Mostly soapy Friday
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Judge Parker, 12/6/24
Oh, yeah, my prediction that Judge Parker Senior has his fugitive daughter Anne living in his basement turned out to be correct, much to Randy’s disgust. You see, by now being let onto this secret, Randy must, according to the Laws of Nuptials, inform his wife of his father’s misdeed. His wife. You know, the amoral CIA assassin who loves to kill? I think she’ll be fine with a little fugitive-hiding, actually. Anyway we also learned earlier this week that Anne has to sneak upstairs at night to go pee, which I think is the most problematic thing going on here quite frankly.
The Phantom, 12/6/24
Oh, also, it turns out that Diana has stumbled upon not just one guy who got punched out by the Phantom, but a whole subculture of guys who got punched out by the Phantom, and a new getting-punched-out-by-The-Phantom pub that’s opening up to celebrate the Phantom-punchee lifestyle. Her husband’s flown in to enjoy the proceedings incognito, and honestly, I think that’s great for him. All these having-been-punched guys seem like real delights now, and the Ghost-Who-Punches-And-Who-Punched-These-Guys-Specifically deserves to see how his particular brand of restorative justice punching transforms lives.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/6/24
Oh, also also, Merle is continuing to bleed out on the sidewalk of his suburban subdivision. Maybe the ambulance is going to get there in time, maybe not! Just thought you’d like to know what’s going on (what’s going on is bleeding).
Hi and Lois, 12/6/24
Your parents telling you no is supposed to give you something to aspire to or rebel against; but to Chip, it’s just a sign that he’s destined to be a non-motorcyclist forever due to family law, or possibly genetics. True loser behavior!
133 replies to “Mostly soapy Friday”
Family Circlejerk – The Keane Klan is making it too easy on the Mudges. Where’s the challenge in snarking about a girl wearing a HO HO HO shirt and talking about Christmas coming in her pants?
Mary Worth Mashups
Phantom:
“And for the gent?”
“When I’m done with you, pal, it’s going to be you who’s the one who’s having a bier!”
Chip has eyes?
RMMD-Yeah. Bleeding is what usually happens after a person is stabbed.
JP-Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. You know what to do, Randy?
MW-“You could say I’m the Hunter S. Thompson of advice columns, Mary.”
Wait — the Judge Parker plot is about a daughter named Anne being hidden from the authorities? Is she keeping a diary? If the Van Daans move in, this strip may lose points for bad taste, but will more than make up for that in sheer chutzpah.
H&L: I think Chip’s loser status is marked less by the fact he can’t get a motorbike, and more by the fact his best friend is clearly just a clone of his father with Gen Z broccoli hair.
Luann thinks Phil has a fetish for kidney donors. There must be some easier way to get his attention–maybe start with donating blood.
JP:
Put telling his wife to the side for a moment — wouldn’t Randy have an ethical obligation to report the known whereabouts of a fugitive? Wouldn’t Alan be aware that his son would have that ethical obligation if Alan were to show him Ann? Oh. Wait a minute. “Judge Parker” isn’t a legal strip.
JP: Does this even qualify as wasting time anymore? I thought this was all a tedious prelude to Alan bringing Randy as a middleman to acquiring April’s help (since unlike Randy she can actually get things done when the plot decides she can) in some scheme to exonerate Ann for Don’s murder. Instead, as we can see from Alan’s pathetic self-pity and begging Randy not to tattle on him, it appears Alan may have informed Randy about Ann just for the masochistic sake of regretting having done so.
RMMD: “I was stabbed in the gut, Lana! The bleedings will continue until the alimentary canal improves!”
H&L: “Ah, gee whiz. My daddy won’t give me permission to be a bad boy.”
GT: Yep, it’s the troubled teen that beat innocent Coach Gerads into the hospital and therapy. Or as Henry Barajas refers to him while crowing giddily in today’s GC comments, “the wildcard” that will give Gil’s team a psychological edge to win a football game. You’re a sick son of a bitch, Henry.
RMMD:
“And you’re not even a ‘blood‘ relative, Merle!”
JP: So, I guess Katherine’s alcoholism has either gotten so bad she hasn’t even noticed another person in her house, or she is a paranoid wreck from hearing toilet flushes and creaking floorboards in the middle of the night only to have her ‘beloved’ husband gaslight her.
Not that it matters though, CIApril’s return is imminent! She’ll sort this matter out, toot sweet! (By killing at least half a dozen people, I mean.)
MW: Yeah Wilbur, you sure are capable of doing ‘heavy research’, Mr. ‘My World Collapsed When My Two-Dollar Goldfish Died’.
RMMD: Where’d she come from? Did Merle not even get two doors down from his house before disaster struck? Did Bald Hipster Neighbor Guy call her? ‘Honey, you better come get your man! He’s bleeding all over my begonias!’
