“Speaking of narrative” … you fool, if you’re speaking of narrative, there’s already narrative happening
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Intelligent Life, 11/8/24
I can’t believe I’m saying this about Intelligent Life, a comic strip that’s usually about unpleasant bug-eyed people saying fandom words at each other, but today’s strip is actually based on fairly complex semiotic play. Rather than simply having a conversation, Skippy, and, uh, the other guy are talking about the sort of conversation they expect to have, while simultaneously undermining those expectations. Skippy’s reply being put in quote marks, indicating we’re at least one layer of metanarrative deep here, is a particularly effective device.
Hagar the Horrible, 11/8/24
Speaking of narrative, if they had put an eggheaded intellectual like me in charge of today’s Hagar the Horrible, it would’ve been about how the canonically illiterate Hagar believes that his people’s lore should be preserved via their ancient oral tradition of poetry, and is horrified to see Hamlet reading it out of some book. But you could also do a joke about how he’s afraid of spiders, I guess. I mean, why not, if you want to. I don’t like spiders either, for the record.
Mary Worth, 11/8/24
Incredible visual storytelling here: in panel two, we discover that this whole time Wilbur was standing just in front of these ladies, ready to start manically ranting about how great Mary and her food are, certainly better than the sad Lean Cuisine meals he microwaves every night and baptizes with his tears — but only the sudden pullback of our viewpoint reveals his face, in a real jump scare.
Dennis the Menace, 11/8/24
Wait, doesn’t the “world’s best dad” formulation imply that there aren’t any more like him? Does … does Dennis not know that other people have dads, or what?
150 replies to ““Speaking of narrative” … you fool, if you’re speaking of narrative, there’s already narrative happening”
MW-THC and a lot of it.
MW:
“You have to teach me some of your recipes one of these days, Mary!”
“Well, the one I’m most known for is what everyone calls me after encountering me for the first time: ‘a recipe for disaster‘ !”
Estelle needs cooking lessons from Mary? I mean, she’s not a dewy-eyed 19-year-old bride — she’s a middle-aged widow, right? This is just silly.
“does Dennis not know that other people have dads, or what?”
Do Joey, Margaret and Gina even have parents?
MW: And beige! Very, very beige!
MW: Thank heavens we are spared from a full body panel of Wilbur. We do not need to see his pantless outfit consisting of:
-Hellmans Mayo packet thong
Or
-No pants ala Wilburhood for all to see
MW: “Everybody” has a hard time seeing with Wilbur standing in front of them.
DtM: Doesn’t the fact that it’s Dennis holding the box the cup came in mean he gave it to his father? Perhaps he confused the possessive with a contraction: “The World ‘is’ best Dad.” Don’t be so smug about it.
FC: “Hi, Mommy, we just picked up these orphans from the workhouse.”
MW:
“My goodness, Estelle! — a partial solar eclipse is obscuring the lighting in here!…oh…no…wait a minute…that’s just Wilbur dominating today’s second frame!”
Henry’s smile fades as he realizes Dennis just lumped him in with a bunch of equally milquetoast middle aged fathers who ache for the confirmation of an impersonal coffee mug bought at a flea market for a quarter. Existentially menacing.
I do appreciate that even though it’s right in their field of vision, Estelle still takes the time to inform everyone that this is “the lunch spread.” After all, people who are unfamiliar with Mary’s cooking need to be reassured that no, this is not Libby’s litter box on the table.
MW:
At the reception, old tensions between Wilbur and Estelle simmer to a boil, and the happy event devolves into a muffin-flinging donnybrook that evokes Game of Thrones‘ Red Wedding.
DtM: I can’t help seeing that one box flap as a lolling tongue, and it’s really freaking me out. Too bad there’s not a joke to distract me.
DENNIS THE MENACE: Dennis: “You mean there are more like you?”
Alice: “Speaking of which, remember about 6 years ago, Henry, when you went away to some conference, and Ted the mailman came over while I was lonely and vulnerable….”
MW: Wilbur tramples the entire room on his way to some balls to the wall comfort eating.
I haven’t read Mary Worth in a few days, I didn’t know where they were or what they were doing (wasn’t the wedding over?) and seeing as no other characters are around to see, I assumed that the cast was literally talking to the readers… -shudder-
RMMD: “Well, there’s my age and the ex-wives and…” Truck’s voice trails off as spam filters the world over won’t let him mention his “little helper” drugs.
DtM: If you fail miserably doing your standard pun based nonsense you can always try again later to make a joke and salvage some dignity.
MW: Of course Wilbur would be the first person to shove himself to the front of the line.
Pluggers: Pluggers are medically decrepit meat sacks # 6492.
