Ominous developments
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Crankshaft, 8/19/26
The last time Crankshaft and Harry Dinkle started an adventure together, Crankshaft looked real cherry but it ended up with Harry confronting the truly depressing circumstances of his father’s death. Now Ed has shown up at his place of work to drag him off on some other journey and he looks pissed, so maybe this time will turn out to be more fun for Harry, or maybe Crankshaft has just decided to murder him and put him out of his misery.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/19/26
At one point the scam twins were thinking about kidnapping a child, but then they realized that would not only get them in a lot of trouble, but also make this strip dangerously exciting, so now they’re trying to negotiate down to an acceptable level of plot development. I love the idea that squatting is too much of a commitment to bother doing. Like, most people squat just because that means they get to live someplace for free, but in the Twins’ conception, they’d be squatting for revenge, which means they’d have to stick around even if it turns out that the Morgan house has bad vibes or is unpleasant to be inside (it definitely does and is).
Beetle Bailey, 8/19/26
Hey, General, I just want to point out that the U.S. has fought in, like, several wars in the time that you’ve been an officer. Heck, there’s one going on right now! I know what you mean is that you want to have been in one of the cool ones, not the cringe wars we keep finding ourselves in lately, but still, I feel like you shouldn’t be quite so vocal on this point at the office if you don’t want to find yourself abruptly in the field.
157 replies to “Ominous developments”
Why the zoom-out to reveal Halftrack’s golf clubs? Isn’t the running gag there that he’s not good, and dresses like an asshole? You’re not a legend at that either! Way to suck, guy!
“Here, Harry, are the remains of the Starlight Ballroom, where your father played!”
“Been ditching your Coping With Senility classes, Ed?”
“Who?!”
Beetle Bailey:
No computer or phone at the General’s desk. How does he communicate? — no wonder he never became a war hero.
Crankshaft:
“Next stop…Willoughby!”
Assume Miss Buxley means that a Halftrack is all bad, since she hasn’t been struck down by lightning from heaven for her filthy lies.
RMMD: There are a million vids on youtube about vacation scams. These two need to cut the cord and start streaming if they ever want to be successful.
RMMD You know what’s *also* too much of a commitment? Drawing this every day! Artist must be just as tuned out, the P2 Foreground Twin didn’t even have a hand gesture adjustment from yesterday.
“We need an idea, sis! If we don’t make a plan to destroy the Morgans, we’ll never be released from this powder blue void!”
“Well, let’s hurry! Judge Judy reruns start in 20 minutes! I hope it’s the one where she yells at people!”
RMMD:
“Why don’t we bore him to death with interminable conversation between the two of us about what we’re going to do to him?”
“Well, we’re already doing that!”
Wrecks Moregone:
“Can we menace them with our comically enormous hands?”
“Now you’re talking!”
____________________________________
Wary Morth:
Meanwhile Tommy has stolen the background to sell for drug money.
RMMD:
“Let’s talk him into creating an OnlyDocs website by telling him that people will pay to watch him do nothing!”
CSh: Im guessing that Ed got tickets to the Michael Jackson Revue, as he seems to be moonwalking his way out of the church.
RMMD Its incredible how this strip manages to take any interesting story subject and find the most boring direction to take it in. A couple of teenaged twin scammers with a desire for revenge? What if, instead of watching them pull scams, we spent weeks with the brainstorming scams ideas, and rejecting them all for practical reasons? Maybe we could also put them in a blue void, just to make sure that there’s nothing interesting going in on the background…
Send Halftrack to Hormuz. He can whack golf balls across the Straits and everyone on all sides will just give up and go home in disgust.
CS So, bets on how a pizza parlour photo will tie into the Dinkle story? On his way to his bus driving heart attack, Dinkle Sr stopped for a slice, was recognized as this great band leader, and got his photo with a “Best Band Director Ever” cardboard crown? While holding a hand-drawn sign saying “I Love You, Son!”? How glurgey can this story get??
RMMD: Are the twins actually that experienced, or have they just heard about all these crimes? (I mean, I know about them too; I just like true crime) They had to be told how serious a kidnapping could be – EVERYONE knows that!
All we’ve really seen them do is Fake Violin and “We’re from the safety inspection department.” And that second one wouldn’t have worked on anyone with half a brain.
FC: Billy continues: “And as oldest son, I’ll be the new head of the family.” Starts rocking boat violently.
Beetle Bailey : Amos merely assumes the US has not participated in any armed conflicts since WW2 because if they had, SURELY they would have called on Camp Swampy to help, right? It’s not like this “military base” is just a dump for all the rejects that are kept away from the fighting because they’d do more harm than good, right?
************
Crankshaft : So, it’s not a robot waiter, because if it was, why the hell would Cranky feel the need to tell HARRY, of all people.
ALSO : Cranky can just run all the way from Montoni’s to St. Spire Church on a whim, those two locations are now essentially right next to each other.
ALSO ALSO : this is something so urgent and troubling Crankshaft must tell Harry to come over in person, in person. What are those “telephones” you speak of? Sounds way too new-fangled for this strip!
***********
Luann :
a) YOU’RE NOT SURE!? You spent three days waving that sonogram around, talking about how it was living proof you were going to have a baby, and you’re not SURE!?
b.1) Toni has no family to tell about this. She doesn’t have a brother, a niece or a still-living aunt who practically raised her when her parents died to tell about this.
b.2) Once again, Toni Daytona has NO relatives/friends/acquaintances/supporting cast of her own, and thus when the strip needed to do the “expecting woman is given contradictory, absurd advice” bit, it had to be total strangers accosting her for no visible reason.
