Bygone times, mostly
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Mary Worth, 2/10/26
OK, finally, finally we have absorbed the lessons (?) of the great Toby-Ian parrot story, and after eating those vegetables we get our dessert. That dessert is hot beefcake in the form of Dr. Jeff, who, after fitting a hood that’s too long to close onto his sports car, is taking a break to casually lean back, with his lilac shirt unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up to tease us with glimpses of his James Dean-esque undershirt and rippling forearms, like you do. Who wouldn’t want to go on a “sunset cruise” (wink) with this guy? The Mary Worth trufans certainly can’t resist!
Hagar the Horrible, 2/10/26
I guess we have Lucky Eddie awkwardly announcing that he’s staying outside in the first panel so that it would make sense for him to be asking this question to set up the punchline in the second. But I prefer to think that he knows Hagar all too well, and simply doesn’t want to watch Hagar murder the inhabitants of his former home and plunder whatever wealth they have, just like he murders most of the strangers he encounters on their journeys.
B.C., 2/10/26
I appreciate the single tear the cute chick “Grace” is crying for the farmers here. “Being a farmer sounds tough,” she’s thinking. “I’ll definitely urge my nomadic hunter-gatherer band to avoid agriculture indefinitely, and only interact with settled communities when we raid them for surplus goods.”
73 replies to “Bygone times, mostly”
Wary Morth:
Translation: “No, Jeff, you are still not getting any!”
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Wrecks Moregone:
Apply to the Lion King, I think they have a big Scar available.
Stone Soup – Wally’s looking to get the dipstick wet.
Hägår has definitely killed the owners of his ex house who so kindly invited him in, right?
That’s why they aren’t showing him out, right?
MW:
“What time are you picking me up?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’d have to be able to close the hood to see in front of me to get to your place, and the hood is drawn so out of proportion that if I were to do that, I’d obliterate my windshield glass!”
MW: “Are you going to wear that sexy lingerie I bought you for Christmas?” “Depends…”
MW: Nothing says “middle-aged guy who needs to show off his wealth” than a guy who uses a vintage Corvette to hold his garbage can.
I could have Sworn that Sven Svenson was the name of the Janitor from Archie.
After a tedious search, I found his name is Joseph Svenson, but that was only for the Netflix series “Riverdale”.
After an even deeper search, his original comic counterpart apparently has no first name. His name is just “Mr. Svenson”
MW Sorry, I cannot believe thst this scene is real. Im guessing tomorrow we’re going to see Dr Jeff snort himself awake from an impromptu nap on a pile of old Auto Mechanic magazines. He phones Mary and immediately gets his call declined.
HtH Thee are times when this strip seems to be less about Proud Viking Warriors than scheming junkies scraping enough cash for their next hit.
MW: Wow, Jeff’s stonefaced in panel 2. Mary wasn’t meant to say “yes”! He was sure she already had plans! What’s the point of buffing your image with offers of grand romantic gestures if your girlfriend expects you to follow through on them?
BC: That tear drop is her prison tattoo. Grace killed someone, and that someone was Cute Chick. What, you think she just changed her name? Oh no, this is a real Us (2019 Jordan Peele movie) situation.
Hagar gazes nostalgically at a token of the time he murdered Svenny Svenson.
You all are far to cynical. The Nordic code of hospitality would oblige the couple to offer shelter to anyone who asks for it in the dead of winter (not pictured) and forbid Hagar from killing his hosts.
What happened to the hunky new guy Luann was ogling yesterday? Did she already lose interest?
HtH:
“Whatever happened to Svenny, anyway, Hagar?”
“He made a small fortune as an adult making and purveying Svenson’s Frozen Dinners to accompany us on our long seafaring excursions!”
BC: This is just conceptually wrong. Any farmer who’s big enough to “feed the world” is definitely not starving to death. If anything, the problem is that big, corporate farms have squeezed out all the multi-generational family farms. To say nothing of what happening to the labor supply right now. I would say “stay in your lane”, but I don’t think B.C. has a lane.
JP: If one of my loved ones was a judge, and had abruptly departed for Norway, and and had left me to look after their annoyingly precocious kid, and then hadn’t been heard from in months, and the chief judge of the courts was calling me every few days to ask WTF? because the docket was piling up, you can bet that one of the very first things I would have done would have been to call the police in Norway to see whether they knew anything. And maybe they would know something. And even if I hadn’t thought of it yet, you can bet the chief judge would have. But time passes slowly in Cavelton.
Blondie Do you have a physical stopwatch? because despite allowing 21st-century technology (even buying it as Christmas gifts), we are adamantly opposed to any use of any ‘phone” for something other than communication – no alarms, timers, or stopwatches allowed in your apps, son!
