Facial expression theater
Post Content
Crankshaft, 3/25/26
I like the combination of Crankshaft’s dopey smile and Keesterman’s look of genuine concern in the final panel. Consistently misspeaking like this isn’t normal and it isn’t funny, and I guess someone should tell the latter to Andrews McMeel Syndication, which sells this strip to newspapers all over the country.
Hi and Lois, 3/25/26
Wow, Hi’s face in that last panel is a lot less “Ha ha, the mayor wasn’t even able to get that ball over the plate!” and a lot more “Oh my god … the mayor somehow killed six and injured dozens more with an errant throw. This is awful. This is the darkest opening day in the history of Major League Baseball.”
Mary Worth, 3/25/26
I feel like logically we must assume that there’s an unseen third panel, where someone is fretting that Mary hasn’t reached out for a bit. Is it Wilbur? Probably Wilbur. He’s hit some new emotional low in a comical fashion and Mary is the last person he knows who won’t laugh directly in his face about it. Obviously there’s no unseen fourth panel, because nobody is worried that Wilbur hasn’t gotten in touch lately.
79 replies to “Facial expression theater”
Dementia is funny!
~Tom Batiuk (apparently)
Neither “Rolex” nor “Rolodex” is spelled with an “a,” you monsters.
@The Rambling Otter: I mean, it’s not funny when they mispronounce words in The Family Circus either, but at least it’s cute to some extent. But old people doing it? No, just no.
Batiuk: Give me my Pulitzer already!!
RMMD:
“As you can see from today’s repeat second panel, Fergus, exercising with free weights was part of my regular fitness routine when I was ‘Lorna Starr.’ Now, you’re the only dumbbell I have to deal with!”
JP: Well, that deescalated quickly.
yDT: “Kill da wabbit… kill da waaaaaaaaahhhbit….”
Hi and Lois:
“Chip, how can you even see anything to begin with, what with that unholy mop covering your eyes?”
H&L: I’m from Cincinnati, where then-mayor Mark Mallory once threw an Opening Day first pitch so bad it still gets shown on national broadcasts. This hits a little too close to home to be funny is what I’m saying.
H&L: In this case, “Who’s that throwing out the first pitch?” was a reference to someone else being tarred and feathered.
Mary Worth:
“Thank goodness I have the Nigerian prince to correspond with in the interim!”
Josh’s quip about killing six people with one throw, I’m just picturing the ball bouncing back and forth, repeatedly hitting people in the face, no matter how improbable.
Note to self: When Jesus returns again, and becomes a mega celebrity, don’t let him throw a pitch at a baseball game… as he will smite these people and they probably will deserve it.
MW: Mary faces an ethical problem: Is it okay to smile when saying “I told you so.”
MW: Wait, so these scammers have found someone gullible enough to send them $200,000, no questions asked, and they aren’t going to keep dipping from that well until it runs dry? Or did Trixie escape?
CS: oh gosh, Josh, that word play was kindda cute. Rolex (fancy), Rolodex (contains contacts)’ Rolaids (turns stomach) watch. Plus, were pretty sure Ed is still alive. Relatively speaking)
GA: Will Walt “cheat” to get into what he hopes is heaven? Ah, the last temptation.
Zits used the word “Buttmunch” because the comic is coming to an end and they are presumably going to put in all the things the editors wouldn’t allow before. I can’t wait to see the last week of this comic about teenagers where they have a drug fueled sex party.
“What happened with her and her surgery?” Wooha, that’s a HIPAA violation, buddy!
Moy is making good use of the narrative device known as the “ghost of Wilbur” in this story arc.
@Lauralot:
#12. MW: either SE Asian scammed ng is a hot stop c right now, sre reporters are getting leads from the comics. Radio program on NPR last night discussed scam networks esp. in Scambodia.
H&L Are they shocked by a bad throw for the first pitch? I thought the whole point was it’s some non-baseballer being honoured and it was news if the pitch was good.
MW Hey! Don’t we get to see Enslaved Scammer Boy enjoying his slightly better living conditions in this catch-up strip? C’mon, what does grossing 200k$ get a scam serf? more food? a non-stained shirt?
JP Despite Ann’s adroit efforts to wrap this up and get the possibly dangerous unknown man out of the house, she still couldn’t manage it before the colourists forgot about her skirt.
“Several weeks”? You mean that Mary had weeks without getting her fix of meddling and only now she’s noticing the absence? Or maybe we read the storylines one after the other, but in universe they happen in parallel, so Mary was dealing with Estelle or Toby during these weeks? Or maybe she had some meddling adventures off-screen but they were too boring to report. Wait, is that even possible?!
