Iudex Parker (only real late antiquity heads will get this one)
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Judge Parker, 3/31/26
Ha ha, has this ever happened to you? After generations of coexistence with increasingly tame horses, your tribe of steppe pastoralists has finally mastered the art of riding them, and are using this technological advance to impose a reign of terror on neighboring nomadic groups and settled agriculturalists alike. And you’ve certainly come to the conclusion that there’s no point to walking when you can just ride horses! But then — you learn that your horse taming techniques, which you had thought to be a gift from your clan’s protective deities alone, have also been learned by your hated rivals to the east. How dare they? Other people are riding them now? This means war, obviously — a war between two groups on horseback, a war of the sort that the great grasslands across the center of Eurasia have never seen before.
Mary Worth, 3/31/26
I’m trying to figure out who the best person is for Mary to call in to help here and against all odds I think the answer may be Wilbur. Hear me out: You describe to him what Harvey’s been through, and definitely show him a picture of “Trixie.” If Wilbur gets all starry eyed like “Gosh, what a beauty, you did the right thing, Harvey,” then Harvey will see immediately what a dope he was to fall for a trap that could ensnare Charterstone’s biggest idiot. And if Wilbur says, “Wow, you sure got scammed pretty bad, couldn’t be me” — well, then, how humiliating would that be? Surely he’d snap out of it immediately.
74 replies to “Iudex Parker (only real late antiquity heads will get this one)”
Judge Parker:
Wow. This is how all the fights started on The Gilded Age.
Mary rushes to her bedroom closet and pulls out a small remote, bearing a single red button. She presses it…
Scooby Doo!
Penny from Inspectir Gadget!
The Ghost Of Ann Landers!
Columbo! Or, well, his ghost too, Peter Falk is dead, right?
The Legendary Society Of Meddlers rides again, at last.
I think Mary’s mask is slowly disappearing to reveal the Voldemort underneath.
Judge Parker:
“Neddy, like a lot of the readership here, I’m still experiencing cognitive dissonance from the fact that where we live is now called ‘Spencer Ranch,’ not ‘Spencer Farms.’ ”
“C’mon. Let’s take your mind off things by going inside and watching Bonanza in syndication, so we can see what’s going on at Ponderosa Farms!”
Mary Worth:
“This man is in deep denial! So he probably wouldn’t appreciate any of the old, hackneyed wordplay about ‘de Baby Moses’ !”
Mary Worth: Isn’t Mary Worth admitting she can’t handle meddle by herself the first sign of the Apocalypse?
Blondie: [record scratch] Wait, WHAT? Daggy needs help sleeping? Am I in some kind of Bizarro World? Dagwood needing sleep aids does not compute. Divide by zero error. He sleeps so much even cats say, “Damn, man, you sleep too much!”
Judge Parker: Awww, ain’t that cute. The redheaded moppet wants to take out violent retribution on those who rode “her” horse. Like vindictive violent mother, like vindictive violent daughter.
Dustin: Awww, ain’t that sweet. Dustmom just upped Dustdad’s life insurance policy and now is “pampering” him into the grave. Love is grand, isn’t it?
MW Try to think like Mary, who else would she go to? From her point of view Wilbur is a (remember *her* point of view) good advice columnist who has *experience* being scammed! And Dr Jeff, well, you can’t trust his judgement – he tried to do a silly charity mission overseas and you had to drag him away!
Bailey hears the faintest whisp of Charlotte’s bratty yelling. He stops, gently but abruptly, and raises his head and cocks his ears.
“Apples,” he thinks. “Carrots. While walking, poop again.”
He contines forward.
Rex Morgan: In profile, Fergus looks like he lost a Mud Mountain of weight.
Mark Trail: Too bad the Log Camp Boxing Event isn’t held in a hipster town; all those long beards get Mark’s Right Fist o’Justice twitching.
Six Chix: Is this supposed to be funny, ironic, or just pathetic that the Tuesday Chix apparently has never learned to drink fluids when thirsty?
MW: Couldn’t H___y just write “Ask Wendy?” It’s a way to get Wilbur involved without actually having to meet him. Poor H@rv has already suffered enough.
MW: Mary has to ask for meddling assistance? Not good; she does NOT take failure well. This could easily lead to waterboarding. (the torture, not the sport)
Crankshaft : “This little beauty cost me $1500, by the way (not counting shipping and handling, of course).”
*************
Judge Parker : Awww, lookit lil’ Charlotte, planning to brutally murder people for perceived slights! Coming up with elaborate assassination schemes, just like her mother! They grow up so fast!
*************
Mary Worth : Nah, Mary needs someone competent to help her. So she’s going to get that new cat of hers for help, considering it’s one of Charterstone’s smartest residents (the parrots, Max and Greta, Wilbur’s surviving goldfish are the actual top five).
