Pretty sure Thirsty has bedroom eyes under there
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Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/8/26
So, ah, what do you think that foodstuff is that Superman is slicing in half with his (I assume) heat vision? Is it a deep dish pizza, half cheese and half pepperoni? Some kind of custard tart with fruit on only half of it? Assuming that the “topping on only half” part is deliberate, why would Supes be slicing the appetizer in half in a way that each half has some topping and some not? And could either a pizza or a tart really be considered an “appetizer,” anyway? BUT: what if I told you that this is all a distraction from the real issue, which is that Mother Goose, who has a boyfriend, is on what appears to be a date with the Man of Steel, who, I haven’t really been keeping up but he generally has a couple ladies whose affections he’s juggling as well, right? What is going on here? Scandalous!
Hi and Lois, 8/8/26
Sure, this looks like a couple of suburban bros enjoying a little light erotic hosefun, but think about it for a moment: Hi declares that it’s hot enough to spray Thirsty with his hose, which implies that there are situations where Thirsty would be uncomfortable enough to ask but Hi would deem the weather too mild and would then withhold the desired soaking. In other words, it’s a little BDSM-flavored light erotic hosefun.
Marvin, 8/8/26
I like how Marvin’s grandpa tried to do a cute little joke to make light of the pain constantly besetting his aging body, but it doesn’t work to lighten his or Bernie’s spirits and neither of them can muster a smile. Usually when I write a sentence like this starting with “I like how…” I’m being sarcastic, but not in this case. I bear animus towards all the characters in Marvin, even the ancillary ones, and I revel in their unbroken experience of misery.
79 replies to “Pretty sure Thirsty has bedroom eyes under there”
Mary Worth Mashup: What’s Mary doing while all this forgiveness is going down?
Hi and Lois: So, Josh, what you’re saying is that the erect post covering Thursty’s crotch isn’t the only wood in the picture. EW.
Look at the solemnity on Superman’s face. That pizza/tart is going to feed hungry thousands. Mother Goose is just a convenience. As is her way!
MG&G:
When cartoons hit your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.
No beer in hand, on a hot day, no less? You’re compromising your bit, Thirsty! Resigned, vague gayness is Hi’s thing, and THAT dude came to play today! Get your head in the game, man!
Hi and Lois:
“[S]pray you with my hose” — is that what the kids are calling it these days?
@Baja Gaijin:
It would be lovely if this arc would end today with no involvement of the old hag at all.
Marvin:
“My body’s up to its old ‘Trix’ !’
Pluggers – No, it’s the agony of “da feet.” If Bill Radvansky of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, is going to use an overused wisecrack, he could at least get it right.
Crankshaft : I wondered if this week had been based on something that actually happened to Batiuk, and now I’m not so sure : On one hand, the fire not spreading, and the phone immediately working again after the incident are highly improbable, on the other hand, the phone still working explains away the “Why focus only on the phone going up in a pyre?” part; if the phone HADN’T kept working and Batiuk had been forced to replace it, he’d have made a week about how everyone involved in replacing a cellphone is deliberately making it harder for you to do so because they’re jerks who enjoy being unhelpful.
************
Marvin : I could swear I’ve seen this joke before… But I think it was in Pluggers the first time?
************
Mother Goose and Grimm : you know, there IS another famous superhero who shoots lasers out of his eyes who HAS used it to slice food before, and doesn’t have the “BUT ISN’T HE FAITHFULLY DEVOTED TO HIS EQUALLY FAMOUS LOVE INTEREST” problem; Scott “Cyclops” Summers, from the X-Men.
(Of course, you get the “Actually, his ‘lasers’ are punches from the punch dimension” inanity, but still, randomly dating an elderly goose woman and slicing the pizza with his optic blasts is more in-character for old Slim
*)*A nickname the character has entirely because Stan Lee forgot what his secret identity’s name was in an early issueMW-Now let’s all go out for frosty chocolate milkshakes.
