Thursday quickies
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Family Circus, 9/4/25
Ha ha, look at Jeffy’s face! He knows it’s not good! But he doesn’t have the gumption to be mad about it, just sad!
Hagar the Horrible, 9/4/25
Ha ha, look at everyone’s faces in the second panel here. What awful secret are Hagar and his family concealing — and why is Snert so eager to reveal it?
Pluggers, 9/4/25
Pluggers are nightmarish animal-human chimeras, hideous and offensive to human sight. But among their own kind, in their own company, do they consider themselves to be, in their own distorted way, beautiful? Today we learn the answer: no.
183 replies to “Thursday quickies”
Mary Worth Mashups: Which should be canon?
Hagar the Horrible: Hagar and his missy are aghast at a talking Snert because he’s not only seen but participated in their reenactments of Caligula’s, ahem, “parties.”
Pluggers: The original caption is too long; for today’s Twitter-addicted comic strip readers, the caption need be “Pluggers know they’re butt-ugly.”
Snert tells the neighbors, the Bush Clan, the secrets of the family baked bean recipe, and a fortune is lost.
Did…did Dolly beat the shit out of Jeffy? Then critcize his beaten
Wednesday quickies? Today is Thursday. Isn’t it?
I’m going back to bed until it’s Thursdsy.
…criticize his beaten appearance, abuser-style? Why hasn’t EVERYONNE done this?
Damn thing is acting squirrelly again
@Sequitur:
Josh just gave me a panic attack!
MW-Olive was one of the Jewish slaves and not one of the Exodus slaves but one of the earlier ones.
MW: No longer content to receive praise merely for her vague, arbitrary ability to foretell danger, Queen Narcissisti adds reincarnation to her catalog of unprovable “gifts.”
FC: Bil needs to adjust the spanking machine.
FC:
If only she had been drawn on a small platform with wheels, she would have been Dolly with dolly with dolly.
FC: Even worse, Jeffy has a “hearing ‘pairment.”
FC:
Jeffy’s big mistake, which resulted in Dolly’s pummeling him, was having the temerity to ask in the first instance, “What is it you’re mad about?”
FC This scenario assumes that Dolly knows what a ‘disaster area’ is, which she obviously doesn’t, she just repeats phrases like the worlds most annoying parrot. Jeffy at least has the emotional intelligence to know he’s a dummy and roll with it.
Pluggers are missing a full half of their face. When did thst happen?
FC:
“Dolly didn’t like my ‘Emmett Kelly’ getup!”
You’re a Plugger if you quietly endure your husband’s vanity even if you yourself are, literally, a spring chicken.
FC: Jeffy just came home from playing linebacker in a football game which his team won because of his stellar performance. The kid is known by his peers and coaches to be an amazingly gifted player who would likely get a beefy scholarship if he were encouraged. But as a “walking ‘saster area” he will be punished and his dreams of excelling at anything will be quashed, all because he’s not neat and tidy.
MW: Meanwhile, Evy’s slab of liver hardens on her plate as she waits for Ed to relinquish The Fork.
We’ve traveled back in time? Quick! — let’s take a look at Judge Parker! Maybe somebody will be happy there, then.
DtM: “…and since I’ve been six for 74 years, it really is vintage.”
MW: ENTER Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston.
PLUGGERS: He just now suspects that he might be a dog. The rear-end shot is to verify it. Tail = dog, no tail = a conundrum for another day.
FC: Is Dolly so enraged because she has to do the family’s laundry? If not, what’s her damned problem?
MW: What, there’s no Past Life Regression team at school? No wonder Olive is lonely. Damn those budget cuts!
RMMD: “So, we really don’t care if Jonah croaks. We’ve got YOU now, Cody!”
Hagar: That’s it? Unless this is a multi-day arc, it just ends like that?
Just kind of weird and jarring.
Welp, someone needs to wake up Josh and let him know he needs to bang on the server until the new post is up, but at least I get to see yesterday’s post that I missed, so – oh.
@Sequitur: @astroboy: I knew a four-day work week was too good to be true!
Adding, the blessing of Josh is to have an active comment board that notices lots of small details. The curse of Josh is to have an active comment board that notices lots of small details.
MW: “The shrink said an active imagination is healthy.” Probably true, except for the fact that Olive sees all the people at the table as having Jackal heads.
Do you think Merlin gets tired off people asking him to “show[them[ some magic” the way doctors get tired of people asking for free medical advice at parties? He probably keeps the “I’ll make your dog talk” bit handy for just such occasions.