**************
Rex Morgan M.D. : “Small potatoes, huh? You mean, mind control the whole town into becoming their enemies and attacking them?”
*“Come on, Jane, you know our latent psychic powers due to being twins are limited to a simple telepathic link between us.” “I’m Jane, you’re Jean.” “SEE! It’s not even a GOOD telepathic link because it doesn’t even help me not CONSTANTLY get that confused!”*My attempt at referencing the current summer blockbuster movie… and hey, the character who does it is ALSO called JEAN!*************
Safe Havens : Uh… the way I understood it worked, you don’t have the metabolism of a dove when you’re not in dove form. It’s why the “let’s expand our lifespans by spending the entire summer as mermaids” works!… Or did you guys forget that the whole reason you spent summers as mermaids was because you needed someone’s biological clock to stall for a year?
@A Grave Mind:“Been ditching your Coping With Senility classes, Ed?”
“No! Microwave Cookery!
….no, wait. Coping With Senility…”
Halftrack, pulls M16 out of his golf bag. “Well, that ends now!” Declares war on Dubuque, Iowa.
Is Miss Buxley shooting for a raise? I’ve never heard her be anything but dismissive of the General before. Maybe she wants to be the next Natalie Harp.
BB: I hear they’ve got some nice golf courses along the Gulf of Oman, General.
Blondie: Now you’ve done it, Dagwood, you’ve pissed of Pazuzu, who’s apparently been running a doughnut shop since the events portrayed in The Exorcists.
FC: RIP, Daddy, murdered by your melon-headed children and made to look like a boating accident.
@pugfuggly:
Fist bump.
I was halfway to becoming the next Patton. I routinely slapped my enlisted men, all I needed was some sort of military achievement.
RMMD: Can we please skip ahead to when Grandpa Ollman storms in and clunks their heads together like a Three Stooges bit?
Beetle Bailey:
What General Halftrack really needed to become a legend was to stop wasting his time staring at blank pieces of paper. Look, Miss Buxley’s even brought him another one!
C’shaft: Crankshaft is a member of the choir now, having been recruited because he’s a) male and b) technically alive, so why is he barging in on a rehearsal that he very well should be at already?
RMMD: The twins want revenge on the Morgans, but they don’t want to put too much risk or effort into the process. They may not be the villains this strip needs, but they are definitely the villains it deserves.
@Hibbleton: pulls M16 out of his golf bag
Shades of General Ripper!
I’ve always been at a bit of a loss to figure out why McArthur was considered a genius at anything other than self=promotion. Don’t know whether Gen. Cummings in the Naked and the Dead is supposed to resemble him but I’ve always liked to think so.
Family Circus: Daddy’s not wearing a “life preserver” because they’re filled with lead, not kapok. He’s not going down with the ship!
“Well, good news! President Truman is relieving you of duty!”
Beetle Bailey: After half a century at his present rank, Halftrack finally realizes that he has received his last promotion. Were some major world war brewing, he would be among the first group to be politely thanked with a firm handshake and ushered out the door (like what Gen. Marshall did in the run up to WW2). Camp Swampy is where they put everyone who is deemed too ineffective to deploy but not so horrible to dismiss outright. They would surely become casualties due to enemy action or just accidents and that would hurt public opinion. Lt. Fuzz hasn’t figured out that his posting at Camp Swampy means he is being fast tracked to oblivion.
GT: Surfing is good fun! Gil’s family is on vacation on the coast? Is Milford on the coast? That board is really a BOAR, square cut end!
JP: What is the age range for Abbey, April, Neddy, Sophie, Ann, and Ronnie? They all seem sort of the same. Only the judge has noticeably aged.
MW: Good for you Wilbur, you are just a self-centered uncouth blob but no hypocrite! NOT a hypocrite. He should have a shirt made.
Dick Tracy: Please correct me but Widescreen diverted a Schroedinger to his place, and then shipped it to the pseudonym of Fritz Ann using the three cats shipping company or did he repurpose a cat food carton from his old lady neighbor? I’d like to think the latter since it would be another reason why she despises him.
RMMD: Many maybe surprised that the twins seems aware of the nuances of many scams yet oblivious to the larger significance of their actions. That just supports the notion that they are high on the psychopathy scale. Please let the twist be that uncle Lyle calls the girls up and tips them off that Rene is ratting them out.
BB: I can’t decide if the references to Patton and Macarthur — dead for 81 and 62 years respectively — are a nod to the demographics of the comics-reading public, or a recognition that no subsequent generals have earned similar stature. (Well, maybe Norman Schwarzkopf.) Probably a little of both.
GT: So the Thorps having the kids along on their post-wedding trip isn’t entirely unusual–“familymoons” are fairly popular for couples with children who want to celebrate not only their union, but that of their families (though Beth, being the perfect trophy wife, doesn’t have any family or other baggage which Gil would be obliged to take on). What I do find notable is that everybody in this newly formed clan is off doing their own thing–Jami wants to dig to China like a five-year-old, Keri’s sitting under an umbrella doing the too-cool-for-everything teenager act, Beth is surfing and spouting outdated slang and Gil’s just griping about how much he hates the beach. Nobody in this family wants to spend time with anyone else in it, and honestly I can’t blame them.