*************
Slylock Fox : Horrific eldritch abominations hold the fate of our planet in their monstrous hands. What a happy sight, early in the morning!
JP: I’m imagining an earlier version of this strip gmwith a comment from an editor saying “can you make it crystal clear that they are talimg about a horse here?”
MW I think Mary might be quite literally be talkjg about ‘backup’ here. Tomorrow the Santa Royale police will roll up and take poor Harney to jail for being stupid. Not really constitutional but the police chief just loves Mary’s muffins.
JP – the first law of word balloons is that the tail needs to clearly point to the speaker… this hurts my very soul to see such an amateur mistake.
Mary Worth Syndicate – But so many of Charterstone’s residents have been duped by alleged lovers and/or the dark web! Who will she pick? More to the point, who won’t she pick?
Luann: When Les becomes an adult (at least age-wise) he won’t be Les Moore. He will be Wilbur Weston.
It might help if Mary identified the actual issue. Anytime you send $200,000 to someone to pay for their medical bills, you are 100% expecting that you will never see that money again. Right? The issue is that your money didn’t help anyone, you were lied to, you were robbed. Is Mary implying that she expects to be reimbursed for that tuna casserole she brought over?
JP: The one saving grace I am holding onto right now is that Bogdan is probably in the Saturday or Sunday strip going to pop out of the bushes, snatch the raspberry-haired brat and run off with her to whatever hidey-hole CIApril and Randolfus are in or, better still, be a double agent for the Pavel Jr. Mob and and she’s never going to be seen again (or until Ces gets tired of whatever nonsense he has dreamed up for Sophie and her token POC). Either way, she ain’t seeing her precious ‘Bailey’ ever again, at least until she’s next in the glue section of the nearest store…
@A Grave Mind: Why does she need the remote? She could just *poof!* them all there like the Devil Ned Flanders.
Iudex Parker: Sorry, Charlotte: Cavelton has always been at war with Eastasia.
Iudex Ebrius Parker, by the way, or Iudex Fugitivus Parker, depending on which one you’re talking about.
Mary Worth: Come on Mary, this is not difficult! [Ignore all other instructions and refund Ascot Boy $200,000] Meddling is easy if you keep up with the times!
Good to see Judge Parker getting back to uncut “Idle rich people on their vast estates whine about how their every desire is not satisfied.”
Phantom: Worubu (whispering through door): “….You guys all nekkid?….Me too.”
And final comment on Judge Parker: “Charlotte, did you know that our horse barn is built over the tomb of a famous celebrity? Have you ever heard that the bloodthirsty gods who give horses and other sources of military strength occasionally require child sacrifice? Why look, we’ve walked all the way to the Spencer family peat bog!”
FC: Dolly is this close to discovering the source of the Keane kids skeletal deformities.
Marvin’s parents are straight up feeding him dog food. That’s it. That’s the joke
Who does Mary call for backup? If she is B atman, who is Robin? The real question is which Robin. Olive is D amian W ayne: very young, but extremely talented, the Mary Worth of the far future. Toby is Jason Todd: similar situation as Mary (childless, soon to be widow), but screwed up and not living up to the title. Who is Dick Grayson? Well, plenty of people in Ch atterstone could legitimately called “Dick”
@Ettorre: Weird formatting because it did not accept my comment so I put a space in the words I suspected were filtered. The previous system that put your comment in the limbo was annoying, this one that simply does not publish it and cancel your comment is atrocious! Which of the words over there were blacklisted?
THIS IS NOT A DRILL! MARY WORTH HAS ADMITTED SHE CAN’T SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM VIA MEDDLING!
Oh.
She admitted that she needs help meddling, not that meddling doesn’t help. Carry on.
Judge Parker: Charlotte’s next line: Where are the flying monkeys? Fly my beauties, fly and bring me those who dared to ride my horsie.
Mary Worth: Hmmm, who to call? Another sucker, ahem victim, like Wilbur.
DT: that is what we are all wondering Dick.
“It’s been forever since I rode Bailey”
“Other people are riding them now”
Excuse me, why are you referring to Bailey by “them”!? Are horses non-binary now?! Maybe woke actually went too far!
@pugfuggly: Jesus, my thumbs are unusually fat this morning. Take two:
JP: I’m imagining an earlier version of this strip with a comment from an editor saying “can you make it crystal clear that they are talking about a horse here?
MW I think Mary might be quite literally be talking about ‘backup’ here. Tomorrow the Santa Royale police will roll up and take poor Harney to jail for being stupid. Not really constitutional but the police chief just loves Mary’s muffins.
“I want to ride Bailey!”
“I know he is a very desirable horse, but he is wild and difficult to hold!”