GT Father of the Year / Coach of the Year with no desire for knowledge of, or consequences for, misbehaviour, folks!
MT … or he just paid attention to the Vegas tourism ads that include the wilderness areas like Red Rock Canyon and Pinyon Pines for those who want a casino break?
MW:
Okay, so it’s great that Dr. Jeff has the cool old Corvette and all, but you know how Oscar Mayer has the “Wienermobile”? – Mary should be driven everywhere in a “Muffinmobile.”
MW:
“We’ll just slide over effortlessly from the Prodigal Sportscar to the S.S. Conspicuous Consumption!”
MW:
“I’ve got a splashy fiberglass touring car and a leviathan of a boat that’s so big that it could host all the denizens of Noah’s Ark! — but I’m not compensating for anything. Honest!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: Actually the whole “Farmers working for pennies while big companies take all of the money”
That’s been going on for centuries, with peasants and serfs in regards to royalty.
I’ve heard many people talk like this is something new and that people were better off back in the old days.
MW: Why, this car is melodramatic/ It’s sychophantic/ It’s diplomatic/ Why, it’s Greased Meddlin’!
JP: How are you going to forget colors when you’re all wearing blue?
MW: I’m thinking that if Mary was a heterosexual woman with a sex drive approaching normal she wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off that body. That looks like a pose for a calendar. There’s no way that nurses would not be throwing themselves at him.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I think we all played ourselves yesterday. The ‘hunky guy in the shadows’ was merely Ox running to catch up to Dash and having him come in from a completely different direction in the next panel was a mistake.
Does this means the Evansii suck at drawing as well as story cohesion and character development? You don’t say!!
MW: “You’ll have to pick me up, Mary. My car broke down.”
MW: I’m still unclear what Mary did during the “parrot incident”. Possibly she’ll make up something, or maybe it’s finally time for her to omit she’s no longer “Mary the Meddler” but “Mary the Passive Observer”.
Mary Worth: VIAGRA: For when you need a little blue pill to help you with your little blue balls.
MW: A clearly overpowered sports car and a pose that’s ‘James Dean-esque’… Josh, why must you torture us with a denouement that we all *know* isn’t going to happen?!
DT: Oh fer cryin’ out loud… having one of the Mahoney gals be the killer in disguise would be preferably to this faux psychological crap. No wonder they had to pull a hitherto completely unknown character out of their ass, just like the ‘solutions’ to the Minit Mysteries.
RMMD: Phooey! I’m so mad I could go spray paint someone stinks on a school wall!
@fausto: And if the Norweigian police were smart they’d have said to go pound snow; they’re having enough problems without the likes of Cavelton dumping their unwanted cloak-and-dagger crap in their peaceful coffee houses!
B.C.: [Extremely Murry Wilson voice] Why am I weeping along with Grace? I should be weeping along with Lady Liberty!
@Ken: In her telling, it will be Mary who Sunny alerted to the smoldering electrical fire by flying out Ian’s window and through hers (‘Pompous Axx on Fire!’), and then heroically kicked down the door before rushing in with a properly charged, electrical fire-rated extinguisher. Ian and Toby were so grateful they gave Mary all their still-wrapped gifts and now Sunny can’t stop saying ‘Mary’s the greatest! Mary’s the greatest!’
@The Quiet Man: Yes, this is narratively confusing. In yesterday’s strip, Luann was looking away from the man she was talking to, to admire the silhoutted man in the second panel. She’s making a contended “mm” in the last panel. Today she’s laser-focused on Black Sweater Vest Guy, and making the same contended expression to him, as if to say “what is this ‘we’ you’re talking about?” while silhoutted hot guy is nowhere to be found. Is Luann just latching on to every male who walks by, like some kind of lost duckling?
B.C. : [Wipes tear] Looks like someone misjudged the futures market.
MW- perhaps Jeff realizes that the nautical theme isn’t getting him any closer to Mary’s boudoir, so he’s going to try the James Dean approach and drive her to Santa Maria for some tri-tip
Dustin It’s funny because….well, actually, there’s nothing funny about it.
MW: “Hey, you! Get away from that car!” Jeff slinks back to his Kia Soul.
Heathcliff: They went to the Meat Museum which has to be a sexual euphemism. Out of any kind of meat they could have mentioned they went so Heathcliff could check out the “hotdogs”. Surprised they didn’t just come straight out and say he was stuffing his face with wieners.
Zits: Today Jeremy’s father is telling him about how he was sexually conceived,
BC: Good news, Grace! “Farmers,” as defined by our collective understanding, are rapidly vanishing, and corporate megafarms make tons of money!