JP: Grief, booze, six on one hand…
MW: Wilbur needs to hear things about a dozen times before they even begin to stick, which explains so much about why Mary likes to hang out with him.
Beetle Bailey: The lettering is so tightly packed that I found myself wondering who or where Beanother Patton is.
H&L: Hi with his statement seems to be warning Trixie (AKA Baby Huey) to keep off his hammock lest she busts it. Seriously, what’s up with the perspective in P1?
“Harry, come with me if you want to live!”
“Well, now I don’t know if I want to come!”
Dick Tracy: Some European countries (Germany, Austria, Denmark) use almost the same logo on their postboxes as the horn logo on the building. Neat detail.
FC: And guess what Daddy went down on last night.
Crankshaft: Who barges into choir practice and screams that the choir director has to leave without any explanation? Crankshaft, I know the answer is Crankshaft; it’s rhetorical. It’s outrageous behavior, though, and there’d better be a magical fire that only Harry’s piss can extinguish; that’s all I’m saying.
Crank: “You need to come with me, Harry!”
Just when I thought ICE recruitment standards couldn’t get any lower.
“General, I thought you got some medal for your service: First Gulf War, Afghanistan, ISIS campaign”
“Yes, but those medals were from Saddam. the Talibans and Al Baghdadi”
Rex Morgan, M.D.: What?! A “Squatter Takeover” is a common enough thing to have its own name? with its own methodical rules and mores (“if you have bad knees, try crouching part of the time!”)? I think there ought to be commercials during morning broadcasts of Bonanza, with some guy in a trench coat walking toward the camera, telling viewers how YOU can protect yourself against a Squatter Takeover.
GT: Beth really doesn’t need a surfboard with those huge feet.
BB: Halftrack never made it to the top because of his lack of a PR-ready nickname. No president today wants to appoint “Raisin’ Halftrack.”
Crankshaft-“Oh is this going to be like the time were forcibly compelled to follow the band director and were incredibly bored learning about his father?”
RMMD-“How about if we squat on their lawn then?”
FC-I notice how PJ has been conveniently left behind.
FC-Do any of you kids know the ‘Hail Mary’?
The Morgans are not too smart to fall for such scam, but they would not fall for it anyway, because they hate charity and generosity
Beetle Bailey-“Then Vietnam happened but fortunately I was cleared of war crimes.”
Ph: ‘I’m sorry, Schmelon, I cannot do that. And take off that stupid alien mask or I shall do it for you…’
S4th: ‘I’ll bring the reality check, and here it is: You are a bad friend who constantly ropes us into your wacky schemes and wastes our time. It is only through the will of our cruel master Ces ‘I’m Endearingly Quirky!’ Marculiano that we are forced to remain your ‘friends’. Will you just shut up for once, go catch up on your sleep, and leave us be?’
MW: Every shot of Wilbur talking (or Dawn, or Tommy, etc.) I imagine them just going ‘duuuuuhhhhhh’. Every. single. one.
RMMD: Maybe you can just burn the house down while they’re on vacation? Arson’s been in the news a lot lately!
Luann: Does that shredder also burn the paper, ’cause it looks like you just dumped a bucket of ashes on them.
CS: Oh, COME ON! We just sat through six weeks of this boring-ass non-story. Can we have Batton Thomas back? At least he’s worth hating.
Crankshaft is the Angel of Death. When he’s not escorting people like Harry Dinkle off this mortal coil, his personality is making them wish it would all just end.
***
Now I’m just a humble city non-lawyer in another country, but I’m pretty sure squatting isn’t that easy in most of the US (except maybe the woke cities because there ain’t much left there as they’re mostly burnt to the ground). Wouldn’t that just be breaking and entering? I honestly love these two. They want to crime so much but they’re too lazy and not that smart and they don’t prattle on about, say, Bakelite housewares or some other such nonsense like the rest of that town.
BB: “You can’t argue with the math, General.” Says Buxley.
Halftrack + Half bad = Half assed
RMMD – Hang on. You have these precise, extremely uniform bobs, the exact same shade of Tang. Matching tops and matching manicures – but squatting is too much of a commitment?
Uncle JimmyRene Belluso would be ashamed to call you his nieces.@Lauralot: He needs to do that during the next prison visit, so Unca Renimmy can go ‘woop woop woop! Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck!’
@Anonymous: “Not sure” means waiting until the miscarriage rate goes down to where the need to disclose outweighs the chance of having to tell bad news later.
Do you mean pissed in the English sense? Because I don’t know what is hanging from Ed’s wrist, but at a glance I thought it was a bottle of booze.
Crkshft: Did Crankshaft’s grand entrance cause such a spatial anomaly that they executed a high-speed, military-grade tactical swap, or are choir pews equipped with a secret Lazy Susan mechanism for emergency relocations? Either way, moving that fast in a church without interrupting Crankshaft takes a level of stealth that deserves its own comic strip.
@The Quiet Man:
On Sally Forth :
CHOOSE ONE : “It’s funny because Nona
a) USED to be the ‘wacky’, nonsense-spewing idiot of their friend group before Ces took over.”
b) HAD a way OUT of being stuck as Hillary Forth’s friend; by just accepting never being forgiven for secretly banging Hillary’s summer boyfriend the entire time they were together.”
