Workshopping terms for friends of Elmo. “Frelmos?”
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Blondie, 7/4/26
On this, America’s most sacred fireworks-related holiday, not one but two comics did “people making fireworks noises with their mouths in lieu of setting off actual fireworks” jokes. One of them was Crock, which I’m not even going to bother inflicting on you; I kind of enjoy this one because it ends with at least the hint that Elmo and his little friend are going to come back with actual fireworks that they’re going to set off in the Bumsteads’ living room.
Beetle Bailey, 7/4/26
At least Beetle Bailey, the strip about America’s military, takes a properly patriotic tone! Oh, wait, what’s that you say? They actually did a joke about the grim reality of the physical abuse of low-ranking enlisted men by their superiors? Hmm. Hmm!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/4/26
Rex Morgan, M.D., meanwhile, doesn’t have time to celebrate. It’s focusing its patriotism on improving America by targeting and revealing the scammers that bedevil us all. Or the one scammer who’s doing that, anyway. A lot of commenters were like “These ladies are somehow going to end up both being Rene Belluso,” and I was like “Ha ha, very funny, but that can’t be right,” and they’re not, but they almost certainly are his nieces, given that we learned a couple years ago that Jimmy was Rene’s actual name. Anyway, I gotta say that “pretending to play your violin so people give you spare change” is not anywhere near as impressive as “running a scam self-help cult that ends up actually helping people” but you gotta start somewhere, I guess!
30 replies to “Workshopping terms for friends of Elmo. “Frelmos?””
Pretty lame vaguery, Elmo. “Happy 4th?” Fourth what? Dose of Ritalin you’ve skipped? Beer stolen from your parents? Home you’ve invaded today? Disgraceful, just disgraceful.
Blondie: “Friends of Elmo”, plural? Let’s wait until a second friend of Elmo’s shows up before we waste energy on this matter.
FC: Thel, the little jerks are sticking in one place and keeping their mouths shut. There will be plenty of screaming and screeching later; don’t spoil this time off.
Blondie-And that’s how Elmo detonated a nuke.
MW-Let’s talk about your exes, Wilbur.
FC-“What? No. We’re doing the famous pose of ‘See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Speak Nothing, Know Nothing’.”
Crankshaft-“What are we all doing here? Is this a Pied Piper thing?”
RMMD:
“Let’s the two of us do a topical ditty to celebrate the fact that we took in twice the amount of tips as we did the day before!
“Double your pleasure
Double your sum
With Doublemint, Doublemint
Doublemint scum!”
Family Circus: Who stole Jeffy’s nostril? Was it that darned Barfy?
MW: “Speaking of exes, Dad, remember when you let a homicidal maniac live with us and ignored my concerns until your precious goldfish was threatened?”
RMMD: Is every member of the Belluso family destined for ineffectual villainy, or is the Snidely Whiplash gene recessive and only presents in an unlucky few?
MW: The real fireworks are the petty bursts of emotional attacks in Wilbur’s domicile.
Did every comic blow off the semiquincentennial? Even Hi & Lois, which is doing a whole week about it, didn’t really acknowledge the big day as such. I wasn’t expecting a repeat of last year but I was expecting some acknowledgment that it’s not just an ordinary Fourth of July.
Wow, the Walker Co. so clearly forgot it was gonna be the 4th of July when this ran, I kinda love it.
“Shit, what do we do? Can we draw an Uncle Sam hat on Killer real quick? Some fireworks out the window?”
“How about the tiniest ‘Happy 4th?’ imaginable?”
“But 4th what? Be specific man! Tee time’s in 20 minutes!”
Blondie:
Who lets these little messengers of the devil into the house to annoy Dagwood, anyway? Blondie? Cookie? The rarely-seen Alexander?
Mary Worth: Oh no you di-int, Wilbur! Cue the montage of the Colombian Giantess, the Crazy-Eyed Floridian, and the others.
They’re “visiting” Uncle Jimmy, nobody uses that word unless jail or a hospital is involved. Is he STILL in that bed? Is he “the best” at consuming solid food yet?
RMMD:
“We’re twenty-somethings, each of whom has an unfettered ability to make our own couture choices, and here we are dressed absolutely identically. But we’re not dorks or anything!”
MW: “Oh yeah, dad. What about some of your old girlfriends…like…like…Hey, wait a minute. Iris is Tommy’s mom.”
Kudos to Blondie for not going with the very dated: “Let’s put a cap in his ass.”
MW:
“Why isn’t Mary Worth present in her eponymous strip today, what with today being such a momentous occasion, Dad?”
“She’s off touting the adult incontinence underwear that the readership is always joking about her sporting.”
“No. Don’t say it, Dad.”
“Yep. It’s her Declaration of ‘In Depends‘-ence!”
Blondie: /pulls out baggie of white powder/ “This should have enough ‘kick’ to make us loud enough to wake up Mr B!”
BB: “It took 3 hours of drinking before he even let me go to the hospital! I nearly passed out from the pain! Funny, huh?”
RMMD: Jeez, these two are a wire-tapper’s dream come true. Any more details you’d like to drop about your ongoing scam, ladies? Maybe remind each other of Uncle Jimmy’s address and phone number, and reminisce about some other crimes you’ve done with him?
@matt w: As far as I can tell, the comics are following the lead of pretty much everything else. It’s a huge contrast with the Bicentennial, if you’re old enough to remember that. I did notice yesterday Coke has special red-white-and-blue “USA” cans — but they’re for the FIFA cup.
BLONDIE: An alarmingly large amount of so-called humor is based on the fact that people don’t lock their doors.
MW: “Which Weston made dumber relationship choices?” can join the known list of Impossible Questions.