Hägar the Horrible: Honi: Oh fck oh fck so embarrassing Hamlet: Gee whillikers Helga: A solidly bad idea Hagar: What’s everyone so upset about BARK BARK BARK
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: And now I have sunk to imitating Hagar the Horrible imitating a dog. What would Snert have to say about me?
JP: Gone for good? You (and we!) should be so lucky, Judgey Wudgey.
RMMD: Uh lady? Yeah, this is still Cody’s fault. Just because Jonah has anger management issues doesn’t mean Cody had to go and be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
SF: Wow, I didn’t think they could make Hilary even more insufferable, but here we are.
MW: I’d say Mommy’s had a little to much of her ‘special juice’ today, but I then again she must’ve bailed a few strips ago because I think that’s Irish seated at the table in Panel 2. Are they having Rice n’ Carrots with Hamburger gravy after their appetizer of…. sandpaper, it looks like?
What a fallen world we live in, where a plugger knows what a “good side” is, or cares.
A real Plugger would use a film camera for his vanity project, dammit. Never could figure out that digital photo frame the kids gave him for Christmas.
HtH: If you want to know the secrets a pet keeps–you actually don’t. Read Saki’s Tobermory but be warned: It does not end well.
Today’s GT will not be published in Texas or Florida.
A digital camera with displays of each snap? I thought Pluggers were still using 35mm film, and still have their 126 cameras.
FC:
“Dolly got mad when she thought that I was criticizing her artwork when I referred to ‘a manipulation of Surrealist cliches,’ but actually, I was talking about ‘Dali‘ paintings!”
Hagar doesn’t want anyone to discover why he brought back peanuts from Vinland to make peanut butter!
Making a dog talk?! Why can’t Merlin use magic for something more wholesome, like Uther Pendragon having rape by deception with Arthur’s mother? Or having Arthur sleep with his sister?
Take a day off or two. We’ll be alright
HtH: Snert desperately wants to fuck Helga’s duck Kvack, and the last thing the family wants is to hear him talk about it.
Shouldn’t Merlin be, you know… defending Britain against these vikings instead of hanging out with them?
Pluggers are only photogenic from a certain angle: the angle in which their head is turned enough that you cannot see their face, but their hips are not so turned that you can see their ass
FG: So sweet, all the trappings of fairy-tale funny pages romance, just like Taylor and Travis! Mr. Kleen even went down to the Shark Mall kiosk and got himself an ugly facial piercing, just to be more like his haddock-scented Sugar-Boo. Can’t wait to see Adrane grabbing hold of it and tearing it straight through his lip.
Hagar probably kidnapped Merlin in his native Wales, one of the biggest catchment area for the Viking slave trade in the early middle ages. Merlin is dickish, but for just cause!
MW: The blocking in panel one makes me deeply uncomfortable. Also, why is Evy blonde now?
Pluggers: Nothing wrong with being a nightmarish animal-human chimera.
Josh should use the same trick I use: If Six Chix looks like it was drawn by someone in the throes of delirium tremens, it’s Thursday.
Everyone’s panicking because they know Snert’s a dog and dogs aren’t smart and none of them want to sit there listening to him alternate between droning on about how vaccines are dangerous and demanding a snack.
***
Jeffy was the fifth person that day to say, “There’s Dolly with a dolly!” He was also the last.
Family Circus – Jeffy is coming to accept his place is the pecking order of the family. He will always be the low status individual. When he watches nature documentaries about predators picking off the weaklings, it will awaken the primordial Thanatos death drive. It will also offer some sadness, because at least the water buffalo will try to help members of the herd against the lions.
Hagar the Horrible – Comedians hate being asked to tell a joke cold or off-stage by fans. Merlin is annoyed as well with being expected to wow people with magic, but he’s learned the real trick is to threaten to expose them under the guise of a whimsical wish-fulfillment.
Pluggers – Pluggers have only barely reached the level of cognitive development to pass the mirror test of self-recognition. True vanity or a beauty industry never fully developed. Everything they do in that respect is just imitating their human forebearers.
Crank: “Luckily, it was the 1970s, and I could get all the ‘Ludes I wanted.”
HTH: “If he was trying German irregular verbs on the beast, he got everything he deserved.”
JP: “So who do they think is going to pay the little shit’s college tuition? I say she gets a job on the line at the sardine cannery.”
MW: “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about paying her college tuition. I think the local booby hatch is still free.”
FC: Josh, you’re completely misinterpreting the reason for Jeffy’s expression! He’s clearly still feeling distress from the incident that ripped his clothing and dirtied his face! Meanwhile, Dolly’s furious expression at him indicates she’s engaging in a form of victim-blaming. Or maybe she’s just enraged at his stupidity, which is understandable.