Forget all these other comic strips. Are the Gasoline Alley girls in space yet?
RMMD: And speaking of my ex-wives, you do know that practically every dime I make goes to alimony payments?
MW: Behind the Wilburbomb, we can see Mary frozen in fear at the prospect of being asked to share her muffin recipe… If she’s going to give up her exclusive knowledge of how to make the muffins, which are likely laced with a substance that opens people’s minds to meddling suggestions, she will only tell after being formally challenged to a duel.
Dennis: I think Dennis is commenting on the fact that the mug is clearly manufactured en masse (probably in China) and the slogan printed on it is, thus, meaningless. He therefor concludes that his ability to read has done nothing other than shatter the fragile innocence of his childhood. He’s ready to join Dagwood in the soulless drudgery of adulthood.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
Rhwanda: “And how much will I get once I dump your worthless ass?”
MW: Rarely, when we have a party, do we need to announce “Hey, everybody, this is food, please eat it.”
Mary Worth 1: “Wilbur, goddammit! We’ve been through this, the flowers aren’t part of the celebratory lunch spread!”
Mary Worth 2: Why can’t we see Wilbur’s hands? WHY CAN’T WE SEE WILBUR’S HANDS?!!
Mary Worth 3: Years later, in the aftermath of the Santa Royale mass suicide, the video would survive online, traded through image boards, memefied, a ghostly artifact tinged with sadness of cult members smiling wide-eyed and unblinking, inviting everybody, Everybody, to the celebratory lunch spread. It’s a self-serve buffet (with cyanide)!
(I guess I had a lot to say about Mary Worth today.)
IL: Godamnit, Skippy: if it’s a ‘fantasy’ football league then your joke should have been ‘Hobbits versus Orcs’ or ‘Targaryens vs Lannisters’ or something, not characters in a sci-fi universe! This nerd shit is mainstream now, try to keep up!
HtH: Ah yes, the Saga of Rolf the Strong defeating the Brown Recluse. Not the most popular tale, I’m surprised that made it in there.
MW: Ah, yes, the self-serve buffet, as opposed to the buffet that is served to you?
DtM: The fact that Dennis isn’t sure if there are other dads out there really underscores how much they try to limit his contact with other people. Frankly, I don’t blame them.
MW: Estelle would have called it a “reception” not a “celebratory lunch spread,” but then the focus would be on the newlyweds instead of the only important person here: Mary Worth.
Pluggers haven’t figured out how to use the calendar on their Jitterbug phones.
Mary Worth: Mary sure worked hard on that buffet! All you can eat… brown, beige, and roses! Dig in, everyone!
Intelligent Life: Romulans and Klingons are from sci-fi, not fantasy. If you’re going to make fun of fantasy football you’re supposed to say something like Elves vs. Dwarves or Riverlands vs. Westerlands or some suchness. This is really basic, you guys!
Mary Worth: This looks like one of those too-perfect scenes you see right before it’s revealed that the person experiencing it is actually in a coma.
Some children would rather not think about their parents having sex. Dennis is the opposite. He believes he is only product of copulation by a man and a woman, everyone else is the product of asexual reproduction
MW: Saying “It’s a self-serve buffet!” and making it as something everyone should be excited about when in reality it’s all the fun of eating at Golden Corral but in someone’s house is really MEH at best.
But also, I’m guessing they saw all the chafing dishes and sterno, even these rubes probably figured out it was a buffet. Look at Wilbur there, he’s so excited he’s CLEARLY pleasuring himself
@Ettorre: No one’s “too perfect” scene includes Manic Wilbur. No one’s. Not even in Mary Worth.
@pugfuggly: I hadn’t read your post yet when I wrote mine. It was just convergent evolution or something.
IL – The blind carpenter picked up his hammer and saw! Thank Jebus!! Then he cut off his thumb, but it was a clean cut and they could re-attach it…thank Jebus, again! And he got a decent Workers Comp payday – Jebus strikes again….
HtH – Book larn’in’ is dangerous – best stick ta rape an’ pillage, son….
MW – So…somebody slipped Wilbur an ecstasy mickey?
DtM – Well, I’m not sure how official all these ranking are.
Jerry Seinfeld
Adios Amigos, DJ.
DtM I read the caption before looking at the picture and figured
Why am I, bereft of any discernable talent, compositing better comics than a professional?
Intelligent Life – This strip might be more than surface level deep, but the odd phrasing make it feel like an Alien attempting to mimic human speech.
Hagar the Horrible – Hagar had Lucky Eddie write a biography of him instead of an epic saga, so he has no objection to personal or Viking history being contained in the printed word.
