Downer Saturday
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Mary Worth, 3/21/26
“My heart … my delicate heart … too weak to fly to see my injured beloved. Time to heal myself using the best technique known to man: taking a pill and then tucking into an enormous bowl of hearty chili. It’s an old family recipe: you cook a pound and a half of ground beef, add barbecue sauce and exactly two beans, and serve!”
Blondie, 3/21/26
“Yeah, it turns out that every day of the year — every moment, really — is a crushing, depressing chore. But at least there’s death waiting for us, right? At least there’s death. [suddenly remembers he’s a character in a long-running comic strip who hasn’t aged appreciably in nearly a century] oh NO”
47 replies to “Downer Saturday”
Blondie-Wow. I had no idea that ‘Blondie’ turned into ‘Pluggers’.
FC-“Those aren’t the cookies I’m interested in,” Daddy says.
MW-“So I will take the train to you.”
MW-Harv3y, maybe you should ask Trixie for money to fix your broken heart.
MW:
“I’m not sure I should be swallowing this suppository! Oh, well — bottoms up! So to speak.”
Zits. They were doing a good job of no longer portraying his parents as Boomers who should be in their 70s for a while but today the cartoonists forgot and gave us references to Red Skelton and Bullwinkle. Should’ve been Sinbad and Stimpy.
MW:
“This will be great practice for when Trixie arrives and I have c to take lots of blue pills!”
MW: Figures a guy wearing an ascot would have two tiny ice cubes in his drink shaped like miniature diamonds.
MW:
Whatever is in that bowl is as thick abd viscous as the Great Red Spot of Jupiter.
MW: “I’d visit you in a heartbeat, Trixie…but I have a bad heart, heh, heh. See what I did there. I have another one about travel and itchy feet but I better keep that one to myself.”
Blondie:
“Now, does Tootsie get as upset as you about the passage of the four seasons, Herb?”
“Nope. Big girls don’t cry. And don’t slump your shoulders about it, Dagwood. Walk like a man!”
MW — “My angina is not yet stable” is going to be my new go-to excuse for not completing an unwelcome chore. Never thought I would write this, but Thanks, Mary Worth!
RMMD … and the answer to “how many in-person diner customers makes the difference between opening and not opening” in the Morganverse is (drum roll!) two! It takes two customers to make it worthwhile to employ another person! Those must be some pretty expensive breakfasts, or the town is still operating with a 1950s 1$ minimum wage
JP Well, the video explained nothing, but on the bright side at least they managed to do it in only one week.
MW: I’d visit you in a heartbeat… although my angina means “a heartbeat” isn’t exactly a stable measurement of time.
Mary Worth: Wow, so is this the “boy kibble” we’ve been hearing about? It really is pretty grim. I think our friend needs to find a new wife right away, no matter what! As a comedian from his era probably said, “Sure, she’s scamming me and I gave her all my money — but what am I going to do, stay single?”
Blondie: “It’s finally warm, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing… man, life sucks!”
Hi and Lois: Chip is sleeping in algebra class again. He may be having a great dream, but it’ll be a rude awakening when the teacher dumps a bucket of snow onto his head.
MW: “Also, because of your injury, Trixie, your VAGINA is not yet ABLE.”
@Bono Vix: re Zits: I think Zits is in reruns now, so maybe they really were Boomers when this first appeared.
@CanuckDownSouth: On JP – No no, it did explain one thing; Randy and April have a lot more ‘splodin and murderin’ to do before they can come home (they won’t be coming home), and Bogdan’s sudden interest in Charlotte means he’s going to spirit her away to join her parents to learn the family business.
FG I know it’s a genre trope, but geez, Ming’s doing one right off of that early-internet Evil Overlord List – “If I am ever the Evil Overlord and one of the Hero’s allies are captured, I will not use brainwashing (magical, medical, or other) to turn the ally into my tool to then attack and destroy the Hero. I will quickly, efficiently, and verifiably in my presence have the ally killed. At most, I will keep the ally’s preserved head in my office to intimidate the Hero is s/he ever gets there”
Phantom:
To while away idle time in the jungle, a young Worubu decides to “Do the Freddy” — with violent results.
Rex Morgan: Mae Mae had better get rediscovered by Hollywood soon, because it turns out she’s a terrible waitress.
MW: Personally I would have guessed “grape nuts” rather than “chili”. Are grape nuts still out there, in the old people section of the grocery store? I remember my bafflement as a kid at the blatant false advertising in the name of that cereal, which contains neither grapes nor nuts, nor in any way recalls either of those two delicious things, but would be more accurately called “bran brambles.”
@Rita Lake: Oh I thought the name was ok. They have the same texture as grape seeds.
@Rita Lake:
Yikes! That’s my favorite cereal.
Now I’m just confused. Mary Worth loves boats. You know you can actually travel the world on boats, right? They have regular passenger boats crossing the seas. It’s slow and expensive – they don’t let you take responsibility to feed yourself, you’ve got to pay for premium cuisine en route – but it’s not just cruise ships and pleasure yachts out there. If you want to go to, I wanna say Cambodia, and the doctors don’t let you fly, and you have a lot of money to your name, a boat should be plan A, right?
@Amelie Wikström: Yes, but he thinks she’s in New Jersey. I don’t think there are any regular routes out of California, through the Panama canal, and looping back there.
Judge Parker: “Do not being worrying I am being very sure I am not followed” :black clad commandos suddenly burst in through the Parker home’s windows and doors:
DT: “14 prisoners…Dick Tracy is going to be disappointed there were not even more.”
