My memory might be inventing that)
ARGYLE SWEATER: liking this week’s word play on “Seattle Times” addition.
BETTY: She’s right to worry. Kids should be inquisitive and relate to animals. Get him a pony.
GT: smart planning, Beth, wearing your riding gear under gown.
JP: great idea, Ann, but you’ll make more waiting tables at Nick’s Diner than counseling ex-offenders.
S4th: seems Dreamboat Ronan actually is enjoying his first absurdist family road trip.
The Phantom: That imagery of a fire for the scene transition between Phantom and whoever-the-blonde-guy-is-i-forget is unironically pretty cool, even if it makes it look like Phantom has spontaneously combusted mid-conversation with the president.
Six Chix: Okay, I get that newspaper comics are mostly done by insecure old codgers desperate to convince themselves that their objectively-worse times were somehow better than our modern times, and while I disapprove, I’m usually willing to let them indulge themselves with their “kids these days and their DAMN phones” complaints about overdependence on tech. But this is a bridge too far. Six Chix people, you cannot seriously be trying to suggest that modern people do not know what doctors are nor use them. Half of the idiotic criticisms your generation throws at the younger ones is BECAUSE we have and use doctors rather than toughing everything out (usually unsuccessfully) with alcohol and conformity. At least keep your bullshit consistent!
Gearhead Gertie: The fact that Gertie’s husband seems to not share her love of NASCAR at all raises some interesting questions, particularly why he married her at all if her hobby-slash-ideology annoys him so or if Gertie’s obsession is a new thing. Me personally, I like to think Gertie used to be somewhat normal but than got lured into a NASCAR-worshipping cult a few years back and hasn’t been the same since.
Rex Morgan: So like, what are the Scam Twins even gonna DO to the Morgans that requires them to sit outside their house and spy on them for days on end? They’re acting like they’re preparing for a home invasion, not a con. What, are they gonna break in, gather the family in the living room at gunpoint, and than perform their busking scam again right there, waiting for the Morgans to give them money?
Rex Morgan: One thing about upper-middle-class suburban neighborhoods is that locals are very well aware when someone is there who doesn’t belong. If a resident has hired a new gardener, or has relatives visiting from out of town, or is having an affair with the owner of a blue Toyota, you can be sure at least some of the neighbors know about it. Or if, for example, two striking redheaded sisters have been staking out the Morgans’ house for days, there are at least two retired people watching them through partially parted curtains, someone else has them on their Ring dorbell cam, and at least one person has already written down their license plate number. This scam had better be very subtle, is what I’m saying, because as soon as the cops are called, they’ll have all the identifying info they need.
@Bob Tice: “Wokka wokka wokka!!”
7:09 Sarah walks the dogs, 7:21 June walks the boys. Uncle Jimmy knows that!
@ectojazzmage: Like many newspaper comics characters, no one on earth would tolerate Gearhead Gertie if she was a real person. Or Wilbur Weston. Or Harry Dinkle. Or Dustin’s family. Or Alice. Or the characters in Intelligent Life. And the only joke any of these creators know how to write is, “Haha, this person is awful, and the other person just has to sit there and take it!” No they don’t, creator. No. They. Don’t.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Re: Luann: Oh come on now! I imagine her “new direction” will last at least as long as her ‘blank slate’ period (why Phil has no faith in such a gifted intellectual, I’ll never know.)
Phant: “On the search for a lasting solution, I took my eye off the present danger.” That’s the same excuse I gave my manager at Foot Locker when those teenagers got away with an entire pallet of Air Jordans while I was in the bathroom.
Six: Where are they supposed to be? It looks like this is happening on a stage somewhere and the little blue people in the background are in the audience. Which may be why no one is rushing forward to help. They’re not sure if this is all part of the show or not.
GG: “You knew I was a Gearhead when you married me. It’s actually part of my legal name. You’ve had to write it on forms numerous times.”
RMMD: “We could just run them over. It wouldn’t be a scam and we wouldn’t make money from it, but it would be something as opposed to nothing.”
FC-Back into the weeds with ya.
MW-“Tommy! It’s Dawn! I’ve come alone! I don’t have Mary Worth with me!”