My love of Flash Gordon is hopefully well-documented, but the Shark People’s champion being a muscly bald guy who could be addressed as “Mr. Kleen” REALLY threw off the mood, here.
Pluggers: furthermore, pluggers are total butterfaces but they can really throw it back.
The sad part is, Ancient Egypt Olive didn’t have any friends, either. The Doc doesn’t own any guns, right?
Don’t like how Hagar’s daughter’s shoulder strap has slipped down. To the handful of geriatrics who still read Hagar unironically, that’s practically porn.
In the follow-up panel, we learn that Jeffy will soon be spending a year dead for tax reasons.
And nobody missed him.
FC – OMG, Jeffy’s been MAULED by a BEAR and Dolly still can’t think of anything but mispronounced put-downs. This family is more dysfunctional than I thought!
Hagar – OMG, what have these barbaric perverts been DOING to that poor dog!?
Don Abundio, translated:
“A lot of people in the office are out on strike”
“I know. I usually just ignore these malcontents until they give in”
“Really? The picket lines don’t bother you?”
“No, but…”
“This time they’re really getting in my face!”
[Signs: LOCAL 307, STRIKE, UNFAIR, STRIKE, etc.]
Hagar – And that, dear children, was the first time anyone heard “The Aristocrats” joke.
@ValdVin: Can’t believe I got beat to the Saki reference in just 33 posts (I didn’t get mine in until #48). It’s possible we are TOO literate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobermory_(short_story)
Hagar: Do you see how eager Snert looks? He definitely understands human language, probably because he’s a man cursed by the gods to live as a dog. The family fears that, by so blatantly thwarting Loki’s will, they will attract his wrath. (Frankly, the hat is already a risk.)
FC – …and I said I disdain Zoroaster – I’m a Crispin….
HtH – I hope this breaks toward that plot line from the Twilight Zone with Cliff Roberson and the ventriloquist dummy….
Pluggers – How ‘bout how hard it is to find that Instamatic 126 film, and developing it is even worse….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
FC:The first and last time Jeffy tries to introduce Zoroaster to his peers. Dolly has no sympathy. “He preached without a divine commission!”
“I will make the dog speak,” the Merlin intoned, and the dog spoke, it spoke of rivalries and adulteries, rapes and murders, perjury and theft and dishonor before the savage gods of the Norsemen. Axes were raised, buildings were razed, and the barbarians fell upon each other, driven to madness and revenge by the words of the dog. At least the Saxons will not be able to raise these allies, the Merlin said, as he began to gather his magic to return to Camelot, leaving behind only fire and blood.
MW: If we’re going to do this we need to just come out and DO it. We’ve been mealy-mouthing Olive’s “gifts” for the last few weeks now (years if we count her first appearance) and if she’s a psychic who knows about her past lives, let’s just come out and SAY it so we can base a half-assed NBC drama in the mid 2000s on her crime fighting abilities and be done with it.
@Charterstoned: Please, no. This fall Chess (literally a show with everything but Yul Brynner) is returning to Broadway for us cultists, and if Mary and Olive breathe a word of it I may die.
(That’s what it takes for me to gatekeep.)
@ValdVin: I have heard that one night in Bangkok and the world’s is Mary’s oyster.
@Ukulele Ike: There’s no such thing as “too literate”.
We seriously named a cat Tobermory back in the 90s.
Hagar the Horrible: “Merlin! You gave Uther a whole new face so he could father an illegitimate kid! Leave the dog alone, you know what I want.”
It’s okay, Josh. The three-day weekend screws up everybody’s internal clock.
Pluggers: Look at Henrietta’s eye roll. She knows Earl has never had a good side, and she’s tired of indulging his delusions that he does. She’s only stayed with him this long for the sake of their hideous dog-chicken hybrid offspring.
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine!
“One Night in Bangkok” is a banger.
Oh my. No Josh love for today’s truly revolting Dustin?
@LTJpezcore1:
so we can base a half-assed NBC drama in the mid 2000s on her crime fighting abilities
Ahhh, back when every other show had “psychic premonitions” as the plot device to justify why the characters knew what they should investigate this week.
MW/Peanuts mashup: Olive could probably help Sally finish that school report.
@Anonymous: Around that time even Snuffy Smith got into the psychic, with ‘Ghost Mistopher’, featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt.
FC: Jeffy, you should work hard to be a walking sasster area. Slay, Queen!
HtH: I don’t know what they’re worried about. Snert is just going to say some Dennis the Menace-level shit.
