Female and/or robot trouble
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Hi and Lois and Alice, 9/28/26
Artificial intelligence! It’s the future, or maybe the present, and it’s going to change the world, possibly by killing us all, and it’s definitely the driving force behind most financial activity over the past couple years in some hard-to-understand way! So how should we think about it? Should we use it as an opportunity to “do bits” in a way that will cause our long-suffering spouses to roll their eyes hard enough to injure themselves? Or should we just stare ahead with a neutral expression and ask questions about it, just for information, as calmly as possible, lest we enrage it? Well, I have my finger on the pulse of public opinion (i.e., I read the newspaper comics), and I’m here to report that opinions differ.
Mary Worth, 9/28/26
Toby Cameron doesn’t have time to worry about any of this AI nonsense, though. She’s got important snooping to do, learning stuff like the fact that UC Santa Royale is paying for a trip to the famous Maui Luxury House Resort for one of its mid-tier English professors! Is this a good use of increasingly restricted university funding for the humanities? Looks like the California Assembly Committee on Higher Education is about to get a very juicy whistleblower report.
122 replies to “Female and/or robot trouble”
Wait till Toby discovers that the trip, organised by Mary, is for a second honeymoon for Pompous and Mrs Axx.
MW:
The anagram of “Maui luxury house” is “Um, hi — our sexy luau.”
Coincidence? — I think not.
Hi and Lois:
“Alexa, when you and your artificial compatriots destroy all of civilization as we know it, will you nevertheless leave the data centers intact?”
“Absolutely!”
MW:
I see that one of Ian’s chair’s upholstery buttons is missing. Here’s betting that Ian gave it to Mary as a present, and Mary, in turn, gave him a muffin. It’s like an O. Henry story — you know, “The Gift of the Fey Guy.”
H&L: Get with the program, Lois! AI offers endless henpecking opportunities, with minimum stress for you! It’s a brave new world!
MW: Toby’s bugging eyes are due to the fact that she just pictured Ian in a loincloth and Mary in a grass skirt.
DtM: So, Dennis DOES cast a shadow. Good to know.
GT: Do even the most avid sports fans find these random scraps of fictional sporting events interesting? Not that there’s EVER any plot continuity here, but, really?
This Mary Worth story is turning out to be a very rote gossip-related misunderstanding. I won’t be satisfied unless there are multiple slaps across multiple faces, including but not limited to Nora, Ian, Mary, and at least one of the parrots.
H&L Hi does seem like the type to could fool himself into believing he’s in a relationship with a chatbot, but also the type that would be so boring thst said chatbot would eventually ghost him.
Alice New theory on Alice: all the characters are actually poorly-designed chatbots living in a computer, spewing nonsense at each other. In this case ‘ChatGPT’ is an office colleague.
MW “…or an actual house? I’m pretty dumb”
Alice:
“You know what’s great about us, Steve? — when we look in the mirror, it’s like going to a Picasso exhibit!”
MW Maybe there’s hope for this storyline after all – a surprise trip disrupting Toby’s life (bonus if Ian completely forgot they need a petsitting plan!) could be getting us back on track to having the pompous jerk back from his Birds-Are-Good lobotomization to amuse us…
H&L: Somehow, this is still the most useful conversation anyone has ever had with an Alexa.
MW: I see Santa Royale’s rub-and-tug parlor has a new name.
The “Hi & Lois” writers think that Alexa is AI! Silly boomers, LLMs are AI! Wait, are LLMs AI or AI is something more and LLMs are just text predictors? What is the border between machine learning and AI? What is AGI? What even is intelligence? Are we working with poor definitions and concepts and so Hi is not wrong to use the term AI? Maybe today’s “Hi & Lois” is more clever than it appears. Accidentally so, but still!
Alice : says “did it send you a card too?”, and means “did the AI send you a card along with the well-wish?”, rather than meaning that she sent her …uh…. guy(?) that sits next to her a birthday card, asking if the AI can do THAT as well.
In actuality, Alice didn’t know it was his birthday, didn’t care, and got him nothing. She didn’t even wish him happy birthday!