Phantom – That’s Yorick in the second panel, right? Is that who they’re talking about? Looks like you’re a bit too late to be getting him back, Mr. Phantom dude.
@Lauralot: Beatty. My guy. You could have just made one character.
But then how could he have the narrative cues we’re getting from the twins? Break down today’s strip, for example:
“All we’ve seen so far…” — a recap of yesterday’s strip, for any readers who might have missed it.
“Something else is happening” — a segue to let readers know they should move to the next panel.
“It’s Mrs. Morgan with the boys” — telling the readers what they’re seeing in that panel.
“What are they up to?” — setting up suspense for tomorrow’s strip.
At least, I assume those are the motivations for this dialog. Otherwise you’ve got two people telling one another things they already know, which would be kind of silly.
REX MORGAN M.D.: I guess the Fraud Sisters are so used to narrating the bullet points of their schemes out loud, they think that everyone acts the same way (Sarah Morgan: “Wow this is a great day to not be defrauded by a phony corporate inspection. I sure would fall for that old con if someone tried to do it to me. Well off to walk the dogs while trying to avoid running into twin scam artists so I won’t become putty in her hands.”)
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): I know what diabolic plan the Scheming Duo are going to do now. June is going to read a letter the twosome dropped (by accident) in front of her and she’ll decipher the backwards code that read, “Make sure
Susie DerkinsJune Morgan doesn’t go to the side of the house or all our plans will be ruined.”Naw, that plot is way too advanced and well thought-out for our double dimwits.
Don Abundio, translated:
“The boss will participate in the company football match today”
“Oh, no! Don’t little shrimps like him get pulverized in that game?”
“Ah… Not the cheerleaders”
@The Rambling Otter:
#65. Otter, those cookies last night looked tasty. (And you didn’t burn any). Butter frosting?
@Banana Jr. 6000: So, a big thing about the whole “manic pixie dream girl” concept is that the guy who coined it, Nathan Rabin (who now openly HATES the term and the way it’s become a cudgel used against any woman who dares to be weird and quirky), was specifically criticizing a kind of regressive, sexist phenomena where these female characters he labeled as MPDGs were only superficially different, so as to serve as a male writer’s fantasy of a servile fixer-upper who needed a good man to set her straight but would make that man happy by pulling him out of the muck. The emphasis was not on the weirdness of the woman, but on her lack of development next to the man, the way she served as a personality-less plot device for said man, and the portrayal of her weirdness that as either non-disruptive or something for the man to put a stop to so they can be together in that white-picket fence nuclear family way that gives off vibes of paternalistic (often borderline incestuous in feel) sexism.
MPDGs as defined by Rabin are often not weird in ways that would genuinely challenge any of Hollywood’s archaic gender and social norms, and if they are, they’ll be subjected to being “fixed” by the male lead. Their stories are often very evocative of creeps in real life who try to date what they deem to be weird girls with the intent of breaking them into being tradwives. This is also why some people following Rabin’s example noted that there were manic pixie dream boys as well and they were just as common as the girls. Male characters who were kinda surface-level offbeat, but ultimately conformed hard to regressive, sexist attitudes of what a perfect man was or would be fixed by the female self-insert character.
All of this meant that when people began flinging the term around willy nilly or making “deconstructions” of the concept, they were often really just reinforcing it due to their shallow understanding of what Rabin was talking about, creating stories in which women who were quirky and weird were portrayed as actually just being broken and disturbed and in need of repair, or implying that any woman who acts even slightly different from the norm of a suburban trad-housewife or stuffy businesswoman is nothing but a male fantasy.
Where am I going with this, you may ask? Well, it’s that Luann IS, in fact, a manic pixie dream girl, or at least is quite close to what Rabin was mocking. She’s “weird” in only the most shallow, superficial of ways that definitely will not ever challenge the status quo, and if she ever gets out of line, it means she has to fix herself or be fixed to get a man to give her the time of day. She frequently has no real personality or drive outside of being the girlfriend or daughter. She’s a doll, so reduced in nature and persona that she comes off as a childlike idiot in need of raising.