Pluggers: “Wait. This time I’ll pull down my pants.”
GT: “And we’ve raised $50 for our big fundraiser!”
“Remind me, what were we raising money for?”
“Beats me, Barajas the writer never told us. The team? The roof? My ex wife’s Ozempic?”
“Maybe to pay the new coach!”
“Did we hire her? I know we discussed it but nothing happened after that.”
“Coach, phone.”
“Dad, it’s me Jami! I’m still on a bike in Europe.”
“Sigh. I’ll be so glad when Barajas finishes his graphic novel.”
Beetle: Same strip as yesterday, but yesterday’s had a printed date, today’s has a handwritten one. Mysterious.
MW: Ed is the second sanest person in this story (Naomi Hatchetface is still way ahead of everyone) but as always, he’s made to look like a buffoon in league with Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin for outwardly stating his opinions. Next he’ll be asking when Evy bleached her hair between their marathon fuckfest.
MW: “The psychologist said having an active imagination is healthy for a while,” says Evy while wearing her Brigman-patented Quaalude stare.
Dustin: Hmm, well, I think “misguided” is an understatement for today’s strip.
Zits: Jeremy is a bit young to be cougar bait.
Dustin, on the other hand, is the right age but distinctly doing this in the wrong place. Where’s this cougar hunting when you’re at a bar? Does someone have to give you lessons in this too?
MW: Of course she was Cleopatra! The spacetime loop has millions of reincarnated Cleopatras and not a single scullery maid.
BG&SS: Not gonna lie, I like this remembrance. Beetle, the laziest man in the Army, seems to have taken his own birthday off from his strip. Is that a meta joke?
Luann: Bernice, don’t act surprised when Luann says the equivalent of, “My dog’s breath smells like dog food.”
CS: “By this time, my lungs were aching for air.”
@ValdVin:
On Arcamax, yesterday, they celebrated Beetle’s anniversary with a panel of the entire cast marching.
Comics Kingdom ran the same, non-anniversary strip twice instead.
@taig: Evy must have dipped into the stash that Mary confiscated from Toby.
C’shaft: Ah yes, nothing makes a narrative more compelling than a protagonist who is doing nothing and, furthermore, is incapable of influencing events in any way. This grasp of compelling storytelling is what’s made you the artist you are today, BatTom.
Dustin: Every time I’m tempted to feel sorry for Dustin for being the strip’s “young people these days” punching bag, I’m reminded that he’s also a serial sexual harasser.
GT: Fry bread apparently has a complicated reputation among indigenous people, some of them hailing it as a reminder of their endurance under oppression while others consider it a symbol of colonialist influence. This is a strip which has Gil holding his plate of fry bread up to his face like a sandwich, though, so I’m not going to expect it to get into too much detail.
JP: Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. After all, black market arms dealers are famous for keeping their enemies alive indefinitely.
Luann: Well, I mean if we’re using Luann as our baseline…
MW: Olive is absolutely going to grow up to be the kind of white woman who calls herself a “shaman” and engages in closed practices like smudging.
RMMD: “In fact, we’ve been deliberately trying to trigger a heart attack in him for years! We’re just glad someone finally managed it!”
After giving up crime and getting facial reconstruction surgery, Two-Face would occasionally slip back into his old ways. His wife, the once-notorious Chickenwoman, would merely roll her eyes.
@Guts Dozier: She’s no spring chicken! That’s Pluggers’ whole schtick. If it weren’t for that whole “sentience” thing, she’d be ready to become one of those long, slow cooked stews that you make with a hen that’s done laying! I mean, where do you think Banquet gets the filling for its pot pies from?
HtH: “Ve haf vays off makink you TALK.”
Hagar: “Okay, but if he says anything about peanut butter, he’s lying.
MW- I’m now waiting for this strip to go the route of Robot Chicken’ take on Calvin and Hobbes. Where it dissolves into Olive in a straight jacket and padded cell talking about all the wonders of Ancient Egypt.
HtH: They left out the joke, which would show the dog barking madly and Merlin saying, “I didn’t mean I would make him speak English!”
(Yes, I know Hagar’s community doesn’t speak English either, but the strip’s writers would probably forget that).
Crankshaft: “It’s too dull to draw someone carrying my strips into an office building, so instead I’ll show two panels of me lying unmoving in bed.” Seriously, this is like a Super Happy Fun Pak comic, without the flying sweat.
@Maltmash3r: Unfortunately this is Mary Worth where the inmates run the asylum and the sanest people are seen as Cassandras and Debbie Downers ruining a good time.