MW: The quintessential problem faced by Harv—and, indeed, by all of the Charterstone residents—is whether it’s worth it to have some small measure of peace by actively avoiding Mary, in order to be spared her intrusive, moralizing advice, if at the end of this quiet respite you know you must answer the inevitable knock at your door to discover you have to eat one of Mary’s casseroles.
@Anonymous: I think it’s pretty clear there are no longer editors for the comics, just a straight funnel to the screen/page. Even a mostly checked-out bored editor would be calling out some of the shoddy work being done in so very many strips.
“You like my new wristwatch? It’s a Dick Tracy watch”
“A lot of smart watches these days have the futuristic technology you used to see only in comics.”
“No, it means that buying this watch comes with a one-time immunity to beat up a minority”
If you read these strips in a vacuum, you would think that “Mary Worth” was satirising strips like “Mary Worth”. While the people of Chatterstone receive hundreds of strips about their first-world problems, there are literal slaves in the Third World that are the real victims of the scam economy, so we should sympathise with them. But we know Mary Worth, both the strip and the character, and we know she/it is completely devoid of irony and self-reflection
MW: Oh man, you know Harv is getting desperate because he’s on an actual computer now. “Maybe she emailed my laptop instead of my phone!” he thinks, not understanding how any of this works.
@Ettorre: Mary’s been meddling at her cat for practice.
JP: This whole Randolph/Randy thing has me wondering if what Randy’s full name actually is. Randal, I assume, or did Alan saddle him with a hypocrism from birth?
Crankshaft:
“Let’s organize a quick game of poker! — a container of Metamucil to the winner!”
Crankshaft: Speaking of missing panels, there’s a third, fourth, and probably fifth out of sight here, with Ed repeating the same joke, to the increasing consternation of his friends. Is…is this what they mean by the disease progressing? Do they need to take the car keys away? Is this why he’s increasingly incontinent? Okay, that one’s probably down to the gallons of coffee he swills every day.
“You’re not alone, faithful Hi and Lois readers, we don’t know who these ‘celebrities’ are either. Yeah, we don’t know why they just can’t get Mark Harmon every year either.”
***
Mary Worth will earn my eternal admiration if tomorrow the scammer talking about how much money they got from the mark and the next panel pulls back to show the conversation is with an unkempt and chained up Wilbur Weston.
Cincinnati?! Where in 1996 the plate umpire dropped dead from a heart attack only a few pitches into Opening Day. Owner Marge Schott was upset that they postponed the rest of the game. “They have three other umpires, don’t they,” she reasoned while lamenting all her problems: “First the snow and now this!” Good times.
Imagine going back in time to whenever Crankshaft was young and explaining that in the future, more people would own Rolexes than Roladexes. What a utopian and wildly off-base vision of the future they’d get!
Hi and Lois: Surely Hi knows it’s opening day? And if he were paying attention, they’d have announced who was throwing out the first pitch? The only way this makes any sense at all is if Hi and Chip are doing a bit, watching a blank TV screen, or more likely a rerun of Animal Planet: Dark Days in Monkey City.
@The Rambling Otter:
MW: Of course, what a skinny old man who just squandered his life savings really needs is a week’s worth of textureless brown glop.
Mary Worth:
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear all my purple ascots rolled.
Shall I dye my hair again? Do I dare to eat a pear?
I shall send urgent AOL chats, and wait for Trixie dear.
I have ignored the meddlers’ singing, each to each.
MW: Mary considers what kind of casserole she should bake for Harv, but frowns as she is suddenly bereft of ideas. Then her face brightens, and she hits speed dial on her phone. “Baja will know just the thing!”
Hmmm, wonder why she never does wellness checks on Wilbur? I guess there are things even Mary Worth is afraid of.
H&L: Hi is not completely to blame here. Having William Shatner tossing the first pitch to Dick Van Dyke isn’t as cute as it sounds.
To Mary Worth, “homemade casserole” is a euphemism like “Cleveland steamer” or “rusty trombone.” If you fail to keep The Meddler updated, she’ll wish you the worst!
Mary Worth II: The blood-splattered call center is found after several weeks, and the one surviving guard, locked in a cell, starved and in his own filth, explains: “When we presented the one called ‘Trixie’ his set of steak knives for a job well done, I told them, ‘I have a bad feeling about this. . . .'”
Crankshaft-Nixon then goes into a variation of his Checker speech.
Blondie-For being such a food connoisseur Dagwood should know that fish is meat.
MW-What did Harv3y tell the bank when they asked him why he withdrew $200,000?
MW-“And a muffin. Somebody has to take this cat off my hands.”
MW-Mary’s making a tuna Muffin casserole.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
Very clever! Got the reference, one of my favorites. Made my morning. Kudos.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Yeah, we have had some memorable Opening Days.
MW: “or maybe he would enjoy a nice hot dish of baked catfish?”