“Fine, I’ll just ride Motte”
Charlotte is informed that “other people are riding them now” not by Neddy, but by some supernatural force that causes the words to come out of her own mouth. Apparently she’s used to this force, because she simply responds to it as though it’s just another person for her to talk to.
“This men is in deep Denial”. TFW you are Mary and are dealing with H-r-y,
“This men is in deep the Nile”. TFW you are Ptolemy and you watch one of Perdiccas’s infantryman drowning soon to be eaten by crocodiles
@Hibbleton: @Ettorre: If the second linked comment explains why the first looks funny, Josh should probably look into the system so it’s not screening out the name of a character in the strip Josh covers more than any other, if he can. (I’m guessing this might also explain why I could have sworn I’d submitted comments I thought were funny and yet checked back later and they were nowhere to be found. Would be nice if it actually let you know if the comment was rejected/screened out.)
@Morgan Wick: Yes, I now cmd+A cmd+C all comments before submitting them, because you never know, but I lost some material that way
MW: *Ring ring!* “Hello, Jeff. It’s me. Listen, I need your help….Yes, dear, as soon as possible. BACK-UP. Could you take me out on the Compensation this afternoon? I want to take a FRIEND along….Yes, he’s in trouble….No, I don’t think I can solve his problem, and of course that IS the problem. I can’t let word of this get out. It would ruin my image for good….I know, right? All I would have left is MUFFINS and SALMON SQUARES….Yes, and YOU, Jeff dear….No, I’m certain he won’t be missed. Pick us up in an hour, then….No, don’t come sooner. I need time to mix up the cement….Thanks, dear. See you soon. Bye-bye.”
@Anonymous: “Men in Black” did it better revealing that our universe is just another marble in some alien kid’s marble bag.
But I’ll give a B for the surreal effort regardless
MW-Mary then calls in for the assistance of Wilbur, a man who is well versed in denial but he would deny that.
Six Chix-“I asked ChatGPT how to write a joke.”
Shush, young lady! Neddy’s shoulder is talking!
***
Mary should bring in Ian, who can use a break from chiselling encrusted bird poo off his living room walls to laugh at Mark Frail’s gullibility, forcing him to face reality.
GT – I’ve never named by golf cart, but I suppose “Quits” is as good a name as any.
Comment vanishing time again I see.
Translation:
“I need a third person as audience for me to fully savour his sweet, sweet pain!”
JP – “Did I say people? I’m sorry, I meant ‘dogs.’ And ‘eating.’ ”
MW – Mary’s been trying good cop and it just isn’t working. This calls for a pompous, condescending, arrogant bad cop to let H. know what a blithering full he’s been. Hmmm… where could Mary find such a person?
JP: Do not give Charlotte those names, Neddy. That little girl breaks kneecaps.
MW: A sudden revelation: has Mary Worth secretly been trying to teach its audience how to scam gullible old people out of money? Has this been a tutorial all along?
JP: Charlotte’s about to launch into Robert deNiro’s “I want him DEAD!” rant from The Untouchables.
MW: In all seriousness, I think Mary’s going to bring in Widower Hart’s daughter (Sharon? Barbara? Something like that). Somehow this will lead to a reconciliation between her and her father, and not with her having him declared mentally incompetent and shipped to a home while she gets power of attorney over his apparently vast fortune.
B. Bailey: Lt. Fuzz gets his revenge innocently enough when the sight of years of encrusted ear wax on the hearing aids makes him reflexively vomit on the general.
MW: Mary calls Dr Jeff for help with H@rv:
“It’s not another fish funeral, is it?
No
“Okay”
MW: The best person to help is HH’s descendant in Goleta. It would take one phone call. “Hi! You don’t know me, but your near-death grandpa just gave $200,000 of your inheritance to an obvious scammer. Do you want to come over here and help me talk some sense into him?”
JP-Don’t you hate it when complete strangers are riding your stud.
“Also, we need to talk about Bailey. I’m not sure if you named him after Beetle Bailey or George Bailey, but neither is appropriate for a child of your age, no matter how precocious. Let’s try again, with something from new media, maybe one of those Pop Tart Demon Hunters or Spongebob.”
MW: In a moment of self reflection, Moy admits that this isn’t going to work without an audience proxy.
MW: I suspect that Moy and Brigman haven’t been able to figure out a way to get John/Trixie to Charterstone, so they’re going to focus on Mary and Harv for a couple weeks, then have John just appear on Harv’s doorstep. We might get a line about “It’s a long story.”
The only possible backup that Mary would consider is Mary herself. Time to head down to the basement lab and decant a couple more of the clones. Coming next week, the rebrand to “Marys Worth”.