I see Brigman has brought out the Iris/Toby/Zak’s babysitter paper doll for Evie.
Now Olive needs to be especially careful, lest the makeover her new friends will inevitably give her leaves her indistinguishable from Dawn.
(It’s OK, Junie, we know you’re in the same predicament as Manley is on Judge Parker. Just give me some more Captain Ginger and all will be forgiven.)
FC: Ha ha, that much torn fabric means there are significant abrasions that the cartoonist chose not to show. The little guy is SUFFERING!
@Ukulele Ike: #41: Wait until Kleen finds out his haddock smelling Sugar-Boo has already been boinking Zarkov. If Flash and company ever get the chance to get back to Earth Zarkov would be a fool to return. He gets more hot poontang in a year on Mongo than he ever got his whole life on Earth.
@richardf8: The only thing Olive has going for her is the fact that her hair doesn’t look like a helmet to protect her soft spot (her whole head is a soft spot) or that it was hacked by a weed whacker. It actually looks like a nice hairstyle for once, though it’s wasted on a narcissistic weirdo like her.
Also the babysitter’s name was Nan which really makes me remember that Zak has a mommy fetish.
FC: Jeffy misheard Dolly. She called him a walking Sarastro error. Dolly is mad because she is the Night Queen. Jeffy should be happy because this is the only time he’ll be compared to Sarastro.
HtH: I guess the punchline is supposed to be “dogs bark a lot, amirite? so if they were human they would talk too much”.Snert will probably say, “I’m happy I can speak human, but what I really wanted was the ability to safely eat chocolate, onions and garlic and wash it all down with coffee”.
RMMD: how long will it take to sort out the roots of the guy whose name I can’t remember rage?
Today’s Hagar puts me in mind of being in the Boy Scouts and hearing some kid claim he tried to teach his dog to give blowjobs by letting the dog lick the peanut butter off a carrot.
Pretty sure everyone in The Horrible household has the same sort of motivation.
Wednesday Squickies
FC: Dolly took him at his word when Jeffy told her he liked his sex rough.
Hagar: Snert’s first words will be “these motherfuckers sodomize me” and it will go rapidly downhill from there.
Pluggers: Good choice. A photo of a plugger’s perianal dermatoses will be an improvement over depicting his face.
@Doc Wonmug: “Be Prepared.”
@Little Blue Bicycle:
….or finishes his career and moves to a land devoid of comics. WAY better
HtH — “He can already talk! Snerf, tell Merlin what’s on top of the house.”
love is... Humpty Dumptying.
@Anonymous: exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxactly.
FC: Dolly finally kicked Jeffy’s ass.
MW: Evy’s glazed look is probably due to a particularly vigorous before dinner boinking which would also explain why she forgot to put her bra back on.
@TheDiva: Dustin acts like it’s stuck in the 90s, but it’s actually stuck in the 70s. Dustin’s attempts at women are so aggressive and formulaic that he might as well be wearing a leisure suit.
@taig:
says Evy while wearing her Brigman-patented Quaalude stare.
I’ll be laughing at this one a long time.
@Hibbleton: Ha! Thanks! I really like your explanation for how Evy got that way, including the touch with the bra.
HtH: They all have secrets they’re keeping from each other, and they all independently realize that only the dog Snert is privy to them all, so they prevent him from shooting his mouth off. Hägär would shut him up with the sword if he started talking.
RMMD: Bearded dude there seems a trifle amused that the family rageaholic ham-hater Jonah has finally bitten off more than he could chew.
@TheDiva: Dustin: Every time I’m tempted to feel sorry for Dustin for being the strip’s “young people these days” punching bag, I’m reminded that he’s also a serial sexual harasser.
Serial sexual harassers these days, not like when I was starting out, we had respect when we harassed sexually and serially, the ones now have no common sense, amirite?
The internet has broken my brain. My immediate assumption? Dog fucking.
But they didn’t have peanut butter in 11th century Scandinavia.
HtH. I don’t know what the dog saw that revealing it so terrifies the Hagar family, but considering they have a close friend who fucks fish-women and they don’t bat an eye it must be really awful.
RMMD- ” Other drivers, servers in restaurants, ridiculous comic story lines that have been dragging along since mid May, that Christmas when he threatened to shove a drumstick up our ass, half siblings he didn’t even know he had until a few months ago showing up out of the blue, cocksuredly expecting to assume their way into his miserable life. You name it…the guy’s just got issues. .
Your heading says “Wednesday,” and because today is Thursday, I spent several hours trying to figure out if was missing a joke there!
