More about time
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Mary Worth, 9/16/25
It’s not exactly clear how much time in-strip is supposed to have elapsed between the current storyline and Olive’s original appearance in the strip; presumably it’s not the 11 years that have passed in real time, but probably like … five or six, I’m guessing? And one of the oddnesses of childhood is that five or six years wouldn’t seem so long to someone Mary’s age, but a kid in that scenario really would say “I remember” like it happened in another era. So, so far, so normal, except that Olive also says “remember” when she talks about her spooky visions of the life she and Mary lived in Ancient Egypt, so I think that adds a different valence to it. Anyway, I guess if you were a naive child, you might think that being able to talk to animals would make you a good vet, but hopefully she’ll get a chance to talk to Dr. Ed and learn that that job is just one dead pomeranian after another, and the only thing that would make it worse would be if you could hear the pomeranians speak in complete sentences.
Hi and Lois, 9/16/25
Lois is desperate to see some evidence that two people really can stay happily married to each other for any length of time, and she is not finding it today.
Family Circus, 9/16/25
Sure, Jeffy is being an idiot as usual, but don’t be so grotesquely smug about it, Billy. You didn’t arrange things so that time only flows in one direction, at the same rate for everyone in the same inertial referential frame! What if you were shot into space at relativistic speeds for an extended space voyage and Jeffy stayed on Earth and you came back and he was older? Who’d be smug then, huh, Billy? I mean, probably you, I guess, you’d be a worldwide celebrity and hero of exploration, and he’d still just be some guy, and an old guy to boot.
Garfield, 9/16/25
Wait, do you expect me to believe that notorious dog-hater Garfield is watching some kind of TV show starring a talking dog, and complimenting the talking dog character? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all. #notmygarfield #garfieldcanonicallyhasnothingbutcontemptfordogs
89 replies to “More about time”
FC Well, there *is* a solution Jeffy, but it’s not temporary and involves some funerals…
PearlsBeforeSwine Sadly Dark Matter can’t be pizza as it’s nonbaryonic with properties showing it doesn’t interact with light, therefore has no charged particles like electrons and protons that make the tasty tasty food we all know and love… as for Dark Energy, it’s repelling space apart, so it’s even weirder and… (Fun Police arrive and take the ranting astronomer away. Exit, pursued by axion particles…)
Jeffy is wearing a Jeffy shirt because his groyper hoodie is in the laundry.
Six Chix – You’re looking for a hairstyle on which to base your personality? I suggest a flip. The word implies both humor and insanity, so you’re already halfway there!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Juan, the actor, has just arrived, sir”
“And he wants to greet me?”
“No, not exactly…”
“He’s challenging you to a wrestling match!”
“And in this corner, standing 6 feet tall and weighing a svelte 210 pounds, star of stage and screen, The Unicorn…”
You could make a joke about how the sperm that produced Billy answered the call earlier than the sperm that produced Jeffy and that’s why he gets to be older, but maybe sperms do not live for years and anyway it would only be half the person because the other half comes from the mother — whatever Aeschylus says — and neither I nor anyone wants to think too long about Bil’s sperm, so let’s forget about it
@Ettorre: If this comment doesn’t even get moderated, what’s the point of the system?
Questionablecontent:
Here’s the problem: ditching Claire would be “transphobic”, even if she barely acknowledges anymore Marten even exists. Demoting Claire from Dictatress would also be “transphobic”. In fact I’m waiting for the jellyfish to go on holiday to the Mariana Trench and put Claire officially in “temporary” ownership of Cubetown. So no matter how much you’d think this looks like the beginning of a romance between Marten and Zlata, it’s never going to happen because Claire is Goddess and doing anything to question that status is heresy. And also “transphobic”.
This has gone from being one of my favourite reads to my top hate read, and Jephthy’s to blame.
@Ettorre:
One of Joseph Wambaugh’s novels had a character called Spermwhale Whalen.
“Billy’s in charge because he doesn’t need to have his name on his shirt so he doesn’t forget it. Forget his name, that is. Or his shirt.”
“My dog ate my homework! For home economics I had built a chocolate sculpture!”
MW: I’m just relieved Olive doesn’t aspire to be a fashion designer. “Electrical tape is IN this season! Add it around a top to define or minimize the bust, accent sleeves on one or both sides to evoke protest or mourning without having to go all Gothic, and for repairing an accidental tear or holding a drooping hemline in place, it can’t be beat!”