…That was a whole thing, right? That it turned out that the guy Hillary met every summer that seemingly only existed during the summer in some weird Brigadoon-type deal actually spent the rest of the year being NONA’S boyfriend in secret, and Hillary almost permanently stopped being friends with Nona over it?
MW – “You don’t want to say ‘Ok for me but not for thee.’ It’s perfectly ok for your daughter to get dumped for someone who’s far more attractive too!”
@Hibbleton: But didn’t you hear? Watching a video is “too much of a commitment.”
@Bob Tice: “Also, They’ve lived in Glenwood too long and are immune to that by now.”
@Downpuppy: Yeah, even with a reasonable heart rate on ultrasound, the risk is pretty high till about the 12-week mark.
@Ken: That’s General Westmoreland erasure!
@Anonymous: I’ll take C) It’s funny because Ces doesn’t know how to write consistent, appealing characters due to his overweening need to be seen as the next Steven Spielberg or creator of the next ‘Stranger Things’.
Crank – This is a ripoff of the Hardy Boys and the Mystery of Finding One’s Asshole With Both Hands….
RMMD – How ‘bout we dope up Rex and take some pix of us all naked, together in bed? Naw…everyone will know that was a set up. But maybe with June….
BB – And then there was the time I confronted the bunker single handed. I grabbed my trusty 9 iron and began my approach….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@TheDiva: Boy does that encapsulate Rex Morgan M.D. perfectly! The real villains here are risk and effort.
@But What Do I Know?: My father was a WW2 army veteran who served in the South Pacific. He said the historic photo of MacArthur wading ashore at Luzon was a staged photo opp.
Shaft – “You need to come with me, Harry. I warned you about preaching that ‘Love thy neighbor’ stuff. I’m going to have to burn you now”
@Ken: There were many other famous WW2 generals but they went on to things far beyond their military career. Eisenhower became president. Marshall become a secretary of state and thanks to the Marshall plan helped to rebuild western Europe after WW2.
More recent generals didn’t have the multiyear publicity that Patton and MacArthur both had.
@Baja Gaijin: That’s the Thurn und Taxis crest–from the family which used to have the postal monopoly in much of Europe. Ever read The Crying of Lot 49?
Crankshaft-Yes, Ed. Everyone already knows about the “Dogs Playing Poker” picture.
FG: Fuck me! It’s the Fire Wights!
Cue up the Johnny Cash!
@Banana Jr. 6000:
…If this is “In the Name of the Father” resuming, I now remember this kind of weird intermission broke up one of the Funkyshaft verse stories before; Bull’s suicide and its aftermath was interrupted by Mason Jarre talking Les Moore into letting him play a “REAL HERO” by making Lisa’s Story : The Movie : The Right Way, and the Pizza Box Monster’s first appearance.
JP: “Overwhelmed by grief.” Okay, sure. We’ll go with that.
‘shaft: I think the twist is that Ed has become the new Grim Reaper. And somehow, he’s still able to wear his signature bright red jacket.
RMMD: “Maybe we should just punch Rex Morgan in the face and run off.”
“Yeah, but that wouldn’t pay anything.”
“Our payment would be the emotional satisfaction we receive from the act.”
“Emotional satisfaction, eh? Intriguing.”
BB: Is this what Buxley Wednesdays have been reduced to? Miss Buxley offering halfhearted encouragement to her enfeebled boss? I say, let’s go back to the days of full-tilt, proudly sexist Beetle Bailey. What damage could it possibly do in 2026?
Crankshaft looked like a virgin?!
Rex Morgan: “Let’s do the police fundraiser scam.” “Oh, you mean the one where we open up a boiler room and hire desperate employees to cold-call thousands of people every day asking for contributions to a fake charity, hoping that even 1 percent of the marks are stupid enough to give us money?” “No, I mean we’ll just call the Morgans. They could be good for a couple hundred bucks! And if they say no, we’ll ask them if their refrigerator is running — and then tell them that they’d better catch it!” “Um, I think maybe we’re starting to miss the whole point of being scammers.” “It’s to enact petty revenge on people we dislike, right?” “Oh yeah, right. Okay, bags of poop in their doorway it is!”
Beetle Bailey: The Army wrote off Gen. Halftrack ages ago. That’s why every day, he sits in a nearly empty office, with a very nice desk and a very comfortable chair, with no one around but his civilian secretary. And every morning, Miss Buxley shows him a new fax from Washington, D.C. It always says “Nothing today” — but he keeps hoping one day it will say “WWIII started! Need you now! (Don’t worry, it’s not the nuclear kind.)” So he goes to lunch and dinner and the officer’s club, plays golf, and occasionally meets with various Camp Swampy officers about how the soldiers’ training is going and why the food is so bad. Sadly, Miss Buxley doesn’t have the heart to tell him that they haven’t actually gotten a new fax from Washington in years — she just copies the last “Nothing today” one over and over. She’s not even sure if the fax machine is working.
@Johnny Q:
Maybe Josh meant “cheery” rather than “cherry”… but I’m not really seeing that either? He seemed to just have a blank expression on his face, maybe a smirk?…
Maybe Josh meant “sherry”, in that Crankshaft just stood around in a stupor, “overwhelmed with grief” like the Honorable Judge Parker…
@Tabby Lavalamp: re: RMMD: “I honestly love these two. They want to crime so much but they’re too lazy and not that smart…”
The twins need to go get sushi, and not pay.