@Anonymous: Ah, I didn’t see that one. Thanx!
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
Maybe Hagar and his family just don’t want to hear an animal’s thoughts articulated as if they were a human. You can see yesterday’s Pardon My Planet for the perfect example why not.
Pluggers are ugly!
MW- If Olive really uses her psychic powers and mummy brain right now she’ll see an image of Wilbur Antony and Dawnopatra back in Santa Royale….doing the King Tut strut. BTW-could Spuds Morton have been Olive’s dad also? Sure would explain a lot.
SORRY EVERYONE I KNOW IT IS THURSDAY, THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND HAS COMPLETELY UNMOORED ME FROM WHAT DAY OF THE WEEK IT WAS ALL WEEK
DT: I realise that considering the “motives” of Dick Tracy is an exercise in futility (which some might say is a flaw in a detective story) but seriously, what is Roberta thinking here? “You’re going to call Dick Tracy and explain you had nothing to do with the murders, right? And saying that will make it true?”
JP: “They both may be gone for good! Which is no reason to explain things to Charlotte! I can keep saying they’ll be back soon until she’s thirty if I have to!” Making really good decisions is clearly a Parker family trait.
MW: Y’know, when I was a kid, my psychologist said that having an active imagination was healthy for a child, but being unable to distinguish between that and reality by the time you reached your teens was kind of worrying. On top of all the other reasons to dislike this story, I seriously resent that, thirty-something years later, I’m forced to admit he may have had a point. (Then again, I was nowhere near as bad as Olive, since — as I’ve said before — Olive is a character created by someone who’s never even met a child, and possibly never even been one.)
Pluggers: The Pluggers core readership is staring at this in bewilderment, thinking “Wait, how does he know what the picture looks like without getting it developed? Did McKee mean to draw a Polaroid?” Those outwith the core readership are also staring at it in bewilderment, thinking “Wait, Pluggers have those vintage cameras that aren’t phones? Are they hipsters?”
RMMD: Called it.
Cleopatra? More like Cleo-BRAT-ra, amiright?
But, I’m going with Queen Narcissisti for the duration of this Egypt-themed arc, or semi-arc, or whatever it is. .
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Zarkov had sex with some sort of mermaid-thing, not Velle. Or just got a blowjob, due to the Mermaid Paradox. (Sexy babes who lure sailors to their death/no vagina)
Calling it early: Mr. Kleen is nursing a special grudge against Flash because word got around Sharktown that Velle came on to him (but being a good ladyfish, let it go as soon as she learned Flash and Dale were an Item).
Kleen, who has glam photos of Velle taped up inside his Guardman locker and practices writing out “Mrs. Velle Kleen” to see how it looks, is unable to believe that an Earthman would not drop everything to ball a clammy hairless leprous-green chick with gills, jet-black sclera, and yellow irises.
@Josh: I screwed up the trash collection schedule for the same reason.
@Ukulele Ike: Blowholejob.
FC: Dolly doing some leaning in the void.
DT: so why did they need the loan shark money if there is a VC around? Somebody got a gambling addiction?
JP: two months and the case has gone cold. Cut to Randy and April having a great time at an Italian Cafe. Pavel jr was pleased that his dad was taken out since he is the boss and agreed to help April and Randy ditch their dim kid and JP and finally enjoy life. Meanwhile the two dumb girls who almost screwed things up actually helped to botch up CIA monitoring.
RMMD: Cody’s new half sister and hubby are very happy since they are next in line to inherit.
MW: Olive is just setting up her origin story as Hawkwoman.
GT: don’t sports teams at schools hold more elaborate food fund raising like a pancake breakfast or spaghetti dinner? Rather than making it a sudden spur of the moment thing it could have been a whole event lasting a week of strips.
@Man-Crab Hybrid: Indeed!
CS: you’d be anxiously immobile too if you’d just entrusted your life’s dream into the hands of “The Syndicate.”
PLUGGERS: We are NOT butt-ugly, we’re as beautiful as a ripe tomato or pumpkin. True, in a couple weeks we’ll look better in the dark. And tho I’m not into that thing, this past week I saw two positively fine butts– one on a professional cheerleader and the other on a twerking actress. (Neither a Plugger, yet)
FC: Maybe it is supposed to be a good thing. After all, Jeffy’s wearing torn-up jeans, which makes him more fashionable than he’s ever been before or ever will be again.
HtH: The Horribles’ family dog has seen things. Things that he can never be allowed to reveal.
JP: even if we think their absence is great, I doubt young Charlotte sees it’s for “the good.”
6Cx: sounds like true adult love, not just puppy limerence.
