What does Dolly even have to spend money on. C’mon
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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/13/25
It’s never entirely clear whether Hootin’ Holler was cut off from the rest of the Newnited States by some abrupt cataclysm or a gradual societal decline, but one thing is certain: while financial transactions there are still notionally measured in terms of cash, the reality is that the local economy is increasingly barter-based.
Family Circus, 6/13/25
Each of the Keane Kids has their own assigned role in the family, and Dolly’s is to be a fucking snitch. She even narcs on herself! Sad!
Marvin, 6/13/25
Hey, bench kid who probably has a name but I haven’t bothered to learn it: you shouldn’t look so smug either! None of you should! None of you have anything to be smug about! You all have bad personalities and are very unappealing!
(UPDATE: HA HA YES IT’S WARREN IT’S RIGHT THERE WHOOPS)
135 replies to “What does Dolly even have to spend money on. C’mon”
MW – Oh, Dad, I haven’t forgiven you for the cruise ship incident. This is just another thing I’ll push onto the stack.
Marvin. Um, Josh, The bench kid’s name is literally in panel one’s dialogue. Are you okay?
FC: Thel’s ‘mad money’ doesn’t go as far as it used to.
The thing I find sad about Gearhead Gertie, is that the “Haha, it’s funny because an elderly woman likes Nascar” joke that gets dragged and dragged is toothless, because I am certain that if we look at any Nascar video I don’t doubt that there will be at least one elderly woman in the stands. I mean Nascar stadium seats thousands(?) so there must be.
In turn anyone can enjoy Nascar and this entire line of “joke” is so feeble that it makes Gertie’s husband look like a marathon runner.
BG and SS:
Having taken a commercial transactions course in law school, Hizzoner knows that even chicken — live or fried — can be a negotiable instrument.
@The Rambling Otter: Also, if Gertie is such a loyal Trufan of Nascar, why does she watch it on TV and not at the actual stadium every single day? Sure it’ll cost money, but I doubt that will stop her.
Then I suddenly realized, that she’s probably banned from the stadium with a restraining order from every driver.
I doubt that will stop her either.
RMMD: That squirrel’s thoughts are probably more profound than Truck’s, but you don’t see HIM making a big, dramatic deal of it. Bury your nuts and get on with life, Truck!
MARVIN: Where are the snacks? I see no snacks. Eh, it’s probably just orange slices anyway.
FC:
“The penny is obsolete, Mommy. The dollar can’t be far behind. So may I have this?”
BGSS: So what happens if Snuffy doesn’t abscond? How does he get his bail back? Do I dare ask which end of the judge that chicken will be returned through? (Just kidding, of course Snuffy’s going to skip bail. It’s not even a question.)
Marvin: What kind of preschool makes pre-verbal toddlers play team sport? What kind of demented child-hating hell kindergarten makes them play a team sport where some toddlers have to sit on the bench and not even play??? Truly, every single human being in the Marvin universe is the worst possible version of themselves.
Marvin: I see that Tom Armstrong realized that talking in speech bubbles was confusing us. So he went with thought balloons.
Too late Armstrong, damage has been done.
BG&SS: Hootin’ Holler is a town completely ripped up as a whole and transported to an alien world. They were supposed to be the start of a race of slaves for alien overlords but after a generation of dealing with Smiff’s, et al, slothfulness, the aliens abandoned the idea (and the village) and went elsewhere. All humanity owes them a debt of gratitude for its continued freedom.
Marvin:
“Don’t be so smug, Marvin! I mean, you’re the one person on earth who literally has a constant coprophilous grin!”
@The Rambling Otter: Well, there was that time she took her RV out onto the track at one.
Infant Warren would look a lot less smug about being on the bench if he knew about Rehnquist and Roberts trying to undo all the good he would do.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – Truck wishes that he, like the squirrel, could eat his nuts.
Marvin: Umm…it’s “Warren;” it’s right there in the first panel.
BG&SS: Or in this case, “batter-based.”
Marvin: JOSH!
Others before me have said it but it needs repeating…THE KID’S NAME IS IN THE FIRST PANEL!
Marvin’s telepathy toddlers remind me of Village of the Damned. Then again, so does everything else in the strip.
