Can I call in a wellness check on a cartoon character
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Mary Worth, 8/31/26
Hey, everyone, here’s a fun fact, if by “fun” you mean guaranteed to deliver the epiphany that oh my god I’m so old, how did I get to be so old: we are mere weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the death of Aldo Kelrast. Can contemporary Mary Worth come up with a storyline that could come close to that magic? Well, today we’re launching a new one, and I’m mildly hopeful, as it introduces two intriguing things: Mary and Ian spending time together socially and, apparently, enjoying themselves in a quite manic fashion; and some anhedonic old lady sitting in her Charterstone kitchen fuming about how nothing is as good as it used to be when she was young and had her whole life ahead of her. Not even putting oat milk on oat-based cereal (or “oatmaxxing,” as the kids call it) can bring her a frission of pleasure anymore! Looking forward to learning how she’s about to make this everybody else’s problem and nip Mary and Ian’s ha ha!ing in the bud.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/31/26
OK, fine, I guess we’re not going to get to see the scam twins try and fail to pull off a child kidnapping, but at least we’re going to be treated to a Socratic dialogue between Rene and his elaborately coiffed and mustachio’d jail buddy, in which the former attempts to explain how rating on a criminal associate entails turning them in to the authorities, usually in exchange for reducing one’s own looming criminal penalties, and is quite different from activating family networks to dissuade a loved one from a course of action that you don’t believe they’re equipped to handle.
Pluggers, 8/31/26
You could definitely have done a panel with this caption where the plugger is cheerfully strolling ahead with a measured pace, just like many older heavyset adults I see every day do. But we’re in the late Pluggers era, so instead we have to look at this, a “fun” comic in which a plugger is clearly in genuine distress.
27 replies to “Can I call in a wellness check on a cartoon character”
It definitely makes sense to predict that this cereal-filled and hate-filled curmudgeon will nip Mary and Ian’s ha ha-ing in the bud, but this being Mary Worth, I feel like there’s a strong possibility that their ha ha-ing will nip her hating in the bud. It could go either way!
Mary Worth:
“My goodness, Mary! — I’m higher than a kite! I haven’t been this wasted since the ’60s!”
“Ha ha!”
“Breakfast isn’t what it used to be! Food isn’t what it used to be! Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be! Ten years ago the pang of lost things was excruciating, now it is just annoying!”
RMMD:
“By the way, what in you in for, anyway, pal?”
“Sporting a mullet! — it’s a felony here in Glenwood!”
“I don’t get you Belluso. One moment you encourage your nieces to run their cons, the next you turn around to rat them”
“Are you forgetting where we are?”
“We are in prison and you are an unsavoury character?”
“No, we are in Rex Morgan MD and there is no character consistency”
RMMD. In today’s example of comics as cutting edge chroniclers of pop culture trends I see that the RMMD artist has made time to see Joe Dirt a mere (checks Wikipedia) 25 years later.
MW – Of course Nelly isn’t going to get much out of a box of Cheerio. Next time, buy the box with more than one in it, Nelly.
Mary Worth:
“I’d throw out this insipid breakfast food, but that would make me a cereal killer!”
Pluggers: Joe Feline’s body odor is giving away his presence to his prey. It’s time for a tongue bath!
MW Mary and Ian, forced into a car together – despite no carpool obligations – to satisfy the writer’s desperate plotting to have them hear or witness together the start of the next meddle-plot, at least *try* to escape their fate by not using the seatbelts. Ha ha! they laugh – an anniversary drive by Kelrast Kurve and we’ll be free! free of plots so laboriously drawn-out that you need a specific pan exchange excuse to have a character meetup, and changing one seafood entree for another at the denouement counts as excitement!
Mary Worth:
“So I ask Jeff if he can get his leviathan of a boat into the travel lane so that he can dock us before we go to the BumBoat, and he says ‘Yes — but wait a minute. There’s a ketch!’ ”
“Ha ha!”
GA: Look, if you’re so forgetful that you forget the friend you drew realistically in the strip, at least use post-it notes.
MW: The laughter ends just as the tape does. Ian asks Mary if she has another Cheech and Chong cassette.