TG: the kind of look I got at age 24 when I ordered Christian Brothers for our table. Heck, it was welcomed at our BYOB parties.
9CL: If you’re a 9 Chickweed Lane character you probably do need an attorney, but all she can do is try to get you a plea deal.
C-Shaft: When you get to the second panel of Young Battom lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, you have to ask, “What the hell are we doing here?” Of course, at least you and I aren’t trying to turn it into a newspaper article.
DtM: “Come to think of it, I’ve been five since the Korean War, so forget about the ‘might be’ part.”
Dustin: Dustin’s better off. Being in love/lust with the personnel director leads nowhere good, especially if everyone knows.
GT: Gil’s frybread regenerated as he ate it and various donors came up to talk to Leo. I think it might be an alien in disguise.
JP: Randy went off to Oslo to find April? He’s probably spent all that time staring baffled at a Norwegian street sign.
MW: Ed should really look on the bright side. These kinds of “memory” are usually unearthed with the help of New Age therapists. Olive got their on her own, with even Mary being tangentially involved at most. It’s a much cheaper way to go.
Phantom: At least one of the miners knows that they’re in a strip called “The Phantom.” That sort of meta-awareness must, at minimum, cause some eyerolls.
RMMD: Cody goads his half-brother into a heart attack. His half-sister and her husband Luke Cage’s top priority is making him feel better about it. Don’t try this at home, kids.
@131 Activist:
Okay, you stumped me. What is “TG”? All I can come up with is The Grizzwells but it doesn’t match your comment.
Oh, wait. Tina’s Groove. Duh.
@Sequitur: “Trash Gordon,” from Mad Magazine issue 523, May 1980.
@134 Voshkod:
Ah! A much better name for that strip.
@Sequitur: The caption shoulda been “… having a great Fall.”
@136 Peanut Gallery:
Yeah, it’s close enough to Autumn to say that.
Or, “…being a good egg.”
@Treetown: I’m pretty sure the official explanation for why Tess LaKoyle needed loan shark money is, “Shut up, nerd.”
@Sequitur:
#133 TG: glad you got it. Old strip but current auteur.
Between Friends – This is approaching Mary Worth levels of bee-grinding.
@140 Peanut Gallery:
It doesn’t get any better tomorrow.
@139 Activist:
Yeah, I read it back in the day when it was new and I’m rereading today. I can never remember TG stands for Tina’s Groove. That’s why I write out the names of the strips to which I’m referring and I don’t try to give them “cutesy” or “clever” names that often make them even harder to figure out what they are.
@Sequitur: Hey, now, I enjoy the current incarnation of Flash Gordon. Trash Gordon is the sort of stuff Mad would have come up with back in the day.
@Sequitur: You mean Declan doesn’t produce photos of the Big Boss in bed with a Springer Spaniel and a dead boy, get his job back, and have Blonde Friend fired all over again? And she doesn’t go back to the vodka coffee ladies cap in hand, and learn they hired Savreen Irangirl for the job she turned down, and her shares skyrocketed in value as every bored housewife in Toronto is completely shit faced and wired on coffee vodka and staggering through the streets, looting, raping, and pillaging?
Because I would read the SHIT out of that.
@Voshkod:
Hey now!
Hey now!
Iko Iko un day
Jockomo feeno ah na nay
Jockomo feena nay
Well! Now THAT’S stuck in my head for the rest of the night…
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Touche!
@141 Ukulele Ike:
That might work except Declan is an idiot so anything else wouldn’t happen.
@Baja Gaijin: Number two with the deeply repressed violence that is inherent in Mary Worth’s makeup. Each day she has tamp down a volcano of anger against the likes of Wilbur and others. Every now and then she has just pop that vent open and let it all out.
HtH: Notice that despite the family’s objections, Merlin and Snert still seem eager to go through with the Dark Magic. Maybe this is the start of something; maybe the syndicate thought, “Hey, ya know what would really pep up this zombified dinosaur of a strip after 53 years of the same old shit? A TALKING DOG!”
But nah, they’d have saved that for a Monday, and started a whole week off with a “hilarious” storyline.
Concerning today’s Hagar the Horrible. Someone at Comics Kingdom mentioned something that makes sense. Snert knows where all the bones are buried.
What–it’s Thursday? Damn, now I have to put the garbage out!
FC: As a rule, the appropriate feeling is pity for the English language whenever Dolly says anything.
@Ukulele Ike: #123: Maybe the mermaid thing gave Zarkov a taste for fishy women. He and Velle have seemed rather chummy lately.