@MKay: Or what seems to be… -squints- giant sushi to the side?
BG/SS: Quick legal nitpick here. When it goes directly to the judge, it’s not called “bail”; it’s called “a bribe”.
MW: Huh. So I guess neither of the Westons are werewolves, then.
Marvin: What if Garfield was a baby human?
Goosebumps actually did that scenario (A neighbourhood of infertile parents paying a local mad scientist to turn their pets into human babies to raise, which wears off when they hit their teens and start slowly turning back into animals) isn’t as terrifying as what the above line implies.
RwO: Gingerbread Mom seems pretty chipper, considering the surgeon only did half his job.
PBS: Pig might need to find a new retreat. The last time I flew somewhere, I spent half the time on my phone doing NYT crossword puzzles. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one using the small screen.
Phantom: A long time back, someone here came up with the term bee grinding, describing when a strip just spends a week or so just spinning its wheels. Case in point.
Legend of Bill: This strip is presenting an epic story and has some great artwork, but not sure this is the right format. The combination of a mega-size plot and bite-size installments result in losing track of who’s who and what’s going on. It doesn’t help that CK only shows a month’s worth, so going back doesn’t fill in the blanks that much. I hope that some way, some how, this story gets collected into a book.
I’m not crazy about the introduction of a “Li’l Elizabeth Warren” character, I don’t know who at Marvin is trying to make Senate Babies happen but it sounds like a bad idea.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: The absolute sobriety condition for bail might be a concern for Snuffy, but he should probably more concerned with the way Sheriff Tait appears to see him as his personal five-piece chicken dinner.
MW: Just what this story needed: even more incest overtones.
Luann: Fish and Dragonfly is actually a better book than anything any of the two dozen professional writers in the Funkyverse ever wrote.
Crankshaft: Now we see Lillian’s business model: loan out books, then re-sell them as new.
Pluggers: Pluggers have zero interest in their spouse’s activities.
Frazz: Caulfield is detestable even when he’s off-panel.
Marvin: Well, “Warren” will keep certain red-bearded comics bloggers from being smug for at least a few days…
Also Marvin: Why would you want to keep Marvin from the post-game snacks? The sooner that kid climbs into the portable cooler and closes the lid after him, the better. Juice boxes and frozen Marvin corpse for everyone, I say!
BG&SS – I guess if’n Congress can be bribed with bearer bonds….
FC – Can I have this valueless post Brenton Woods fiat fraud paper….
Marvin – Well – that and coach getting tired of wiping the shit off….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
The Family Circus: There’s a deep irony here in that Dolly steals from a bag marked with a Tau, which was accused by the letter Epsilon of having “provided tyrants with the model for the wooden instrument with which to crucify people” in Lucian’s Trial of the Court of the Vowels. And so the snitch becomes the snitched-upon. For shame, Dolly!
FC-That’s tip money Mommy got from her job.
MW-“Oh, Dad, why should I forgive when you didn’t believe me until your fish was in danger?”
MW-“Oh, Dad. I haven’t forgiven you for making me think you died.”
RMMD-Just watching the squirrel bury it’s nuts.
Whether or not the Hootin’ Holler legal system can accept bail or any payments in the form of chickens should be well beside the point, as Snuffy is very likely in court for stealing those very chickens! The brazenness of the corruption in this court still manages to surprise, and that’s pretty impressive!
MW: “Unpredictable, off-kilter woman.” It’s technically accurate, I guess.
Phantom: Meanwhile, in Mountain City, Manju the Tea Barrista hears a ringing in her trigger finger.
JP: ”Is that your dumb husband? Tell him to go see if the refrigerator is running.”
RMMD: Squirrel: “You want sensible advice? Go get the DNA test, old cowboy dude.”
BGSS: I’d just like to point out that the Sherriff’s eyeline seems to point towards Snuffy rather than that plate of chicken, which, I mean, whatever floats your boat, I guess, but try to make that shit more subtle.
FC: “OH MY GOD NO DOLLY: THAT’S MR T.’S PURSE! PUT IT BACK!!”