MW: “Or maybe a veterinarian/chef combo…”
HnL: If this were The Lockhorns, we could at least have Leroy say something like, “If Loretta were out of the picture, we’d have plenty of downsizing,” or “If Loretta can get herself down from a size 16, we’d have some downsizing.”
FC: “And why do I always have to wear his hand-me-downs?!?”
Garfield: A Talking Dog!?!
Chefs and veterinarians alike make sure the animals end up making a human happy
Dustin When you have a setup line and a punchline, and don’t give a damn whether the setup line is something anyone would say after the preceding dialogue.
“What about all your junk?!”
“That’s the first time in years you have paid any attention to my junk!”
Why is Lois upset? If those two divorce, they’ll end up needing TWO new houses!
Luann: Bernice doesn’t want to jeopardize her chances at a tepid love affair with Piro.
CS: “If you don’t show up, I’ll try to burn down my bookstore again.” “What?” “What?”
9CL: oh yay more of this
You could argue that this is Jeff Keane expressing envy for the fact that real-life Billy (Glen Keane) is not just older, but one of the most celebrated animator of his generation, while he lives in his father’s shadow by taking over his sinecure. But that would be mean!
Dustin: It looks like Steve Kelley recently heard the phrase, “living rent-free in your head.” Isn’t that precious?
DT: Sam is the voice of reason and Liz is actually doing some basic practical checking.
RMMD: Never awkward for a doctor to be at a social event with a patient.
FC:
Addled Jeffy needs to wear a “Jeffy” shirt to remind him what his name is. Smug Billy needs no such prompt.
Shoe: This tracks. Since Comedy Central’s daytime programming is now mainly reruns of The Office, it’s likely that they’re watching an infomercial for cleaning products.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Ah, yes — The Choirboys. The Catch-22 of cop novels. Are you a helmet or an anteater?
Roscoe Rules (my favorite character): “Yeah, this one got banged up a bit.”
@Voshkod: Also, Jeffy just shit his pants, didn’t he? I love the classics.
Maybe every single one of those Pomeranians leaves this mortal coil with an emphatic, French-accented, “And so! I die!” rendering it all quite hilarious? A day of giggles!
Yes, Pomerania is in Germany. Look at you, bein’ LOGICAL
Yeah Olive, talking to animals isn’t very fun.
Take Cruella Deville’s grand-nephew from “101 Dalmatian Street” who after Cruella locked him in a storage unit with nothing to eat but dog food for several months, he went sort of nuts and developed a dog split-personality which caused him to understand the language of dogs.
So when Cruella had the entire Dalmatian family (descendants of the original 101 from years back) captured and was going to put them all in a giant shredder. The grand-nephew could literally hear the dogs crying out for help and had to make a choice, either Cruella (who constantly psychologically abused him) or the Dalmatians who never harmed him in his life.
Oh my rambles…
@5 Ettorre:
BIL’S SPERM! Cumming soon to a theater near you!
The funny part is, these people aren’t even house-shopping. They needed someone with time on her hands to vent at, and, well, Lois is a failure.
@The Rambling Otter: I’m still wishing for a spoiler tag on this site.
Or I could just learn HTML or whatever that stuff is.
6Chix: I’m offended not so much by the chaotic art and nonsensical dialog as by her incorrect usage of prepositions.
*pulling my hair out*
Shout out to Dudley “The Dude” Deer showing off his skateboarding skills in today’s Slylick Fox! Keep ’em rolling Dude!
MW: Olive’s eyes glazed over as she went into a reverie. “I remember when I was a pie. It was a long time ago. Only it was a plum pie…! And a boy stuck his thumb right into me! I don’t think he was a very good boy. I think he was nasty!”
@taig:
On Luann : Why does Bernice think that Piro would be upset if she disliked his younger brother? He told the entire town he disliked his family so much he ran away from home to become a university hobo!
@taig:
On Dustin : if DustinDad had been eating DONUTS while having this conversation in the break room, it would have been the perfect “Where does Dustin get his laziness, procrastination and inability to improve himself from, what a mystery” comic.
Today’s Garfield mostly sounds like euphemisms for something unspeakable. As Garfield watches, dead-eyed. Don’t give up on the world, Garfield!