MT: More proof that Tad Crass is just a villain straight out of a cheap 1980s children’s film, like a hammy real estate developer who wants to bulldoze a local teen hangout or beloved restaurant in order to put up a new office building, but is foiled by a group of kids whose dirt-biking or roller-skating skills are required.
@Amelie Wikström: although that does bring up the topic of trains. Probably should have said he’s been advised not to travel away from his regular doctor.
@20 richardf8: Grape Nuts was named in the late 19th Century. People were stupider back then. Men thought women took Lydia Pinkham’s for all those herbs it contained, not its 20% alcohol content.
H&L: Bunny Buster is what Chip calls Lil’ Chip.
FC: Thel doesn’t let Dolly carry the bag with the celery stalk sticking out for all our sakes.
MW – Trixie reads his thoughts and replies, “Who’s this Angina chick, you two-timing snake!?”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I want to see Don Abundio”
“You’re too late”
“He’s in a contest for his soul right now and he’s in way over his head”
Blondie; We can’ see Herb’s feet, but behind that hedge he’s dancing Michael Flatley-style in panel 3.
MW: To be fair, HH is consuming the tastiest-looking thing we’ve ever seen in Mary Worth. And the chili is probably second place.
CS: And “Batton” continues to prove the superiority of ink and paper, by re-using the same copy-pasted head two days in a row, and for the seventh time in this 11-week arc. Look at Panel 1.
Luann: Gee, what man would ever be interested in a young woman with a job and personality who is receptive to video games but merely “used” to be a cheerleader? At least 90% of them.
Stay in your lane, Pluggers. Leave the relationship humor to… well, pretty much anything else.
@Terry Rhoden: On JP – we should be so lucky that the characters finally get some kind of permanent comeuppance for their… (gestures at past several years of strip).
Pluggers: I first read Chicken Lady’s remark as; “I have chicken every now and then,” which I thought was a cute way for Lynn Bailey to come out.
@Baja Gaijin:
Eating Grape Nuts felt like eating gravel. And what was up with Shredded Wheat?
Also impossible to eat, but I remember they had cool toys back in the 50s. They were Ford model cars so I got my mom to buy them and tried my best to eat the damn things.
@CanuckDownSouth: The Panama Canal is for wusses. ROUND THE HORN! ROUND THE HORN!!!
Phantom: I needed to blink and look again to understand that we’re getting a flashback to Worubu’s long-ago and beardless youth. My first thought was that some random patrolman was kicking in the door to his office. “It’s not RIGHT!”
MW: Relax, HH. The person you’re chatting with doesn’t even have a….oh! you said angina. Beg pardon.
@Baja Gaijin: Wow! Thanks for the bonus information, I’d never heard of Lydia Pinkham’s Herbal Women’s Tonic, cures all “women problems,” including “hysteria.” That’s a stitch! Now I’m craving a little pleurisy root with Jamaican dogwood and black cohosh…why should the ladies keep all the goodies to themselves?
And it’s a cultural touchstone! They even wrote songs about the stuff!
MW: Looks like Mary is going to cash in on another coronary stent referral to Dr. Jeff, ca-ching!
@CanuckDownSouth: Yeah, Amtrak has you covered in that case. Santa Barbara, excuse me Royale to LA, and then a long-haul to Chicago, and then to NY. It’ll take about 3.5 days. Or start out by heading north to SF, Portland, or Seattle, and head east from there. Mostly depends on whether you prefer desert or mountain scenery as you watch the world go by.
I did Portland to Chicago some years ago, and one fellow passenger I talked to was on his way home in Pennsylvania from Mexico, after going there for a less-expensive total hip replacement procedure. If he could manage three or four days on a train a week or so after that, angina should be no problem at all.
About half my comments vanish, and I’m beginning to wonder why I bother anymore.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
On Crankshaft : if it hadn’t been for that one throwaway strip where he drew an autograph at Comic Con last summer, I’d say this week would be building up to “Mr Batton Thomas… You *TALK* a lot about how exhilirating drawing your comic strip is, but I haven’t seen you put a single line to paper… If I asked you, point blank, to draw me a character from your strip, could you do it…?” (with the insinuation being that Batton Thomas is using a ghost artist)
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On Luann : You gotta remember, though, that Tiffany is FAT now. Yes, she’s drawn the exact same way as she was drawn in her trim high school year, but she’s supposed to be noticeably overweight still (at least, that’s how I interpreted a line she said during a conversation with Kip that roughly went “Yeah, I’m still fat, but it’s no longer an issue that’s brought up because I’m cool with it now.”)
MW- “Squark! 200 large! 200 large! Squark! Hardly’s a sucker! …Squark! Ha ha ha!”
RMMD “I’d better go check on my other customer…He’s grabbin’ at his neck and turnin’ blue…I think he’s tryin’ to get my attention!”
Hey Blondie, stay out of Hi and Lois‘ lane. They’re the ones who make punchline-free remarks about the weather. You don’t see Hi walking around with his knees bent and shoving big sandwiches in his mouth, do you?
@Anonymous: re: LuannNo, no! She still has a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, however the silhouette is now 2 millimeters wider on the standard comics page! But really, comic artists are at least as bad as the fashion industry where a size 6 is too far to normal modelling. They at least have the excuse that their craft follows from caricatures and is expected to exaggerate things when making “normal” look waif-thin, as opposed to starving actual human bodies to turn them into better clothes hangers.
@CanuckDownSouth: He could take Amtrak cross-country–it would take about 3-4 days but be real, what else is Widower Hart doing with his time?
MW: So Widower Hart drains his bank account, can’t pay for his medication and winds up in the hospital, and his estranged daughter is either forced to take him in or pawn him off to an assisted living facility. This is somehow presented as a happy ending.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
Me either