Being a Norse pagan, he is superstitious about spiders, which are associated with the Norns, the Viking equivalent to the Greek Fates, who weave tapestries of life. They are also considered tie closed to the Past, Present, and Future, so one appearing in a history text is extra concerning for a warrior like Hagar.
Mary Worth – “Celebratory Lunch Spread” sounds like an artificially flavored nutritional paste from the future that The Refugees get during The Holidays ( a series of old harvest and winter festivals back before climate change ruined agriculture and led to a rise in The State). Only well behaved Refugees get it, the rest are still subject to The Meddling and suboptimal rations until total submission.
Dennis the Menace – Dennis learns “World’s Best Dad” mugs are a commodity produced in mass, and that it is an opinion, without authoritative backing in fact. This means that he shouldn’t be restricted to merely seeking paternal approval from Henry, his mere biological Dad.
Perhaps, Dennis thinks, he could be the World’s Best Dad himself, a paternal figure for all to pay homage to. If these things are merely opinion, and the cost to maintain such a notion are cheap mugs and tchotchkes made in China, than the masses could easily become his “children”. Fused with his Sunday school learning of God (the Father), and suddenly a very menacing and megalomaniacal future awaits!
@The Rambling Otter: Indeed. I could be charitable and think Wilbur is talking to the food he is about to unceremoniously start shoving into his Dagwood-like maw, but there’s a non-zero chance this is more fandisservice. ‘Mary’s muffins are GOOD, readers! Take my word for it! YOU make all this possible!’
JP: Meanwhile, Ces seems to have decided that his strip needs a Wilbur too, hence Neddy’s giddy, singsong declaration about meeting Testor’s Glucas.
Zits: Jeremy is in high school and I don’t believe his homework is to figure out how to spell common words and use them in a sentence. Anyway he has a smartphone and he’d be asking Siri this and not his mother.
Marvin: Surprised this story hasn’t yet turned to the inevitable conclusion of Marvin peeing all over this cardboard boat as some kind of avant garde performance art.
Hi and Lois: That’s funny, Chip thinks his family is ever going to have the financial ability for him to attend college. Yesterday Lois was panicking over the cost of buying a school lunch.
Six Chix: You can in fact charge a phone while simultaneously using it to watch videos.
Beetle Bailey: Surprised that Beetle’s horribly deformed feet aren’t disqualifying him to serve in the military.
Normal people used to have a general idea of nerdom, but not the specifics. This is why there is the common idea that “Star Trek vs Star Wars” is a huge point of controversy among nerds. Star Wars and Star Trek are known even to the general public. Actual nerds are more interested in much more esoteric and specific questions — “what does the colour of a lightsaber say?” — but it is hard to explain to normies. Just like theologians do not really discuss about how many angels can dance on a pin, but they DO discuss whether Christ has one or two natures or whether he is “FROM two natures” or “IN two natures”, which is actually more complex. Anyway, the muscular guy knows that Skippy will make a nerdy reference but doesn’t know which one and doesn’t care to know. Good for him
@LTJpezcore1: Not me, but I agree
It could be worse, blonde guy. At least he’s just making a pointless Star Trek reference. If you asked me, I’d start moralizing about gambling on people who give themselves brain injuries for your entertainment.
***
He’s talking right at us? Oh fuck, they’re Deadpooling Wilbur.
Alice’s sly smile at hearing Dennis is from her secret knowledge of the boy’s actual paternity – she once drunkenly seduced George Wilson.
MW has a whole turkey on the buffet table. It’s self-serve. I usually say “This herd ain’t gonna cull itself”, but this time…
Pluggers remember a time when they could get free calendars from the bank, their insurance agent, and the drug store. But they usually didn’t have them until the end of the year, and there was always the chance some of the doctor appointment cards stuck to the fridge would get lost by then. So they joined the modern world and started *buying* their calendars six months ahead at the dollar store. The convenience and peace of mind is well worth the expense.
MW- You really haven’t been to a wedding until you’ve hade the requisite salmon squares and muffins
@Tabby Lavalamp: Wilbur Weston is the new Wade Wilson. Will Ian Cameron become Wolverine to boot?
@Ettorre:Whoopsiedoodle
MW: Wilbur will destroy that poor buffet.
@Philip: I can believe that in any type of dystopia Mary would be made Minister of Newspeak.
MW: Wilbur channels his inner Homer: “Self-serve?! Woo-hoo! . . . Mmmmm, graaaavy.”
Frazz: And by “force of nature” he means “flaming asshole.”
CS: If they willingly hired Crankshaft, why wouldn’t they hire this guy? He couldn’t be much worse.