Luann: After hearing that inane response in panel three, Phil says ‘You know what, never mind. I don’t want any resident here catching whatever you have!’
RMMD: “Hi, Lana! So sorry to pull you away from your DECOR! Hope my spurting blood and increasingly ashen skin aren’t going to clash with your DECOR!”
H&L: The Chronicle-Tribune is possibly the most generic newspaper name ever.
MW: I’m sorry, what?! The “Ask Wendy” column is only weekly?! I thought it was supposed to be a rip-off of “Ask Ann Landers,” which was daily because it was just a short response paragraph of facile platitude sludge based on reader-provided prompts that probably took Eppie Lederer less time to write each day than the average Mudge spends writing their daily snark. Even if Wilbur does a triple or quadruple response for his weekly column, his work week is still probably only about 30-45 minutes, most of which would be spent on the feather-light “prep work” of skimming through readers’ letters to cherry-pick the best few. Speaking of which…
@y129 Poteet – In regards to your question late yesterday, I recall that the backstory of Wilbur’s wealth really is supposed to roughly parallel that of Eppie “Ann Landers II” Lederer. Once upon a time, Wilbur was just some schlub grinding away as a sports writer when the creator of the famous “Ask Wendy” advice column died or retired and the syndicate put together a contest to see who would take over. As a lark, Wilbur sent in an entry and ended up landing the job. Yadda yadda yadda, a couple decades later Wilbur is now wealthy beyond comprehension, his net worth supposedly exceeding the rest of Charterstone’s residents combined.
Wilbur’s alleged fortune would have been fairly hyperbolic even when he was introduced in 1993 during the twilight of the newspaper era. For a fifty-something replacement newspaper columnist in 2024, it’s downright absurd. Add in Wilbur’s lifestyle and antics over the past eight years (especially faking his death and wasting massive amounts of emergency rescue resources at the expense of the taxpayers) and it’s simply impossible. Lederer maintained a mostly respectable reputation, but Wilbur should be the Worthverse’s equivalent of Boogie2988 at this point.
Bottom line, Wilbur probably shouldn’t even be subsisting in a crappy studio apartment on his weekly newspaper advice column, let alone flourishing in some luxurious SoCal condo.
H&L: Yeah yeah, motorcycles and bad puns, what I want to know is, is that Batman on the cover of the Chronicle Tribune? Is Hi and Lois officially part of the DCU now? Really looking forward to seeing how they integrate Trixie into the next Suicide Squad.
RMMD — For a moment, I thought the first word was “Merde!”, which opened up the potentialities of an intriguing new world of French intellectualist cynicism for RMMD. [sighs] For a moment.
@Schroduck: H&L: I think Chip’s loser status is marked less by the fact he can’t get a motorbike, and more by the fact his best friend is clearly just a clone of his father with Gen Z broccoli hair.
This whole strip makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s set in a kind of suburban preserve for failed human genetic experiments.
JP: It’s so sweet that Randy thinks April tells him anything. He doesn’t even know what dinner is going to be until he shows up at the table.
Phantom: Poor Neville Marlyebone Douglas Haig Mountbatten Stokes the Third has looked like a third-rate expatriate West African thug all week, but today his face is dropping to Three Stooges level.
RMMD — Doesn’t bleeding usually involve blood, which in my experience is red for pretty much all humans. Does the syndicate not spring for scarlet tones? Or is the long end of the electromagnetic spectrum not visible in the Morganverse?
The Ghost Who Brands — Great stout–oh, and you’ll be hearing from my solicitors, Bandar and Bandar. We’ve got trademark laws in Bangalla too, you know..
H&L: Chip must have been the easiest baby to raise ever. “Just stop crying!” “(sigh) Okay.”
Phantom: You don’t see much Curly-Howard-as-Pee-wee-Herman cosplay.
RMMD: That’s not the real Lana, and Buster knows it. Dogs always know.
JP: “Also, if you could be cool about my being a 1970s comic book vampire, that’d be great.”
H&L – “Absolutely not!! Well, unless you also plan to apply for a motorcycle license, which is a separate qualification requiring an entirely different form of training and testing. But you knew that, right?”
@jroggs: You didn’t even mention the biggest problem with Wilbur being an advice columnist: his complete incompetence at every aspect of his job. He’s a great writer, because the script says he is. But the script also shows that he’s a selfish, stunted manchild who can’t handle ordinary emotional challenges, much less the difficult questions advice columnists receive. And the few writing samples we see are atrocious. It’s as if Karen Moy saw Les Moore, and thought “ooh, my strip needs more of that!”