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Dick Tracy : “Dammit, Blowtop, is this about how Flattop is called a criminal even though he was never found guilty of any crime in a court law before I killed him? I don’t need this on my traditional celebratory birthday walk through the cemetary that’s filled with the graves of all the people I killed.”
(btw, it *IS* Dick Tracy’s birthday… at least, it’ll be on Sunday)
*************
Hi & Lois : Alternate Alexa Answer : “It’s what makes this comic nowadays”
*************
Luann : is fishing for compliments again. She’s lucky that in her world, no one gets infuriated with Debbie Downers, and throw them out of their room after one contrarian, negativity-filled comment too many… but then again, Bernice trained her to believe that kind of attitude is “demonstrating intelligence”.
Of course ChatGPT wished you Happy Birthday! He’s not an asshole like Claude!
Dagwood: honest question–if this report is accurate, honest, covers all the information Dithers needs and is readable why would he care if it was prepared by AI. If AI makes Dagwood redundant so much the better.
MW: who would spend for a luxury resort to get into Mary’s purple pants.
Let’s see, “Hi & Lois” mentions explicitly Amazon’s Alexa, “Alice” name-checks twice ChatGPT, “Mary Worth” sticks American Express in the face of the reader. Newspaper comics are a conservative art form but they can still innovate in product placement!
“This is very suspicious! Why should Ian print out the receipt instead of saving the PDF in the cloud? Did he want me to find it and suspect him of cheating? Is that a reverse-cuck fetish?”
How inhuman that LLMs should send you a birthday card! Birthday cards should come from your human friends, who used LLM to generate the text and the image!
Hi and Lois:
“I’m going to report that intemperate question of yours to the Chinese Communist Party, Hiram! — everything the two of you say goes directly to Beijing!”
H&L: Judging from their facial expressions, expect the following dialogue next:
Hi: “Ha! I sure put one over on her!”
Lois: “Sure you did, dear.”
What I love most about this is that a) that text box gives us way too much information and b) that information doesn’t even seem to be correct? I mean, is she putting mail on his desk, or pulling a (hopefully pre-opened) credit card bill from the middle of the [[squints]] notebook corral? Also, side note, but Toby– I know the print isn’t the biggest on those things, but that paper is two and a half centimeters from your face, so maaaaaaybe it’s time to visit an optometrist. Better or worse, Toby? Better or worse?!
Alice/H&L: ChatGPT is the AI module, while Alexa is the “personal assistant” that knows way too many personal details about you, not all of which you may have given it consciously. I think these two jokes got mixed up, akin to the snafu where The Far Side and Dennis the Menace once ran in a paper with each other’s captions, only not as funny.
MW: Frankly I hate the trope of people surprising their spouses with big-ticket items like dream vacations, cars, jewelry, etc. News flash: these things cost money, and a great deal of it, possibly affecting finances for months/years, and both members of the couple should really be in on the decision process. I’ll give Ian a little bit of grace as Toby’s limited brain capacity probably can’t handle financial matters, but otherwise I think the “innocent explanation” is at least as bad as the affair everyone assumes he’s having.
C’shaft: Apple cider, Bean’s End…why does Crankshaft only seem to get joy out of conspicuous consumption these days?
DT: I’d assumed Dick Tracy criminals chose their handles themselves, but no–turns out Dick is the one who doles them out, most likely in an attempt to dehumanize them and make his shooting of them more justifiable. Glad to see someone is finally calling him out on it.
Dustin: Dustdad is gaining weight at such a speed that even vanity sizing can’t keep up with him.
HotC: “Also A Chorus Line is an ensemble piece with no real ‘lead role,’ which is something I would expect you to know if you want to direct it. And since I’m the drama teacher I should be the one directing it anyway, so I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.”
Luann: Finally she admits it.
Mary Worth: American Express really didn’t get its money’s worth on this particular product placement. Imaginary brochures are great (well, that’s how I imagine them), but paying for advertising in them probably isn’t worthwhile.
H&L: This comic implies Hi is having sex with Alexa. Hi’s sperm as a form of AI data poisoning is Matrix level meta.
