Toby doesn’t care about Sunny’s criminal past … she’s so open-minded
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Dick Tracy, 11/25/25
Ah, man, remember the Dick Tracy vampire car storyline from 2016? It was a fun one, and I personally would follow the principle of “don’t stop in the middle of your not-so-interesting storyline to remind your readers of a more interesting one,” but I’m not in charge of Dick Tracy. I do appreciate that advances in solid state storage have allowed Dick to keep a 3D image of a cool vampire car on his watch, for him to amuse himself with whenever the conversation about clown crime gets tedious.
Mary Worth, 11/25/25
It appears that Mary Worth takes place in a universe very much like our own, with the crucial difference that television never invented the concept of a studio audience or a laugh track; instead, the characters themselves laugh in an aggressive, artificial way to let the audience know that a joke has just happened.
Blondie, 11/25/25
When Dagwood says “Are you ready to take Thanksgiving to another level?”, it should come as no surprise that it’s a sex thing. The hat stays on, ladies.
67 replies to “Toby doesn’t care about Sunny’s criminal past … she’s so open-minded”
Mary Worth: Has any checked Toby for brain worms? Normal brains don’t work like hers.
Blondie: Dagwood’s kissing Blondie but he’s thinking about turducken.
Dustin: If Ed’s lucky, this Christmas someone’ll get him a “World’s Most Mediocre Lawyer” sippy cup.
Slylock Fox: Someone hates Lumpy McTentsleeper. Beavers don’t fell trees away from streams or rivers. I’ll bet Wanda Rabbit is behind this caper.
Blondie: has anyone noticed that Blondie’s expression never changes? She always looks slightly worried.
DT:
“And apparently he goes by the full formal name of ‘Ozob the Nwolc’ ! Now, I’m sure that’s code for something, but I can’t put my finger on what it is!”
Blondie: So we’re not going to say anything about Dagwood hanging a testicle on a door way and enticing his wife under it?
Yeah, I get it. Better not to mention it.
MW: Does Mary realize that just because a “talking bird” like a parrot, mynah, or cockatoo has learned to mimic the sound of a person going “Ha ha ha!,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s learned to equate the sound with being happy, and it will in fact repeat the words regardless of how it feels? Or is she implying Sunny is amused by “Friends” reruns, which would make him one of the first?
MW:
“Considering the almost maniacal repetition of monosyllabic utterances on our telecast, young lady, the name of our TV show should probably be ‘Channeling Phyllis Diller’ !”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Ha ha ha!”
Blondie: Wait until you see his condom with the little buckle on it.
Six Chix: Has Tuesday Chix not learned to Scotchgard her jack o’lanterns? If she had, she’d not be all depressed today. Well, not depressed because her pumpkin lover is flaccid and stinky.
Sally Forth: I love those two Gangsta Grammas!
DT:
“Now, despite Ozob’s having assembled the vampire car, Rikki’s real preference was to drive menacingly through the streets of Gotham with a combination tractor-trailer, thus earning Mortis the sobriquet ‘Rigger‘ !”
BLONDIE: Blondie plans and cooks the entire meal and cleans up. Dagwood dons a musty hat and hangs poultry from the ceiling.
DtM: Dennis has, quite innocently, committed his worst menace yet.
RMMD: Augie should have directed the bouquet to “Autumn Rook,” to subtly nudge Summer onto his side.
MW: Halfway to ever. So, like, semi-demi-hemi-ever?
MW: I’m getting a feeling that the parrot arc was dashed off as content-free filler for the gap between the Olive Saga and whatever’s going to start up after Thanksgiving. Pity, after all the great ideas that have been tossed around in the comments here, not that I expected anything that interesting would actually happen.
Blondie:
If this strip had been in circulation in 1678 when Puritan preacher John Bunyan was alive, he probably would have written The Pilgrim’s Regress.
DT: “Vampire Car?” There’s gotta be a Batmobile joke in there somewhere!
MW: Toby is watching a video cover of Flipper’s Ha Ha Ha song as sung by David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on another of SiriusXM’s odd music genres: Punk Easy Listening.
MW:
“Mary, he even flies to the door for Amazon deliveries! — go figure.”
Thanks for the earworm, Rhymes With Orange!
@Ken: It’s most likely Ian will return from his convention and order her to get rid of the bird.
Blondie: Some people’s kink is having candle wax dripped on them during sex. We shouldn’t be surprised that Dagwood’s equivalent is hot chicken grease pouring down his neck.
I choose to believe that the constant praise for Dagwood’s idiotic ideas is part of an extremely long con designed to bleed him of whatever’s left of the Bumstead billions, culminating in the entire cast of characters leaving him alone on a blank panel.
RMMD: In her anguished mental state Summer doesn’t hear the soft tickticktickticktickticktick coming from the bouquet. Soon Augie will have no more obstacles to riches beyond his wildest dreams as the published author of a single true crime novel…
JP: Whoa, slow down there fella! M&M can only con so much travel money out of the syndicate for ‘research’. You can’t expect them to show Sophie moping around all those amazing places!