DT: I don’t think I mentioned it when these strips first ran, but guest artist Rich Burchett is doing a bang-up job imitating the 1950s Chester Gould art style. Dick looks exactly like Mumbles today! Maybe he plans going incognito to the Rogues Gallery assembly.
”Whkilt Ugeen Roach? Whazzit u?”
”WHAT did he say?”
I like how Anne being Judge Parker’s daughter is fourth on his list of concerns. And one those concerns isn’t even about her. “She was broke and desperate, and I felt scared, and by the way she’s the flesh and blood offspring I helped conceive and raised from birth. So I figured I should maybe do something.”
CS: My re-telling of this week’s Dinkle story. I barely had to change anything.
H&L: I’m sure this was funny the first time this strip ran, right after the release of Easy Rider.
Phantom: Roger Stone’s tending bar now? Just wait until he finds out The Ghost Who Drinks is lactose intolerant. A pint of that milk stout and the Phantom will be launching gas attacks for hours.
Rex Morgan M.D. & Judge Parker: I never thought we would have two strips where it would be appropriate to ask “Is the old man cold, clammy, or diaphoretic? Does he have an ashy pallor? Is he becoming increasingly disoriented to time, place or self?” Yet here we are.
The Phantom: Pimm’s is a quintessentially English summer drink, not something you would typically serve as we approach Christmas. It’s also quintessentially a drink for toffs, the booze of choice at Wimbledon, horse races and society events. So, you know, perfect for a colonial lady living in a rain forest served by a pygmy tribe. Well observed, Phantom!
MW: Realizing she has endless new material and a trove of research already on file, Mary instantly decides to change “Ask Wendy” from its current weekly advice format into a daily “My Wilbur Survivor Story” column.
RMMD:
If this were a Tarantino film, a distracted and disconcerted Lana would trip over both Buster and Merle, and all three would be spurting vast quantities of blood as they writhed on the sidewalk.
The only thing that will save Merle from a *very* uncomfortable discussion with the HOA is a doctor’s note. And nothing from that quack in a box, it’s got to be from someone authoritative.
Get on it, Merle!
“I am not lying to my wife!”
“Really?! Bold move, but maybe I should try that once in a while!”
MW: “Now I used to do more prep for Ask Wendy, but the security guards at the prep school had me arrested. Sigh. Those prep school girls were so pretty too. Especially in the late spring…Well, all I can say is, thank goodness for the internet.”
@2 Baja Gaijin:
I like all three.
The Phantom – This bartender learned an important lesson from the Phantom – Branding! The signature scar from the masked man’s ring left a literal impression, as well a figurative one. The bartender returned to the family profession as a pub keeper, but now with a personally branded craft brew in an effort to set his establishment apart from the other competitors.
Rex Morgan, MD – This has been a story the creative team has long wanted to tell, but due to a misunderstanding of the “Man bites dog” aphorism is journalism, they thought it would never get printed in the newspaper.
Hi and Lois – “The Chronicle-Tribune” would mean that the Flagstons leave in or near Marion, Indiana, which is the hometown of Garfield’s Jim Davis. Sadly the era of super-niche blogs has largely passed, so the odds of having a Comics Geographer blog to help us understand any potential meanings are slim.
“What’s the name of the newspaper?”
“The Chronicle Tribune”
“I see you misunderstands. Both “Tribune” and “Chronicle” are very common in newspaper names, but they are generic names preceded by the town the newspaper is in”
“You don’t get it, Hi lives in the town of Chronicle, IN”
Let’s see, shaved heads, skull symbolism, fascination for a patriarchal figure dishing out violent punishment, staff and costumers made out of felons. Are we sure it’s a Phantom-themed pub and not just a skinhead bar?
JP: Yikes, Alan is having a bad skunk-hair day.
GT: In order to confuse Goshen, Gil is having his players alternate between red pants and white pants between each play. That’s why he’s The GOAT.
MW: “Survivor Stories requires HEAVY RESEARCH. I mean, I have to get off the couch, go outside, and actually talk to people. It’s exhausting! Not like Ask Wendy, where I can sit around in my underwear and just make up a bunch of pap. Although I do wish I could pull platitudes out my ass the way you do, Mary. That would make it even easier.”
When the Phantom wants to be a mysterious phantom in the jungle he wears skin-tight purple spandex, but when he really extra especially doesn’t want to attract attention he’ll wear a dark fedora with sunglasses in a dimly lit bar. It’s no surprise he’s pointing at the barely legible sign on the tap, hoping he’s picked the correct one.
***
*reads about police and dogs* No, seriously Lana. Get the pooch out of there.
***
Yes, Zoomers are making puns on songs from the 60s, though Chip could be one of those kids that goes on to old music videos on YouTube whining that they were born in the wrong era and today’s music sucks because for some reason there are some who seem to be trying to chase clout with Boomers and GenXers.
