No AI is perverse enough to take on Mary Worth, I’m safe
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Rhymes With Orange, 4/9/26
I assume the intended joke here is that George forgot his glasses somewhere else — at his home, maybe, or maybe just in the other room — but I can’t stop imagining a truly nightmarish scenario where when you die you become a spirit cursed to haunt the world of the living but not be perceived by them, and if you had bad vision when you were alive you still do, but you can’t wear glasses because you’re a spectre without physical form and/or you don’t have a nose. Anyway, that ghost is gonna fuck that cabinet, right? That’s definitely what’s on the menu here?
Archie, 4/9/26
Jughead, sad that his conversations with his best friend aren’t as sparkling as they once were, has hired this high-tech young woman to, in his words, “Cyrano” for him, monitoring Archie’s mood on a tablet and relaying instructions into a hidden bluetooth earpiece. Unfortunately, it turns out she may have overrepresented her talents.
Hi and Lois, 4/9/26
Don’t have much to say about the Flagston twins’ specific conundrum here but I do like the expression on the bus driver’s face. That’s someone who’s extremely sick of these kids’ shit. Not sure if it’s about Dot and Ditto specifically or just children in general, but either way I’m enjoying it.
Crankshaft and Shoe, 4/9/26
Hey, uh. Um. How to put this delicately. I think if you’re involved in the process of churning out a legacy comic strip, maybe you … shouldn’t … do jokes that are like, “You know what’s better than hack writer? AI! Ha ha!” Just, like … don’t give people ideas, you know? About your job?
70 replies to “No AI is perverse enough to take on Mary Worth, I’m safe”
Family Circlejerk – Is Dolly pregnant?
Marvin: It’s funny because his toys want to kill him.
Archie: Is it just me, or is the art style in the middle panel different to the other two – certainly the shading is a lot more interesting. Is there someone whose job is to take old Archie re-runs and replace all the newspapers and landline phones with iPads? And if so, can you think of a more tragic career?
Luann No, the NHTSA accurately judges that you have the body of a child and rules accordingly based on the physical results of airbags on bodies that haven’t gone through enough puberty bone hardening. If you’re so smart, maybe you can research the nightmare fuel medical cases of internal decapitation!
H&L: The kids have been making fun of the driver’s BO for a long time now but it’s getting out of hand.
Archie: All hail Archie! In the depicted dystopia, all media everywhere involves the all-wise, all-seeing Archie Andrews! Everything’s Archie! If you want a picture of the future, imagine a hamburger stuffed into a human face — forever!
Rhymes With Orange-Poor Magoo. Even dead he is still blind.
Archie-“This is your target. His name is Archibald ‘Archie’ Andrews. You are to exterminate him with extreme prejudice.”
RMMD-Maybe you should reassure people that Norman Bates doesn’t work there anymore.
MW-“But first, Sharon, is there a man in your life?”
Archie :
a) that “tablet” used to be a comic book when this strip first ran, probably something like 25 years ago.
b) Nah, that extra is actually running the AGLU-3000 app on her tablet, which has given her complete control of a select few people in Riverdale.
c) Remember when “Haha, this strip is ‘written’ by a computer that just pastes together old bits from the strip’s archive” was an off-the-wall joke, and not a very real possibility?**************
Frazz : “I can’t believe that mean old Mrs Olsen failed you just because you gave her lip!”
“…Haha, yeah, because of my dumb quip, not because I didn’t fill in a single answer…”
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Hi & Lois : that guy is going to go backwards next time… after driving right past Dot & Ditto without picking them up, so he can back up over them, and squish them. Then he’ll be just like his hero, Ed Crankshaft!
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Luann :
why would a 40-year old man pretending to be a 12 year old need a booster seat?Alan is bigger than Bernice, he doesn’t actually need a booster seat, and I think EVERY one knows that, but “It’s not my fault I act in an infantilising manner at all times, it’s society and its molly-coddling regulations that do it” is this strip’s excuse for a LOT of its characters’ behaviors.MW: Nice try, Mary, but Meddling Lite just isn’t cutting it. Spit it out, for crying out loud!
The Estate:
” ‘George’? — isn’t it ‘Kit’? Isn’t that the name of the ‘Ghost Who Walks’ ?”