@J.J. O’Malley:
MW: Does Mary realize that…it [Sunny] will in fact repeat the words regardless of how it feels?
She’s just humoring Toby…as do most people.
On that note, I’m not sure what the final bid was for LBJ’s Nuts in the John Oliver auction to benefit public media. Last I saw, it was $25,000 (and if anyone knows, please share). As enticing as a presidential scrotum is, I did not bid on it, but Madame Ovary said we could have hung them from the high ceiling in our place. Would that count as mistletoe?
@Pozzo: Unfortunately, this strip already played that card when Costello had B.O. Plenty win the actual 1966 Batmobile at a Comic-Con raffle or some such bull%$#@.
Blondie’s positioning in panel 2 is objectively bizarre: fingers splayed, knees knocked out from under her, fully and completely on tiptoe, not to mention the fact that her face is turned completely away from her husband’s as he Nazi-salutes the wall… all of that plus the fact that they’re both still talking makes me grateful for both the reference to mistletoe and the “KISS” sound effect, or else I wouldn’t know what the hell’s going on here.
MW – When Ian returns and puts on Eddie Murphy Raw, the discourse in the Cameron household is going to get real real.
MW — Yes, because nothing evinces happiness so much as being able to mimic actions one sees and hears on a visual display!
Blondie: D’s nuts:deez nuts::turkey nuts:truck nuts. Discuss.
@The Quiet Man:
Soon it will be time to do the taxes in the US and so the creators just wanted to be sure they got all of their deductions backed up by solid published use. Next year the girls “charity” will take them to Tuscany or the Bordeaux wine country!
Abner, Abner Kadaver
His Vampire Car’s gonna grab ya…
I’m sorry, but that’s just a tractor.
Mary Worth: People are criticizing Mary for not understanding that Sunny is just imitating what he sees on television. But me? I commend him for showing more human emotion than any human character in this strip.
DT: “Yeah, I think in total there were 14 dead? Well, one of a heart attack, so 13 for sure. Anyhow, good times…”
MW: I don’t know about you, but I find it a little funny that Mary Worth, the emotional shepherdess of Charterstone, hears a *parrot* making a laughing sound and says “That’s one happy bird!” Yup, level one emotional indicator achieved, no need dig any deeper here.
Blondie: /five days later/ “Happy thanksgiving, Dag and Blondie! Thanks for inviting us over for the d– OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT SMELL?”
Abner Kadaver is such a good pun name. It’s multifaceted. I’m focusing solely on that to avoid thinking about Blondie and Dagwood’s sex life.
Meta 1: Sunny would be well-advised to stay away from Dagwood at Thanksgiving time, for many reasons.
Meta 2: Blondie’s posture indicates that it’s time to break out this holiday classic.
Dick Tracy: That’s less a “Vampire Car” than a “Vampire Tractor,” specifically a modded-out Ford, judging by its paint scheme. For shame, Dick Tracy! At least have the decency to use Vampire International Harvester red and black, they were headquartered in Rock Island, after all!
Blondie: Approximately six hours later the turkey leg was crawling with maggots, minus the ones falling on whoever was underneath.
Also Dick Tracy: Diet Smith’s greatest innovation lay not in the two-way wrist communicator itself, but in the vast relational databases it connected to, but more important, the imprisoned Bangladeshi workforce that carried out the mySQL searches by hand. No one could return SELECT (CONCAT “Rikki”, “Mortis”, “Vampire”, “Car”) AS Video FROM Villains faster, or cheaper.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
@Hibbleton:
Lord knows that’s what Mary herself does. She probably just thinks that’s normal.
JP: I don’t know why Reena said she knows nothing about cooking. Everything looks so delicious!
@The Quiet Man: As far as I can tell, the syndicate offered just enough research cash for Ces to pick up a used copy of the Rough Guide to Norway. (Vigeland Sculpture Park is cool, though. Definitely on my list in the unlikely case I decide to vacation in Oslo)
Zits Spanish to English.
RMMD The card reads “I hope you like them, but if I have to return the book advance I can’t afford it and you owe me 200$”
H&L Lois, first, if your pediatrician isn’t going over growth charts for height and weight, get another one – maybe half an inch is on track, or maybe not! ditto for whatever weight increase! And if you’re worried he’s eating too much junk food, realize that *you* control an enormous amount of his access and you can deal with it *without* waiting for a doctor’s visit.
Sunny is gonna need more than quality pellets to make him the happiest parrot ever Toby – if ya know what I’m sayin’.
“No matter what his past, he’s home now.” Except, you know, for the whole “illegally smuggled” thing, Toby. I was really hoping Ian would be back home when the cops come busting down the door, but then I realized he’s the one who would be calling them and letting them in. Enjoy your contraband while you can.
***
Has Dagwood been working out? It would make sense that he’s tired of just cardio after all these decades, but I’m not sure the jokes would land the same when he gets to a bodybuilder physique.
Blondie-Stuff a turducken into Blondie?
RMMD-That’s some fast service. Summer just left Auggie.
MW-Hey look! The show where everyone laughs has added a new character.
Blondie-Dagwood got the idea from Dithers who dangles a sword above Dagwood’s desk.