@Hibbleton: Yes, because saying “I told you so” is the only thing Mary ever does.
As someone wiser than I pointed out, this is a case where Mary’s meddling would have actually been useful. She knew what was going on, she’s seen this scam before (with Wilbur and Tatiana), she knew how much money was involved, and she knew of HH’s (local) relatives who could have been brought in to help. She did nothing, and let it happen.
Hi and Lois-“Do you think they’ll be able to scoop that person’s brains back into his skull?”
CS: Whipsawing from the Batton Thomas interview thinking “I’d rather see Ed fumbling his word choices” and then in the middle of a week of that, finding oneself thinking they’d rather see some more of Batton talking about how he settled on his preferred pencil for illustrating.
In today’s “Bergman does the Family Circus,” The encroaching metropolis reflected in the window foreshadows the inevitable passing of this idyllic family scene.
Skipping the muffins and going straight to the casserole. Mary ain’t playin’.
Hi and Lois has been exploring exciting new emotional territory for a while now. Today’s strip may be the greatest example of the strip’s current era. Instead of giving us a joke, the characters are reacting to something we can’t see– Mister Snuffleupagus throwing the first pitch in a game? Why not?– and letting us pretend there’s a joke! It’s a completely unexploited innovation in humor. I wonder why.
CS – I think it’s nice that Keesterman breaks bread with the guy who destroys his mailbox on a regular basis. I guess he takes pity on him since he can neither drive nor speak correctly.
COTW in my book – and definitely Scroteworthy.
GT: I see not one, but two baguettes, and what might be a head of celery. I appreciate keeping to the comics trope of what anyone grocery shopping ends up with.
Blondie: Yes, Dagwood, don’t trust the woman who runs the town’s biggest catering service to select good fish and choose the right complementary flavors.
BG&SS: Maybe if they didn’t nail paper to the wall there wouldn’t be so many patches in the Smith household.
Mary Worth: Maybe Olive: Unnerving Child Psychic exists in Mary’s world to highlight the fact that mental powers are genuine in her reality. Mary doesn’t know she’s telepathic or whatever, but guys? She’s telepathic or whatever!
She’s also weaponized some kind of cooking magic. I don’t have time to dig into the archive, but it’s a rich topic, for sure.
@Terry Rhoden: I want MORE Batton Thomas. I’ve never seen a mainstream content creator destroy himself this aggressively in my life.
DtM: New artist, or did they go straight to AI? And what is Alice wearing – toreador pants? With knee socks and ballet slippers?
@Weaselboy: I don’t. I think it’s sick, and suggests some serious problems on Keesterman’s part. But characters being friends with people who do nothing but abuse and insult them is a staple of the Funkyverse.
Crankshaft – Dolly Keane: That man needs to see a doctor.
Mary Worth – Where’s my recipe for hamburger meringue pie?
Serious question: Is Mary going to get HH’s money back? I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, since he had the audacity to storm out and reject her initial meddle.
Mary should make plans to go to the Hallmark store to look for an “I told you so” card.
Add “people who make wishes to genies” to the long list of people Frazz and Caulfield are superior to.
@Hibbleton: MW: I think I’ve seen Mary smile (happily, not smirking) but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh.
Maybe she’ll make an exception for Foolish Fop as she demands this month’s condo association fees.
H&L: it wasn’t Opening Day, but my favorite ceremonial pitch came from Mary Tyler Moore.
Her TV show was set in Minneapolis and they built a statue to her.
The Twins invited her to the game the day it was unveiled.
MTM stood on the mound. Pretended to be chewing tobacco and scratched herself like a ballplayer.
Took a full windup and threw a perfect strike.
Crankshaft : Nah, I think Keesterman and Meckler are thinking “EVERY time he pipes up, we change the subject and start talking amongst ourselves instead of with him, and he STILL doesn’t get the hint!”
Like, it’s not just me, right? That first panel reads like Ralph and George trying to change the subject of the conversation, and it’s something that only involves them and doesn’t involve Crankshaft, so he has no reason to speak?
**************
Hi & Lois : Unfortunately for Hi and Chip, that *IS* a baseball player. And the season’s new main pitcher. The team they’re rooting for is DOOMED.
@Anonymous: Zits: Maybe Beavis & Butthead have taken over.
@Pozzo: Hey, at least she scribbled a sympathy note on the opening day flowers she had received from the Reds’ TV broadcaster and sent them to the umpire’s widow. She wasn’t completely devoid of class.
C’shaft: In this age of smart watches and digitized data, an old guy like Crankshaft is the only person who should be able to know the difference between a Rolex and a Rolodex.
MW: Maybe Widower Hart wouldn’t like a homemade casserole, since casseroles tend to serve 4-8 and he lives alone and can’t possibly finish one without part of it going bad.