FC-“Make sure you make that the quick kind of sand. I have to practice my supervillainy,” Dolly says.
MW:
Nothing quite starts a weekend morning like seeing the back of Wilbur’s tonsorially-challenged head.
Mother Goose and Grimm: This is one of those memes where Superman is an asshole right? And he’s dating an elderly goose lady just to piss of Lois?
(Not make her jealous, just literally enrage her)
Marvin: One way to solve joint pain is to get rid of the joints. The arm shortening surgery Marvin’s granddad seems to have endured must have been agonizing, but at least it cured his aching elbow.
MG&G: How much am I meant to read into the fact that Mother Goose is drinking wine and Superman only has water? Normally I assume you’d have to be very drunk to tolerate Mother Goose’s company, so I’m concerned that Superman is rawdogging it.
MGG: I know that ‘Mother Goose goes on a date with X’ is a trope of this comic but…Superman? Really? The only way this makes sense to me is if Supes has tried absolutely everything else and finally came around to ‘I wonder what it’s like to hump a goose?’
H&L: The fact that Hi looks unusually muscular in this strip makes me wonder if this is actually Thirsty’s little fantasy. The fact that Thirsty only has one hairy leg makes me wonder if he’s making it using AI. Makes sense: all that beer has probably killed off the section of his brain that allows him to visualize stuff.
Marvin: I was trying real hard to think of a clever pun involving another cereal brand, but once I thought of Grandpa grabbing his friend by the collar and yelling “THEY’RE AFTER ME LUCKY CHARMS!” I haven’t been able to stop chuckling.
@Baja Gaijin: I’m hoping someday Brigman will provide a picture of Mary that you can repurpose into her with a glass pressed to her ear listening through a wall, because that’s how I imagine Mary spends most of her days.
In the meantime, Tommy and Dawn’s relationship has advanced to the “taking dad along on our dates” stage, which is… well, I can’t say nice, but at least it signals this story is nearly over.
“Yeah, I’m starting to feel like a breakfast cereal — and I’m all out of Life.”
Family Circus Mashup: What Daddy was fantasizing about while pouring the sand.
MW: And just like that, Tommy’s in the cult.
RMMD: When you gesture, do you make sure to hold both of your hands in exactly, and I mean EXACTLY the same position? Jimmy-Rene is for certain, a man of symmetry.
H&L: If Thirsty weren’t so brain-fried, Hi’s offer would have been met with locker room guffawing and arm punching. Even the simplest double- entendre is beyond him now.
Comic book geek moment:
Clark Kent in the comics is married to Lois, so Mother Goose must be Lana or Diana in convenient disguise.
The Kingdom Come comic had a much better restaurant gag. Bruce’s steak arrives undercooked and the guy with the Weber grill for eyes instantly fixes the problem.
MW: I’ll lay you 10-1 odds Wilbur’s about to pull the ‘oops, lost my wallet, guess Tommy has to pay!’ gag.
S4th: It just hit me, I wonder if all this – the long-desired road trip, the time travel, the *sigh* backyard amusement park, is all just some dream Ted is having?
Ph: Okay, this is taking me out of the story. Is the report that No-Mad No-Sad has been ‘pardoned’ supposed to be a cover story because the fact that he was taken out of American custody was leaked*? Otherwise, why release any information on his status at all? Just keep saying ‘yeah, he hasn’t gone anywhere and you’re a [insert whatever insult comes to you] if you say otherwise!’
*Probably by one of those sailor’s who decided he didn’t want his pension and wanted everyone to know about Schmelon Schmusk’s stupid alien mask?
@16 Ken: That’s a good idea. I wonder if I could cobble up that image? Meanwhile, Mary still has the MeddleVision 2000™.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
Sure, it’s weird that Superman and Mother Goose are on a date(?), but what really bothers me is that Superman is somehow using his heat vision with his eyes closed.
Phantom: When did The Phantom turn into Juggs Parker?