The 1968 youth rebellion came after two decades of great postwar prosperity had created enormous expectations that started to undermined economic stability through rising inflation, in addition to the radicalising effect of the Vietnam War and racial tension. In this turmoil, it made sense to travel the USA in a motorcycle to uncover its soul. Chip is Gen Z, after the end of history. Prosperity exists, but there is no high expectations, no high idealism and no radicalising factor — no war and no draft. Mildness is the natural state of the Last Man
GT: Tomorrow special guest star Coach Sean Payton pleads with Gil to withdraw the bounty he put on Perm’s head. “That got me suspended for a year Gil!” But Gil only smiles as his devious plan comes together.
Hi doesn’t realise that Zoomers like Chip are terribly affected by depression and anxiety produced by too much social media and staying indoor. Let me have some fun outdoor, it will hurt him less!
@Ettorre: “Let him”
@Baja Gaijin:
As good as #1 and #2 are, I like #3 the most for its twist on the canon.
Hi and Lois:
Oldest son meek and mild from a family born not to be wild
My mama seemed to know I was a snore
Despite the bad I kept from turning, loved my Sunday learning,
‘Til Mama got herself bored
And I didn’t turn 21 in prison doing life without parole
Everyone steered me right, with weakes punchlines,
Lois tried to raise a nutter but her pleading I denied,
That leaves only me to shame ’cause I ain’t wild
(With apologies to Mr. Merle Haggard and for spacing, I’m on my phone.)
Luann: Phil seems too interested in human organ collecting. Watch it, Luann. You’d better pass on any date with this guy or you could wake up in a bathtub full of ice water with one of your kidneys missing.
Hi and Lois: Chip expects to grow up and live the “Easy Rider” lifestyle, which would involve riding hogs and doing psychedelics in a graveyard with Jack Nicholson. Instead, he’ll probably grow up to live “The Dude Abider” lifestyle, which will involve wandering around in a bathrobe and drinking beer in a bowling alley with Uncle Thirsty.
In true Judge Parker fashion, we will now cycle through every single character‘s opinion of Alan sheltering Ann, until the subject is dropped altogether and winter comes to Cavelton.
“I know what I did was stupid” should replace “This serial comic strip … features a no-nonsense, upstanding lawyer who stoically handles drama inside and outside of the courtroom” as the syndicate’s official “Judge Parker” synopsis.
H&L: Teenage boy making a pun on a song from [checks notes] 1969. Sure. It’s like when Jeremy’s dad, who was presumably born around 1980, wears a Herman’s Hermits T-shirt in “Zits.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“How I love to be out here communing with nature!”
“Don’t you just adore the sights and sounds of the country, Don Abundio?”
“I’m getting mainly the sounds”
“So… Will you please shut up?”
Judge Parker creators: “Courtroom scenes are visually boring, but check out these thrilling depictions of people conversing in a blank-walled basement.”
JP: Unfortunately for Alan and Randy, April follows a different axiom of informational mathematics: three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Phantom: Despite being knifed several minutes ago, Merle hasn’t lost enough blood to lose consciousness or go into shock, or even stain the front of his shirt. I doubt he needs an ambulance, or even stitches.
JP – “I know what I did was stupid. Just, please don’t tell anyone.”
“Ces, when you write a comic strip that’s published in newspapers and online, it’s kind of automatically not a secret.”
@Ettorre: If the poor and underinsured are finally turning on the Insurance industry big-buckers, that “radicalizing factor” may be coming back in spades.
As for RMMD: Someone waiting for emergency medical assistance is worried about the cops showing up and shooting his dog. This is the realest shit in this strip– hell, in the funnies page — in 30 years.
JP – Two people can keep a secret, provided one of them is dead.
Long John Parker
Phantom – So…this is supposed to be some sort of English pub, transplanted in darkest Africa…probably by Cecil Rhodes. Give me a pint of Imperial Exploitation….
RMMD – I’ve heard of punch drunk, but this is a new one on me….
H&L – Bored Loser….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Phantom: Unschooled in the ways of British pubs, Kit thinks he’s ordering a glass of healthy milk, like the good guys in th’ Saturday morning cartoons. One glass of stout and he’ll be skull-punching everybody.
My mom got a motorcycle license for free when she took her driver’s license. She liked to say she was legally allowed to drive the hog all her adult life without ever even seeing one up close. Of course that was in 1975 and these days there’s a common understanding motorcycles demand an entire separate set of skills from cars. Just more evidence the Flagstones are eternally stuck in the postwar era I guess.
@Peanut Gallery: I know the Don Abundio girls have a strict dress code, but….wandering around a field in a strapless evening gown and pearls?
C’shaft; “Um, sir, you do know it’s school policy that we’re not allowed to have phones out at all during class hours, right?”