Marvin: I like how every time I read this strip, they just seem to pile on another unpleasant quality on the titular character. It reminds me a of s story from the Simpson‘s writing room on the evolution of Homer: they had come up with a gag where he enters a pet store and the owner immediately asks where the stench is coving from. Veteran writer George Meyer sighs and says “I guess Homer smells now, too.”
“Mommy, I found this sign of the Illuminati in your purse. The Eye of Providence offends the Eye of God, Mommy, and only He can bring about the New Order of the Ages. I’m turning you in to the High Priest for reeducation, and I’ll keep all of these Satan’s Slips for safekeeping.”
@KevynOnVideo: It has all the irony of the Gift of the Magi or the Kramer/Peterman subway pants story….
These kids are walking and playing sports. We’ve seen Marvin talking with a speech bubble. That means they are bullying each other with telepathy and we should all be absolutely fucking terrified.
***
No, Dolly. Mommy has to tuck that into a jockstrap later this evening because she just needs one goddamned night to herself or she’ll explode.
***
“I’ll give you a buck for this cheap purse, Mommy.”
A true modern update of Family Circus, not just lazily occasionally touching up the artwork from fifty years ago, would have Dolly pulling out that bill and railing at her mother for her continued reliance on government issued fiat currency and how she really needs to get in on the ground floor for the just-issued KeaneKoin cryptocurrency.
MW – Interesting that they have the same kinds of problems on the planet Pandora as they do in Santa Royale.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith – If you ever have anarchist associates, they will inevitably romantically talk of Revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
The tl;dr is that when the central government retreated to focus on other areas of the fight, there was radical worker self-management, which serves a “proof” of anarchist theories, even though it lasted less than 3 years and collapsed when the central state returned.
Catalonia could function for the limited time it did because it was a fruitful area where the state was not present, but was an ever present threat. Hootin’ Holler, however, shows a more realistic image if the central government simply didn’t care because there was nothing to steal: People turn to their own local corruption, petty theft, and bribery via barter, instead of coming together to maximize their resources for the betterment of all.
Family Circus – Dolly isn’t smart, but she knows her Mother having a monogrammed handbag is a sign of vanity, a deep sin in the Keane’s strict Calvinist religion. This is her first step in a future of religious grifting
Marvin – Ironically all these babies who are ignored on the sidelines, but still eligible for snack time, will grow up mediocre and spending their ample free time complaining about “participation trophies” the younger generation gets
JP: Now that Sophie and Neddy are on a safely boring path (for now at least,) things are really getting interesting (weird) with April.
Fake IDs to fly to unknown locations sent by ???
Not to worry, the plot line will spin out over weeks and months, boring readers to tears.
MW: “You can start by dropping that ‘Dawnie’ shit.”
@Phantom Phan:
RWO: You mean surgeons don’t leave a gaping hole in the mother’s abdomen after a C-section?
Phantom: A comic spinning it’s wheels for weeks is common practice, except for adventure strips like Flash Gordon or Prince Valiant.
@Voshkod: God damn it, Voshkod of twenty minutes ago, ‘Satan’s Scrip’ is much better (I won’t say funnier) than ‘Satan’s Slips.’
MW: You can tell by their blue skin and glowing white eyes that Belle did mange to slip Wilbur and Dawn something “special” before she left.
Marvin and FC: The kid on the bench is Warren. WARREN. It’s right there in the first panel. But Josh forgot it by the crime he finished reading the strip. Yet he can remember that he called Dolly a narc in 2017. I don’t know if I should be angry that Josh is making me read the comics, or sad about the speed at which his MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) is progressing.
@Emily Riposte: “Listen to me, Marvin. You’ve gotta tell them! The post-game snacks are Warren Burgers! We’ve gotta stop them somehow!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Why are you so late coming home from school?”
“I’m studying martial arts”
“Who’s teaching you?”
“A master of self-defense”
“And he’s a ninja!”
Adam@Home: Hey, don’t read on Wilbur’s turf!
MW: Uh, who wants to tell anyone (and I mean anyone) in Santa Royale that some of us may become unpredictable and off-kilter when they are not taking their psych meds?
GT: That Milford infielder is never going to nab a hot grounder wearing an 8-lb roaster on his glove hand.