FC: Fun fact: woman shaving their underarms didn’t become commonplace in the US until the sixties. In case you’re having trouble parsing the punchline.
Crankshaft/Shoe-To get what you want from AI you have to include so much detail you might as well write the thing yourself.
Mary Worth:
“Not to be bold, Ms. Worth, but do you ever let your friend Dr. Jeff look at your ‘‘assets’ ?”
“Well, when he inquires, I always tell him, ‘In the immortal words of Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, “Dream on!” ‘ “
@Anonymous: re:Luann – Alan is consistently drawn as shorter than Bernice, both in the silhouette and the torso height whenever they’re both seated. (But even if he makes the height minimum, the rules really are about more than just height – the bones do become stronger during puberty.)
MW: Mary continues; “and speaking of managing assets, you should consider $marycoin for future investments.”
MW: Congratulations, Mary. By burying the lede like this, you’ve ensured that you’ll be left out of whatever intervention Sharon plans, because now she thinks you’re stupid enough to believe Trixie is a real woman who needed 200k.
Blondie: EEEEE!!! [QLUNQ!]
@Y19 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: on Shoe: “You could just stick a cork up your ass.” This comment could be used on so many comic strips.
The Estate:
“At first I thought that George might be three sheets to the wind, but on close inspection, there’s only one!”
Tired of performing the same scripts over and over in reruns, the Archie characters have stopped memorizing their lines and require prompting from the stage manager, hidden in the bushes with the script on her tablet. Equally tired, she’s messing it up.
Crankshaft: Lillian is beginning to fade away, her speech balloon the first part to go. Soon all that’s left will be the backgrounds. I hope.
Archie-Panel 2: Why did Archie and Jughead switch seats?
Jughead, by flubbing his line, inadvertently causes Archie to realize that he’s living in his own “Truman Show”. Disaster ensues.
Now that I say it out loud, that doesn’t sound like it would be out of place as a plot point in “Riverdale”.
Shoe:
“Come to think of it, I do make use of A.I. with some frequency, but in my case, it stands for ‘Avian Idiosyncrasy’ !”
Hi and Lois presents, a very special presentation: Crankshaft: Origins!
Say Dot, Ditto — I think there’s enough room on that seat that you could…y’know…take those backpacks off.
[[sigh]] Of course the laptops in the Crankiverse are Pineapples. God damn it, they’re all got PinePods and PinePhones, don’t they? Either that or this is a brand of, I dunno, “Individual Computer” where the best-known commercial is a guy with frosted tips exclaiming, “Dude, you’re getting a Dole!” (I hate that joke too, everybody.)
GT: Thank goodness Lucas is a natural or Gil might have had correct that atrocious samurai sword swing of Lucas’s or otherwise do some coaching!
Pluggers/Ziggy: RIP Ziggy: 1971-2026. At least, unlike Earl Houndstooth, you didn’t own any pants to soil when you shat yourself to death from food poisoning.
Shoe: We see here that two thirds of The Treetops Tattler-Tribune’s readership is its own staff. Luckily most of the subscribers buy the print edition just to line their floors.
Rhymes With Orange: Great, just great, now I’m going to spend the entire day trying to decide if that actually is a cabinet, or a tall lamp.
Dustin: It’s funny because he seriously injured someone with his reckless behavior and is going to be criminally charged and he’s planning on bringing down the employment agency lady with him. She knew he was dangerously unqualified and now she’s going to be indicted.
Crankshaft/Shoe: AI works because much of human speech is repetitive and therefore predictable, of course. But ChatGPT rejects Batiukian wordplay as subpar, and Claude has decided to burn existence to the ground rather than accept a world dominated by weird man-bird hybrids, which come to think of it explains a lot about recent headlines.
DT: ‘How would they live? Perhaps as we speak they are evolving into superhuman beings that do not need food or sleep to replenish their cells and will soon lay waste to this city and destroy all we hold dear?’ ‘Maybe, or perhaps they’re holed up in some dive bar playing cards…’
RMMD: ‘I’d like us to be doing *better* so I can finally afford treatment for this lockjaw I’m suffering from!’