“Yeah, that’s been a rule since like third grade.”
“Just shut up and do as you’re told, you stupid non-elderly people!”
DT: “And now the bastard had to go and get shot in them. Blood NEVER comes out of this fabric!”
Dustin: “I was asking because I live with my parents; rents are ridiculously high and my dad’s on disability so I help my mom take care of him. But you’re hung up on outdated and insulting stereotypes of adult independence, so go die in a fire.”
GT: Lucas Martin thinks they “have a history,” but for Coach Permawave it was Tuesday.
Luann: Luann approaches being a living donor the same way she does everything else: with no contemplation or idea of what it might entail.
MT: Why do they need to call Mark in to be this manatee’s Uber driver?
MW: If Wilbur was doing “heavy research” he’d know Hurricane Milton only clipped Tampa, and most of the damage was further south in Sarasota. But hey, you don’t expect him to nurse margaritas on a devastated beach, do you?
Pluggers aren’t fooling anyone.
RMMD: Merle must be in pretty good physical shape to kneel for a prolonged period like that with his knees bent up double. I haven’t been able to sit like that during this century.
H and L:
Get your dotard runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for Dad’s censure
And whatever stuns our way
Yeah, Flagston, gonna make it happen
Take the world in a shrugged embrace
Tire all your loved ones at once and
Implode into pla-a-ace
I like chokin’ blightening
Heavy, peddled chunder
Pacin’ with chagri-in
And the reelin’ that I’m under
Yeah, Flagston, gonna make it happen
Take the world in a shrugged embrace
Tire all your loved ones at once and
Implode into pla-a-ace
Like a poor-natured chi-i-ild
I was born, born to be mild
I can rile so nigh
I never wanna try-y
Born to be mi-i-i-i-ild
Born to be mi-i-i-i-ild
[bridge]
Get your dotard runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for Dad’s censure
And whatever stuns our way
Yeah, Flagston, gonna make it happen
Take the world in a shrugged embrace
Tire all your loved ones at once and
Implode into pla-a-ace
Like a poor-natured child
I was born, born to be mild
I can whine so nigh
I never wanna try-y
Born to be mi-i-i-i-ild
Born to be mi-i-i-i-ild
[outro to fade]
@jvwalt: In defense of Jeremy’s Dad, he may have just recently seen Peter Noone in concert (he’s doing a Xmas Herman’s Hermits holiday show next week at a little casino near my home).
In Mick Jaggers’ autobiography, he writes about the Stones going on a package tour of England in the early. ‘60s with Noone and several other acts.
The Stones could not compete with Noone for the ladies.
One morning, he saw Noone coming out of a hotel room with 2 women who looked very much alike, except for about 20 years’ difference in age.
Mick says that’s why he always smiles when he hears the Hermits’ biggest hit: “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter”.
Chip, if you’re going to operate a motorcycle, which is more dangerous than a car, you should at least demonstrate to your father that you’re smart enough to know that motorcycles require their own specific driver’s licenses. You really don’t have the brain cells to lose in the event of an accident.
Judge Parker: Judge Parker is a strange beast of a comic because it keeps trying to throw these characters into insane high-stakes adventures involving stuff like super-crime conspiracies, yet also absolutely refuses to ever accelerate it’s iceberg-like pacing. The result is that we get all these plots that – in any other story – would be super exciting like fighting the cartels or getting press-ganged into an assassination instead devolve into the cast just kinda sitting around hum-hoing about a situation they say is happening but actually isn’t. It’s very odd.
The Phantom: “…Sir, are you going to answer me or just keep vaguely pointing at the shelves behind me?”
Rex Morgan: Merle’s been bleeding out on the sidewalk without actually showing signs of dying for about a week now, Lana, I think he’ll be fine for another few minutes while you take his dog home.
Hi And Lois: Newspaper comic writers want to live in a fantasy world where teenagers just do whatever their parents say all the time and never once question or rebel, which is honestly pretty pathetic.
RexMo – Lana tells us what June is going to look like at age 70. I know a lot of men who would hit that. Not Rex, but a lot of men.
Wrecks Moregone:
I repeat, where is the bleeding that he’s bleeding out?
Hi and Lois: Chip will just have to settle for using heroin.
Zits: I think that basic identification of the human digestive system is something that would be taught in the elementary school years. There’s a “Magic School Bus” about this subject! Also Jeremy might want to accept he’s forever going to be in the “friend zone” since Sara doesn’t seem at all interested in even asking about his reproductive organs.
Curtis: Did this restaurant owner get so upset that Curtis tried to order a cheeseburger that he physically threw him out of the store or did Curtis walk out and decide to just sit on the sidewalk?
Dustin: He’s not going to live with them much longer. They are very close to kicking him out unless he starts paying rent!