Pluggers:
Pluggers realize, to their chagrin, that it’s hard to keep one’s balance using one’s arms when one only has four digits on each hand.
MW: Goes out with Jeff, comes back with Ian? You naughty, naughty girl!
DtM: George learns that Martha, in her infinite spite, has signed him up to homeschool Dennis.
H&L: The Flagstons have sprouted small, purple mountains in their back yard. No wonder the weather’s wonky.
MW: This Mary Worth becomes especially amusing if you imagine that Ian and Mary are spying on Nelly through some kind of hidden camera. I mean, they wouldn’t be privy to her inner monologue, but they could clearly see she wasn’t enjoying herself. And that would be enough to bring them pleasure.
RMMD: Hey, Panel Two Rene Belluso, is there some reason you’re not making eye contact with your friend? You know, the one who’s actually talking to you? Is there some other, more interesting inmate you’d rather be talking to across the yard?
Pluggers: This Pluggers represents a new low … for me. I saw that this plugger had coordinated his T-shirt and his sneakers and thought, “God, I wish my life were that together.” So, yeah, I’m now an aspiring plugger.
JP:
Alan, back when Woody Wilson was running the show we could afford to eat here!
Katherine, may I remind you that when Woody Wilson ran the show, we didn’t even have to look at the prices because he always wrote in some plot angle where we got to eat for free.
Mary Worth:
“That big ol’ boat of Jeff’s is compensatory, isn’t it, Mary….”
MW: Gary Larson’s masterpiece, The Far Side, contained a strip that generated outrage upon publication. This comic, Tethercat, featured two dogs smacking a cat which was tied by the tail to a tetherball pole. Musing on the strip’s controversy, Larson gave voice to the idea that would become the Tethercat Principle: that audiences will assume that whatever the last thing a character was seen doing, they will continue to do indefinitely, until shown otherwise. For Farside readers, the tethercat remained forever trapped and battered.
Using the tethercat principle, Dawn is off somewhere crying over Tommy in perpetuity, and so we as the audience are—wait, wait, wait, Mary and Ian are having an off screen affair while our new plot is about some madwoman raving over groceries? I have never been more excited in my life.
RMMD: “You should follow my example and make a list of people that you have wronged and then make restitution to them in an episodic fashion.”
“Earl! That would never work!”
MW I always wondered how the characters in this strip managed their perfectly-timed synchronized laughs, and now we know: hours of practice with Mary. Don’t worry about your busy schedule, she’ll come to you and we can do it in the car.
Pluggers So….that cat is shitting himself, right? Im pretty sure thats what we’re looking at here.
Calling this “the late Pluggers era” is going to look pretty naïve to the Pluggerologists of 2300, when Pluggers is the only form of media that remains legal.
Anyway, it’s my birthday today, and this absolutely bonkers Mary Worth strip feels like a gift to me personally.
There’s an engagement prompt which is “describe your favorite movie in as boring a way as possible.” Today’s Mary Worth narration box is like that, except it really is that boring.
Wrecks Moregone:
Moustache is so stupid that he makes Rene look like a genius, which made me ask myself, is he an undercover agent for law enforcement trying to get prisoners to confess to planned or committed criminal activities?
Then I realised that was far too intelligent story arc for this comic.
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Wary Morth:
What the hell?!? What happened to Mary’s compulsory 2 week victory lap? Are we moving straight on to her illicit affair with Pompous Axx and the two of them laughing at Toby? Please let this story arc involve an affair between Mary and Pompous Axx and a lot of laughing at Toby.
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Flylock Socks:
Cassie will do literally anything to get the red jackal to notice her, won’t she? She might as well just confess her love at this point and get it over with.
MW: The only reason I can think of to have Ian in panel 1 is because the sourpuss in panel 2 bears an incredible resemblance to the ‘School Management’ lady from several storylines ago. I’m guessing she’s going to turn out to be her twin sister or cousin or something.
DT: ‘A possible terror attack would normally be a job for the feds, but if you’ve seen who’s running things over there right now, the MCU is actually the more sober option!’
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Shrinkflation is out of control