Note also the contrast she forms with the Goofus to her Gallant, good ol’ Bets. Bets is actually different from the Evans’ vision of what women “should” be and constantly given shit for it. Bets is genuinely weird (at least in the eyes of a self-absorbed, repressive senior citizen or dudebro), such that the one time the Evans tried to have her be “fixed”, they had to backtrack on it because it created a clear radical shift in her personality that creeped everyone out, unlike with the typical MPDG. Much to think about.
GT: Uh. Anybody know who that is in Panel 3?
The inconsistency in the art requires subtitles and name plates.
Pluggers: So Roger White of Central, South Carolina, what is the answer? You going to leave us all hanging? Now I’m going to be thinking all day of what variety of cheese sounds most like the name of a 19th Century barbershop quartet.
6Cx: Oh, I get it. The play is Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
@Baja Gaijin: I was afraid you were going to show Tommy in the act of beating the bottle.
@Ettorre: Tell that to the hapless bird that got exploded by Randy Johnson’s pitch!
@matt w: Buck’s absence actually has gotten rather noticeable to me too, if only because he used to be so omnipresent that it feels odd he’s disappeared. Maybe he disappeared into some alternate dimension while driving to Rex’s office one day, like Ozzie Smith in that one episode of Simpsons with the baseball players.
@MKay: Rex Morgan characters do tend to frequently talk just like the Pod People in the 1970s version of Body Snatchers (the best one and one of my favorite horror movies ever). “We came here from a dying world, carried by the solar winds, to listen to your roots country music. We adapt. We survive. We listen to Muddy Boots. The function of life is listening to Muddy Boots.”
@Anonymous: That was an interview with Larry King. And it was especially embarrassing because Stan Lee and King were in the same age range, so seeing King be so culturally ignorant that he didn’t even seem to know what comics are and having to be corrected about it by Lee (who, I swear to God, had to talk to King like a parent explaining something to a toddler) was a real trip. One of two examples involving Larry King that I like to cite of how clueless and out-of-touch with reality the bigwigs of the entertainment industry are, the other being his interview with Danny Pudi where he seems to think that a guy who acts in stuff like Community and Ducktales owns a private jet just because he’s an actor.
@Lord Flatulence: too much mustard…
@Guillermo el chiclero: Without looking it up, my guess would be Liederkrantz.
Those late-19th century German-American choral societies were very fond of a) erecting statues of Richard Wagner; and b) stinky cheese.
FC – “Get back in there and let the ticks find you, kid!” “But Daddy, I don’t want Limes Disease! Can’t I have Strawberry Disease instead?”
Ha ha, it’s funny because Mr. Gearhead pulled a Pride & Prejudice in his youth and now he’s stuck in a loveless marriage until he dies.
DT: The “Schrodinger” name seems very appropriate, since if you buy a computer from some anonymous dude you met online, you have no way of knowing if it’s alive or dead until you open the box.
FC: Big Daddy Keane gazes disapprovingly as Jeffy insists on continuing to have allergies, no matter how many times he’s sent into the weeds to “get used to it”.
GG: Seriously, Gertie’s husband (do we know his name? Does she? It’s a non-NASCAR-related piece of information, after all) while it’s not clear how sincere this suggestion is, it’s entirely possible she wouldn’t even notice if you did!
JP: Wait, so Ann is going to help other women in her situation … because she sincerely believes that this situation should only be written about once? Huh? Did Ces forget what Ann actually said yesterday, and just remembered that she questioned the show and Network Lady accused her of being sarcastic?
Speaking of things Ces forgot, Ann’s sudden decision not to sell her story might have more dramatic impact if she’d ever actually wanted to and hadn’t been pressurised into it by the Galton and Simpson of Garbage, complaining every step of the way!
S4th: Stupid though this all is, I am glad that the Forths are actually getting to do their vacation, even with the time travel, and it’s not like the time Hil’s future self dragged her round various spots in New York that meant absolutely nothing to her yet, and we apparently weren’t supposed to be thinking “She’s missing the Unicorn Tapestries for this?” (No, I’m still not over that. Seriously, if my first trip to Edinburgh had involved Future Horace showing me where the student bar I was going to hang out at was, and I came back to find my parents saying “You were kind of zoned out the whole time we were at the Museum of Childhood,” I’d have been livid.)
