Friday terrors
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The Phantom, 9/11/26
Happy Friday, everybody! I was going to explain the backstory to today’s Phantom to those who haven’t been reading along, but, you know what? Snakes, aliens, devil-Phantoms, screaming, flames … this right here is art and it doesn’t need any explanation. Just let it wash over you! Let loose with an enthusiastic “YAAAAHHHH!!!” while you’re at it. The weekend is almost here!
Marvin, 9/11/26
Marvin’s grandmother lives with her husband in an apartment building for which she has to write the newsletter because the Great Financial Crisis wiped out all their retirement savings, which forced them to briefly move in with Marvin’s parents (an episode for which their son-in-law has never forgiven them) before eventually settling into their current digs. Sometimes I feel like I must be one of the only people on earth walking around with this amount of Marvin lore in their heads, but I’m pleased to learn that the strip’s current creative team at least remembers that they’re too poor to live in one of the nicer apartment buildings that gets first dibs on the bingo guy.
Mary Worth, 9/11/26
Damn, Nelly must be a true master of the gossiping arts. How else can you explain the fact that Alma has gone in mere minutes from “So what?” to “Wow, that Worth lady always seems so proper, but if you say she and Prof. Cameron were engaged in full penetration intercourse right there in her car in the Charterstone parking lot, I have no choice but to believe you! I guess you can never really tell about a person!”
Daddy Daze, 9/11/26
Men will literally project a truly awful death-related pun onto the nonsense “ba” syllables their children produce rather than going to therapy so they can deal with their grief at losing a parent. It’s sad!
37 replies to “Friday terrors”
Mark Trail: Foreground Fauna Beaver isn’t worried about the bats’ impending demise; he’s worried about The Cricket Bro’s impending underground demise turning into a weird gay dangermaxxed orgy. It’d probably get more hits than another spelunking video.
The Phantom-And that’s when the acid kicked in.
RMMD-What a thrilling exciting story. All that medical knowledge being imparted.
MW-“Hello, Nelly. I’ve made basket of muffins.”
Dady Daze-Some sage advice.
MW: “Hmmm, Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter”
Al Sharpton: hates panther men! And fire!
MW “You never can *really* tell about a person… except you, Nelly, you make your bitterness and misanthropy *amazingly* clear to all!”
DD: There was a meme some years ago, of a woman saying “Nobody ain’t got time for that!”
The meme is dead in the water these days, but in the last legs, someone posted a recipe that called for four cups of thyme.
“Nobody ain’t got thyme for that!”
Just saying that this was done more effectively than today’s Daddy Daze.
GT: A rather patriotic piece today. I wonder if the syndicate came down on Barajas and Merrill after last year’s Fourth of July piece. “Hey, no more of that woke, America hating bullshit. Ten papers threatened to drop your strip after that debacle unless you make amends.”
Ph: Suddenly I’m in the mood for an old episode of CSI:Miami…
Marvin Ha, its funny because Bingo can be long and humans are frail…right? I think I’m m reading that right.
MW Alma does seem easily influenced, but to be fair, she seems to be in the late atages of colloidal silver poisoning, which might be interfering with her mental capacities.
“Grampa loved roasted lamb, turkey…most meats. He was, in fact, frequently out of thyme! Thanks forvthe thought, baby who has just urinated on me!”
Mary Worth:
My working hypothesis is that the source of Nelly’s being pretty much dour about everything in the first instance is that she was piqued that Johnny Rivers has never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — as opposed to, say, Percy Sledge and Gene Pitney.
Hard to blame her.
20 minutes later: Alma, Suicide Bomber.
Daddy Daze:
“Apparently seeing a video of the Spice Girls was too much for his heart to bear.”
Mary Worth: Proper?! When Mary isn’t feasting on surf-and-turf with her hod-roddin’, speed-boatin’ boyfriend, she’s stuffing her neighbors full of tea and bran while yanking their darkest secrets straight out of their guts. Sure, there would be something extra-repellent about the idea of her doing the secret nasty with Ian Cameron, of all people, but it’s not as if she’s ever been a prim little old lady who didn’t enjoy a good age-appropriate, done-by-“NCIS” rutting every now and again.
The Phantom:
Now, is that the band Slipknot?
Mary Worth:
We all celebrated Alma’s blunt “So what?” reply to Nelly’s initial gossip gambit, but it turns out it was just an opening that let Nelly get a foot in the rumormongering door. Look, now Nelly is breaking down the last of Alma’s resistance with a belligerent “Didn’t she?” Soon she’ll be putty in Nelly’s hand, until Mary deprograms her with a deck full of then Queen of Diamonds, allowing Alma to end Nelly’s reign of terror with a single bullet.
Marvin: Losing one’s voice after an excessive bout of talking, is something that can actually happen.
Where’s the joke!?
I give a true, non-sarcastic salute to Marvin, for somehow, some way, successfully being more boring than actual apartment newsletters. Way to make 390-13 Doug look good, guys!
Is this the first time we’ve seen the “Dasy Daze” daddy without glasses? There goes my theory that he was the victim of some diabolical experiment involving psychosis-inducing glasses.
RMMD:
‘There’s only one thing to do, make sweet love and have a new pair of girls! C’mon, the conjugal visit trailers are right outside!’
‘Jimmy!’
‘I told you, it’s Renee!’