Blondie: Today’s “women be shopping” is a great contrast to how certain comic strip couples behave like real people sometimes.
BG&SS: Only in Hootin’ Holler when the defendant shows back up does the bail get returned as chicken bones.
H&L: This hits home. Childhood recalcitrance introduced me to my Dad’s favorite saying. “It’s less work if I do it myself.”
@Phantom Phan: Hell, most airlines have wi-fi on planes now (albeit for an additional fee, like everything else on a plane not connected to your immediate survival), and newer airplane seats come equipped with little fold-down shelves where you can set your phone or tablet for your streaming convenience. Pig would be better off hanging around the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, a 144-mile dead zone for reception.
FC-Jeffy already found the drugs in Mommy’s purse.
@Peanut Gallery: “Not to mention the Felix Frankfurters!”
FC: Dolly learns a life lesson today which will be invaluable once she’s a teenager. When you rifle through Mom’s handbag for cash, keep your mouth shut.
FG: Those Anti-Killer-Robot helmets look a little cumbersome for running away in. Especially since the dead guy’s cracked like an eggshell.
FC: Dolly, you might not want that one if you find out what part of Mommy’s g-string it got stuffed in at the strip club downtown.
FC: Thel’s heart sank. Years of carefully squirreling away small amounts of the allowance Bill gave her with miserly grudging–a dollar here, a five there–only to have it ruined by her tattletale daughter. Now her husband would turn the house upside-down until he found every last cent of her escape fund, and monitor her spending more closely than ever.
But Thel knew there was more than one way of escape. While the little monsters were sitting in front of the television, engrossed with some hideous cartoon animal, she crept down to the basement and checked her little garden in the crawl space. Yes, the destroying angels were just about ready, as pure white and as deadly as their name implied. AI foraging apps couldn’t distinguish them from ordinary button mushrooms; her idiot offspring didn’t stand a chance.
Marvin: I’m sorry, I know I’m putting way too much thought into a long-running gag-a-day strip where the “gag” has less to do with humor and more to do with a visceral reaction to the title character’s bodily functions, but WHY DO YOU HAVE A “BENCH” AND “STARTERS” TO BEGIN WITH? YOU’RE BABIES!! TWO, THREE YEARS OLD TOPS! YOUR MOTOR SKILLS ARE STILL DEVELOPING! WHAT OBSESSED HELICOPTER PARENT DESPERATE TO LIVE THEIR FAILED DREAMS OF ATHLETIC GLORY VICARIOUSLY THROUGH YOU IS PUTTING YOU IN AN ORGANIZED SPORT?!?!? HAS ANYONE ATTACHED TO THIS STRIP EVEN SEEN A CHILD BEFORE?!?!
…Thank you, I just had to get that off my chest.
CS: “I really enjoyed reading it. I mean, it’s no ‘Lisa’s Story,’ but what is?”
Marvin: The only “post-game snack” around is that container of suntan lotion that Marvin keeps spraying into his mouth because it smells like coconut. It may be toxic, but don’t worry, it’ll all come out in the end.
Hi and Lois: Sure, Dolly, take the dollar — but if you touch Mommy’s birth-control pills, there’ll be hell to pay!
Snuffy Smith: Remember that Roald Dahl story in which a woman killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then cooked and served it to the police? Well, watch out, judge, this sneaky family of chicken thieves is getting you to eat the evidence!
GT: “Wow, Pedro…we’re on a first name basis here…hit that almost to the wall that appeared suddenly during his swing! Mr. Valley Tech, tear down this wall! Meanwhile the search for the umpire and Milford’s catcher continues. It’s 6-7 and I’m Ytram Noom!”
Snuffy Smith : So, basically, it’s not just Parson Tuttle, EVERY SINGLE FIGURE OF AUTHORITY in Hootin’ Holler is just a conman fishing for “donations” (read : bribes)?
************
Family Circus : I know who’s truly responsible for this… SOUPY SALES!
************
Marvin : is on the starting lineup, but he usually drops out of the game 5 seconds in because of a potty emergency.
@ValdVin: GT: No, that’s a George Forman Grill ® in his hand.