This morning I was flipping through stations on my television when I came across a cartoon Baja Gaijin might enjoy.
Jolly the Clown!
@Anonymous:
Plus, really, nothing haunts a guy quite like his girlfriend’s opinion of his dickhead little brother. He’s bloody 12, everybody would hate him even minus the genius thing!
@Peanut Gallery: You didn’t mention the appearence of Future Bart Simpson™! This must be a Treehouse Of Horror flash forward episode.
MW: BINGO! And just like that – The Ladies wrote in a reason to visit Animal Hospital! It sure pays to get the *deluxe* organic fruit gift baskets these days! I frankly thought they’d come up with something more *relevant* to Olive’s supposed telepathic powers – like sensing that Max has an intestinal blockage and insisting he get to the vet ASAP. But I guess it’s good enough that Olive wants to be a vet… close enough for soap opera.
Anyway, if The Ladies follow through on the deal, our powerhouse Stars, Libby, Pierre, and Odin, will be gracing these panels very soon – maybe even this month. Great job, Intern! You got into their studio with the gift baskets in spite of the restraining order…
Change.org petition for the Family Circus to put their characters in name-branded sweaters at all time. Jeffy is a good start, but I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to remember which walking reminder that Thel forgot to take her pill is which.
@GarrisonSkunk: Wrestling announcer seems like just the right gig for him.
Here’s hoping Baja Gaijin considers that a challenge to find a matching Late Thread Cuisine.
@Sequitur: BIL’S SPERM! Cumming soon to a theater near you!
____________________________
Just when you thought it was safe to go into the Keene Sex Chamber again!
Mary Worth: “I remember you making mud pies when you were a little kid. Maybe you should become a chef!” “Um, I don’t think careers work that way.” “Okay, I saw you petting a dog yesterday… so maybe you should become a vet.” “Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
Hi and Lois: Lois is trying so hard to get these two to sell their spacious suburban home and buy the two-bedroom condo she needs to unload. “What do you want a big, empty house for? You have to nag each other to keep the lawn neat, and there’s always some neighbor getting drunk in the yard next door, and you can’t even find your baby half the time… Say, maybe I should think about downsizing too!”
Family Circus: C’mon, Jeffy, one day Billy will be an old and grizzled 83, while you’re still a young and hip 79. (Of course, by then you’ll just be heads on robot bodies… but what magnificently pumpkin-shaped heads they’ll still be!)
I love that Heathcliff wearing 10 gallon hat and driving an ox-drawn prison coach with a bullwhip isn’t out of character enough to warrant comment, but Garfield vegging out in front of the tube…? Preposterous!
@Sequitur: BIL’S SPERM! Cumming soon to a theater near you!
_____________________________________________
And now….from the folks who brought you “Bil’s Sperm”…. its ……..” Jeffy 2:The Jeffying”
Popeye Spanish to English.
@Ken: Too easy. Hot dogs.
@Anonymous: It’s OK for Piro to hate his family, but not OK for some random slag to hate his family.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
MW: Brigman is drawing Olive with an enormous head to match her personality.
MW:
“Okay, a little off-topic, Olive, but how did you happen to end up with your first name to begin with?
“Well, Daddy wanted to call me ‘Peaches,’ and Mom wanted to call me ‘Cherry,’ so they were kind of pitted against another as a result. ‘Olive’ was a compromise!”
MW:
“Olive, have you been taking head size expansion lessons from that Morgan girl over at RMMD?”
RMMD: Notice how smugly Yvonne looks at June. “At least I still have my mullet tail. We’re you attacked by a hedge trimmer?”
“So, Mary, I’ve been meaning to ask you how you manage to get a single cube of ice to hover in the middle of these glasses of water. They doesn’t move at all, no matter how I tilt the glass. It’s like these cubes are the axis mundi around which all of creation rotate, the two stationary points, immovable and infinite, standing alone against the chaos of the world.”
“Well, Olive, they don’t normally do that. It only happens when you’re here.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. Anyway, want to bake a pie?”
Come on, Jeffy. You’re already making the fist. Introduce it to that smug face*.
*I don’t condone violence, but look at that smug face!
***
Olive’s being realistic today. What’s going on?
I didn’t follow the comics for a couple of weeks, so I just spent a few days catching up on most of them. I learned that it’s not a good idea to read two weeks of 9CL, Crankshaft, Frazz, Mary Worth, and Judge Parker at one time.