@Anonymous: “….the historic photo of MacArthur wading ashore at Luzon was a staged photo op.”
Absolutely true. The real life MacArthur just hated getting his boots wet.
Halftrack wants Buxley to slap him like Patton slapped the kid, but more you know, sexually.
Sex Organ V.D.:”Wonder Scam Twins power activate! Form of a Morgan Scam! Shape of A Minor Inconvenience! “
Blondie: Every once in awhile we’re reminded that the man with the most gaping maw in all comicdom has standards.
FC: BDK’s secretly been taking endurance swimming lessons. He’s already emptied the bank account and 401k. The “no lifejacket for Daddy” bit is next step of his plan to “drown” and start a new life with a barista.
DtM: Dennis will be eating his words in the future when he has to maintain a lawn or catch crap from an HOA. It can’t be bare, get weedy, or grow too tall; Mr. Wilson knows.
Actually, scratch that worry. Dennis’s future has “cooking sparrow on a curtain rod over a trash can fire” written all over it.
9CL: Okay, quit tying those dialogue balloon tails together. A cardinal rule in comic strips is that the tails are never EVER impeded in any way, shape or form. Oh, well. Better it happen to 9CL than, say, Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes.
H&L: Trixie’s got the eyes of an eagle. Raise your hand if you ever saw a spider in a tree. I know they’re up there, but I’ve never seen one. I’m pretty sure most spiders just spawn in the corners of bathrooms and basements.
9CL – All of the women in this garbage are unattractive, but in profile they’re downright hideous. Why doesn’t Brooke understand this?
However, the same situation over and over and over and over for years is even more of a complaint. Same shit, different day.
Crankshaft – Cranky murdering Harry Dinkle would put all of us out of our misery.
Mary Worth – Never forget that oblivious, self-unaware Wilbur is an advice columnist. It’s been ages since we’ve seen him working on his column. How many letters does he actually receive? One per week?
Does the twins’ hatred for the Morgans stem from the fact that they have two boys of the same age who look nothing alike? Come on, girls, not all twins are homozygote! They are not even genetically related, one is adopted! I don’t remember which one and probably neither Rex and June do
Harry seems horrified, as if the Grim Reaper had come to call him. On the other hand, death would be preferable to spending time with Crankshaft
“I was on track to be another Patton or MacArthur! But never came even close to advocate for WWIII!”
9CL: She wished for her husband to show up, and he did, and they are going to have sex now, even though they are both dressed for a parent-teacher conference at a particularly stuffy boarding school. Ha ha!
Thing#2’s Chin hand objects!
The Familliar Mucus: No fair Mom, The Beatles used up all the good fish puns in “Yellow Submarine”.
GT: Beth is surfing on a folding table?
Crankshaft: Lilian is so excited about Crankshaft’s mysterious proposal that it causes her to spontaneously teleport three feet to the right and turn 180 degrees, leaving Harry shocked by this display of magic powers.
Also Crankshaft: But seriously, what the fuck is this? We’re not seriously going back to the dumbass storyline about Dinkle’s shithead father only a few weeks after wrapping it up, are we? What else does Batiuk think he can even wring out this? Also, one awful part of this plot is that its starting to make me feel kinda bad for Dinkle. Not because of his “liek if u cri everytim” backstory, but because he can’t seem to do anything in life without Crankshaft and his loathsome friends barging in to pester him. Even though I’m fairly certain there was no indication he and Crankshaft even knew each other before the Sad Dinkle Saga.
Rex Morgan: The Scam Twins are truly something else, that’s for sure. I earnestly think they might just be the single dumbest Rex Morgan plotline/characters in the series’ entire history.
Beetle Bailey: This one is an interesting display of one of Mort Walker’s “rules” for Beetle Bailey, which is that despite its military setting, it’s always set in peacetime, even if there is a real life conflict that the USA is involved in going on when the strip goes to print. It went the entirety of the Vietnam War AND the War on Terror without ever so much as implying that Beetle and company would be going overseas to fight. This creates the rather utopian suggestion that Beetle Bailey takes place in a world where the United States never fought a war again after WWII.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Wowzers! My heavy industry subsidiaries must be doing great business”
@Ukulele Ike:
NEXT, we shall learn that there is, in fact, no Easter Bunny. I’m not sure the Soviets had one still photo from the war that wasn’t staged. Yes, folks, photo ops are, in fact, photo ops.
FC – Daddy doesn’t need a life jacket because you’re only in three feet of water. But it’s enough to be over all the kids’ heads.
MARY WORTH: Mary: “Yes Wilbur. You don’t want to say…’okay for me but not for thee.’ You don’t want me to use these gardening sheers for something other than trimming the hedges, right?”
Wilbur (cowering a little): “No Mary. I’ll be good.”
Mary: “That’s my boy.” (pats Wilbur on the cheek three times. Third third time being a little harder than normal.)
@GarrisonSkunk: A local radio station used to play a song called Wet Dream that had even more fish puns. This was in the 1990s, I think. I was going to Google it to see who recorded it but realized what kind of ads would probably target me.
@ectojazzmage: Re Rex Morgan – I still find it amazing that faking violin playing while panhandling was presented as a major scandal.