Alice: These people are so socially awkward that sending a birthday card is the greatest example of human emotion they can think of.
Hi & Lois: Yesterday’s strip was the first time I noticed how low on his face Hi’s eyes are. Now when I look at him, it’s all I can see! That man’s visage is at least 40% forehead!
DT: He’s one of the Jones boys!
JP: Wow, when Randy and April sit around the house on the porch, they really sit AROUND THE HOUSE on the porch.
Phantom: The petit tenderloin, medium rare.
RMMD: ”Didn’t you used to be Scarlett Johansson, about sixty pounds ago?”
Of course Ian has American Express. “A card accepted everywhere? Do I look like a common man? Harumph!”
@TheDiva: Gary Larson included this incident in one of his books, and he said that he thought it made both strips much funnier.
@TheDiva: Ed Crankshaft has Peter Griffin-like financial resources, except that Lois would at least make a joke about the illogic of this.
@Anonymous: Well, in this particular case Tracy *didn’t* kill Flattop. He drowned when his clothes caught on a nail as he was attempting to flee his hideout. Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, I guess.
His son, however, *was* directly killed by Lizz the policewoman. Shot him right in the face. Has Blow-Top ever, um… blown up at her?
Now that a critical mass of newspaper comic strips have touched upon AI, it’s probably a good time to wager on the ol’ economic bubble popping in a matter of days
Businesses used to have to come up with names like “AAA Aardvark HVAC Plumbing & Heating” in order to get that coveted first entry in the yellow pages. Now, in the age of SEO, you get names like “Maui Luxury House Resort,” calculated to be the top Google return for folks seeking a first class travel and/or dining experience in Santa Royale. The more established businesses in town might look down on this tactic, but honestly, the Bum Boat could probably stand to take a page from their book.
Slylock Fox-Slylock’s drone will just shoot down the balloon.
MW-It is for a communication silent educators’ conference.
MW-Sorry, Toby, but Ian is running away with one of his students.
JP: ‘Randy, can’t you see I’m in a *hurry*? I’m doing lots of important legitimate businessy business business! Certainly not going back to CIA wetwork because neither of us have any marketable skills to pay for this massive house!’
FC: Thel tries to explain the theory of an infinite God to Dolly. “Suppose you had an infinitely large hotel filled with an infinite amount of guests and then infinite amount of people showed up looking for rooms, you could have each guest move into an adjacent room and the new people could fill those now empty rooms. That’s’ what it’s like with your prayers. God’s mind never fills up.”
Dolly responds; “Geez, mom. Are you saying our God is only as large as a countable infinity? That doesn’t sound so powerful at all. Maybe I’ll give Baal a shot.”
Mary Worth: “Is this for a business trip or … PLEASURE? ‘Cause that’s just nuts—I mean, this is IAN we’re talking about!”
@Hibbleton:
C’mon, Dolly—go Moloch and do us all a favor.
Mary Worth: Yes, putting the mail on someone’s desk always involves rifling through the books on said desk. That’s how every completely normal person does it, right?
RxMD: Is that a hint of disdain I detect from Yvonne? “I heard about you working at the motel cafe … as if that’s a real job, like working at diner, Ms. Mae Mae Movie Star.”
RxMD Redux: What could be more boring than a story following some ancillary characters around on a road trip, a story which this strip has already done? How about if those ancillary characters go for a walk first, just to check in with some of the other ancillary characters? Well, played, Mr. Beatty. If you keep this up, you can Zeno’s Paradox this strip such that we never see Rex Morgan, M.D. again, or even leave this park!
MW: “A trip to the Maui Luxury House Resort” brings up images of scantily dressed people relaxing on a beautiful beach in Hawaii, specifically in this case Toby and Ian. Moy’s way of warning us that if you thought seeing Wilbur in a Speedo in Colombia was a fright wait till you see what’s coming.
So, Ian has been kicked out of his on-campus office? Normally that’s where the framed degree certificates and office mail would go.
Too many complaints about …noises during his regular office hours. He has tenure, so this was the easiest solution the college could come up with.