Pluggers: I love the shocked expression on the young Pluggers face as he learns the horrors that inevitably await him in his life as a Plugger.
Beetle Bailey: “It’s also why I was lying here trying to masturbate before you interrupted me”
@Ukranazi Stepan: I’ve seen 8-Bit Atari games gorier than this.
yFG: So the Mongovian Sharks and Lions enjoy a diet of grains and vegetables? Açaí smoothies? Almond butter? Avocado toast? I guess that’s better for the planet than our Earther animal variants. Meat is Murder, Sharks and Lions!
FG in real time: We still don’t know how Dovanna lost her arm — she had two yesterday. “I came to lead an army of hunters. We slept rough and lived by night and had our arms eaten off when we weren’t paying attention.”
Judge Parker: This is when
the copsBatman shows up, and punches outAlan ParkerRa’s Al Ghul, right?Judge Parker: The real reason he’s keeping Ann locked up in the basement is because she’s a werewolf.
I mean, it’s better than what we were given.
love is... when she poops a heart and it breaks into pieces.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
If Flagstons were destined to ride, they’d be born wirh Skull and Jaw birthmarks. Just Sayin’
@Bob Tice: Oh, Randy already yelled at Alsn Yesterday.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Given that we haven’t seen a drop of blood (even the black tar comic censorsjip call “blood”), I’m now convinced this guy is just playing sick for mommy so he can watch Korean soaps all day instead of going to school. (Leave it to Rex Morgan M.D. to have a guy be stabbed, or viciously bitten by animals and somehow overreact and underreact to the critical injury. That…that just takes skill!)
@Ukranazi Stepan: it’s like a pre-Sergio Leone western where a guy facing a blazing Gatling gun from 10 yards away would just grab his chest, go “uhhh” and then fall down. The wardrobe department would just take the actor’s garb and put it on hangers.
It was a cleaner time.
@The Quiet Man: “or she is a paranoid wreck from hearing toilet flushes and creaking floorboards in the middle of the night only to have her ‘beloved’ husband gaslight her.”
When “The Screaming Skull” ends up having better writing than this comic.
JP:. The one thing Alan did right is to tell Katherine, unlike the time she almost divorced him for keeping secrets from her. Randy, thankfully, will tell his beloved former spy.
@Ukulele Ike: Not shown: They’re actually about 6 feet away from where Don Abundio’s car is parked on the side of the road.
Looking forward to the upcoming Rex Morgan/Mary Worth crossover: Stell is heartbroken that Ed ditched her on their honeymoon to operate on a robbery victim’s dog who was shot by a cop.
Crankshaft: Harry Dinkle’s face in panel 3 is the opposite of a smirk, yet somehow ten times douchier in effect. If I were in his band, I would whip out my phone and text just to spite him.
H&L: Aw man, Chip can’t do that thing he’s never mentioned before and will never mention again!
FC: @Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: And now you’re on a list. Well, obviously you were already on the list, but now your name has a fresh tally mark beside it.
@richardf8:
Great. There’s constant yelling in that strip.
@Sequitur: Someone in the Keane household is a Donovan fan?
@87 Peanut Gallery:
Why do you think e-lec-tric-al banana is going to be a sudden craze?
Yeah, I know. Donovan was talking about the guy they called “Banana” in the group The Youngbloods.
♫ C’mon people now, smile on your brother…
Pluggers: The plugger bear cub kid is thinking, “Oh no, now he’s going to go into that story of wearing an onion on their belts again!”
RMMD: Well *finally*… we get back to our Star Canine! Since the two-legger went to get Lana, Buster opted quite sensibly to stand vigil over Merle’s
barelybleeding body! What compassion, what loyalty, what bravery – ready to fend off any other thugs who might see this as a chance to pick Merle’s pockets!And we see the bond that has been forged from this shared experience – Merle is now concerned about Buster’s own safety when cops arrive! I tell ya, this is truly a heart-warming scene, thanks to the empathy that Buster is showing!
I really don’t know how Buster could have done any more in this case – he already gave the would-be robber an identifying bite! And having him stop the bleeding by using his leash would have been too unrealistic… it’s not like it was an arm or leg wound.
@90 Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:
I want to see Buster break into song and dance to the tune “Mack the Knife”.
@Peanut Gallery: Interesting. Usually, when Don Abundio pulls over to the side of the road, he has no interest in getting out of the car. More often the girl gets out of his car, to walk home by herself.
@Sequitur: Well, NOW you tell us… when it’s too late to work it into the script in a realistic manner. And besides, Buster would need a little work with Melody Mare to perfect the routine.
@Sequitur: “Break into a song and dance to “Mack the Knife.’”
Man, I love Prague, 1962.