(By the way, getting back to the discussion a couple of days ago about newspaper strips with a solid media presence, I’ve just realised I forgot Little Orphan Annie was a successful musical, and of course, one of the biggest empires out there, possibly surpassing Garfield even though there isn’t actually a strip attached to it any more, is Peanuts.)
@ectojazzmage: Good explanation. I wasn’t putting nearly as much thought into the term as you did. (I was throwing the term around willy nilly.)
The strip seems to be shilling Luann’s flakiness as quirkiness. Which fits right in with my fundamentalist interpretation of Luann. The only thing Luann’s parents want for her is to get married and start banging out white, Christian, upper-middle-class children as soon as possible. Notice she is held to no adult standards of any kind, or any behavior standards. She invited herself into Phil’s home, changed her career plans to pay for it, and then just walked away from that decision to go play camp counselor for two months. Now she’s back with a new career Phil is supposed to indulge. Which, as many have said, she’s done many times before.
I’ve seen this movie before. It ends with Luann “accidentally” getting pregnant and Phil “having” to marry her.
@Joshua K.: One of the fascinating things about Gearhead Gertie is that it’s not actually clear if the writer knows anything about NASCAR beyond the basics of it being a motor race, the totemic name of Dale Earnhardt, and whatever headlines come up when he searches for it. (Just the headlines, though, not the stories.)
But that’s crazy, right? That would be like if Intelligent Life was written by someone with only a superficial understanding of geek culture, or Gil Thorp was written by someone who didn’t know how high school sports worked, or Rex Morgan was written by someone who couldn’t care less about medical drama…
Six Chix-It’s clearly obvious they are dead.
Six Chix – Fine, fine, they’re dead. “Is there someone in the house who knows how to do an online death certificate?”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
I don’t really have a good rebuttal for your interpretation, but I don’t really agree because I personally feel that PHIL SUCKS. He’s NOTHING except his obsession that having a full-time job puts him ahead of his peers, I mean, have we ever even seen him in his civvies? Look, he’s STILL in his goddamn scrubs with the name tag RIGHT NOW!
@Anonymous: “Crankshaft : I remember a time where Stan Lee was interviewed (questioned?) about being a comic book writer, with the person asking the questions being all ‘Oh wow, being the WRITER of comic books must be hard, just scribbling down ‘BIFF!’ ‘BAM!’ ‘POW!’ and calling it a day’.”
Was the person interviewing him Jack Kirby?
@Baja Gaijin: Yes, because face it that is what is secretly drawing Dawn to Tommy
JP: Please please now have the TV exec exclaim ” Yeah, now that might work, gritty ex-con woman helps others in her situation adapt to life, while getting into thrilling adventures each week. “
6ix Chix: The lesson in any era is, when you’re on your knees giving a blow job to a man, keep in mind he’s liable to keel over from a heart attack and you’ll have to ask passersby for medical assistance. Nothing new under the sun. PS: I am glad Mary Lawton of all people did not find it necessary to draw anyone’s dick because it was sure to be hideous.
@Anonymous: Phil’s personality consists of the scrubs. They are also what endows him with his throbbing musky sexual appeal. You do NOT want to see him in board shorts.
@TheDiva: You’re a Plugger if you know who the Doublemint Twins are.
@Anonymous: The thing of it is, the male leads in MPDG stories or just general fundie propaganda as Banana mentions are pretty much universally terrible in every way, just unintentionally because their writer has so many bad hangups they refuse to work on and are so regressive that they don’t realize how their self-insert looks to everyone else. MPDG protagonists are almost always smarmy, self-absorbed, unlikable, controlling, sulky, puritanical, and God knows how many other undesirable traits. Their role is to be a sad but “mature” (lol) man who is pulled into life by being given a beautiful woman to fix and make their own, one who will have no real life outside of appeasing or being maintained by them, feeding their egos eternally in an ostensibly romantic relationship. All of it as self-insert for their writer. Phil definitely hits a lot of those notes.