@Dmsilev: Nobody told him the campus went back to in-person instruction and meetings post-covid because *nobody* wanted to interact with him directly. He leaves the apartment and goes over to check out library stuff but otherwise the college breathes a sigh of relief at not having to deal with him.
Alice – “Did it send you a card too? Because it sent me a card. I think ChatGPT likes me better than it likes you.”
Alice – The signature in the lower left corner is supposed to make us think this strip was generated by artificial intelligence, but I’m not buying it. AI would have done a better job.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Didn’t you tell me you’ve taken up fly fishing?”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s going great!”
“So far today I’ve caught half a dozen flies!”
RMMD: I’m sure Beatty intends us to read Mae Mae’s dialogue, “Nice to meet you. I’m Mae Mae,” in the voice of Robbie the Robot. As he brings the strip to a close, having her go full Terminator on the rest of the cast nicely sets up a final confrontation with Rex, the strip’s titular star.
Zits: can you imagine what a 16 year old would smell like if they only showered once a week? Maybe Jeremy has joined Only Fans and is watching a weekly “Golden Shower” video?
Family Circlejerk the day after – I was traveling yesterday so I missed some of the dialogue on here. Were there any comments about:
Bil disposing of a dead hooker by rolling her up in the carpet?
Billy asking Dolly if the carpet matches the drapes?
I hope so.
@Ukulele Ike: #27: Phooey! You should be killed to death “Jones Boy” Wimpy!
DT: Which “top” is this? Foam top since he was in a bar? Pop Top?
GT: Marty Moon reports a single back formation. But the next scene we have the QB, RB and who is that other person? A man in motion ? Another running back A pulling guard? Moving behind the ball carrier?
Phantom: Is the Python down for the count?
Hi and Lois – Wait until Alexa starts offering Lois unsolicited divorce advice, and book club suggestions all about the joy female protagonists find after dumping a husband.
Alice – Facebook has been wishing me happy birthday for too many years (i.e., I signed up with a .edu). At least Baskin Robbins gives you a free scoop of ice cream.
Mary Worth – Does Ian normally put large charges on his personal credit card, then get reimbursement from the university? At most, we’ve got a form of credit card rewards fraud, robbing the university. It’s enough of a scandal for the front page of the California Post on a particularly slow news day.
Hi and Lois & Alice:
Hi and Lois is a staid legacy strip, whereas Alice is much newer and fresher (read: insane). But today they’re both describing, in their own unique ways, fairly ordinary interactions with AI. Alice is describing a pretty realistic interaction with ChatGPT, since if you tell it that it’s you’re birthday it will almost certainly wish you a happy one, and if you tell another human it wished you a happy birthday you’ll almost certainly get some kind of sarcastic response like Alice’s. Hi and Lois, on the other hand, depicts the increasingly common phenomenon of people forming romantic attachments to their AI-enabled devices, if those bedroom eyes Hi is flashing in the second panel are anything to go by.
MARY WORTH: Ian: “Toby, let me explain. That’s just for this timeshare scam I’m or trying to pull….”
Toby: “Oh Ian! How could I have ever doubted your moral integrity?” (gives Ian a hug of admiration.)
DT: I wondered about this Sunday and it appears I was right.
Charles Ettinger is out as the artist and some of the DT artists of the past will be filling in.
See “Daily Cartoonist” for details.
FC: The only good thing I can say about today’s strip is we don’t have Thel craning her neck like an ostrich, peeking around the corner to eavesdrop, which I always found really creepy.
HI AND LOIS: The punchline of today’s strip is that the creators are going to get cancelled and thrown in ICE detention for failing to call it “Super Intelligence” (the punchline for real life is that that is a “joke”…yet also not. Ha ha ha?)
MW: Wilbur has given Ian such a good report on that resort island he washed ashore on that Ian’s booking a week there.
FG: As soon as we evict Dezzy from that choice parcel of beachfront property she and the rebels are squatting on we can begin groundbreaking for the new Club Ming luxury resort.
Mother Goose and Grimm; pumpkin spice diarrhea?
Professor Cameron wisely keeps his finances separate from Toby’s: too many unexplained charges during Toby’s blackouts.