RMMD: *Cue sinister music*
@Ken: I’m just old enough to remember the Bicentennial being a huge deal, yeah. And its not being triple-digit temperatures anywhere in the Northeast. (Only in the 80s up here in Vermont, which is plenty bad in my house without central air–and an air quality alert with “patchy smoke” because of fires in Canada, which sounds about right.)
Well, at least Family Circus celebrated by not only acknowledging the holiday but giving Thel one of her rare speaking lines.
Blondie: Elmo and Generic Child Character setting off fireworks inside Dagwood’s house as he tries to sleep would’ve been much funnier as the primary focus of the this installment, rather than merely it’s imagined punchline. At least that way we could imagine a significant chunk of the Blondie cast dying horribly in an explosive inferno.
Beetle Bailey: I don’t see why a broken arm is a big deal for Beetle, it’ll just magically heal Looney Tunes-style between strips like every other injury in this comic.
Rex Morgan: God, as if this plot hasn’t been weird and vaguely creepy enough, we’re now seriously going down the route of “scammers aren’t just evil, they spread their unholy taint to their relatives”. Soon Beatty will be dedicating entire strips to calling for con-artists to be rounded up and placed on reservations and their children sent to residential schools to “kill the scam, save the man”.
CS as noted, the culmination is Dinkle playing his father’s magnum opus in public… solo on a trumpet. A piece supposedly written for a whole Big Band. Maybe the band didn’t quit because the crowds dwindled but in frustration because that’s either a terrible piece with no role for anything other than a showboating trumpet, or a terrible one with each instrument – no matter its strengths – playing the same dang notes.
MT Paging Fashion Police… paging Fashion Police… we need a ruling on a so-called tuxedo in Mark Trail!
MW Dawn desperately tries to overcome the Worthiverse Conditioning, tugging her head, shaking it to try to get her mouth to form the words that will brutally compare her relationship choices with her Specialest Quirky dad’s homicidal and scambait exes, but she just… can’t… quite… tears of frustration from in her eyes as all she can do is get the smallest scowl to appear…
Spotting AI fun: last night on public radio before announcing the music, hot told us it was 15° but wind chill was -3°. Was he talking Celsius, was his a repeat show, or has AI taken over public radio too? You decide.
Fun Fact 2: my town has healed so much that even on July 4 at 1am, there were no firecrackers, gun shots, or screaming sirens of police, firetrucks, or ambulances! Is this healthy, or a sign our spirits have died? You decide..
CS: on Sunday we will be treated to premiere of Larry’s masterpiece. And Harry will put his troubled memory to rest.
yLUANN: Never heard terms file fold or military roll, but I know what Ox means. Love his and Bee’s casual conversation — hope Team Evans doesn’t put a romantic spin on it.
BETTY: Peeking at lurid eye magnets does NOT mean she approves.
BF: see comments for BETTY. Cursed distractions.
JP: we’re drawing horses.. and I alone am doing Bailey. Or else.
RHYMES wO: don’t you just hate it when younguns try to take your freedom under cloak of “protection”?
RMMD: I’m hoping Rene Belluso (I think we all agree Josh is right about “Jimmy”) has been badly injured in one of his scams. Now, unable to leave his wheelchair, he has turned the two girls into his instruments of vengance against his nemeses, the hated Morgan family and their little dog too! “Yes, yes,” he gurgles, “today you nearly got them to give you 39 cents. My plan is coming together perfectly!“
Murky Tail:
“You called me dad! I suppose it’s time I told you, you’re adopted.”
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Wrecks Moregone:
Uncle Jimmy’s the best…….at getting caught!
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Wrecks Moregone II:
It seems low stakes enough to be a Belluso scam.
A high level scammer might, instead, pretend to have a medical degree, open a nursing home, and have a comic strip named after him in which he hardly ever needs to appear.
@MKay: Once you get down to it, I don’t think it’s actually that hard, Wilbur is MUCH stupider than Dawn on just about every level, especially relationships. Like, for the crap we give Dawn, her idiocy really tends to boil down to her having shit taste in men and while Moy likes to delude herself otherwise, Dawn probably wouldn’t be blamed for most of her breakups in real life (e.g., Jared).
Wilbur, on the other hand, is directly at fault for every single breakup or relationship drama we’ve seen from him (with the exception of Dawn’s mother… pointedly from BEFORE Moy wrote the strip, back when Wilbur was a normal person instead of what he is now), and his antics are baffling and usually vaguely horrifying, like faking his death or obsessively stalking his ex after she dumped him.
@Bob Tice: That’s just what twins are often like, to be honest.
@Bob Tice: Yeah, that’s something that’s always weirded me out about Elmo in this comic. Like, why is this random kid in the neighborhood so obsessed with Dagwood and how does he keep getting into Dagwood’s house? It’s not like Dennis the Menace, where the Wilsons are clearly family friends of the Mitchells and Mrs. Wilson babysits Dennis regularly; there’s no indication that anybody wants Elmo around or that Dagwood and Blondie even know his parents personally. It’s so bizarre.
@MKay:
Similar to personal birthdays, the older you get the less it is celebrated. Also, it’s tainted with…well… you can figure it out.
As always, Arlo & Janis nails it.
Mary Worth:
When in the course of subhuman events….
MW: Seeing these two mental giants snarl at each other, I can’t help but think of the words of Htom Sirveaux: ‘Perhaps booze would alleviate this situation!’
Ph: And here comes the ‘zappy zappy’ and the napalm and the ‘noble’ death of these spear-wielding ‘noble savages’. Surely their involvement with the masked white vigilante has only brought peace and joy to these people!
S4th: Uh, what now? They aren’t in one of the last line of fake wood-paneled station wagons? Their little fugue state gave them the frikkin’ GADGETMOBILE????
DT: Psst! Sam! Child labor laws are being rolled back across the country! You can still get out of this!!