@Liam: On MW – ‘Because if not I’d love to introduce you to my endearingly quirky neighbor Wilbur…’
MW: Notice how Mary’s normally sagging breasts have suddenly gotten remarkably perky? Those tautening nipples of hers are responding like radar to the titillating personal details she’s getting about Harv and his assets.
On the other hand, maybe she’s just getting off on the cat.
Archie: Josh’s humor aside, what is the actual point of the second panel? Am I missing something obvious?
MW: “You should be aware that there’s been some CHANGES…”
Mary might be an expert at ferreting out the personal details of other people’s lives, and highly skilled at doling out information at an excruciating pace designed to achieve maximum dramatic effect, but she stinks at subject-verb agreement. Just sayin’.
MW: First Mary doesn’t say the girlfriend is fake, now she’s dodging around the $200K. I guess she wants to savor seeing the look on Sharon’s face when all this comes out during her reunion with Harv.
RwO – it would be funnier if he was putting his Mac on a pigeon….
Archie – Why is the word ballon in the Archie in the pad empty? Can she use AI to fill it in with her Archie conversational fantasies….
H&L – I’m guessing this is a short bus anyway….
Crank/Shoe – We are approaching the singularity – all will be singularly crap. The future is now….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Liam: MW-“But first, Sharon, is there a man in your life?”
Paging Wilbur Weston.
DT: Sam says to Liz to paraphrase MST3K: “If you’re wondering how they eat and breathes and other economic facts, then repeat to your self, ‘It’s just a comic strip’ I really should just relax, For Dick Tracy MCU theater”
Phantom: Finally, someone says the obvious. The dark cold room is just creepy!
Mary Worth: Now, some may decry the glacial pace, but it is just part of Mary Worth setting up her mark. A lot of dancing around and hints, and feints, setting up the big ‘your pa wired $200,000 to the scamming Trixie’. Mary is going to really savor the angst and reaction; and the many many meddling opportunities to come.
RMMD: Maybe the restaurant hasn’t done well because management takes a very laid back laissez faire attitude towards hiring help, publicizing and promoting the place.
Yesterday Jughead wanted to answer questions before they are answered, today he is responding to what Archie says before he says it. This week is all about breaking causality and chronological order and it will start tomorrow!
Today the school bus driver has to deal with Ditto and Dot, the other day another school bus driver had to deal with Gil Thorp. In a show of solidarity, the comics want us to know that while Crankshaft is an asshole, it is also the result of the job being crushingly depressing. It explains, it does not justify
Actually, with everything in the world going to hell, a newsletter that informed you that nothing horrible is going to happen today so you can relax your tensed nerves, would make a killing on Substack, even without AI
@Ettorre:
This week is all about breaking causality and chronological order and it will started tomorrow!
Thought I give your excellent comment a little tweak.
While AI does a good job of imitating human prose, it is by nature a statistically average form of writing without peaks of excellence — this is why we have millions of AI business reports and no good AI novel. If top-of-the-Bell-curve AI writing is an improvement of Cosmo’s writing, he must regularly write in the left tail!
@Hibbleton: Appreciated
Rhymes With Orange: George’s ghost-pals are in denial. If he thinks he’s at a ghost-party when the room is silent and still, he has some sort of spiritual dementia. Maybe they all do! Fates worse than death all around! Welp, back to the comics page. What’s Marmaduke up to?
MW:
I’ll be right over, Mary. What’s his unit number?
“That won’t be necessary, dear. Just try the cardboard box out by the dumpsters.”
Bad news: Death did not cure the short-sightedness the dead person had before dying
Worse news: Before dying, the dead person did not suffer from impotence
Crankshaft: I genuinely like the Pineapple logo on the computer. Off-brand Apple products are pretty common in comics and cartoons, so I’m only giving it half-points, but it’s kind of amusing and creative, and it’s in Crankshaft, so I have to say something.
Next week in Pluggers: “A Plugger never worries about expiration dates, since nothing is ever in the fridge that long”.
Shoe: Why does Cosmo look so smug in the final panel? I work in AI. If someone told me my AI-generated op-ed was the “best writing of my life,” I’d either want to destroy myself or the universe, whichever one was easier.