Not being familiar with Intelligent Life (and make of that statement what you will), is Skippy supposed to be the office nerd? Until the second panel, the only clues were his hair, and his ordinary build compared to Blond Guy’s superhero proportions. The latter’s look of disdain in the third panel suggests the attitude of “you would follow sports if you were a real man.”
@26 Lord Flatulence: Rarely, when you have a party, do you serve things that don’t look edible but in fact are edible? Your answer to that question is “no” but Mary Worth’s would be “yes.”
@46 ValdVin: That’s not a roast turkey. It’s a giant turkey-shaped salmon square.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Let’s go skiing, girls!”
“Me first!”
“No! Me!”
“Don’t argue! On my yacht I always go first!”
“I forgot that the best view is from the back of the pack!”
@Ettorre:
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, if I made a comment like that, I’d expect:
25% of people to fully understand the reference (who the Klingons and Romulans are, this is inflated by running in the nerdy circles I do)
50% of people to understand I made some sort of Star Trek reference
25 % of people to be completely bewildered
I’d say the strip misses some chances to actually go for the “fantasy” joke and make some sort of reference to Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Game of Thrones, or the huge sci-fi/fantasy crossover universes of Star Wars or the MCU.
And obligatory “sportsball” joke.
From past comments I think Josh has a reasonable knowledge of Latin. The phrasing of the question in the middle panel of Intelligent Life is is the stuff of Latin students’ nightmares. Apparently it would be in “the subjunctive of the 1st periphrastic conjugation”:
https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/indirect-questions
So, long story short, the comment in panel three would be especially apt if the whole conversation was in a dead language.
There are plenty of stories of people trying to recreate their grandparents’ prized recipes, lamenting that the elders became so skilled that they didn’t bother writing down all the tricks and techniques they use. Wilbur senses that Mary is one such cook. So his diabolical plan is to hide cameras in her kitchen that feed into a custom-built AI, which will learn to duplicate her dishes perfectly. Then Mary will conveniently disappear and Wilbur will become an obscenely rich food magnate – he will move into a tackily decorated mansion and he’ll buy Charterstone, reducing its surviving residents to slaves for his greater glory.
RMMD: “Well tie me to a pig and roll me in the mud! Of course I’ll marry you, you old horse thief!”
GT: This is one of those magic moments when the art and the dialogue are equally incomprehensible.
I swear I see more of Wilbur Weston than I do of my own family.
Maybe this is on me for reading Mary Worth, but I still don’t like him.
LUANN: Wow, apparently Berniece was such horrible toxic R.A. that the university not only eliminated that position, but the entire campus housing department as well. That’s the only plausible reason why no one’s stepping in to stop this room-swapping silliness.
HtH: Far be it from me to try to teach a Viking about how to inflict overkill levels of violence, but … Did either of them consider slamming the book closed? Although I do see that the book is already closed in panel one, yet somehow still has a living spider in it in panel two. So Hamlet was either implausibly gentle when he closed it previously, or that is a spider we should likely all be in terror of.
“I’m having trouble with my Viking history. It says we never wore horned helmets!”
MW: Aren’t buffets self-serve by definition?
Obviously, Dennis recognizes that this is a mass-produced mug, and therefore there exists a considerable market of dads who want their impressionable children to think they have the “world’s best dad.” By “others like you,” Dennis means “pathetic frauds.” Not un-menacing, but I concede he has to work on his delivery.
@Dan: My perception is that some of those created worlds are considered by the larger culture as less nerdy, particularly Game of Thrones and the MCU. When the GoT series was running, I encountered many viewers who weren’t nerds, and at least some of the men seemed to treat it like a Mafia franchise except with dragons, beheadings and boobs.
MW: Well glad to see the creative team watched the latest episodes of “Bridgerton” with the whole “I just got married to a man but now I am attracted to another woman” theme. Estelle’s holding hands with Mary in the first panel and coming on to her in the second. Awkward….
MW – I find the food on this buffet far less disturbing than the brainwashed looks on Mary, Estelle, and Wilbur’s faces.
“Come to the bufffffeeeeeett. Partake in our salmon squares and muffins of our Great Leader.”
RwO: Wouldn’t ya know? NOW they want Fish talent – just when we’d declared Fishapalooza a bust and laid off most of our Piscean assets. But we were able to call back Grayson Generic-Fish to do a splendid chef portrayal! As well as a few extras we picked up down at the dock.
Yeah, Rhymes with Orange thought they were gonna get star power like Stellan or Willa for their little scene. Dream on. Too little, too late… the bandwagon has rolled.
Bacön: Things you’d rather not contremplate #2352.
MW: I’m beginning to think this is all about an MKultra experiment in mind control. The buffet is laced with something. That’s the why behind the insane Mary praise.