To give some additional context on this subject and what me and Banana are talking about is to cite one of the few critiques of the Magic Pixie Dream Girl that actually followed Nathan Rabin’s model correctly in what and how it was criticizing: 500 Days Of Summer. In that movie, Zooey Deschanel’s character is quirky, but often in ways that DO challenge Hollywood’s ideas of what human relationships “should” be (e.g., being very sex positive and implicitly polyamorous), and much of the conflict and point of the movie is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s romantic male lead is actually a rather pathetic individual with a deluded, controlling attitude towards her because of his refusal to admit that they’re not compatible and that he can’t and shouldn’t be trying to change her to be his kind of woman.
He spends months in raging denial over the fact that she was never interested in a serious, non-friend relationship with him (even though she openly told him such from day one), obsesses over her and the few good times they had together long after she’s cut him out of her life, and the ending of the movie is ambiguous on whether he’s actually managed to come to terms with all of the above, or if he’s just gonna start a cycle he’s been in for years all over again (with it being implied that his final conversation with her on the park bench might be imagined to reassure himself and the new girl he meets at the end being suspiciously similar to Zooey’s character in some ways, down to a similar name, hinting he might have a “type” he foolishly pursues to try and “fix” them). He is a sympathetic character (unlike most MDPG male leads), but it’s made clear that he’s deeply flawed and keeping himself unhappy with his attitude towards women, particularly those he deems to be weird. And his whole arc and the movie’s wider themes sum up both the real issues with the Magic Pixie Dream Girl as described by Rabin and the ways that people who try to make Hollywood’s ideas of interpersonal relationships real for the sake of conformity only hurt themselves and others.
That’s all to say, Phil sucks dogshit but that’s what characters like him do by default. They suck, but their writers are desperate to believe that they’re a catch.
@Horace Broon: #88: Or Judge Parker was written by someone who didn’t give a shit for courtroom drama.
@Anonymous:
Nothing unusual in Luann. The Evvannssii was always drawing that one cheerleader roommate in her cheer outfit.
They should next introduce a scuba diver who is always in full diving gear on land.
GG: Later that day, a volunteer staffer at the Latter Day Saints church found himself fielding a dizzying array of questions, most of them about baseball.
Phantom: Yeah, the first Phantom really knew how to hoist a skull in the moonlight, but I think he’s a little beyond helping you.
RMMD: They’re not up to anything. The Morgan boys need help crossing the street, and probably still will when they’re sixteen.
@Ukulele Ike: You are correct, sir. The shocking twist is that Emil Frey also invented Velveeta.
I’m almost certain that one of the Fractured Fairy Tales / Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons used the gag “Take me to your Liederkranz,” but I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that online.
@treetown:
#94 JP: yeah, that’s what I’m expecting too. Ann will protest, “NO! I want to really help individual women get the support and resources they need in to re-enter society and build a strong life. Forget the script.”. “Yeah,” says Eve, “fiery rebelliousness. Ned, help me convince your friend.”.
FG: So, Ming. Are you going to take that dead Hawkman with you or are you going to make me clean up your mess?
C-Shaft: What’s it like to be so associated with BBQ grill wackiness that two video game nerds are (presumably) willing to pay you royalties on a game about it? Most of us can barely imagine.
DT: Can an online sting operation on an arrogant gamer be visually compelling? It depends on how interested you are in bowties and mullets.
GT: Great wedding when the bride and groom on the cake look like they’re watching the guy who just scratched the paint job on their Chevy pull away without leaving his insurance information.
Luann: And this is probably the 900th epiphany Phil has seen in the time they’ve been datingish.
MW: Hey, Dawn? It might help if you said that last part out loud. Don’t go assuming you and Tommy are psychically bonded just yet.
Pluggers: A little internet research revealed that this cheese is Liederkranz, an American variation on Limberger. A little more showed me that this exact jeopardy clue dates from the High Trebek Era in 2009. Roger White of Central, South Carolina has been holding onto this one for a while.
@Horace Broon: Re: comics juggernauts, when I visited Japan last year, Snoopy was EVERYWHERE. I think Japan likes Peanuts more than the US does.