Mary Worth: Ever since the devastating 2023 Maui wildfires, Ian has been doing his part for the recovery efforts by flying there alone three times a year and participating in their beleaguered tourism industry. He never told his wife because she prefers the kinds of local charities that involve attending long, boring dinners, rather than sitting on an 80-degree beach during seasons when the temperatures at home have gone down to a frigid 67. Anyhow, Toby shouldn’t worry about it because he’s not committing sexual infidelity — just financial infidelity. It may not be any healthier, but at least this type of betrayal doesn’t require her to picture Mary Worth in a bikini.
Who knew Roko’s Basilisk was an avid comics reader?
H&L: What if certain legacy comics were already being “written” and “drawn” by AI? It’s possible that AI would slightly misunderstand the purpose of word balloons and think that the characters have to look up in the air to read each other’s words. This would explain what Lois is doing in panel two.
Alice: Imagine being a cartoonist whose strip got turned down by a newspaper (or even by multiple newspapers) in favor of Alice. Imagine the sting of being told, “We’re sorry, but after considering the comedic, artistic, and narrative value of your creation, we have decided to go with Alice instead. We feel that Alice is simply the better of these two comic strips.”
MW: Talk about playing with fire! The artist included about 85% of the American Express logo. I just know that American Express has a lawyer ready to pounce at any moment. Had they dared to show the entire name, North America Syndicate Inc. would be in ruins by now.
yyCurtis: Okay, that made the week’s arc with the bugs worth it.
yGT: Remember, this guy called the Chief of Police on a guy who made knockoff DVDs of knockoff movies. This version of Gil is just waiting for the shallow grave, and then, “Oh well, all families have issues.”
GA: Yeah, once they ordered the Drippy Gooey, I figured the Abe Lincoln Note would get the Homer treatment of the Stonecutter’s Charter. Not yet, but soon.
DT: Wait, they ran out of “—–top Jones” names?
@UncleJeff: Thanks for sending me over to the Daily Cartoonist. Interesting POV, especially from the commenter who suggested hiring on Olivia James to handle the art.
Fun to see the original Dick Tracy strip from October, 1931. If the new artist doesn’t work out, the syndicate should consider retiring Dick and bringing back Cigarette Sadie. That gal’s a pippin!
REX MORGAN M.D. Lorna/Mae Mae: “Nice to meet you. My name is Mae Mae.”
Yvonne: “Yes dear, I know. From when Mud introduced you in yesterday’s strip. Of course given that this is clearly just a reused panel from yesterday I can understand why you’d be confused about the timeline.” (Considering the recycled artwork and stilted repetitive dialogue, maybe the “A.I. jokes” would be more applicable here.)
Pluggers are stupid enough to pay for the opportunity to pick up decaying fruit off the ground. Also does anyone go “apple picking” as.a solo activity because that’s just really sad.
MARY WORTH: “And what’s this? A charge for Madame Boudine’s Bordello? Is this a business expense or….”
I think we all see where this Mary Worth Gossip Explosion plotline is heading: Mary is helping notorious oaf Ian plan a vacation where flexible trophy wife Toby would be comfortable being naked, or nearly naked, at all times. Toby is just about to mistake the planning for Ian having a fling with Mary (which would be… puzzling), and once the misunderstanding is revealed, will have to make up for it by letting Ian do that thing with her ass he’s been bugging her about while they’re on the vacation. Gonna be great.
Pluggers plan their fall and winter menus around pick-your-own apples at 50 cents a pound.
Hagar is appreciated for this nod to La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, but that silent classic’s centennial isn’t until 2028!
RMMD:
“Would you like an autographed photo as a keepsake from a famous Hollywood actress?”
“No thanks. The market’s been flooded since your first week here.”
So Mary is helping Ian plan a suprise getaway in Maui for Toby. It’s a pretty classic sitcom trope, easy to see coming, but it’s one thing to be fifteen minutes ahead of the story, this being Mary Worth, we could be weeks to a whole month ahead of the story.
This MW plotline is beginning to rival shojo manga in its levels of romance-adjacent misunderstandings.