Are we to believe that the other babies are prudently restraining themselves from eating the post-game snacks? Babies are not known for their impulse control!
BCN: Why would you give a pet foster–a position that usually requires training for both standard and special needs care–an animal they don’t expect and are completely unprepared to receive?
GT: “I probably should have mentioned the inning and score earlier so I wouldn’t have to wedge it in mid-play. Sorry, I’m still a bit rusty.”
JP: Wonder what the Amazon Marketplace reviews are for “Secret Government Cabal”…
Luann: “Then Fish realized that Dragonfly was a boring killjoy and never wanted to be babysat by her again.”
MW: “We both know you went beyond the pale of forgiveness many, many years ago.”
Pluggers expect their wives to handle all of their mental labor.
RMMD: So he just came to this bench hoping that his very own Magical Non-Binary Kid would appear and help him sort out his life?
SH: Isn’t the existence of merpeople publicly acknowledged in this strip? I mean, they’ve had the queen addressing the United Nations and a blockbuster romantic comedy about it and everything. Do they just not know that they come whale-sized?
@matt w: Much like Dustin, Marvin operates on the precept that the title character is horrible and everyone hates him.
MW: “Oh, DAD…” is pregnant with all the hopeless resignation Dawn has long felt, being the daughter of the Schlub. Dawn knows, better even than Mary Worth herself, that failure is going to repeat itself, over and over, and that she will never escape the hell that is living with Wilbur at Charterstone.
Wilbur and Dawn head home to Charterstone. Dawn looks on despondently as Wilbur sprinkles fish flakes into his aquarium.
“Thank God Willa is safe!” Wilbur exclaims. “I don’t know what I would have done without my Willa. I don’t think I could have continued to live if anything had happened to her. She means EVERYTHING to me!”
Dawn says nothing, but silently goes into the kitchen as she begins to channel Sylvia Plath.
FC: “Earn one on the pole yourself.”
GT: As the Milford infielder chases the grounder, he goes into his famous Groucho Marx impersonation.
@TheDiva: When you put it that way, there might be something to be said for the strip.
(Marvin, not Dustin. Dustin also operates on the precepts that Dustin’s even more horrible father gets to score points off him.)
@Bob Tice: I refer you to the Uniform Chicken Code (UCC), Title 9HH.
@Voshkod: Joke’s on you — it’s actually a North Korean-sourced counterfeit bill.
Luann: Oh, I get it. The moral of the story is that Bernice is better at working with kids than Luann.
@Ukulele Ike: The joke’s on her, then. She’ll never be a teenager, but is cursed like the rest of her family to remain frozen in time, forever.
Since the judge will never return the chicken, there’s no need for the legal fiction of “bail”. Just call it “bribe”, it’s even more in character for this strip!
Mary Worth: Moy could have Wilbur and Dawn fuck each other on-panel and it’d STILL feel less weird and incestuous than how they already act.
Family Circus: Uh oh! Dolly has unwittingly revealed to the family that Mama Keane has been sneakily acquiring real money instead of Papa’s KeaneBucks company script in order to escape the Kompound! Sadly, this means that Mama is going to be spending the next week in the stockades while Papa uses her escape funds to buy himself a new car.
Snuffy Smith – If Loweezy is using those chickens for bail… does that make them “spring” chickens?
Let’s be honest: the original joke was that Marvin was not allowed to sit on the bench because they did not want the shit to leak out. Don’t pretend this would be too disgusting for Marvin’s readers, they deserve everything they get!
@Guy Nerdlinger: “Mommy, why does this dollar say Hawaii on it? Just how old are you really?”
@BigTed: I remember reading that story in school, but I never knew Roald Dahl wrote it.
Rex Morgan M.D. Spanish to English.
Sometime this past week, I stumbled across an interesting video on YouTube, titled something like “The Bizarre Zombie Existence of The Family Circus.” (It was a good watch.) The video outlined how over the past few years, more and more of the panels have been recycled, slowly building up to the point where now, almost every single Family Circus, every day, is merely a touched-up rerun. Cigarette boxes replaced with cell phones, CRTs replaced with flatscreens, names adjusted for the times, and prices adjusted for inflation.