@Peanut Gallery: Must be the season of the melon head….
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: That First Aid training you give to your talent really paid off in this instance. Any other mutt might have wound its leash around a neck.
@94 Ukulele Ike:
I ran across that video a couple of years ago. I liked it then and I like it now.
I really don’t expect Buster to sing in Czech.
JUDGE PARKER: Because we all know that April, the shady secret agent is the queen of sharing information with her spouse! Come on Randy, April’s probably more intimately knowledgeable of illegal secrets and subterfuge than of you (I bet the naughty minx “works them like a claw” when you’re not looking, Randy!)
@Buck Ripsnort: Ha, ha! Rex Morgan M.D. just said ACAB! Who’da thought it rip the “Wokeness Crown” away from Gil Thorp so rapidly?
@Guillermo el chiclero: or worse yet, Luann’s brain which will…oh wait, there won’t be any problem there. Girl, you may have finally met “the one!”
Fifty years ago, with powerful Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills mired in scandal acting Chairman Ullman floated the idea of a national sales tax, and, speaking of sales, both Mutt & Jeff and Dawg dealt with door-to-door salesmen each in their own way.
Curtis –
“Tongue Swigglingly”???
it’s tough to be more offputting than Chickweed, but E for Effort
GT: Get the juvenile delinquent who beat up the other team’s coach to run onto the field and “get into his head”.
Runs right up to the coach who gets a ‘deer in the headlights’ look.
Gil is a jerk.
Other team’s coach should go all Matt LeFleur on the guy. (reference to last night’s Lions-Packers game).
At the very least, coach should go to the referee crew and tell them about his history with the kid.
Instead….he’ll go into spasms and Marty and the Milford sports establishment will celebrate Gil’s brilliant coaching’.
Why is the bar’s signature drink not rum punch. Come on people.
JP: Do the CIA know about Randy and April’s vow to never keep secrets from each other? For that matter, does April?
MW: Wilbur silently panics. Mary is going to do her best with Ask Wendy? When he just told her how little effort he puts into it? Good lord, maybe when he comes back the paper would expect him to do his best! Then he remembers that a) the only explanation for the fact he continues to have a job at all is that nobody at the paper has ever read Ask Wendy and b) it’s Mary, whose best, while definitely an improvement on “advice” like “What are you complaining about, it’s not like your fish just died,” is still just bland platitudes.
Phantom: Given that the colourist on Mary Worth once apparently decided that “The Macallan” sounded like a wine and everyone knows wine is purple (although I haven’t entirely ruled out the possibility that Wilbur takes his whisky mixed with blackcurrant cordial, cough mixture, or methylated spirits), I feel it’s worth acknowledging that the colourist here did spend five seconds on Google to find out what Pimm’s is. Good for them!
Pluggers: You know who else trots out random cliches and acts like this makes them the font of all wisdom? Yep, Mary Worth is a Plugger. I don’t make the rules.
S4th: Ralph’s new teaching job is going much better than his old one! We haven’t seen it because Ces finds that incredibly dull! If the student who never graduates suddenly shows up having transferred schools just to track him down, maybe we’ll see that!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Apparently there’s something called Pimm’s Winter Cup, which as far as I can make out is basically mulled gin.
@Horace Broon: Also, there’s a milk stout. It tastes like chocolate coffee and is about 6% alcohol.
Curtis: Anyone who has worked in a restaurant kitchen with fried food knows that the oil and grease stench will ruin your clothes. This guy with his sweater vest must smell terrible.
JP: Randy and April have a policy of total honesty with one another. Also he tried lying to her once and found out he didn’t like being waterboarded.
Phantom: Kit is ordering either a large chess pawn or the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. An unorthodox request, but the customer is always right.
RMMD: Mr. Lewton has figured out that an excitable dog might make it harder for the EMTs to help him, which makes him a strong candidate for smartest character in the strip.
Phantom — I think I prefer the term “redemptive discipline.” But I also prefer the term “percussive maintainence”.
9CL: This is a strip that has featured a talking unicorn and a man claiming to be God. Neither was as interesting as you might think. Both were more believable than Amos attracting two women simultaneously.
C-Shaft: As a bandleader, Harry Dinkle is no joke. Nor does he have any.
DtM: Don’t grownups always warn kids not to sit too close to the TV screen? And yet here’s Alice with a Real Housewife of Orange County’s chin resting on her knee.
Dustin: “My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” Learn from the masters, Dustin.
GT: Lucas Martin runs across the field and gets into a staring contest with the opposing team’s coach, who could credibly have a restraining order against him. Apparently I missed the part where the referee slipped into a coma, but I can’t say it surprises me that he did.
MW: If I’m not mistaken “Survivor Stories” used to be called “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.” Wilbur finally realized he was tempting fate.