IM: The way the characters move up and down in the panel makes me feel kind of nauseous. It must be exhausting living in the Intelligent Life universe, squashed under the force of own your speech bubbles straining against the ceiling.
DTM: “You mean there are other men who put their own genitalia inside a woman’s? And then ejaculate in there? And make her pregnant??? I thought you were the only freak sick enough to indulge in a repulsive perversion like that!”
Hagar is a very rich man, he can even afford to buy his son his own parchment book! However, he would rather not damage the ink by squishing the spider, so he hopes Helga has a non-violent solution
I know I have made this joke before, but there is absolutely no way real-life Dennis’s real-life dad would ever be called “World’s best dad”
@Tonio: Oh definitely, of all the things I listed Star Trek is probably the *most* nerdy of all of them, based off crossover success. You could have made Nerd Guy make a joke about fantasy football being Thor fighting Thanos and Muscle Guy would have known what he was saying because Avengers Endgame was the #1 grossing movie in history for a while.
Ed is really devious. He needed a secretary to work for free at his practice, so he married her, even though it was obvious to everyone that he did not give a damn about her. Not only that, but he also avoided paying for an expensive wedding and got his wife’s friend to cook a feast for free! Ed: hates humans, loves animals, really loves saving every dime
Wilbur’s the wedding guest who loads his plate with shrimp and stands in the corner choking them down and weeping.
@Dan: Yes, it should have been a fantasy reference “dwarves vs elves”, but we cannot expect “Intelligent Life” to be as savvy of nerd culture as “The Big Bang Theory”
@Old School Allie Cat: “Welcome to the Camp. I guess you all know why we’re here. My name is Wilbur and I became aware this year. If you wanna follow me, you have to eat a Square.
Then put in your earplugs. Put on your eyeshades.
You know where to put the cork.”
@Dan: Yes, as a culture we live in a society after the mainstreaming of nerd culture in the 2000s and 2010s. Indeed, we are experience a retrenchment and backlash from peak nerdom in the late 2010s, unless it is simply a switch to anime
Gasoline Alley: This strip is nothing but one long Dad Joke.
@Lee Sherman: Ha, that is really similar. Great minds, I guess!
Actually, a Norse Men would not refer to himself a Viking, which is an insult, like calling someone a pirate. Unless Hamlet is like a rapper reappropriating the N-word, which is more interesting than whatever “Hagar the Horrible” is doing
“If it’s Mary’s cooking, it is to be good!” Unlike her advice, which produced this doomed marriage after all
JP – Yes, the boyfriend who didn’t bother to warn Sophie about the dangerous rip current when she went swimming. Neither did the rest of the family, including her supposed friend Lusercas, even though they all knew about the danger. That boyfriend is a real prince.
Frazz – One asshole enabling another asshole who doesn’t need enabling.
Mary Worth – When the guests see serving dishes on a table with a stack of plates and no one standing behind the dishes to serve the food, I think they can figure out that it’s a buffet and that it’s serve yourself. Well, Toby probably can’t, but maybe Ian will explain it to her.
Aaand – they’re starting out with praise for Mary’s cooking, and it won’t be long before they lavish their most extravagant praise on her meddling.
Pluggers – I traditionally do this on New Year’s Day.
9CL – I’m afraid to say that he should do something different for once, because Thorax is the one thing that’s worse than this repetitive shit.
You may say I’m the best dad
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And you’ll learn it’s not that fun
@2+2=7: Maybe Mary made a litter box cake. It’s a real thing – the topping looks like dirt, and semi-melted Tootsie Rolls are arranged artfully on top. Sorry that I can’t do links.
@miranda: Most are, but sometimes there are servers dishing out the food. Cruise ships have buffets with servers, or at least they did the last time I was on one five years ago.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Congratulations on Speed Bump. Bison can be dangerous, but those guys have it all together.
IL: I have an Order of the Stick T-shirt captioned “Fantasy Fantasy” in which a group of generic guards are hanging around a water cooler discussing the characters they have on their teams (the punchline is “Hang on, I want to see how Ned Stark is doing…oh, crap.”). I mention this here because it’s much funnier and has a better grasp of the concepts of both geekdom and fantasy sports than Intelligent Life ever did.
MW: GAAAAAH! I never want to see Wilbur under most circumstances, but “pre-feeding frenzy ecstasy Wilbur” is something I REALLY don’t want to see!
@Dan: #57: Skippy could’ve easily kept it well within the realm of fantasy and sportsball. Just make a reference to the game of quidditch from the Harry Potter stories, “You mean Ravenclaw versus Slytherin?”
The facial expressions confirm that Mary’s secret baking technique is substituting out all-purpose flour with cocaine.