9CL – Two weeks of this in one sitting highlighted how repulsive Amos is and how unappealing and awful Edda is.
Judge Parker – Two weeks of cloak and dagger bullshit and a failed attempt to make Alan sympathetic.
Crankshaft – Two weeks of Batton Thomas patting himself on the back, and now Loathsome Lillian promises to make Harry Dinkle show up. I can’t wait.
Mary Worth – Two weeks of stilted, human adjacent dialogue, Museums Are Good, and a bonus Dogs Are Good! vignette. Make. It. Stop.
Rex Morgan – The forty year old children, June’s hideous hair, Truck Tyler, and now Hank Jr. What a wonderful reunion of beloved characters. Where’s Buck Wise?
I haven’t started catching up with reading the comments over the past couple weeks, or as far back as they go.
I’m really sad about Robert Redford. R.I.P.
Zits Spanish to English.
MW: This is what I was afraid of. Olive is basically a 65-year-old, with zero teenage interests or behaviors. Don’t tell me about her wanting to be one of the popular girls: she won their regard by saving a life, then immediately ditched them to hang out with Mary some more. Now she’s going on cross-country trips by herself. At this point she might as well hook up with Wilbur. She’s not that much younger than Belle Batsfrey.
@Charterstoned: i dinno. Her clothes are honestly the most “normal” thing about Olive. (I would have suspected she’d favor Small Wonder-esque dresses for that hip “homunculus” look all the cool kids have.
MW-“I remember in another life making apple pies…”
6Chx: I’m proud of you, Bianca. Realizing your current personality needs a profound overhaul is the first stage in self-healing.
MW: “Or possibly a bartender. Mom never lets me have vodka & tonics at home.”
@Voshkod: Maybe they’re each holding a Galileo thermometer instead of a glass of ice water? Nah, that’d be too interesting (a very very low bar to clear for Mary Worth).
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: Those two cousins have been drinking too much of that hillbilly juice.
Not that surprising for someone who remembers all her past lives. This is probably the hundredth time she’s gone through adolescence.
FC: So many opportunities for a big brother to mess with a little brother’s head.
“Hey, when we went to the store yesterday, Dad let me drive.”
Oh, it IS up….
GA: A short order cook cannot communicate with a waitress while preparing and serving meals! Hilarious! Maybe “Diner Lingo” should be the new Esperanto.
MW: How does Olive hold up that gigantic head?
Mary Worth – She’s going to perform surgery on the dogs, isn’t she? Animal abuse is one of those early serial killer tells.
H&L – Mr. Cat and I both have a lot of stuff. I firmly believe he has more than I do because he wants all the movies and music he loves in physical form. Which I respect, but we have so many CDs, DVDs, records, etc. It’s overwhelming. We packed up a lot of our stuff last year when we thought we might be moving, and then I ended up inheriting some of my mother’s stuff, and now… we’re stuffed. Like Pluggers.
@Ken:
Sh still loves pounding barley for flour, and bringing water to pyramid builders, though!
RMMD: I want to see either Nail Gunner Doris or the con artist guy at this wedding.
@taig: I mean Prio like his brother so much, he’s just letting this 12 year old wander around campus with a bunch of adults all willy-nilly instead of picking him up like people do with kids that age.
Maybe Piro has more trust in his brother than I assume, since Alan is clearly more mature than, say, a grown-ass women “hiding” from little kids. (Bernice: “As you can see, he’s the ‘socially awkward’ one, not me!”
@67 Professor Well Actually:
It’s not hard, it’s full of hot air.
EC: So I guess the seventh time Abby asks “But can we afford it?” is the charm. I dunno, I feel like Len’s realisation that this is a bad idea needs a better impetus than Abby saying the same thing she’s said all storyline.
(On the other hand, I was worried that the impetus would be that the kids would fail the application and Len would immediately “realise” that this school was elitist. Nothing annoys me like people complaining organisations are elitist because they’ve been rejected. You already knew that, which is why you were so keen to join in the first place! You’re just mad at being told you aren’t the elite!)
Pluggers: Okay, I know “Pluggers are in pain all the time” is a go-to riff, but we’ve just had three in a row. That’s … unusual. Is the role of Chief Plugger beginning to get to McKee, and his only joy is drawing his characters in agony? Because I could totally understand that.