Hi and Lois:
What the hell is that on Thirsty’s face just above his nose in panel one? Is that a single, massive eye? No wonder he usually covers it with his bangs, he can’t let it get out that he’s a descendant of the Ancient Greek Cyclopes.
JP Is quick-changes-in-public the new fad in the Parkerverse? Because after Ann’s dress switch from outside to inside the office meeting, Sophie has managed to ditch the ankle-length skirt for knee-length during this outing with Charlotte.
@pugfuggly: re: MGG – my guess would be “charity win-a-date raffle” as the setup and Mother Goose is so unimpressed with the result that she regrets the two bucks she spent on a ticket
Hi and Lois – And is it me, or is Hi looking just a little less “suburban drone” these days and a little more “Tom of Finland”?
Oh shit, it’s me, isn’t it.
@CanuckDownSouth: Inconsistencies like that are often a sign that AI is being used, but in this case I think it’s just that the artist doesn’t care.
Marvin: “Actually, you sound like the effluvium of feces produced by someone who overate high fiber breakfast cereal.”
73 degrees Fahrenheit in Wilton, CT as I type, going up to 88 with a heat advisory! Thirsty is right to complain.
The record label’s lawyers made Sufjan Stevens rerelease Illinois with Superman censored from the cover, but nobody pays attention to newspaper comics.
@Baja Gaijin: You want this image: https://joshreads.com/2024/05/did-he-really-forget-doesnt-look-like-it-to-be-honest/
*sigh* Spam at #32 with the usual phrasing
Spam alert at #32.
Zippy: The fat lady has sung. After 55 years with the character Bill Griffith is turning the strip over to his nephew who will pull a “reverse Heathcliff,” gradually removing the surreal elements along with the painstaking attention to craft & detail until it’s simply about a developmentally disabled man and his neurotypical companion/caretaker, a daily three-panel Of Mice and Men drawn by whoever’s doing Gil Thorp these days.
Marvin: Hey Marvin, stay in your lane! Complaining about the pains of aging is Pluggers’ raison d’etre, and occasionally Crankshaft’s. Yours is to provide scatological jokes centering around a child who is anywhere between six months and four years old depending on the day; now get with the program!
@Schroduck: Now I’m legitimately curious: can Superman actually get drunk? I would think that the same circumstances that give him all his strength and superpowers would render most earthly intoxicants ineffective to him. Or is it the exact opposite, and alcohol effects his Kryptonian metabolism in an extreme fashion? I guess the answer depends on what comic book era this question was addressed, who was writing at the time, and how funny it would have been to have the Man of Steel absolutely blasted on a single margarita.
MW: Next week Wilbur accuses Tommy of stealing his wallet to buy drugs.
I usually share my Sweet Treats in the evening to counteract the Late Thread Cuisine.
But this morning, I wanted to share something nice, just to say “Have a good morning, and I wish you well”
I made pancakes ^^
DT: The problem with the Schrodinger QX is that it could be either functional or not, and you really don’t know until you unpack it.
Dustin: “…A nicer sister, parents who actually cared about me and wanted me to succeed rather than using me for cheap potshots, a friend who is mentally capable of functioning in society…”
JP: That’s the first thing anyone has said or done in Judge Parker that makes sense.
Luann: So, from “tepid” to “lukewarm,” then?
MT: Look, if the Titan submersible taught us one thing, it’s that nobody will cry too hard if smug wealthy technocrats who think they know better than everybody get bodied by the forces of nature. Best to let this one take its course, Mark.
RMMD: “And you thought we’d listen to your advice? We’re evil, dammit!”
@A Grave Mind:
OK, TIL that Hi and Thirsty are canoodling, but I gotta take issue with “reluctantly.” Thirsty is CLEARLY, um, thirsty for Hi. Enthusiastically so.
On a semi-related note, I’m visiting my kid in Montreal, it’s Pride Weekend, and both Hi and Thirsty would be having a great time if they were here. Maybe Lois and Irma can sample some cl while the guys are away they can sample the clam.