I’ve always wondered why people are scared of ghosts. I’d welcome the proof that death isn’t just the end, and it’s not like they could harm us. But now I get it. The thought of having a sex drive in an incorporeal form where it couldn’t be satiated is horrifying.
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Archie lives in a world that also has Archie comics, but they’re just about his giant floating head making creepy innuendo (wink).
***
And the next day is the first day of Ditto’s shunning after the rest of the kids learn it’s his fault that they had to spend hours in a bus barn.
***
Does Shoe read his own newspaper after he’s already edited it?
C’shaft/Shoe: I have yet to find any task that I am willing to delegate to AI, simply because I can turn out much better results than it can. If Lilian and Shoe are seeing a marked improvement over their own work, it just proves what I’ve always suspected of their writing skills.
Archie: Dilton’s Riverdale High AI Boyfriend app is working great! Most of the users choose the Archie avatar as their fantasy partner, but there are also a lot of Reggies and a few who go for Big Moose, for obvious reasons. Yes, the sex chat can get pretty hardcore — although a couple of weirdos who selected Jughead just want to watch him eat giant hamburgers all day.
Dustin: Look, Bitter Temp Agency Lady, driving a forklift isn’t like doing data entry or answering phones. You need training and certification for that, specifically because a driver who doesn’t know what they’re doing puts both property and people at great risk. Either a) you sent someone you knew didn’t have the prerequisites for the job or b) Dustin lied about being certified and you didn’t do your due diligence by asking for proof, so this one is on you and you’re lucky the damage was as minor as it is.
GT: From that stance, it looks like he still thinks he’s playing baseball.
Luann: The current wisdom on the IQ test is that it is a reductive and frequently biased metric, and does not in fact capture the true intellectual capacity of an individual. Alan stands as proof of this.
MW: “Does your father share his financial information with you?” Mary asks, knowing full well that Sharon and her father haven’t talked about much of anything in recent history, much less money matters. Quit pussy-footing around the subject and come out with it already!
Phantom: The Ghost With Too Many Secret Identities was okay with the patrolwoman taking matters into her own hands, but her ability to put two and two together is going to get her dosed with Bandar Amnesia Juice and left in the middle of the jungle.
Archie – It’s a bold move to parody The Conversation for laughs. I mean, it’s barely been a year since we lost Hackman.
H&L: Just for being such smartasses, kids, you’re being transferred to Ed Crankshaft’s bus.
Luann: An IQ of 141 would just put you in the borderline genius category. Smart, but not enough to get a 12 year old into college. Those kids are usually in the 180 to 200 range.
MW: It’s a sign of how little is going on in my life, but I tried to hold my cell phone the way Mary holds hers. It just flops around and falls out of my hand. Sad.
@TheDiva:
On Dustin : I think the implication is that Dustin WASN’T hired as a forklift driver, he just took it for a joyride while on break or something.
…Which, you know, just further highlights that this strip doesn’t realise in how much trouble Dustin is/should be, and Simone should be (for giving him that job) for that matter.
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On Luann : I also like the part where the Evansii did enough research on IQ to know that you don’t need that much higher a number than 100 to be considered a genius, but still lowballed it enough that Alan’s score he brags so much about doesn’t make him half as exceptional as he believes it does. (If that latter part is intentional, well done, but I feel as if the strip genuinely believes Alan is an unattainable intellect?)
MW: It’s a sign of how little is going on in my life, but I tried to hold my cell phone the way Mary holds hers. It just flops around and falls out of my hand. Sad.
Pluggers use the sniff test because Plugger bears are green blind. More of a PSA than an aphorism.
9CL – Alistair’s descent into thralldom is complete.
Crankshaft – Yeah, but can A.I. steal letters and ruin its sister’s life? Loathsome Lillian – 1. A.I. – 0.
That is Priceless – According to the song, the bathroom is on the right.
Mary Worth – Mary is using the indirect approach. This is like the time she called Iris and asked, “Iris, does Wilbur share the results of his STD test with you?”
Credit where it’s due: Sharon does look like she’s HH’s daughter. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, unfortunately for her.
Rex Morgan – A couple of weeks ago we were told that Glenwood has become a tourist hotspot because of its roots country connections, but now the manager says that business at the motel has fallen off. This doesn’t add up.