My point here is that the Keane Photoshop Factory dropped the ball. A dollar was probably a treasure whenever this strip first ran, but it’s not going to get Dolly anywhere today. What’s she going to get at the corner store, 1/3 of an expired Snickers?
MW: Interpol dossier: wanted the Jackal, armed and dangerous. Off keltered and unpredictable.
DT: Evil twin time!
GT: c’mon there is so much clip art and so many images of infielders making a play that this glaring lapse just confirms the theory the artist is subcontracting the work out to some one who has no access to reference material and has never seen any American high school sports. The bars lie more like cricket bats and the baseball diamond looks more like a cricket pitch.
RMMD: the squirrels is the real brains of the operation. He is sending telepathic messages to Truck “tell Wanda talk to Wanda Buy me some peanuts. “
RMMD: Next week, we need to follow the squirrel around while it wallows in its mopey thoughts, before it sits down and notices an ant, at which point the process repeats itself until we have a mopey neutrino somewhere.
@80 Austria:
And in case anyone is interested in looking at it, here’s a link!
You may want to bring snacks. It’s twenty-two minutes long.
Is that a pile of grey toilet paper rolls behind Marvin?
Adam@Home: I really didn’t think Adam Newman and Wilbur had anything in common but there it is.
I enjoy how in an isolated community that probably can’t afford full time incarceration, the concept of “bail” has evolved from a security payment that is repaid if accused cooperates, to a simple bribe. It’s taken as given that the accused will “flee”, and everyone is fine with that.
The Judge probably wouldn’t even remember what to do if Snuffy Smith actually showed up for his trial and forced everyone to go through the procedures of actual justice.
@84 GarrisonSkunk:
I think they’re towels but I like your idea better.
MW: “Oh Dad…” rarely could Dawn have said more with less. Have to give kudos for that last panel, seriously.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #78: “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” used that Dahl story for one of its episodes. It was one of my mom’s favorites.
FC: Mommy, why is this dollar bill so sweaty and smells like your ass?
Yaffle: In the land of the Hand People.
Their biggest employment is hand job.
Snuffy – Is there really a regional accent where “lunch” is pronounced “lonch”? That word has appeared in this strip many times, and it always bothers me.
@Anonymous: #46:
“You can tell by their blue skin”
Belle’s been lacing their food with colloidal silver for the last three weeks. That’ll do the trick.
I’ve seen this episode of “Alfred Hitchcock’s Barney Googled and snuffed out Smith “, before (Spoiler alert!) – the judge eats the chicken and Wa la – no more evidence!
I’m no financial expert, but wouldn’t frying the chickens ruin their full value as trade currency, since that would mean they would no longer be available for eggs and breeding stock? My hunch is that Loweezy had to salvage their carcasses after they were killed by that fancy “bird flu” that escaped from a secret gummint lab.
@Austria:
I need to try and watch that video again. I just couldn’t get into that narrator’s voice.
BG&SS: It’s against the law to use the evidence as bail, isn’t it? Or were those chickens witnesses?
@Anonymous: MW: You can tell by their blue skin and glowing white eyes that Belle did mange to slip Wilbur and Dawn something “special” before she left.
____________________
Wilburp just couldn’t resist digging into that batch of Belle’s Smurf Berry Surprise.
@92 Peanut Gallery:
That is weird. Say it with a long “o” and it makes a bit a sense. The way it is written, however, the “o” would be a short “o” like in “top” that doesn’t make any sense at all.
MW-“Oh, Dad, you make it so hard for me to fake sympathy for you.”
@Drew Funk: RMMD: Next week, we need to follow the squirrel around while it wallows in its mopey thoughts, before it sits down and notices an ant, at which point the process repeats itself until we have a mopey neutrino somewhere.
_____________________
Its Squirrel World! Squirrel World! Party down! Excellent! Party down, Slappy!” “Party down, Screwy!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: There were also TV episodes based on it, on both “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Tales of the Unexpected” (an anthology series based on Dahl’s stories). Apparently Dahl originally got the idea for it from Ian Fleming.
@Peanut Gallery: Snuffy – Is there really a regional accent where “lunch” is pronounced “lonch”? That word has appeared in this strip many times, and it always bothers me.