I may not be a particularly good (and amateur) cartoonist, but I think I’m a good enough cartoonist to know that Hågär’s body proportions – as indicated by head-torso ratio – belong to a toddler there.
@Ettorre: Yeah, we have the reverse Plugger Paradox: Pluggers has to make jokes about Pluggers not understanding things that in fact are mainstream enough that Pluggers understand them, or the Pluggers will all miss the joke.
IL: That’s not even close to a relevant thing to say to an invitation to a fantasy sports league. It could be a Star Trek-related competition (trading card game, maybe) and this answer still wouldn’t make any sense in this context. Seriously, fuck this bullshit comic.
MW: If Mary made it, you know it’s good. So come on, everyone! Line up and rip off a chunk of this uncarved turkey, and please only one scoop of cat litter each.
If it’s seaworthy, Marvin will insert some seamen in it.
FC: “hide and shriek!!” I honest-to-goodness love that, ha ha! What a great idea for a game!
MW: “Self-serve buffet” means Wilbur will shove everyone aside and trample them underfoot as he lunges for the buffet table, hogging every plate and platter for himself. Sounds about right. NOM NOM NOM, Wilbur.
C’shaft: I mean, when you have Ed Crankshaft on your staff can you really claim to have any employment requirements?
Dustin: Dustin doesn’t have a job and everyone mocks him. Dustin gets a job–a job most people don’t want to do because it requires you to stand for hours on end in all sorts of weather–and everyone mocks him. Maybe Dustin isn’t the problem here.
GT: The art in Gil Thorp has never been fantastic, but at least there were different head shapes. These three boys look like they were made by those paper doll games, switching out skin tones and hair models on the same basic face.
Luann: This is what happens when you take characters who haven’t changed since they were twelve and put them in college.
Pluggers have nothing going in their lives beyond the gradual decay of their own bodies.
RMMD: I guess this makes Wanda the Catherine Parr of the Truck Tyler saga.
MW: That baking dish full of oatmeal is an interesting menu choice for a celebratory lunch spread. I wouldn’t think you’d pair that with turkey. Would you serve that with white or red wine?
MW: My God, the dead-eyed glee! It’s burned into my memory!
@Arabella:
Pluggers- While they don’t give out calendars at banks and insurance companies anymore, just make a contribution to one single charity and your mailbox will be flooded with hundreds of pleas for money and free gifts! I have about six calendars, 120 greeting cards, 10,000 mailing labels, notepads, window mandalas and plastic bags. Not to mention solicitations for Christmas donations in August.
MW:
The only way Wilbur should get to partake in any festivity food is if Libby offers him delectable delights in the way that Far Side cat tried to serve wine to the dog:
“The glass nearest to you DOES NOT CONTAIN THE POISON.”
@Philip: Regarding Intelligent Life, you’re close. It’s a hack’s attempt at Big Bang Theory, which was already hackwork to begin with.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s a salmon cooked inside a turkey, a tur-salmon.
@Unca Bob: I have a stack of small notepads that we got from a couple of charities. We keep them next to the landline phone to jot down messages.
MW: (at the legal department of the J.M. Smucker Co.)
“Hey, Ted. Did you see Mary Worth this morning?”
“Who’s Mary Worth?”
“It’s a famous long-running comic strip, but that’s not important right now. Look, they have a character saying, “If it’s Mary’s cooking, you know it’s going to be good!”
“So…?”
“Don’t you see? It’s a blatant ripoff of our famous slogan. Right down to the irony of something that sounds disgusting being actually good!”
“Let me see that! You’re right, it definitely does evoke our motto! Who writes this.. comic strip, you say?”
“A couple of broads, named “Moy and Brigman”… we need to sue the skirts off of them!”
“Wait a minute! I just looked them up – it seems they’re owned by Big Mayo, one of our slickest competitors. I don’t know if we want to to go spoon to spoon with them….”
I decided to read up on Hagar (and in turn Vikings)
Something that I was looking for, that the wiki since removed
But I got this:
“Hagar himself hates baths; a Running Gag of the strip is that he only takes one once a year. (In truth, Vikings were known for their personal hygiene at home — on shipboard was another matter; they INVENTED the sauna, after all!)”
MW: Mary’s cooking makes Wilbur feel like he’s king of the world!
Hagar The Horrible: Hagar is gonna be so mad when Helga gets bitten by the spider instead and gets spider-themed superpowers.
Mary Worth: I’m 100% certain that Mary drugs all her food to keep the people of Charterstone in a state of perpetual, easily-controlled bliss, hence the reason basically everyone in this comic is a goddamned moron of some stripe.