MW- Wilbur seems ecstatic around Tommy now. Did I miss the part where Tommy admits to loving mayonnaise too?
@A Grave Mind:
OK, TIL that Hi and Thirsty are canoodling, but I gotta take issue with “reluctantly.” Thirsty is CLEARLY, um, thirsty for Hi. Enthusiastically so.
On a semi-related note, I’m visiting my kid in Montreal, it’s Pride Weekend, and both Hi and Thirsty would be having a great time if they were here. Maybe Lois and Irma can sample some cl while the guys are away they can sample the clam.
Anyone who has read Larry Niven’s infamous “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” essay knows that this date isn’t going to end well for Mother Goose.
@CanuckDownSouth, @TheDiva: It’s such weird spam, too. Well, not so much weird, as three decades out of date. Does anyone click on random links any more?
@Tonio:
Clark Kent is married to Lois!?!?? When did that happen?? Says the guy who hasn’t read comic books regularly since the late 1970s. Has it gone out of fashion to read and snicker at “Man of steel, woman of kleenex”? Is that seminal essay lost in the rubble heap of time?
Hi and Lois-Not the wet t-shirt I was hoping for.
@Doc Wonmug: funny, I was just talking about that essay with my kiddo.
@TheDiva:
The recent movies stated Kryptonians can get drunk under a red sun, but not a yellow sun.
@Doc Wonmug:
Almost 30 years ago now. Superman: The Wedding Special, December of 1996. Not only are they married, but they have a canonical son, Jonathan Samuel Kent (named for both his grandfathers.) who took over as Superman from his Dad for a while.
MG&G – As a fanatical Match Game viewer, I’m disappointed she didn’t do a “You bet your ‘S’!” joke.
Marvin – Then Bernie says “Well, cheerio!” and walks out.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Fetch the ball, Mimosa!”
“And to think my servants questioned the need for them to shovel the front walk at dawn!”
@33 Rita Lake: I have that image. It’s the empty glass that’s hard to find.
@40 The Rambling Otter: Wow, those flapjacks are pretty enough to put on the front of a pancake mix box! I don’t think I can find a Late Thread Cuisine to counteract their deliciousness.
@44 brendancalling: To summarize, Hi and Thirsty could have their gay old time in Montréal this weekend without anyone batting a judging eye.
@Ken: Not an expert, but I believe that the theory behind random links spam was that Google’s algorithm used to rank pages based on how many other pages linked to them. The purpose of the link wasn’t to be clicked on but to boost the spammer’s page in the network.
However Google may now have moved to an algorithm like “I don’t know I give up” or “who gives us the most ad revenue” or “links shminks, we’ll just scrape the results for AI overview,” so the link spam is probably still a good two decades out of date.
MG&G — Old Mother Goose sighed. Here she was, stood up on a date by a gander who had no doubt flown off to pursue something a little more downy. She’d ordered the pizza, half-pepperoni, half-plain — just like he liked it — and now there was no one to cut it. The waiter had disappeared somewhere into the mint walls of the interior. Hungry and bereft, she desperately pondered whether she could take the whole thing at once, but she knew her old beak couldn’t handle it. Where was her hero? Why didn’t he just appear out of the void and save her?
And then, mirable dictu, he was there. Suave and handsome as the Phantom in his skin-tight outfit, using his laser vision to cut the pie in two perfect halves.
“Well. Miz Goose,” he said dashingly. “How do you like your pizza?”
“It’s very nice,” she replied. “But couldn’t you have divided it so that the topping was only on one slice?” And in that instant, she knew that her fairy tale was over, and he would never come to her aid again.
@Peanut Gallery:
…Sure, just have the animal that’s only made for hot, summer-like temperatures go outside during heavy snowfall. Like, he didn’t even have it wear a blanket on its back or anything!
@TheDiva: Can Superman get drunk? Not on Earth, to my knowledge, due to the yellow sun which immediately heals him from alcohol.