Dustin: It’s very telling that only the stupidest person in Dustin thinks that a comic strip about Dustin is a good idea.
Luann: ….WHY would a rock climbing gym have restrooms you can’t use with the rock climbing shoes?
Pluggers are racking up medical debt that will not be paid off for at least two generations.
RMMD: Weights? Please, this is the twenty-first century–Maena would have been mainlining Ozempic.
@Charterstoned:
I think the residents of Charterstone caught on by now.
In the fairy tale show “Once Upon a Time” the evil Queen despite screwing over literally everyone in the Kingdom multiple times… she attempts a redemption arc, first off just by trying to be nice, so at a potluck she bakes a lasagna.
Grumpy snarkily says that it’s probably poisoned, while no-one is daring to touch it, while glaring at her the entire time she’s there.
Just saying, the residents at Charterstone SHOULD* know better than to eat what Mary gives them.
*They should, but sadly everyone at Charterstone are complete idiots.
@TheDiva:
Luann: ….WHY would a rock climbing gym have restrooms you can’t use with the rock climbing shoes?
A rash of people stealing the shoes by leaving with them, making them put up a rule of how you have to return the shoes back to the desk if you leave the climbing area?
…But then, why is kooky kleptomaniac Tara, who’s gotten herself kicked out of SEVERAL places from her compulsive stealing, be the one who’s a stickler about THAT rule?
Pluggers: Pluggers are medically decrepit meatsacks #16,739.
Pluggers: Pluggers wear their hospital bracelets as jewelry because they long ago hocked their real jewelry to pay their doctor bills.
Crankshat – “Wristwatch”, because we need to make sure people don’t think it’s a pocket watch, because Rolex doesn’t make a pocket watch, as far we know. Oldsters need watches to keep excellent track of time of what’s left of their quickly dwindling lifespans. It’s a riot! Laugh, dammit!
Pluggers: Pluggers proudly wear their hospital bracelets like soldiers wear their campaign ribbons.
BF: On the up side, the fog in her aging brain means Blonde Friend doesn’t remember that, after a life of hard toil and sacrifice, she still can’t afford to retire to a nice lakeside property with “mature trees.” She’ll endure her suburban hellscape for another ten years or so, then die.
Phantom: ”Thank you, sir!….what’s a ‘cowboy?’”
“Jesus, H-man, we know you’ve been scammed and we’re just a pair of pears! Or maybe butternut squash. Look, it doesn’t really matter if we’re fruit or vegetables, we’re smarter than you. Oh, look at Mister Taxonomy there, saying that whether we’re pears or squash we’re still fruit. Look, buddy, you just lost 200 large to a Cambodian scammer, don’t make us explain the difference between botany and cooking. Jackass.”
@Ukulele Ike:
On Between Friends : are we in reruns? Because yesterday’s comic, where Blonde Friend completely zones out a coworker/superior because she is bored and doesn’t give a shit about what is happening at her job makes more sense as a rerun from BEFORE she got her “dream job” where she “gets to be her own boss”…
(though it’s funnier the other way, because it implies the actual problem with Blonde Friend’s job is Blonde Friend herself)@Liam:
“Blondie-For being such a food connoisseur Dagwood should know that fish is meat.”
Maybe the Bumsteads are Catholic? Or more likely, Episcopalian? Either way it’s a Wednesday during Lent, and fish gets a “not really meat” exemption.
Dagwood doesn’t realize that it’s Lent, because he slept through every Mass he’s ever been to.
I like that today’s H&L implies that somehow, in The Year of Our Lord 2026, Hiram Flagston is unaware that the ceremonial first pitch is almost always done by a celebrity who can’t really throw a baseball. Like this is brand new information to him.
@Anonymous: Plus, would you want to be putting your hands on a rock climbing wall where someone’s been putting shoes that were just in the restroom all over the handholds?
Crankshaft / Plugger mash up: only a plugger would get the Roledex reference. Amazing how once having a great rolodex of contacts was a sign of being well connected.
@Anonymous: I just thought of something else, how come Tara isn’t doing this the ‘badass who plays by her own rules’ way and breaking into the rockwall after dark and daring Les to climb up without any safety gear, then bailing on him when he plummets to his back-snapping doom?
@treetown: Pluggers have Rolodexes packed with the phone numbers of people who are long dead.
Move over, Reed Hoover.
Luann: I guess if you have to go pretty bad, you can take off the special shoes and wade through the puddles of piss to the toilet in your socks. It’s been many years since I’ve been in a gym locker room, but I recommend bringing galoshes.
Luann: I can’t figure out why Les just didn’t use the bathroom as part of the process of renting the shoes. He had plenty of time to do this, whether he really needs to go or not. Any half-way decent pick-up artist would have Googled rock-climbing terms in advance anyway.