RMMD: The Chump Change Twins are obviously an author avatar, and we get to watch Terry Beatty workshop idea after idea for a plotline. Riveting stuff.
@I speak Jive: I legitimately think that Wilbur isn’t actually an advice columnist or even truly employed. The letters he answers and the paychecks he receives are all actually from Mary. Anything he thinks he is sending in to “work” is actually just mailed to her, to be immediately dropped in the garbage. The whole thing is just Mary’s excuse to support and control his life, to give him something to do as enrichment. Wilbur doesn’t know, purely because he’s too stupid, egotistical and incurious to figure it out.
@Joe Blevins: Your idea is better than any other because it entails Rex Morgan getting lights punched out.
@Anonymous: That is such a weird recurring trend, even for Batiuk. One would think it would be smarter to use the little intermissions as bridges between long story arcs, not having them just awkwardly pop up in the middle of said arcs.
@Anonymous: Your father is right, though there is a bit more to it. The famous Luzon photo is indeed basically a staged photo op – MacArthur knew there would be photographers there and played up a powerful image for the crowd as he walked ashore – but it was also MacArthur attempting essentially a controlled version of a genuinely spontaneous photo captured months earlier when he landed on another Phillipines island, Leyte. On Leyte, his pic was snapped as he storming onto the beach after a frustrating back-and-forth with a beachmaster who was too busy fighting a battle to bother with things like “showing respect to your superior officer”. MacArthur’s annoyed expression as he waded up the beach looked to outside eyes more like steely determination, and when MacArthur saw the result, he decided to make a “perfected” version for more sweet PR.
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
Rene doesn’t think much of the Twins’ scamming abilities, and I can see why. Their big problem is they have no sense of moderation and proportion and are seemingly incapable of cooking up a scheme of appropriate scale, instead vacillating wildly between pissant cons like pretending to busk and major crimes like kidnapping. Today, they consider either getting a $25 donation from the Morgans under false pretenses or stealing their entire house; tomorrow they’ll propose either stealing the Morgan car’s catalytic converter and selling it to a fence for $50, or calling in a bomb threat to the Morgan Clinic and demanding a $10,000 ransom. (Joke’s on them, Rex isn’t at the clinic often enough to give a shit.)
Since I’ve reached the age where the AARP sends me regular warnings of online scams, I figured that the scam twins were next going to modify their kidnaping scheme by making AI images of Sarah in danger, and then scramble to remove the corporate watermarks that the app added. But now, I think they’re just going to overcharge the Morgans for unnecessary air duct work.
@Tabby Lavalamp: You are completely right that what the Twins are talking about here is not squatting. “Squatting” implies that they’d be living on property that isn’t actively used by it’s owner and/or doesn’t have a clear owner. Their suggested scam is literally just breaking and entering and would end in them being arrested, which I guess is certainly a commitment of a sort. Pretty much anybody could tell you how stupid their idea of a “Squatter Takeover” is, but what else do you expect from the Twins, who just had to have it explained to them that kidnapping is a felony in the same tone one would explain to a five year old why they shouldn’t try to pet wild animals?
@Hibbleton: God, remember that Funkyshaft story where ICE arrested a Muslim lady, but then the people who run Montoni’s called in a favor from Bill Clinton and got her and then the ICE agents came by to give a bag back to the Montoni’s crew as “atonement” and everyone was all smiles and laughter?
@treetown: I’m pretty sure all the interchangable array of clones that makes up Judge Parker’s female cast are all supposed to be in the twenty-to-mid-thirties range.
SH: A dove, that at one point became a human, then went on vacation by turning into a whale.
There’s a fine line between Furry Kink comic, and crack addiction.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: In the Simpsons, when Jim Varney played a squatter who stole the Simpson’s house from under them, I swore the entire concept was meant to be silly and nonsensical, “because” it was something that just doesn’t happen.
But what do I know?
@The Rambling Otter: There’s a fine line between Furry Kink comic, and crack addiction.
That reminds me, I forgot to look at Six Chix yesterday. Meh, I didn’t miss anything, except someone topless.
BB: I see that Miss Buxley is leaning into her role as Halftrack’s own Natalie Harp.
Crankshaft-“Harry, come with me if you want to live.”
@Anonymous: LUANN: Toni’s brother uses her for free babysitting but has no real relationship with her beyond that, while her aunt couldn’t be bothered to stay longer than three minutes at her wedding reception, so I understand Toni writing them both off.
@Ukranazi Stepan: I realize they’re quite narrow in places, but still, I think you give Halftrack’s stroke waaaay to much credit.
@The Rambling Otter: I dunno, I could see those two tricking Sawah and Friends out of the house (maybe they play Ice Cream Truck music), then racing inside and locking the door behind them. When Rex gets home from ‘The Clinic’ he’ll stand around looking pissyfaced for a bit before saying ‘I wonder if BUCK could help!’ then calling him so Beatty can get his periodic fix of upnostril shots of Buck’s pudgy face.
@The Rambling Otter: That’s exactly where my mind went with this. Squatter Takeover is a move for carneys, not professional grifters in the Belluso bloodline.
RMMD – “We could wait until the Morgans die of old age, and then show up drunk at their funeral.” “Perfect!”