It’s only their employees and various vassals who buy their copywrite-protected seeds you have to cry for.
And, um, everyone who relies on them or their food, I guess. Shed a tear for those poor saps if you want.
Mary Worth: Meeting the deadline since 1938.
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MOM! BC’s getting political again!
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MOM! Hagar’s doing anachronisms again!
FC: Does Jeffy always talk this way? Because it’s pretty gross. “My ass is gettin’ ready to take a ….”
The Svenson hoard, also known as the Hägarsson hoard, was discovered by children using a metal detector in a field in Sussex. The runes on the box containing the hoard reveal that it was originally owned by a man named Svenson, who was slain by a jarl known as Hägarsson, who himself later died at the Battle of Badon. The hoard remains one of the finest collections of Norse detritus in the British Museum, including a note from Svenson’s mother, reminding him to wash his hands.
There’s a joke to be made here about inflation and Svenson’s lunch money no longer being enough to buy 1/4 of a slice of low-quality Norse pizza that’ll make him feel sick for the rest of the day, but I’m not caffeinated enough to figure out how to word it.
The mental image of a Viking lunch lady is pretty great, though.
RMMD-Doctor, put this kid back under and cut him open again.
MW-Mary has plans every night but she can move hiding out in the bushes to another night.
Props Josh, I can’t improve on the Mary Worth comment. However tonight’s dinner at the Bum Boat goes (despite your alluring good looks Jeff, we all know you’ll be motoring home after a chaste kiss), it is definitely time for a Wilbur / Dawn storyline.
MW – Aw – who said Doctor J wasn’t a regular guy! Summer lovin’ – happened so fast; Summer lovin’ – my hair’s a duck’s ass….
We always wondered, “Does Dr Jeff make love or does Dr Jeff fuck? Today we learned the answer: neither, because he insists on wasting his efforts on Mary Worth”
MW – “I’ll pick you up at 5:00. Also, they sent me the wrong part for my Corvette, so you’re going to have to stick your head out the passenger side and navigate.”
MW: This is going to go on for another two weeks, isn’t it? OK, Karen Moy, you win. Bring on your prize pig named Wilbur and we’ll be grateful.
@Voshkod:
I thought they were known as the Hagärsdottir? After Honi Hagärsdottir, who was the person referred to in the Order of the Garter‘s famous motto Honi soit qui mal y pense?
MW: Mary needs surgery to pry her knees apart. Call in Rex Morgan.
BC: Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
JP: This attitude is how Randy makes friends wherever he goes!
“Here in Siberian Prison Camp, my beardy friend, we don’t end our sentences in prepositions.”
Phantom: Your Girl Scout troop leader, of course! She’s not about to lose the best toll house cookie baker in her group.
RMMD – Is this a rerun from 1958? I only ask because the kid said “phooey.”
Apparently Jeff’s ultra expensive Ferrari, or Lamborghini, or Lotus, or Porsche, or Aston Martin or less expensive Corvette, is having a motor issue. We’ve never done a plot where Mary meddles in mechanics. And while it’s early in the morning for my mind to turn in this direction, look closely at the first panel. Is the artist trying to tell us that Dr. Jeff is, shall we say EXCITED, about seeing Mary. And ‘Dinner at the Bum Boat’, is that a euphemism for …………………………………………………………………….
MW: For someone whose entire vibe screams mid-life crisis–the SS Compensation, the sporty convertible, the hair that screams “Just for Men Touch of Grey package model”–Jeff is pretty adamant on maintaining his relationship with Mary rather than hooking up with a twenty-something wellness influencer.
JP: You can give me all the angry eyebrows you want, Randy, but you’re still gonna be here until Christmas making toys in my workshop. Capisce?
JP: Looks like Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe finally nailed Uncle Jesse and got him sent up the river along with the other Duke boys.
MARY WORTH: “Me? I’m just hanging out at the Lamborghini car lot. Why? It’s just the way I like to pass the time occasionally. Anyway, I’ll pick you up at 5.”
DT: The way this plot is ending like a deflated balloon Dick might as well join Dr. Jeff and Mary on the battlecruiser HMS Medicare Fraud.
C’shaft: I literally never heard of Yondr pouches before they were mentioned in this strip yesterday, and I’m already sick of hearing about them.
DT: So, someone finally calls Dick Tracy out on using his role as a state-sanctioned enforcer to justify his thirst for violence, and all he can do is whine “that’s not fair”? Come on, the old Dick Tracy would have had a guy eaten alive by rats for such presumption!
Dustin: Because when I think of someone who has embodies the message of letting go and learning to take life as it comes, I think of Dustdad.
MT: You looked it up on Google Maps, don’t be so smug.