@Sequitur:
#142. Seq, good advice to spell out names. But will probably be repressed by my laziness hormones.
@Voshkod: #134: Don’t remember Trash Gordon but I did see Flesh Gordon back in January of 1975 at the University Flick on North High Street in Columbus, Ohio.
@154 Activist:
That’s fine. I figure I recognize 99% of the abbreviations. The only thing that bothers me is using “SF” for both Sally Forth (S4th) and Slylock Fox (SFx).
@Sequitur: That’s a pet peeve of mine, too, and I always make sure to use S4th and SFx. Luckily, the strips are nothing like each other and it’s always pretty clear which one the SF creeps are snarking.
Imagine if JP and RMMD had the same initials….
@Guillermo el chiclero: Is that a whale-snack pun? I am SO praying that the pun didn’t even occur to you.
Late Thread Cuisine: Since everyone’s sick of pizza and hot dogs and pizza topped with hot dogs, here’s something that’s not pizza or hot dogs.
@Baja Gaijin. Pickles stuffed with possum with a side of rice, both smothered in ketchup. Not even Shaggy Rodger’s would eat this crap.
GT: This started with popovers and ends up with fry bread, two completely different things, neither of which resemble what is shown in the artwork.
@158 Baja Gaijin:
Ew! Someone bled out all over that stuff!
@Baja Gaijin: That pie in the background looks decent.
@162 taig:
But it has red fox scat on it!
Look it up.
@Sequitur: Weird. I didn’t hear it yelling, “I’m comin’, Elizabeth!”
@Anonymous: Somebody here who bothered to research said no, popovers and fry bread are the same.
I accepted that without looking it up myself, because why would somebody here lie about such a fucking stupid thing?
@164 taig:
@159 Anonymous: Ketchup? I’ve never seen ketchup that color.
@161 Sequitur: Probably the photographer smashing a studio light over the food designer’s head.
@162 taig: Anything looks great next to the red-covered monstrosity.
@163 Sequitur: Not looking that up. Looking at this recipe card is enough.
@148 treetown: I can’t believe no one commented on Ed Kudlick’s presence in the mashups.
@169 Baja Gaijin:
Ya know, I was going to comment on that and forgot. I was going to say something about Ed Kudlick in his camel toe shorts.
And thanks for using my suggestion yesterday with the slap.
@Baja Gaijin: Oh, I forgot about the mashups. I like how Olive just placidly takes that slap.
@170 Sequitur: Did you forget or did your brain immediately repress the memory to protect your sanity? Maybe that explains the lack of commentary on Ed’s nipples.
@172 Baja Gaijin:
And you wonder why we post clowns.
@Ukulele Ike: re: FG Why does everyone think Mr Kleen has the hots for Velle? She’s a traitorous fugitive. Looks like a warning that when he’s done with this lot, he’s going after her.
@173 Sequitur: Not clicking. Besides, were you to shave a Plugger, you’d end up with that Ed Kudlick image.
@Baja Gaijin: I recall in the 90’s multicolored sparkly ketchup was a thing.
@CanuckDownSouth: Huh. I never even considered that. I figured it’s a tattoo — and the only names rough tough men tattoo onto themselves are “Mom” and their current squeeze.
I guess Kleen could have just had a novelty tee shirt printed up. The top part says “Velle” and when he pulls the tails out of his skintight sharkpants the bottom parts says “You Die Next.”
@176 The Rambling Otter:
Do you mean like this?
@177 Ukulele Ike:
Probably not relevant, but in a recent Popeye episode Olive wanted a tattoo but her arms were too spindly to support one. She had to settle for a rub-on tattoo as shown in panels three and four here.
@Ukulele Ike: I think it’s supposed to be even tougher than rough tough guy stuff – he wants to kill her so badly that he’s pledged his body to eradicating her and is announcing it to any who can understand Ancient Shark
@Baja Gaijin:
#158. The only problem I have with the Stuffed Zucchini is the banned artificial #6 dye in the sauce. Otherwise, it could be a vegetarian dish I’d be proud to make and serve. My real question is with the large molasses cookie in the background– are those clouds of cream cheese that have set on the plains?
@Sequitur: Saw that. For some reason I found Olive’s wiggly arms profoundly disturbing.
@CanuckDownSouth: Man, you really have it in for this Kleen sharkdude. Did he kick your dog or kiss your girl or somethin’?
@Activist:
#181. On the other hand, perhaps it’s not a molasses cookie but a cowpie made in Poteet’s neighborhood of CowPlop. And the white clouds are actually delectable mushrooms growing in fertile soil.