Reviews of the Supergirl movie from this summer indicated that Supergirl traveled to a planet with a red sun in order to get drunk.
Ma Goose must be dating Silver Age Supes, the one who could do super ventriloquism, using his super food slicing that’s so precise it doesn’t go right through the table vision. They never mention it in the comic books because it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue even though he uses it so often he can do it with his eyes closed.
***
I need to see if either of my local newspapers carry Hi and Lois so I can write a letter to the editor complaining about the filth they allow on their comics page in extremely graphic detail.
***
Bernie reached out and took his hand, quietly replying, “Marvin’s grandpa, I think of you like a breakfast cereal too because you’re magically delicious.”
@The Rambling Otter: oooo – tasty. Although of course, the Canuck asks whether the syrup is maple or something else. (My childhood had a Before and After relative to when my folks made enough for the luxury of Real Maple Syrup to be a pantry staple:)
@Bob Tice: That’s better than seeing him come towards you.
@Baja Gaijin: You’re complaining? I’m looking forward to them writing Kit out entirely and focusing on Diana, Wheezey, Kadia, and Kadia’s Mom just lounging around with Captain Savarna.
”Somewhere, on another continent, the Python is punching your father repeatedly in the head.”
”Is it getting warmer in here? I’m taking off my top.”
@The Quiet Man: That’s right – he did that once to the unfortunate woman who foolishly agreed to go out with him.
HI AND LOIS: You know Hi and Lois is getting desperate when it resorts to cheap titillating fan-service like a wet T-shirt contest (rawr!)
HI AND LOIS (2): Mock all you will, Josh, but there is still way more chemistry and sensuality here than there is in panel #3 of today’s Luann (shudder.)
@Baja Gaijin: It is doing this part of the daily strip that keeps the creators motivated. They adjust things slowly and see if anyone notices – reportedly what happened to DC’s Power Girl and her famous boob panel.
Mother Goose is dating SUPERMAN and she still looks bored as Hell.
oh my god! Thirsty needs to get to an urgent care! A garden hose isn’t going to touch the edema in his legs!
What on earth prompted the Hi & Lois art trust to draw Thirsty wearing shorts? Gross.
MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM: The bigger issue is that the joke doesn’t really work. After all, this is, in fact, “one way to split an appetizer.” The “humor” in this “joke” is supposed to be Superman splitting something that isn’t normally physically split. Like he should be doing this to the bill or something. (Mother Goose: “That’s one way to split the check.”)
Wait, why am I putting a tiny bit of effort into this? I’ll never be a top-tier comic-strip creator that way!
@CanuckDownSouth: I’m a diabetic, so I had to use E.D Smith’s low sugar variant.
“75% less sugar than real maple syrup”
In turn the pancakes themselves are made with Splenda.
@CanuckDownSouth:
@Baja Gaijin:
Also thanks for liking my pancakes :3
I am very proud of them ^^
@Colonel Chrome: It’s…a bit more complicated than that (comic books usually are, especially DC ones), but yeah pretty much this. They got married at around the same time their Lois & Clark equivalents did.
@62 Ukulele Ike: That wasn’t a complaint; it was a request to find out how far back in the archives to start reading.
@64 2+2=7: Your second comment is so very true.
@65 treetown: “Boob panel”?
@70 The Rambling Otter: You should be proud of them. You made food that not only looks like food, it looks delicious. As you’ve seen from the Late Thread Cuisine, culinary professionals often can’t meet both criteria.
@But What Do I Know?: One thing about Superman, he was kind of a pushover at times and a little TOO caring for his own good.