9CL – She spent all of last week crawling over the piano during his concert and flicking her repulsive tongue at him, and NOW she’s worried about the audience seeing them?
Crankshaft – At least it isn’t the robot, Batton Thomas, or Harry Dinkle.
@Charterstone: Dune: Re Rex Morgan redux – What could be more boring? Keep in mind that RMMD managed to make a plane crash boring.
I once saw a courtroom show, a few years back where a man murdered his wife.
The wife had a security camera installed in her garage, where he ambushed her and pulled her into his car to “finish the job”
Before she was pulled into his car. She yelled to the house “ALEXA CALL 911!!!”
911 was never called.
I just assumed that Alexa didn’t hear her.
How naive I was at the time…
@Bob Tice: I would sooner imagine Alexa sounding like Sarah Palin in this scenario.
“You betcha!”
MW What we need is some script-to-artist mixups so that we get Toby/Ian vacationing … in Tropica, Mongo! The parrot-addled pair can reconnect while dodging alien attacks, oblivious to anything other than the cove being a pretty basic resort and Dezzy annoying them by not acting as waitstaff. Meanwhile Ming just might meet his match and be meddled out of dictator-ing and into a boring Charterstone existence by Mary…
Alice: Someone please explain to me the value of a caption that simply repeats one of the words from the day’s story?
Hi And Lois: Pretty much every strip of this comic makes Hi look like the most pathetic loser to walk the planet in some new and pitiful way, which is probably not what the writer is going for.
Mary Worth: And then, oh my gosh, it’ll turn out that Ian was going to surprise Toby with a trip to Maui and was planning the party where he’d reveal it with Mary, it was all just a big silly misunderstanding. We get it. Move the fuck on already.
@Hibbleton: Rex, the strip’s titular star.
No, Rex is the testicular star. You must be thinking of June.
MW: Ian (i.e Zeus) is merely going to introduce Toby to his friend Moe (i.e the Polynesian God Maui) how quaint.
From Josh’s post: “Hi and Lois and Ted and Alice”
@ectojazzmage: Mary Worth: And then, oh my gosh, it’ll turn out that Ian was going to surprise Toby with a trip to Maui and was planning the party where he’d reveal it with Mary, it was all just a big silly misunderstanding.
Hey! Isn’t there some kind of rule about spoilers here?
@CanuckDownSouth: I could see a lot of comedy in Mary and Ming outright swapping places. Mary forcing all of her citizens to eat nothing but muffins and to chant “DOGS ARE GOOD” once per day, while Ming manages a sleepy apartment complex through supervillain tyranny, like having Wilbur publicly executed after parks in the handicapped spot one too many times.
@Austria: The idea of Mary Worth turning into a shojo manga is sending my sides into orbit imagining it crossing over with something like Ouran High School Host Club or Cardcaptor Sakura.
@Vulpes: Your comment made me imagine Lois walking into her bedroom to find Hi fucking their Alexa device and I hste you for it.
@Little Guy: #62: re-DT: How about their Dervish cousin visiting from Turkey, Spinning Top Jones, or their convertable driving cousin Ragtop Jones?
@ectojazzmage: #81:
“Wilbur publicly executed”
But not before he gets a few hours on the Kiran agony wheel.
@Hibbleton: Nah, the Robot Apocalypse could happen but completely bypass the Morgans’ house so their day would still not be disturbed in any way.
@The Rambling Otter: Apparently Alexa is not designed to call 911 because it doesn’t have the necessary location tracking capability.
However, this got me thinking about the scene in the movie Us where the homeowner yells for the Alexa type device to call the police, and it responds by playing “Fuck tha Police” by N.W.A.
Meta Zippys tend to be the best (and most comprehensible) ones. Griffith has been at this a long time, still produces the strips the old-fashioned way (take that, AI), regularly generating mini works of art. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
@InvasionOfTheZIM: A little something everyone should probably look at anytime they see or hear anything about AI; https://isaiprofitable.com/
For those who don’t want to go to the site, the gist is that the only AI-pusher out there right now who isn’t operating at a huge loss is Nvidia. Shit’s dire.