@TheDiva:
Certainly not with overused banalities like “It is what it is.”
Big Jeffy might be trolling us, but I’d like to nominate today’s Familliar Mucus for an honorary Scrotum.A picture of Dolly with HO HO HO on her shirt and singing about being topless for Christmas clearly displays Jeff’s inner Baja.Or else he accidently clicked on his file of Mal functional Familiar Mucus images for his clip art. Ether way I feel it still counts, what say you, Scratchy?
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Reply
9CL: This is a strip that has featured a talking unicorn and a man claiming to be God.
________________________________________
Who did the unicorn claim to be?
@Garrison Skunk: “Who did the unicorn claim to be?”
It was Edda’s muse. It appeared in Central Park one day to tell Edda that she is special. She’s not an ordinary schmoe. She is a ballet dancer and that means that she paints pictures with her body and that makes her better than everyone else.
Of course, she soon switched to being a concert pianist so whatever….
@Garrison Skunk: Was going to try and answer this but yeah, Calvin’s Cardboard Box nailed it.
Baja! A one-eyed cat coughed this up for you.
MW: “Survivor Stories requires heavy research!” I went on a deep dive into the archives to find this long-ago strip where Wilbur cheerfully says “Writing the Survivors column is too easy! I just choose a story from the many that come in!” (https://joshreads.com/2013/09/tommy-the-tweaker-2-the-tweakening/) So apparently this column used to be (unedited?) reader submissions. Shockingly, at some point he exhausted the pool of Santa Royalians who were willing to write up their death-defying adventures on the boardwalk or whatever, and I guess he reworked the format around actually leaving the house and seeking out interviewees. And now he has to write up the stories himself. And he does research? I doubt it.
@Giant Pondering Otter: Indeed! Hey, maybe Ann’s not a werewolf, but a wahrwilf!
@Garrison Skunk: A spaceship.
@Rita Lake: Sheesh, that just makes this whole thing an even bigger mess. Now I’m picturing those Ann Landers romance-and-lifestyle advice blurbs for people who’ve been through actual hell.
Dear Recovering in Colorado,
Wow! That’s certainly one way a fun ski vacation in the mountains with the husband and kids can go badly! Don’t be too down, though. After all, you are what you eat, so in a special kind of way, your family will always be with you. – Wendy
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: @Artist formerly known as Ben:
#108. PHANTOM:. Notice how cleverly Kit is hiding his ring even as he shakes with men whose necks he has rung. [sic]
JP: I don’t there was ever a time in my life when I could wait fourteen hours between pees. I don’t think even prisons do that to inmates. Something to think about, Ann, as you sit with your legs crossed tight.
And by the way, Mudges, her name is Ann, not Anne. Since it looks like we may be stuck with her for awhile, we might as well get it right.
@jroggs: Thank you for that eloquent and very satisfactory response. You suck, Wilbur! Even more than I thought!
@123 Poteet:
Much like many don’t spell Apartment 3-G’s Lu Ann correctly.
Re: Judge Parker Brothers: On behalf of my species I appreciate the tribute, but I must say two leggers look ridiculous with a white stripe. I’m sure Mel Mare feels the same way when she sees one with a so-called “ponytail”!
Stripey: And for the gent? How ’bout a nice Hawaiian Punch? (Do they still make that swill?)
RMMD: This is nothing, Lana. In Nam Charley bayonetted me eight times! Half my gut is made of bicycle inner tubes. If it wasn’t for Hawkeye Pierce I wouldn’t have made it. But I’m sure Doc Morgan is just as good!
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: 9CL: When Amos arrived in NYC to matriculate at Juilliard, he was simultaneously vamping Edda, Seth, and the exotic Brazilian (or is she Portuguese?) brunette pianist who likes to orgasm solo during public performances. Xiulan is a new one for Brooke to spring on us.
“Person who beat me to the trophy in the Belgian Cello Competition for World Class Big Fiddle Status” doesn’t sound like a concept that would make one horny. More likely she’d want to break his fingers.
@Lord Flatulence: Milk stout is easy to find in the more cosmopolitan US taverns. Samuel Smith Brewery of Yorkshire exports a lovely variety of brews to the New World, including a fine porter and a milk stout. Stout is great because you can hang out in an atmospheric pub all afternoon bending the elbow and it’s nearly impossible be become inebriated.
@Ukulele Ike:
It’s never too late, Xiulan!
@Sequitur: If ever I have reason to write about Lu Ann again, I shall endeavor to remember that.
@131 Poteet:
For some reason it has come up several times in the last few years and most of the spellings have been incorrect.
Usually the most common mistake is to leave out the space in Lu Ann.
My parents told me I couldn’t have a motorcycle until I could pay for it myself. Challenge accepted. I bought my first at 15.