There was one comic, where Superman comes back to Earth after saving the entire planet. When some random woman accosts him for not being around to use his laser powers to cure her husband’s cancer (who died)
And Superman feels immense shame and remorse, I’m not even going to get into the actual plot of that comic…
Meanwhile Spiderman teaches us that “You can’t save everyone… (so suck it up and move on)”
Mother Goose and Grimm: I’ve seen a lot of Superman movies and read the comic books as a kid, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen Supes sit down to eat a meal — or sit in a chair, ever, except maybe at old SuperFriends meetings when they were voting on who had to bring the bean dip next time. (Hint: It was never Aquaman.) I’m guessing this all started when Mother Goose made a date with Clark Kent on Hinge, and she was looking forward to discussing the famous reporter’s latest article for the Daily Planet website, “10 Surprising New Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar.” So she was pretty steamed when the person who showed up was this weirdly dressed, glasses-less guy who looks nothing like him. She’s clearly unimpressed with his superpowers, and is mostly wondering if that skin-tight costume has space for a wallet.
Mother Goose: What is Goose’s beef with how Superman is cutting their food? Seems pretty smart and efficient usage of his powers to me, and if she doesn’t like him having powers, she shouldn’t have dated Superman! Is she also going to be all pissy when he conveniently flies her home to skip traffic?
Hi And Lois: In my time on this blog, it totally has not escaped my notice that Hi tends to have more chemistry and emotional connection with Thirsty than with his own wife. At the very least they tend be much happier together than when Lois and Thirsty’s Wife (I genuinely can’t ever remember her name) are around. Clearly the comic is building up to Hi and Thirsty breaking the news that they’re gay to their wives and the comic tranisitioning to a remake of the acclaimes dramedy sitcom Grace And Frankie.
Marvin: “You ever think about doing, like, basic exercises so that your old age isn’t crippling your horribly?”
“What the fuck are you offering me solutions for, Bernie?! Shut the hell up and let me bitch!”
@Anonymous: I wondered about that, too. As far as I’ve been able to find out, most elephants are OK with brief forays into the snow. And if Mimosa catches a chill, I’m sure Don Abundio’s servants will give her a warm bath and a rubdown in addition to attending to their many other duties…
@Baja Gaijin:
“Boob panel”?
Power Girl famously has a superhero costume where, instead of a chest logo, she has an oval hole in her clothing that shows off her cleavage.
…The character has been around for roughly 50 years now, so pretty much everything has already been said about that (most recently : “Maybe I should just get a giant letter P over there? Nah, then everybody would start mocking me by calling me ‘Pee-Girl’….”)
@BigTed: Well, an episode of Lois and Clark, they were on a lunch break.
Lois was craving Chinese food, and talking about a Chinese restaurant she likes, but it was all the way across town.
So Clark says he’ll go and pick up something, instead of flying to the restaurant across town in seconds, he instead wanted to one-up that by flying to literal CHINA and picking up a meal there.
So they’re sitting down and eating the Chinese food together, Lois opens her fortune cookie and is surprised that its literally in Chinese.
So Clark translates for her. Which gets them into a silly discussion of where Clark learned Chinese.
Unless you mean, “Superman” (in his Superman ‘sona) sitting down to eat. Rather than Clark himself, then I apologize.
@The Rambling Otter: Mother Goose could be in a high-speed car chase while people scream in her ear and a bomb ticks in her lap and she’d still have the same bored, sardonic expression on her face.
@Baja Gaijin: So, comic fandom fun fact for today from your resident Marvel-DC supernerd to explain: the DC character Power Girl is – famously – canonically quite busty, and not in a generic “everyone is drawn like supermodels” way that was common to superhero comics in the 90s but in “this is a deliberate and consistent character trait” way. Her costume design draws particular attention to it with a cleavage-showing “window”.
There is a persistent urban legend that the way this trait came about is that DC artist Wally Wood, as a prank, would gradually draw PG’s tits a little bigger with each issue, creating the silly image of her going from basically flat-chested to huge badonkers over the course of her issues and trying to see how far he could get without editorial realizing what he was doing.
There is no evidence of this actually happening, though, and indeed reading PG’s original appearances shows no such “embiggening” going on. It seems to just be a rumor. But it helped solidify the whole running bit of Power Girl having canon big boobs.