RMMD: You think Johnny goes for the old-school Boris Karloff look or the trendy Jacob Elrodi?
SH: If you asked me which comic strip would do a ripped-from-the-headlines arc on the NCAA points shaving scandal…this would not have been my guess.
@The Quiet Man: Yes, if Mary tells that version, it would make the psychological picture leap into sharp focus.
B.C. – Apologies, but I have to correct you here, Josh. Nomadic hunter-gatherers didn’t raid agricultural settlements – they traded with them. Ironically, we were more civilized before civilization.
@TheDiva: It’s the Challenge.
Some climb mountains.
Some ski across Antarctica.
Dr. Jeff has found a frozen wasteland for his own.
JP: In panel #1, “Santa Claus” sounds like he’s practicing lines for some sort of bizarre Dr. Seuss story.
RMMD: Johnny doesn’t know Frankenstein was the doctor, not the Creature.
I’m gonna chalk Rex’s mistaking the characters up to sheer professional discourtesy born of jealousy.
Lockhhorns: “Back in” is doing a lot of work here.
Beetle Bailey: Beetle, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Okay, the FDA will reveal if that was the right axiom for me to use here
Dustin is being given advice from a song his grandpa sang over half a century ago.
Does that mean a then-young Ed was told to remember “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”?
@TheDiva: I wonder if Trashlee is still rebounding from her relationship with Dr. Jeff Junior? She might appreciate a booty call, between quarts of ice cream in front of her television.
“Every morning, before we’ve finished breakfast, we are in debt to the farmer”–Martin Luther King
LUANN: Once again, everyone misses the real punchline here which is that Luann pays even less attention to her strip than the Curmudgeons do, as poor Ox is stuck reiterating the storyline that happened a month prior since Luann is so alienated from her supporting cast that not of her friends and loved ones felt the need to get her up to speed (and considering that this dog made frequent guest appearances at
The FuzeKafe KablooieSpirit-Halloween-Store-coming-soon, this includes her own parents.)(I’m kidding, of course. The actual point is that Ox still desires some of Tiffany’s hot lovin’, which she is, of course obligated to give, autonomy be damned, because Ox is a “nice guy” (who does normal, non-creepy things like sleep with her sweater), but she won’t ,so she’s a stick-up bitch!)
@Weaselboy:
Isn’t that the premise of the entire series (at least as Terry Beatty envisions it)?
@2+2=7:
Until Puddles shows up*, I’m going to assume this was initially a sequence of Ox talking with TIFFANY (explains why she would randomly ogle a guy walking by, when Luann is supposed to be steady with Phil), like how I could see the “Career Paths” initially being “Creative Writing 101, now under new management” (Les would have initially being Piro, with “Mr Gray is forcing me to get a real career” being replaced with “I realised that avoiding you girls (because I hate you) is less of a priority than learning creative writing”).
*Why WOULD Luann be in the dog park without Puddles, anyway?
DT: The ending sorts of fizzled but it is good to note that someone realize DT shoots a lot of people.
GT: With the guest artist gone – is Gil less jowly? Did he get cheek liposuction?
MW: They should get the recent guest artist on GT – Louie Chin – who definitely draws cars that are proportional and well look like a real car. Maybe he is also good with boats and Dr. Jeff’s motor boat won’t seem so turgid.
JP: The story pivots again to now a prison story with Randy? Meanwhile Charlotte has figured out how to get an Uber back to join Neddy.
Phantom: Easy there Annie Oakley – were these warning shots?
No matter how few clothes I wear or how cool my car is. Anytime I mention eating at the Bum she loses all interest.
@2+2=7: This might be the one area where I’m prepared to give the Evansii the tiniest bit of slack. Whether by accident or design, the Evansii (to the best of my recollection) has never shown or insinuated that Ox thinks Tiffany *owes* him any ‘hot loving’ (which I’m not sure she’s even capable of anyway) or portrayed him getting snarky and petulant when he’s ignored unlike a certain other ‘nice guy’ we could name.
Granted, this inability to read the situation makes Ox a dullard like Luann, but at least he’s been shown to be capable of holding down a job and letting things roll off their back.
As for the bit with the sweater, Dash needs it as a security blanket and Ox wants to be near Dash. Now if Ox had said Dash no longer needs it but he’s keeping it anyway…
@TheDiva: Mary is an adequate beard.
@Banana Jr. 6000: You know that, and I know that, but we also know that this strip is getting slapped on the dashboard of an 18 Wheeler to be glanced at by a farmer doing OTR trucking to make ends meet as he listens to “Georgia Mules and Country Boys” on the CD player.
Funniest thing in the world Mary Worth could do would be if a THIRD parrot showed up at the Butt Boat.