‘I thought it was Rene!’
‘Nope, two ‘e’s! The Narration Box has been getting it wrong all this time!’
Ph: Well, I stand corrected. Yesterday I thought the “SNAP!” in the last panel was Python wrenching Schmusk’s little doohickey off his leg, but no. I guess this is supposed to be the AI supercharging the Python’s murderous rage so he can rip Stripeypants’ head off like a bottle cap.
How much you wanna bet that Stripeypants holsters those guns of his* and decides now is the time for some hand-to-hand combat?
*Unless it’s also a case of ‘Whaddya know, no more buwwets!’
Daddy Daze:
“He ran out of thyme” isn’t actually a pun; grandpa died when he couldn’t meet with his trusted usual supplier for his thyme habit, forcing him to go to an unfamiliar source to feed his addiction. He learned the hard way just how widespread the fentanyl adulteration problem is these days. Be careful, everyone! You never know what’s mixed into your cayenne powder!
Yes, Mary always seemed to annoyingly, aggressively proper, and goes out of her way to foster personal relationships with everyone in the neighborhood, obviously the community is a large part of her life, but what possible reason could a woman have for being alone with a married man? Obviously they must have been away somewhere for discreet sex and, followed by Ian driving her home and parking in front of the building in the middle of the day, it’s the only version of events that could lead to Mary getting out of Ian’s car with some vague kind of facial expression. Alma is a genius of deduction.
Ha ha, Daddy Daze Daddy, thyme isn’t a spice! It’s an herb! Your son is an idiot!
Alma is projecting the most “sure, lady” aura I’ve ever seen. I can relate.
MW: I have deduced that Alma has Inuit ancestry, a culture where the phrase “laughing with” means “sexual relations with”. This misunderstanding explains Alma’s pliancy!
@Gil Bates: Ironically enough, something that no one would say to anyone in Marvin.
Crankshaft : Oh look : “I don’t mind you guys changing things because back when *I* was in charge, I was always trying new-fangled gimmicks to be on the cutting edge.”, If only there had been sitcoms hijinks or misunderstandings to make this a payoff to anything!
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Daddy Daze : either Paul is projecting his own thoughts on Angus, or he let him watch (showed him?) Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. “But eventually EVERYONE runs out of time”
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Luann : Question : Why does Luann trust this person who’s not actually her friend? Especially since part of the pitch is “PLEASE BE KIND! MY EVIL CRIMINAL COUSIN IS AFTER ME AGAIN!”, and the last time it ended up that her criminal cousin tracked her down to where she was, and attacked THAT place.
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Marvin : A joke should involve exaggeration, or absurdity. A guy losing his voice because he spent eight hours shouting is not an exaggerated, absurd situation, even if you add “But he’s A BINGO CALLER in an OLD FOLKS HOME!”
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Phantom : …Wait a minute, I forget… Did Python actually get to see what Vindicta looks like (in his stupid mask)? If not, how is he hallucinating him?
MW: They sat down in the middle of the lobby to fully dissect the salacious gossip of…two people sitting in a car and one of them looking around as he got out? Does no one in this complex have a job? Or hobbies? Or self-respect?
Marvin: Situational irony is when something happens that’s the opposite of what is expected, like a fire department burning down, a marriage councilor getting a divorce, or a comic strip describing a perfectly logical sequence of events rather than having a punchline.
MW: Now I’m wondering what the innocent is for Mary and Ian laughing in her car together is. Maybe Ian was picking out an anniversary gift for Toby and, unable to find and advice desk at the mall as seen in yesterday’s Lockhorns, turned to Mary for assistance?
Phantom: I was hoping that Fake!Elon would successfully convince Tokoloshe to give the Python free reign, only for him to join with the Phantom in destroying the drones, thus demonstrating that AI can never truly replicate humanity’s innovation and ability to adapt to the circumstances. But you know what? This is better.
MW – I think Alma is carrying a bag of hammers; useful for measuring her intelligence.
C’shaft: “Those stupid square cuts nobody likes? My idea.”
Lio: Yeah, and look how long THAT lasted.
Pluggers have always been couch potatoes.
@matt w: You gotta admit, “You’ve found the connection between Grandpa and herb?” lands a bit different, though.
MARVIN: {through the window and muffled} Alma: “She fooled fooled all of us!”
MW: Nelly: DIDN’T SHE?
Alma: [snaps out of mental image of Mary and Ian but remains in shock] “IT SEEMS SO! DAMN, WHEN WILL THEY FINISH WORKING IN THE YARD SO WE CAN STOP YELLING?”
Phantom: As someone who doesn’t follow this comic, I decided it would be fun to try and guess what’s happening here. After careful analysis, I’ve decided that the strip is depicting one of those evangelical “scare them into accepting Christ” haunted houses, and said house is either in an amusement park or a prison.
Oops
Marvin: I’m surprised bingo caller is still a profession. You’d think in this age of AI, “Person who randomly generates a number, and says it” would be the first occupation to go. “It’s not just two fat ladies – it’s eighty eight.”
Mary shifting from being the perpetrator to the victim of meddling?! That’s sick, but it’s the perfectly appropriate for the celebration of the 20th Aldomas!
Phantom: Is tokoloshe supposed to be inducing paralyzing fear right at the moment of Python’s big showdown with the Phantom? Seems…counter productive.