Dennis The Menace: I don’t know why, but the way Dennis’ dad is holding that mug is really pissing me off.
Sherman’s Lagoon: One of the characters literally says, “little green alien,” but the colorist makes the alien yellow.
Tfw your son is being corrupted by milksop Christians
@Myrtle: So what company would tweak the slogan to “With a name like Fuckers, it has to be good”?
@ectojazzmage: No steam rising from the coffee cup’s contents, so we can assume that he isn’t scolding his hand.
AC: See, even the Andy Capp creative team knows that most non-nerds have a basic understanding of Star Trek concepts! Intelligent Life take note!
DT: Did Lizz’s in-depth investigation of the Totten Organisation consist of re-reading the same newspaper article she was reading about them at the start of the story?
MW: I love how Mary’s famous Tray of Glop doesn’t even have a serving spoon. “It’s a self-serve buffet, but try not to leave too many handprints!”
RMMD: When Wanda says “What took you so long to ask?” she doesn’t mean “Why was it so long until you asked me?” She’s literally wondering why this proposal took a whole week of strips.
@pugfuggly: IL: Godamnit, Skippy: if it’s a ‘fantasy’ football league then your joke should have been ‘Hobbits versus Orcs’ or ‘Targaryens vs Lannisters’ or something, not characters in a sci-fi universe! This nerd shit is mainstream now, try to keep up!
My thoughts exactly. Although if he’d gone for “Hobbits versus Orcs”, I’d probably have been like “Actually, Skippy, I think you’ll find that already exists and it’s called Blood Bowl.”
LUANN:. Kip’s not dense, he’s messing with Tiff. Just as he should.
CURTIS:. yep, Barry is momma’s boy. But good ol’ dad identifies with his first born.
FG:. Darn, Dov handled the awkward moment well. Said it’d ok not to remember her and then recounts the situation where they met. And admits while he was a prince, she was a mere server.
MW:. I made salmon squares last week from a new recipe I found– and they were super good! First I’d had since Junior high.
PLUGGERS:. Yep, I’m s Plugger. I’ve been recording dr. appts for 2025 since October.
RMMD:. Maybe NOW we can get that furry wedding. Hope Sid still has that merch to retag.
HtH: I’ve always wondered if Hagar’s sword is an Ufberht, which show he’s wealthy.
6 CHX:. Actually chuckled out loud in recognition. But hey, a Plugger is easily amused.
@LTJpezcore1:
#34. MW:. In all fairness, buffets returned after pandemic. I ate at one (possibly Golden Corral) where food was behind a sneeze guard and served cafeteria style by beaming staff. Actually, an improvement over messy, sneeze-ridden old method being resurrected by Mary.
@Activist: It’s especially disgusting that Wilbur will be grabbing food with his bare hands and cramming it into his mouth, then chewing with his mouth open.
@2+2=7: LUANN: the university not only eliminated that position, but the entire campus housing department as well.
I could’ve told you that after Bets, who had decided to skip the semester of college, changed her mind in November and just moved right back into her old dorm room like nothing had happened.
@I speak Jive: #88
I just Googled “litter box cake” and found plenty of recipes. :-) The half-melted, stretched-out Tootsie Rolls sprinkled on top along with a (presumably) clean, unused litter scoop stuck into the mix add an appropriately realistic touch! Ha ha! What will people think of next??? Plastic vomit??
@Roscoe: Well done! Very Lennonesque.
@Ukranazi Stepan: #92
I honestly enjoy your cartoons!
@Charterstoned: #99
Myself, I would serve oatmeal with 2% milk.
Re: COTW post. Josh, your wording sounds suspiciously like you had ChatBot write it for you.
0CL-What’s the matter. Brooke? Afraid to show a male erection? It’s not like anyone reads this comic to get upset if you did.
CS: You actually don’t need a commercial drivers license, only a current regular drivers license to get hired on as a school bus driver. The school districts train you, though having a commercial license helps speed up the process. A student bus driver can operate a school bus with passengers as long as there’s a licensed driver/trainer on board. Once you pass all the written tests and the driving test at the DMV office they usually hand you a route the next day and let you fly solo. Lots of people sign on as school bus drivers just for the free training (plus you get paid while you train) and road experience then bail to drive for a private company. A Class B commercial license with passenger and school bus endorsement entitles one to operate charter, tour, and municipal transit buses, along with cement, dump, garbage, and any single unit (not tractor-trailer) box truck of up to 50 feet in length.
RMMD: In spite of resuming my following of RMMD and following it faithfully for the past few years, did I miss a previous reference to the ex-wives? How many ex-wives? What are the ex-wives like? If I can’t remember the most interesting bits of these stories, why am I even doing this?