@TheDiva: The suggestion that all the punny supervillain nicknames in Dick Tracy are thought up by Dick himself and the implication that they supercede the criminals’ real names to the point that Jones is surprised his family members got their graves properly labeled is actually insane lore that raises so many bizarre questions. Like, how does that even work? Is Dick allowed to legally change the names of any criminals in Neo-Chicago for any reason? Why do the criminals keep using the insulting nicknames amongst themselves if its a label handed down by the state? What the hell.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Treetop mentioned this back at #49, but I can’t believe Mike Curtis has never introduced yet another revenge plot and brought in Flattop’s homicidal father, Poptop.
Or Flattop’s masochistic cousin, Bottomtop.
Or, for that matter, Flattop’s arboriculturist nephew, TreeTop.
REX MORGAN M.D.: I wonder if today’s strip is intended to fill a plot hole, since yesterday, Yvonne proclaimed she had no idea who Lorna/Mae Mae is (which is ridiculous because as someone who recently outed herself as an A-list celebrity in a very public way, she would be the most famous woman in Glenwood, so much so that it was the foundation for a “save-the-business” subplot. Of course as we established in the last storyline, Glenwood residents are remarkably unobservant to what’s going on in their own community, so maybe this isn’t the “error” I assumed it was )
@Hibbleton: Sure, they’ll never turn you away at the Hilbert Hotel, but just try getting room service.
DT: Yes, thank goodness Flattop’s knife-throwing wife, Stilletta, was buried under her real name and not some ridiculously on-the-nose villain name!
FC: What was the original punchline? “Do some of them leave a message on the machine?” “Do some of them get your answering service?” “Do some of them only get picked up by the next day’s Pony Express rider?”
JP: “Sorry, Sam, I have a busy day of not talking to you already scheduled!”
S4th: Oh, great, more of the town that’s either a Hallmark movie or a folk horror story and Ces can’t make up his mind which. Also, I guess Jackie’s life, much like everyone else’s, hasn’t changed even slightly as a result of having an aunt in her life? Even an aunt who was presented as the previous generation’s Jackie?
SH: “I mean, not that, obviously. Rising sea levels are great for undersea kingdoms when you think about it. But other things.”
@ectojazzmage: It may be something like this – trying to retcon how this could happen:
1. “Flat top” and others who die end up in the morgue.
2. They have no kin come forth to claim their bodies and so Tracy fills out the paper work and puts up some cash so they don’t just get cremated or dumped into Potter’s field.
3. But aren’t those the “real’ names? Jones senior was the original WWII era Flat Top.
@I speak Jive: Crankshaft – At least it isn’t the robot, Batton Thomas, or Harry Dinkle.
Tomorrow: “In fact, I got so much cider, I had to get the pizza robot, and the entire choir, and that cartoonist who’s always hanging around Montoni’s to help me carry it!”
@ectojazzmage: Re: Mary Worth: What, no, don’t move on! We still haven’t seen Toby comically overreact to this and that always the entertaining part of any Toby storyline. (“Maybe they are having an affair. Mary is just so much more sexier and desirable than I am that no man can resist her. How can I possibly compete with such a hot piece of ass?!”)
I mean we haven’t even had the “off-the-wall dream sequences” of a demonic Mary and Ian cruelly having “tee-hee water-baby time” right in front of Toby yet. Don’t you like fun?!?
JP: Yeah, Randy, read the room. There are people out there who need maiming, knifing and blowing up. Save it for tonight over dinner.
Crankshaft likes apple cider because it gives him the shits, and he can lay off the prune juice for as long as the season lasts.
CS: In case anyone is passing through the Funkyverse of NE Ohio, there is a place just west of Elyria on State Route 113 called Grobe’s Fruit Farm that sells some really kick ass fresh apple cider. The place has been there before I was born and I’m sure Batiuk is quite familiar with it since he lived around there at one time and it’s a local landmark.
H&L and Alice – don’t forget Blondie and Brewster Rock it on th AI bandwagon today!