Crank: Oh, lord. Yesterday when Ed gasped in surprise he was looking at the wall of photos of people who’d been to Montoni’s, wasn’t he? This is going to be an entire week of “no time to explain” leading up to the revelation that Larry Freakin’ Dinkle once went to freakin’ Montoni’s. Join us next time when Batton Thomas admits he got the idea for Harry Finkle when Larry Dinkle told him “You know, my son wants to be the world’s greatest school band director.” At Montoni’s. (Yes, I’m aware that the dates don’t add up; why start now?)
One of my earliest encounters with Funky Winkerbean was a Shortpacked! strip riffing on the possibility that Durwood and John Darling’s Daughter, Jessica Darling, were unknowingly siblings. Who’d have thought the Funkyverse would get more incestuous?
JP: Wow, Ces backed down from “Charlotte has every right to view this sociopath with suspicion” to “Everything she did was for Charlotte’s sake but it’s too complicated for a little girl” even faster than I expected.
OTF: Wait, so Dethany thinks Curt’s dad has never seen Fi happy? Burn.
LUANN: Here’s a cool idea for the rest of us — confetti eggs. Put a small hole in each end of egg, blow out insides, dye and dry. When the next celebration comes up, fill with confetti and crush over your friend’s head. It means “I like you” and is easy to clean up. ( Learned from my Latino neighbors who were later disappeared)
ZITS: Oooo, an ID badge is so cool. It means you belong to a select group, you can go into select places, see exciting secrets like warehouse and dumpsters. Plus break room.
FBoFW: Uh oh, I dont remember this arc where one of the first gay couples have to deal with separation.
FW: Ming’s bombs the the left of me, fire wights to my right. Here I am. Stuck in the middle with you. Hope Fria is reconsidering her refusal to join forces with (Azura?)
GT: So Beth can surf. Glad she and Gil have something in common.
JP: Abby is being kind. My pastor says while niceness just brushes problems under the rug, kindness requires us to make people confront and resolve problems.
6Cx: Well, perhaps the therapist is being kind.
@The Quiet Man: (6 hours later)
Sarah: No ice cream…?
@Anonymous:
#17. LUANN: I assume Toni wants to be sure embryo or fetus is viable in. Many miscarriages in first trimester.
@The Quiet Man:
#46. PHANTOM: Right, at some point it will go rogue and humans will need to band together to stop it. Btw, Invictus is using intermittent rewards for Chatu, now that’s effective conditioning.
LOLA: So did she accept Harry’s proposal yesterday? Nah, she’s waiting for Mary to first accept that of Dr. J. We white-haired women are choosy.
BCN: I wish to point out that the soap opera within BCN, OUR NINE LIVES, has been zipping along in a truly impressive fashion for the past two weeks, with exciting new plot developments every single day and never a dull moment. MARY WORTH could learn some things from BCN, is what I’m saying.
@Activist: “Baphomet! Stop shocking the Python’s balls for the next….five minutes. Go!”
MW: I now realize that in this world, there is human speech, there is AI speech, and there is MW speech. Also there is real time and there is MW time. The tomato plants have been growing according to real time, even though the strip takes place in MW time. You’re welcome.
Beat Up Bailey: Why does Halftrack’s tie want to be a war hero?
RMMD: I will appreciate the occasional featuring of RMMD on CC during the next few months because I can’t stand following the twins anymore and quit. If they ever do anything actually interesting like incest or murder, it’s good to know that I’ll find out here.
Rex M Organ: Let’s just pee in their front yard and be done with it.
What do The Twins *want*? What is their motivation?
CRANKSHAFT: The real mystery is why Batiuk so often believes that plain respectable interior walls are improved by gigantic black badly-constructed spiderwebs.
@GarrisonSkunk:
Nah, it’s meant to show that Amos is speaking from the diaphragm to make his voice sound more “heroic”.
(Man, properly “blocking” a panel so that the speech bubble’s tails actually point to the speaking character’s mouth is apparently a lot harder than I thought, considering none of today’s comics manage it, at least not perfectly)
@Poteet:
Considering how quickly those “cobwebs” appear and disappear from panel to panel, I’d always assumed they’re not actual physical objects, but like “encroaching darkness” or “a thick atmosphere of morosity” or somesuch.
Blondie, The Neighborhood Bumstead: Time to make the donuts! You know,sexually.
@Horace Broon: OTF: Wait, so Dethany thinks Curt’s dad has never seen Fi happy? Burn.
_______________________________________________
Are her sisters Fee, Fo and Fum happy?
@Anonymous: Nah, it’s meant to show that Amos is speaking from the diaphragm
___________________________________________
Thats too bad! A talking tie might be just what General Halftrack needs to make himself known at the Pentagon, assuming such a place actually exists.
CS: Harry, look what I found on Montoni’s wall of fame, your dad’s autopsy photos! That coroner gutted him like a deer!
@ectojazzmage: #89: re-BB: The TV show “Gomer Pyle USMC” pulled the same trick. The Vietnam War was never mentioned even though the war was at its height during the show’s run. Reruns of the show can still be shown and not appear dated.
BB: There’ve been like a dozen wars since Amos joined up. It’s just that no one tells him about them. Anyway, Miss Buxley is right. A Halftrack is more like 75% bad.
C-Shaft: Change of pace for Lillian when her latest book, Murder at Choir Practice, is actually true crime.