___________________
Guess you missed the arc when Snuffy and Chuck McCann get shot into space when Chuck thinks Snuffy says Launch instead of Lunch.
Years and years ago I used to sometimes look through an old collection of Marvin strips that was at my grandparents house for some reason. It was from the early days when Marvin was more explicity a very young baby. It’s always been mildly interesting to me that, he was allowed to age up into young preverbal toddlerhood, presumeably because they had run the well of baby jokes dry and needed to branch out. but more interesting me to me is that he then stopped aging. even now when they clearly want to be writing strips about still older kids who do things like play organized sports with starting lineups instead of playing “everybody run around for a bit so you’re all tired out when we go back inside”
@Anonymous: SOUPY SALES!
___
Will someone tell Dolly that the “cream pie” she’s about to get hit with is actually shaving cream so she won’t try to eat it?
@BigTed: @Banana Jr. 6000: There were also TV episodes based on it, on both “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Tales of the Unexpected” (an anthology series based on Dahl’s stories). Apparently Dahl originally got the idea for it from Ian Fleming.
___________________________
Dahl’s estate is still threatening to sue over “Snuffy Wonka and the Chicken Factory”
@Sequitur: Thanks, guess Marv takes his private stash whereever he goes.
Next week, Truck notices that squirrel’s cheek fur resembles his facial hair and we’ll be “treated” to a month long flashback of his affair with Slappy Squirrel.
RMMD: I’m hoping a child from every one of Truck’s marriages pops. Dumbass Truck will not under where they came from.
@GarrisonSkunk: Although they were different species, it was a beautiful affair, and they had to use really tiny instruments that had to be shipped in from Texas, Truck and Slappy competed coming up with dumb “nut” puns.
DT: These two dim-wits are finally figuring it out.
BG&SS: As cartoonishly-drawn as that platter of fried chicken is it’s still way more appetizing looking than anything out of Mary Worth’s kitchen or the Bum Boat’s menu.
@GarrisonSkunk: Marvin’s used toilet paper.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Comic strip fried chicken always makes me feel like frying chicken. But even the best fried chicken is never as good as you think it’s going to be.
@Ukulele Ike: The best fried chicken I’ve ever had came from a gas station.
Crank: I’m not sure whether I should add to my list of “things Batty writes about, but he doesn’t know how it works.” I think the joke here is meant to be “Supposing a bookshop’s ‘Staff Picks’ were just books random members of staff really liked?” which, um, is how it works? On the other hand, it’s getting increasingly difficult to tell if a given Crankshaft strip is even intended to have a joke.
I’d also be intrigued by the characterisation of Emily as being into (Googles) sci-fi psychological thrillers, if I thought Batty had any interest in giving the twins any sort of characterisation. I’m pretty sure he picked that book just because he liked the cover.
DT: Finally. Nearly a whole week between “Lovejoy was in a documented legal meeting while The Informer was at police HQ” and “Lovejoy probably isn’t The Informer, then”, but we got there in the end. I’m so relieved I almost don’t care that it’s being treated like an astounding deduction on Dick’s part.
JP: “Luckily, our files show that your husband is an incurious dullard, so he won’t ask what all these packages are.”
HtH: Goodness, looks like there’s been another mix-up at the old comics factory! I can’t wait to see the Andy Capp strip where Andy’s leading a band of bloodthirsty warriors and Chalkie has sex with a mermaid!
MW: This is it, folks! This is the point where everyone decides not to actually learn anything from this, so the Westons are still available for whatever variant of this plot Moy wants to do next!
And we’ve still got the week of praising Mary for her wisdom to go! (What’s that? Did someone say “But she didn’t do anything”? Are you new?)
Phantom: I was recently listening to a podcast about comic books, which says it’s interesting to read X-Men comics from before Bobby “Iceman” Drake came out, in which he has a series of girlfriends he gets on fine with, but there’s zero chemistry and they inevitably decide they work better as friends. He wasn’t being written as gay yet, but it almost seems like the writers somehow already knew. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered about that while reading this strip where Weezie gloats about how there are definitely sparks bewtween Kit and Kadia because he awkwardly gives her a thumbs up while she stumbles over the back of his chair.