@2+2=7: Piro figures he has plausible deniability if something happens to Alan on campus.
@Dmsilev: Olive: “Galileo?”
Mary: “Galileo.”
Both: “Galileo Figaro.”
Olive: “Magnifico.”
@Old School Allie Cat: H&L – Mr. Cat and I both have a lot of stuff.
_____
Reminds me of the Carlin question: “Why is it that somebody else’s crap is stuff, and all your stuff is crap?” Like this. “Shall I move all this crap out of the way?” “Yeah, put that stuff over here.”
@Ukranazi Stepan: Sorry, but I’m honestly perplexed by this take, probably because I don’t read the comments. Reading the strip on its own, I’m not getting “Claire is perfect and nobody’s allowed to criticise her” because it looks to me like Claire is falling into exactly the obsessive workaholic mode she was worried about and everybody in-universe is commenting on it — just not to her face, so far. (I’m kind of reminded of a discussion thread about X-Men: Red where I was equally perplexed by claims that Storm was being written as flawless because she always took charge and accepted responsibility, even though it was consistently shown that she kept failing in a crisis because she’d taken on too much and couldn’t actually handle it all.)
Personally, what I’d like to see isn’t so much Marten dumping her or having an affair as actually talk to her about it instead of being all “Oh, I’m the chill guy, and being the chill guy means never having any difficult conversations ever. The last time I had one was years ago, and it did not go well for me.” Actually, what I’d really like is for Jacques to admit the whole Cubetown thing simply isn’t quite working.
Sundry of us, self included, noted the comedically long absence of Rex Morgan from his eponymous comic. Now he’s back. Hooray? WE DID THIS.
Streaming services like Netflix are urging content creators to “overscript” their programs with blatant call-outs of their actions and repeated exposition to make sure that second-screen viewers are able to follow the plot. What I’m saying is, Jeffy — the boy who needs his own name stitched onto his sweatshirt — is absolutely in their target audience.
Family Circus is moving into the crudely labeled political cartoon game. Jeffy symbolizes Jeffy. (They’re not very good at it.)
@I speak Jive: For as long as her and Rex were out of the picture, you’d think June would’ve had time to freshen her fade before the wedding. She starts a new cycle of testosterone next week.
Given what happened when Lois declared the real-estate bubble a hot air balloon with no ballast on board, and then started worrying about splurging their limited resources, we should be very worried about her helping this couple downsize.
MW – On the wings of a snow white dove, she brings her squab pie grub, like a gift from above….
H&L – You’ve always resented me for my fifty state miniature spoon collection….
FC – Why does Billy always get the extra heapin’ helpings of shit….
Garfield – isn’t Garfield a little too old for morally instructive after school specials….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Horace Broon: Yeah, the Cubetown thing is the Hannelore’s Dad’s Space Station of 2023-25.
Questionable Content allows comments? I’ve been reading this thing for years and I had no idea.
(The Marten = chill guy bit that I really enjoy every time I see it is that he opened a coffee place, and the sign behind the counter reads COFFEE TEA SMALL LARGE.)
@I speak Jive:
#56. Jive, I simplistically never imagined Robert Redford could die– he was always where needed doing what was needed. Rest in power.
PLUGGERS (con): a mudge advised never to make a grunt or groan when getting up. Today I weeded all morning and got up several times for water breaks. With difficulty a groan was suppressed, but became easier to suppress on later breaks– groaning/grunting may just be a bad habit easily broken .
But how to become strong enough so after we get up, we don’t teeter and perhaps fall? Still a plugger thing.
FC: Because Billy doesn’t need to wear a shirt with “Billy” on it to remember that he’s Billy.
H&L: Psst, Lois, you’re not supposed to be getting them to declutter. You’re supposed to be selling them on a big house where they can keep all their stuff and more. Are you holding the real estate manual upside down?
MW: Yes, Olive just met a couple of friendly dogs, so it makes perfect sense she has her heart set on being a vet. She is supposed to be six, right?
@A Grave Mind: We should all be condemned to Hades for this. :)
Low and Hi-less: Why is Low,A real estate agent, counciling John and Lorena Bobbit?
Last week’s news but the Rex Morgan “character has a long-lost child who turns out not to be his actual child but decides to informally adopt him as his son anyway” plotline appeared a while before in Something Positive. Hoping they also wind up with the “non-binary wrestling best friend” angle.