RMMD: “Too much of a commitment” doesn’t sound like it would be the chief problem with taking over a family’s house while they’re on vacation, but consider the strong possibility that if they were seen entering and leaving by the living room window, they might have to agree to be committed in order to avoid prison.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Apparently, though, many of the Marines Gomer marches with in the opening credits did die in Vietnam, something that affected Jim Nabors quite a bit.
@Guillermo el chiclero: “Harry, look what I found on Montoni’s wall of fame — an autographed photo of Artie Shaw, the famous, talented, respected, wealthy big band leader who got to fuck Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, and Rita Hayworth and ended up living until age 94! ….do you think your dad ever got to meet him?”
I must be having deja vu but I could have sworn Rex Morgan already did this exact strip like a week ago.
@MP: Dog and a beer…
DtM: Gina tells Dennis that he owes it to the world to share this gem with Pluggers.
DT: I’m pretty sure that when you bring home a packing box with three cats printed on it, your cat will stay away from it just to be perverse.
GT: Female surfers favor one-piece bathing suits because they know that one really strong wave and a bikini top is history. Of course if you’re hoping to see Beth lose her top, keep in mind she’d still be drawn by Rachel Merrill.
Luann: Luckily for Bwad and Toni, having your swishy roommate dump garbage on you is no sane person’s idea of celebration.
MW: “Or rather you do want to say exactly that but are starting to become capable of shame. Well, baby steps.”
Phantom: It’s finally dawning on Totally Not Ian Mollusk that he put garbage into his deluxe new AI and has been getting garbage out.
@Vulpes: Beatty hasn’t bothered to develop the twins’ motivations and aims beyond “they’re Bad People who like to do Bad Things” so they just leap from scheme to scheme with no thought behind it beyond “heh heh, it’s so fun to be evil!” They make Dan Backslide look like Iago.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I, uh, didn’t think of that one, but I certainly laughed at it.
@Poteet: If Mary Worth really wanted to be a “soap opera-style strip” as its Wikipedia page claims it is, it would be filled with so much balls-to-the-wall insanity that the Belle Batsfrey episode would barely register as a blip. Take notes, Moy and Giella: less schlubby middle-aged guys with tepid parenting dramas, more evil tycoons brainwashing their daughters for their fortunes and romances derailed by joining the priesthood and taking a vow of silence. (And John Oliver cameos.)
@Activist: 111: Azura is witch queen Hotsy-Totsy of Kira the Cave World. Aura is Ming’s daughter who now sits on the throne in Capital City.
In lieu of a Late Thread Cuisine, I offer a word: platypussary.
@ectojazzmage: :#99: What bothered me most about the ICE story was Adela was a last second replacement for another delivery driver who couldn’t do the run. How would the ICE agents who called in the fake order to the motel know she’d be delivering? I believe the driver who backed out at the last second was Funky’s stepson by Holly’s first marriage. Back then I suggested it would’ve made a far better plot angle if we found out the regular driver set her up (for reasons?) to be nabbed.
@Baja Gaijin: Huh. I would have guessed that a platypussary was a glossary meant to help monotremes understand human language.
@67 But What Do I Know?: Ever read “The Crying of Lot 49”? No. I lived in Europe for a while and kept seeing the horns on postboxes.
@ectojazzmage:
Squatting is a huge fear for home sellers or landlords. People move in under false pretenses and often false leases and refuse to pay rent while using tenant protection laws to avoid eviction. It can take years to evict a squatter. The laws were originally written to protect families who moved into abandoned houses which were later bought by corporate landlords for next to nothing at tax auctions. Modern squatters are con men and women who use the law to live rent free.
Both Adele Andaloro of New York and Loletha Hale of Georgia were arrested for trying to enter and claim their legally owned homes when squatters called the police.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
#143. And I guess a platypussary is a training convent for religious platypus.
@Guillermo el chiclero: And there was no need to do the fake pizza ploy at all. She wasn’t in hiding, ICE could have just scooped her at work or on the street like they do literally every day.
Of course, that still wasn’t as stupid as her being freed because of Bill Clinton exerting his immense power during the first Trump administration.
@TheDiva: What’s sad, is that the cats in Breaking Cat News are watching a soap opera that is absolutely balls to the wall insanity. It’s supposed to be parody, but its the best soap strip I’ve seen in ages.
@120 Poteet: Come on, look at the bright side: neither WonderTwin has a June Morgan patented Hair Worm.
@Baja Gaijin: Wasn’t she one of the Bond girls?
This just in: Bweaking Cat News is impossibwy adowabwe.
@Baja Gaijin: Ever read “The Crying of Lot 49”?
Wikipedia describes it as either a postmodern text or a parody of postmodernism.
tl;dnr but my money is on it being a satire of postmodernism parodists.
About ten years ago I test-ran Breaking Cat News for maybe three months. Now, I am a stone-cold cat lover, and I appreciate whimsy and playfulness and nonsense as much or more than the next guy, but it is just too FEY for me.
The art is hard on my eyes, too. The humans are drawn okay, but all the cats are grotesque little abominations.
@Ukulele Ike: It’s cats, being portrayed by tribbles.
@150 Peanut Gallery: Without Googling, I think she was the Bond Girl who hid an audio cassette in the bikini bottom covering her shapely, shapely bottom…without anyone noticing!
BB: Halftrack has been officially retired for a decade because he is well past maximum age but he has never been told.
BB: actually I think Camp Swampy could be the setting for a quirky episode of The Avengers (John Steed and Emma Peel, not Ironman).