RMMD: Last Sunday I predicted we were about to get another week of Truck sitting on the bench. By Wednesday, I’d decided I was probably wrong. It honestly never occurred to me there might be a week of Truck walking to the bench first.
@Horace Broon:
I can’t wait to see the Andy Capp strip where Andy’s leading a band of bloodthirsty warriors
So, any comic where Andy goes to a sporting event (especially if he’s there as a spectator)?
Blondie the character in Blondie the comic strip is kinda weird today. She hardly moves a muscle. She turns her head just slightly in the second panel, but otherwise nothing changes on or around her panel to panel, including the shopping bags. She’s not looking at Dag in the second panel because her eyes don’t move from their one-stare setting. She’s not walking, either, she’s gliding through the scene on some kind of maglev tech (the two little spots behind her in the third panel could be the control panel). Did Dag finally tire of the aging ex-flapper and replace her with an unchanging android? If so, there still are bugs to be worked out. Woodley from next door will help out because he’s planning to get the Tootsie model soon and wants to find out as much as he can before the switch.
@TheDiva: And then, Fish remembered her kind eats insects and that was the end of that story.
Thanks for the link to the famous Poodle Prostitute™ comic, Josh! I’ve referenced it a few times, but forgot when it appeared.
@Dr. Pill: nothing changes on or around her panel to panel, including the shopping bags
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Is that what the kids are calling them now?
@Lord Flatulence: The best fried chicken I’ve ever had came from a gas station.
Fried in eleven natural petroleum oils and greases!
@Dr. Pill: @TheDiva: And then, Fish remembered her kind eats insects and that was the end of that story.
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…and they all get high on hash from Wojo’s girlfriend’s brownies……best “Barney Miller” ever!
@GarrisonSkunk: “First time I feel good in fifteen years, and it’s illegal.” — Fish
Surprised I missed this and I’m also surprised all you other old Cleveland hands missed this but Charles Mitchell Schadowski passed away January 19 at age 90. A big, belated Certain Ethnic RIP to Big Chuck.
BGSS: That rule about not going shopping while you’re hungry may also apply to sentencing habitual criminals.
FC: Dolly asks for permission to steal. Billy shakes his head. Amateurs.
C-Shaft: The Man from Primrose Lane has apparently had a movie and/or TV adaptation in development hell for about a dozen years. Did Batiuk sink money into one of those?
DtM: It appears that George Wilson was already getting defensive about his hearing before Dennis’s age joke. There’s some unseen gaslighting here that makes Dennis more menacing than usual.
DT: That’s right. The Lovejoy they met at the apartments didn’t look or act nearly as much like a sommelier trainee.
Dustin: Dear God I hope Fitch isn’t driving tonight. Not sure about when he’s sober.
JP: Not to tell Mr. Nostrils how to do his job, but if he had sent the docs to a pickup location other than her house the lies she’s expected to tell her family wouldn’t be quite so obvious.
Luann: Bernice and Shannon’s stab at metafiction…exists, I guess.
MT: The source isn’t really surprising since Mark is the strip’s hero. An increasingly vapid hero, yes, but a hero nonetheless.
Phantom: If Kit Jr. wants to keep that spark alive he should stop giving thumbs-up to his own jokes.
RMMD: Ah, at last we get to the real love story of the strip, that between Truck and his favorite bench. Anyone else thinking of sitting there within the next hour or so had better think again, the way he’s Jesus Christ-ing that thing.
RMMD – Good grief, man, if you want advice from a squirrel, it’s all over the internet!
@Guillermo el chiclero: Love the idea of John Rose being contracted as the artistic caterer for Mary Worth.
@66 Charterstoned: I’d like it better if your comment ended, “Dawn says nothing, but silently goes into the kitchen as she begins to eat the poisoned vegan seafood glop.”
Tell me you never heard it say that way without telling me you never heard it said that way.
@richardf8: Own it, Josh! Own it!
@The Rambling Otter:
COTW!
@Voshkod: “OK. Just don’t tell HHT Grandma.”
RMMD: if they’re going to have a touching Father’s Day arc, the writer will need to pick up the pace tomorrow. Paternity tests aren’t instant, you know.