FC: Why is Bil wearing a coat and tie to go to a farm? Maybe he’s cosplaying as Oliver Wendall Douglas from “Green Acres”. Jeffy just failed his audition as Eb. Can’t wait to see Thel in a blonde, big hair wig affecting a Hungarian accent.
@Activist:
@ArtistFormerlyKnownasBen (yesterday)
Thanks! :3
I used a frosting glaze.
@Banana Jr. 6000: This reminds me of Luann. I dislike Bernice because of how she treats her supposed best friend with open contempt, but in her defense, you try dealing with Luann’s stupidity for more than a week without resorting to eye-rolling and sarcasm. It’s a survival mechanism since the both of them are too cowardly and codependent to simply let their toxic friendship end.
Just as I couldn’t put up with Bernice’s snotty attitude, Luann’s dimwittedness would drive me up the wall as well. Just different flavors of insufferable.
@Baja Gaijin:
Genius!
@lynn: “Double your pleasure, double your fun
With Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint Gum
—- PluggerJeff
@Human-eared Dragon: Don’t forget the recent strip that showed that Brad drove home still wearing his firefighting gear.
@UncleJeff: But do you remember ‘It’s two – two- two mints in one’ (clacks rolls of mints together)
GG – Baseball? Baseball?!?! No, if you really wanna stir up the nest, there are only two options: F1 and NHRA. And really, NHRA is the better choice because those people make NASCAR look like a bunch of nepo babies!
I’ve said this before but Six Chix has to be a great gig because it’s 6 people each working maybe 1-2 hours per week and somehow the syndication money is enough to sustain all of them.
LUANN: Phil “Oh ok”
Luann: “You’re not excited.”
Greg Evans: “Oops, I accidentally put their post-coital pillow talk into this scene. My bad!”
LUANN (2): @Anonymous: Now, now, the answers is that they both sucks.* Well actually Luann’s worse because Phil is clearly destined for a one-way trip to the Isle of Misfit Boyfriends in the near future, but we’re pretty much stuck with Luann.
*Not in the way Phil’s probably hoping for though. Maybe Mrs Mazurich down at The Home might be up for it if he changes her bedpan enough times
Is there anyone who doubts that Gearhead Gertie has thousands of hours of old races on a variety of media?
@JeffMcm: Don’t get too excited — I think all six need day jobs to pay the rent. Bianca Xinuse is a hat-check girl at a Rush Street burlesque club; Izzy Bannerman loads cement blocks onto trucks.
@Peanut Gallery: Well, go me. I never tasted Liederkranz, but I am fond of that “aromatic” Wisconsin aged Brick. Fun Wiki article too; no idea Liederkranz had such a t0rtured history.
And tonight I will dream about T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden debating modern verse while munching dark rye bread and raw onion alongside big slabs of stinky cheese. With frosty Seidels of bitter Wisconsin Pilsener.
@Peanut Gallery: “We’ll get him back, Mr. President,” he jested infinitely.
@2+2=7: LUANN: Phil is clearly destined for a one-way trip to the Isle of Misfit Boyfriends in the near future
It says something about how unmemorable all the male love interests are in that none of them are listed on the Characters section on Luann‘s TV Tropes page. Kip is on there, but 1. I don’t count him as Tiffany’s love interest since she never actually had a shot with him, and 2. Half the listings in his entry are about how he has no real personality.
@45 Hibbleton: on Mary Worth: I am NOT going to create that mashup. NO!
@54 Lord Flatulence: Wow! That is something. Did you make it?
@91 Anonymous: Phil is the male Bernice.
@105 Artist formerly known as Ben: You’re a plugger if you wait more than 15 years to submit your “Pluggers” entry.
@118 Ukulele Ike: “Bianca Xinuse is a hat-check girl at a Rush Street burlesque club…” Really? No, you’re making that up.
@Lord Flatulence: is there a recipe?
@Activist: And nope, I didn’t burn any.
Nice and softly golden.
(The inner part is a swirl of cinnamon baked in)
@The Rambling Otter:
Mmmmm
@Baja Gaijin: @brendancalling: No, it’s just a picture I found.