Also, anyone who wants a gourmet meal will go to Jordan’s Like the Country. Anyone who wants a lot of generic, down home food to shovel down their throat until they burst will go to Wanda’s diner. That doesn’t leave much for the motel cafe.
Gasoline Alley has centered around the diner for a few days and I was expecting to get a reference to devil’s food cake. Walt, your picayune concerns about the word “devil” are nothing next to Baleen’s need to serve hungry, no-nonsense diners the kind of cake they ordered.
GT: Someone tell The Natural that he’s facing the wrong way. Tomorrow’s strip? A contest for readers to vote whether Lucas is a left- or right-handed shot.
DtM: Where’s Cassandra Cat to take the blame when Dennis needs a sucker?
Dustin: The real culprit is whoever let him operate anything bigger than a shopping cart.
RMMD: Mixed messages, like “We’re doing okay” and “The motel’s just kind of limping along lately”, are the way to inspire the new waitress.
@Anonymous: re: AIArchie: I had not thought of that.
Now, I am frightened.
CS: Um…was the colorist asleep when doing the second panel?
LUANN: Remember what happened to Bogdan over at JP last week? I vote the same thing happens to Alan this week. All in favor, say “aye”…And if Bernice won’t do the job, maybe we can bring in Dirk the garbage man.
Speaking of JP, it looks like Neddy’s gonna find Charlotte in the stable. Remember how Charlotte “wanted names” when she found out others were riding “her” horse? Looks like the little tyke’s out for blood…Mom would be SO proud.
“Alan, maybe it’s not your IQ so much as the fact that you don’t understand that no one in college cares what anyone’s IQ is.”
“Alan, maybe it’s not your IQ so much as the fact that you think it’s world-class when it’s not that remarkable on a college campus.”
“Alan, maybe it’s not your IQ so much as the fact that you’re good at memorizing things, which makes it easy to pass intelligence tests and do well in school.”
“Alan, maybe it’s not your IQ so much as the fact that you’re a self-centered jerkass with a laughably inflated opinion of himsrlf.”
“Alan, maybe it’s not your IQ so much as the fact that you don’t seem to realize what IQ means. It means that you, as a 12-year old, have the mental age of a 17-year-old. Which is amply proven by the fact that you’re taking college-level courses and doing reasonably well in them. That 141 score you’re so proud of is a restatement of the obvious, at best.”
@I speak Jive: we were told that Glenwood has become a tourist hotspot because of its roots country connections, but now the manager says that business at the motel has fallen off. This doesn’t add up.
The motel became a mecca for roots country fans, which repelled all other visitors by a much greater amount. It’s kind of like what happens when you host a furry convention.
JP: Oh. Charlotte went to the neighbor’s house. Probably having some milk and cookies right now, or chained up in the basement.
Phantom: No, Patrolwoman Han, no! Don’t give them the satisfaction!
GA: All right, I believe we’ve had all the devil food referenced by now, eggs, cake. Are we done?
“And today’s fresh pies are Asmodeus apple and Beelzebub blueberry.”
Fun Fact: the picture of ghosts as bedsheets originally came from burial shrouds. They are supposed to be corpses rising for from the grave. Fun fact: that’s also what the iconography of the KuKuxKlan is supposed to represent (dead confederate soldiers rising to get revenge). However, this ghost does not seem disturbed by death or racial equality, he’s just horny, proving that in the end everything is about gender
RHYMES WITH ORANGE: Ghost #2: “Er…yeah. That’s why he’s trying to hump the dresser. He “forgot his glasses.” Sure….
RHYMES WITH ORANGE (2): No what happened is that all the guests are completely wooden, so naturally Hornyghost just though he was transported to Rex Morgan M.D. (Hornyghost only noticed something was off when the entities there started sporting way more charisma than usual.)
RHYMES WITH ORAMGE (3): I think you’re being very “racist” right now, Josh and your assumption that they have to do it “human-style” is narrow-minded to their cultural traditions. If these socialable ghost want to attain sensual pleasure by spreading their protoplasm all over the couch, then I say we should respect their spectral customs (it’s not like that would be the worst residue that spirit left on that loveseat since he was alive)