MW-Let us remember that Ian is at a “conference”. He’s not dead. He did not divorce Toby. He will be home.
JP: Cat burglar Emil just happens to know where all these valuable works of art are located in Oslo.
FC: Dolly continues. “She originally lived in a Fuck Me pump. That’s why there’s so many kids.”
MW: Now that Sunny knows how to laugh, I’m guessing the conflict in this plot will come from Sunny guffawing at inappropriate moments. Jeff trying to make moves on Mary. Ian naked. Ian pompously bloviating. Ian objecting to bird shit all over the condo [insert Sunny letting loose on Ian’s head as he flies around the room]. Any visit to ANIMAL HOSPITAL as that day’s patients inevitably succumb to Dr. Ed’s ministrations. Any interaction with Wilbur, especially if Sunny can modulate the HAHAHA into a deprecating snicker. It’s just a laugh, but I think there are some awesome opportunities for Sunny to add Greek chorus-like commentary on the residents of Santa Royale.
DT – Yee-Haw! I’m ready for the tractor pull….
MW – My Sunny one, so insincere….
Blondie – Why did I just assume Dag was a breast man….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
DT: Gee, thanks for reminding me that Abner Kadaver, by far my favorite Dick Tracy villain, is dead dead and his henchwoman/babymama Rikki Mortis ran off with her lesbian lover years ago and hasn’t been seen since, and their departures are a reminder of how far the strip’s rogues’ gallery has fallen from its golden days. They didn’t need dialogue, they had faces! Grotesque, improbably deformed faces.
MW: Toby doesn’t care about Sunny’s past…but maybe she should? Because, you know, there’s all these rules and regulations regarding bringing domestic animals into a country and they tend to be especially particular about birds, and it seems extremely likely that Sunny was already being trafficked across the border in an attempt to circumvent those rules? I don’t think they have the Sarcastic Laughter Hour streaming in quarantine.
Dags uses all the Thanksgiving food stuffs as part of his elaborate sexual foreplay. He pulls down his pants and says; “Time to stuff the turkey.” As he removes Blondie’s bra he says; “Let’s check on the baked potatoes.” He grabs her ankles and exclaims; “I’m splitting the wishbone!” Just don’t ask where he sticks his “corn-on-the-cob.”
Blondie’s only skeptical about Dagwood’s ability to top himself because she hasn’t learned about the “Mobius strip” position from the Kama Sutra.
@Liam: [Some weeks from now] ‘Did you hear? A bus carrying people coming home from an academic conference was involved in a road accident. Most of the academics died!’
*Ha-ha-ha! Chirp!’
Blondie and Dagwood’s costumes for role play night: Dagwood wears a pilgrim hat and a v-neck sweater over a polo. Blondie wears a fishnet skirt. I did not need to see this.
DT – Oh great, now I’ve got the Heathcliff theme song stuck in my head.
♪ Rikki, Rikki, it’s a pity
Terrorized the whole damn city…
@J.J. O’Malley: There are some breeds of parrots that don’t merely “repeat” words. If trained, African Gray Parrots can identify objects and have (sort of) conversations with their owners. They are very smart.
DT – I love how this guy is adopting the language of art criticism to discuss Ozob’s silly car customizations. “Ozob’s breakout work, Vampire Car, signaled a shift in approach from the solemn, if covertly ironic, form of automotive menace typified by Stephen King’s Christine, to an overtly cartoonish aesthetic drawing on influences that range from monster truck rallies to The Munsters’ Munster Koach. Critics remain divided as to whether this shift represents camp, or even pandering, versus a clever inversion in which postmodernist technique is recruited into the service of a critique of postmodernism itself.”
@TheDiva: Maybe Toby will get arrested for being a part of this and not reporting Sunny to the authorities?
MW – HA HA HA!
Don Abundio, translated:
“You have a very bad cold! You’d better stay home”
“But my regular poker game is tonight”
“I hate to disappoint the guys! What can I do?”
“Now… Pretend he’s me and bet accordingly!”
MW: Part of me thinks this story is an ultra-sarcastic stealth parody about our nation’s current immigration policy. “You know what those Mexicans brought into the country this time? Illegal Amazon* parrots!”
(* – I don’t know if “Amazon” in the 11-23 strip means a certain variety of parrot, or if means the parrots were ordered on amazon.com)
@The Rambling Otter:
There are some breeds of parrots that don’t merely “repeat” words. If trained, African Gray Parrots can identify objects and have (sort of) conversations with their owners. They are very smart.
I imagine the people who train these parrots are very intelligent themselves…and Sunny lives with Toby. Draw your own conclusions.
@Baja Gaijin:
Did you just imply Toby owns a brain?!?
Woman on telly: “Ha ha ha!”
Parrot Sunny: “Ha ha ha!”
Readers: “Aaaaah aaaaah aaaaah!”
RexMD: Why do I have the feeling that the flowers aren’t from Augie???
Wrecks Moregone:
Winter, that bouquet is from Lorry’s not-son Cody or Corey or Whatever His Nane Was.
In other words you have a new stalker and Auuuuughie isn’t around to help.