@Liam: Oh no you don’t. You are trying to get me to check today’s 9CL and I refuse. Refuse, I tells you! *heads to kitchen for a little sugar-intensive distraction*
@Poteet: Truck picked up all his ex-wives at strip tents in country fairs, like in the old Old Crow Medicine Show video for Dylan’s Wagon Wheel. The marriages lasted even more briefly than their teeth did.
MW: What is that brown object on the far left? *stares suspiciously* No thanks, I’ll stick to my hip flask.
@Ukulele Ike: Bwahaha!
In “Flash Gordon”, Thun’s special friend reveals she’s half lion person. Cross-species is always a given in scifi, but now that they’ve brought it up here we need details. A forbidden love, two hours’ leave in a spaceport, a really cold night in Frigia, space vodka, or what?
@SomeJerk: Thun will be aggravated when Dova refuses to use his litter box and nips out to the nearest Starbucks every time she needs to go potty. (Unless she’s half Hawk Person, in which case she poops on public statuary and parked cars)
I refuse to believe Estelle invited Wilbur to her wedding considering how she still has stress dreams about dating him. Clearly someone just said the magic word “Buffet” and Wilbur Weston just materialized in the room like the Devil upon hearing his name.
Intelligent Life looks so much like early PvP I had to check if it was Scott Kurt or not. It definitely looks like someone who learnt their at style from early gamer webcomics.
HtH: Specially for Hagar, the best song abut a spider, ever.
The fucked up thing about Mary Worth is that for all intents and purposes, Mary Worth herself is less a character and more an avatar for the strip itself and its writers/artists, so any time Mary Worth is being praised in the strip Mary Worth, you’re basically looking at somebody jerking off.
DtM: Nice reminder that the “World’s Best Dad” verdict is not shared by Henry’s only offspring, who seems dubious that this “dad” thing is even a thing.
IL: And of course Skippy and Other Guy’s neckties refer back to Red Superman and Blue Superman, adding another level of intertextuality to…something or other.
MW: Wilbur breaks the Fourth Wall in an attempt to make the reader envious for the taste of Mary’s cooking. Whatever, combover boy. Not gonna work.
9CL: My thanks to Brooke for showing me Amos’s scalp erection is entirely sarcastic.
BB: If Beetle knows what’s good for him—big if—he’ll do what Sarge says. He’s about 45 seconds away from Rocky kicking his ass for touching his guitar.
C-Shaft: His being a new character who hasn’t made himself unappealing yet makes him close enough by itself.
DT: Whoa, what happened to Lizz’s irises in P1? Was she already at work when she decided she wanted to have green eyes today?
Dustin: If we’re having a “State the Obvious” competition allow me to point out that Fitch’s soul patch just disappeared for no reason.
GT: Very cute of Barajas to pretend that if he devotes a few sentences to the dating lives of the Milford scholar athletes both he and we will actually remember them.
JP: Hey, if Neddy isn’t departing for the Last Frontier maybe she can hook up with whatsisface, Glen’s younger brother who thinks he’s a strong swimmer but isn’t. A few weeks with Neddy and he’ll feel a lot better about going into a monastery or whatever.
Phantom: Manley does some of his best artwork in many moons on a half-in-shadow Phantom contemplating how close he came to irradiating all of Bangalla.
RMMD: Kiss Wanda or don’t kiss her, but Truck shutting up is an idea with universal appeal.
Skippy picked the wrong “fantasy” team ‘cuz Star Trek is science fiction. If he’d picked Star Wars, on the other hand, he’d be on better footing ‘cuz that is fantasy.
Luann: If she thinks that’s exhausting, wait’ll she spends a night in the sack with Kip.
Today’s Mary Worth is about how great and perfect and wonderful Mary Worth is. And thank goodness! It’s been far too long since my last hit of Mary Worth self-aggrandizement; I was starting to get the shakes.
Frazz: Is that a fart joke?
@145 Avoiding the Madding Crowd:
Could be. He wants to be the wind and he’s talking to an asshole.
Intelligent Life: Skippy and other guy are the new Deadpool & Wolverine
@Sequitur: Excellent!
Phantom: So Mollusk (so subtle) knows that his rocket landed in Africa, but still calls it his lunar mission? I realize that Musk has become an Official Enemy, especially now, but shouldn’t this story criticizing him make some kind of sense? And the US Attorney is rescuing the saboteur, because there’s no problem with sabotaging a moon rocket so it crash lands on Earth?
Honestly I’m usually drawn here by your awesome encyclopedia knowledge and wry commentary on the Mary Worth absurdities.
I’ve missed this since Monday, glad it’s back. ?