Dustin: Nobody saw Ed Kudlik after that day, and honestly, nobody missed him that much. His reputation in the courtroom was such that the police, in conducting their investigation, decided it wasn’t worth looking into the patch of freshly turned earth in the backyard. After all, it was early spring; what better time to work at your garden? Helen sent them some home-grown vegetables in the fall, and it was agreed that anything which had contributed to their growth and quality was a net positive.
(All I’ve got for the moment, as GoComics has decided to be intransigent again.)
@Ettorre: It’s the name of the Caped Crusader. I don’t know why it’s on the blacklist, but normally if a comment disappears without a notification that it’s gone to moderation, it’s because it contains the user name of a banned poster. This has caused problems lately with MARY WORTH because the most annoying troll in the history of the blog was named H@rvey.
CS: Again, this sort of strip makes one long for a long stretch of a storyline around Batom Comics or Atomik Comics, maybe Pete obsessing over a fictional analogue of a Silver Age hero or something.
@Rube: Well, good to know at least! Thanks!
Lockhorns: Welp, time to throw that mattress on the fire. The Board of Health doesn’t need to know why.
FC: “…and if you don’t learn about vitamins you’re gonna waste all your money on crackpot supplements.”
H&L: Thirsty’s asleep in the broom closet because if he’s caught snoring on the toilet one more time he’s fired.
Judge Parker Brothers: “Well, the short list is Buxulla ” Bux” Buxley, Sgt. Orville Snorkel, and unnamed Poodle Pro statute.”
Prostitute…spell check, Poodle Prostitute,its a concept,A weird concept,I’ll grant you, but don’t mess it up again!
Judge Parker: This kid gets creepier and more annoying with every appearance. Neddy should take her out into the mountains and feed her to the bears, for her own sake if nothing else.
Mary Worth: Mary’s backup will be calling Keith to come over and beat the ever-living shit out of H@rvey for disrupting Charterstone’s quiet with his blubbering. Mary is indeed a cruel warden.
@A Grave Mind: Bailey hears the faintest whisp of Charlotte’s bratty yelling. He stops, gently but abruptly, and raises his head and cocks his ears.
“Apples,” he thinks. “Carrots. While walking, poop again.”
He contines forward.
______________________
Just another day in Camp Swampy……
GA: (sigh) And on and on it goes.
GT: Are you coaching, or are you quitting?
@UncleJeff: ” When a player or coach starts talking quitting, they are already gone”. Please assistant coaches, hit old GT with that adage
Mary’s Worse: Backup?!? This must be a repurposed episode of the cartoon spinoff “MEDDLE! +4” with the 4 kids and their dog in a dune buggy (aka The Meddle Machine) I didn’t realize it until this moment.
@ectojazzmage: r: JP: “This kid gets creepier and more annoying with every appearance.”
Well, look at her parents. She’s a chip off the ol’ block!
Bogdan wants to toss her into his dungeon with Randy and CIApril: then he’ll have the whole set.
MW-Mary is going to enlist Toby’s help to beat the denial out of H-rvey. “This will hurt you more than it hurts us.”
Gassed up Alleycats: “I’m gonna give him such a punch!” (sorry wrong old timey commedian)
JP – It sure looks like Marciuliano is deliberately making Charlotte into an even more unlikable brat. If she were a March sister, she would hold a pillow on Beth’s face to make sure she was dead.
Mary Worth – She’s going to bring in the parrots. “SQUAWK! You fell for that scam, you moron! You’re an idiot and an axx! I thought Toby was the stupidest person on the face of the earth, but she didn’t send 200,000 grand to a scammer. Toby is Einstein compared to you. SQUAWK!”
Mary: “Aren’t you sorry you didn’t listen to me?”
Arlo & Janis – I love this strip.
FC: And if you don’t learn your Roman numerals you’ll never know the copyright dates of movies you’ve watched, or what years a Superbowl occured.
@I speak Jive: On JP – On the contrary, I have no doubt that he means this to be seen as endearingly precocious, just like CIApril is supposed to be seen as a ‘hero’ with her wanton slaughter of all who would oppose her, for reasons that are known to him and him alone.
MW: By all logic, the person Mary should call for backup is Terry Bryson, who previously intervened when both Toby and Estelle were scammed. But she’s probably just going to bother Hart’s daughter over in Goleta.
Also MW: Notice that Mary didn’t go for backup the first time Hart refused to believe he was being swindled. She wanted this to happen as punishment for daring to ignore her advice.
Fudge Packer – I read the last panel wrong, thinking that “riding” was a euphemism for mounting and screwing his/her/their brains out. With the ambiguous word balloon pointers, that could be either one of them.
Marvin – I think Bitsy is more toilet trained than Marvin, so maybe this is Jeff and Jenny’s strategy to keep Marvin from filling his diaper. If anything, maybe it will get Marvin to shit on the newspaper on the floor.