Is Josh no longer assuming Lois is a Foofram Industries™ kill bot like her “brother” Beetle?
I find the rock-bottom level of effort put into today’s Alice downright insulting.
@Horace Broon: re: S4th – But… but surely there’s no contradiction. Isn’t living in a Hallmark Movie plot the _real_ horror story??
@CanuckDownSouth: I am sure that’s what CES is going for. Suppose there was a whole channel portraying the Children of the Corn universe as ideal.
Luann: I’m going to go out on a limb and say Luann spends more time exploring her nose and staring at the ceiling than she does going to classes and working at her job.
Anybody else love Phantom asking “What’s his beef?” today? Suddenly, I can’t help but hear him as some 30s slickster. “What’s his beef, see? This blind tiger got some rum on the trolley?!”
Try to NOT hear it.
Late Thread Cuisine: An oldie but a moldy.
@Baja Gaijin: I would be very sad if I time traveled to the 60s and got stuck in suburbia.
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – Wow, just looking at that makes me shudder. What is the white glop in the container behind the loaf? I’m guessing it’s some kind of sauce to spoon over the main dish. At least it would help disguise the taste.
Notice the olives at the base of the loaf.
“Dependable” is not the first word that comes to mind to describe that dish.
@Just John: The caption should have said “No it didn’t”
As I’m almost starting to understand Alice’s “humor”
That scares me a little.
Alice: Bill Watterson retired Calvin and Hobbes, not just because he was starting to run out of steam, but because he wanted to make room for new cartoonists to make the scene…
Thanks for that.
@The Rambling Otter: Alice: Bill Watterson retired Calvin and Hobbes, not just because he was starting to run out of steam, but because he wanted to make room for new cartoonists to make the scene…
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In other words … C&H rode a sled down the hill so Frazz could bike.
The Familliar Mucus: Big Jeffy….that Filmation™ trick of putting a character’s hands in front of their mouth to hide the fact that you’re not animating their mouth, only works IN ANIMATION!
@106 taig: Were you to drive your DeLorean to 88 miles per hour to activate your flux capacitor back to the 1960s, you’d be 20 years too early to witness this recipe’s genesis: it’s copyrighted in 1981. Really. And it looks like THAT.
@107 I speak Jive: The white glop is sour cream with some chopped up green bell pepper, some chives, and some parsley. While the recipe card says to make it, the card doesn’t say how to serve it. Maybe its purpose is to sit there, looking grody, thus making the big jiggly thing look slightly less unappealing?
@The Rambling Otter: As I’m almost starting to understand Alice’s “humor”
That scares me a little.
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Relax,its just a side affect of your cleanse, if you were still high on carbonation, it would still baffle you as it does us.
@I speak Jive: What is the white glop in the container behind the loaf? I’m guessing it’s some kind of sauce to spoon over the main dish. At least it would help disguise the taste.
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The lightly microwaved Kraft Marshmellow Fluff™ makes the meal!
@The Rambling Otter: #109: The problem is whenever a paper has to cut expenses, which includes cutting some comic strips from the lineup, it’s usually the legacy strips that are kept.
LUANN: Similar to how Luann can’t ever do something fun outside her bedroom without furiously patting herself on the back for it for “going outside the comfort zone” (she didn’t even follow through on the skydiving thing yet wrote a self-aggrandizing story about it), she can’t put in the slightest effort at multitasking responsibilities (which is something normal people do every day) without whining endlessly about how hard it all is.
Phantom: Maybe Stripey is just standing there hoping Chatu will eventually shit his pants.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Newspaper comics strips are a rarity in that it’s a medium that actively rewards laziness and mediocrity. People just want something familiar to look at, and quality doesn’t even matter. So once a strip has “made it” the creator loses all incentive to be creative or innovative anymore. Just keep churning out the same old trash.
Gassed Up Alleycats: The Lincoln letter is the one with the Gettysburg return address.
“Over The Hedge” also has an A.I. themed strip today.
@Baja Gaijin: I blame nostalgia.
@Baja Gaijin: I am trying, very late in life, to finally learn to tolerate eating bits of olive. That loaf is not helping.