To be fair, everyone in Marvin kind of hates each other
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Marvin, 4/10/26
Pixar’s beloved Toy Story movies are about, among other things, the complicated emotional relationship between toys and humans, especially when humans become too old for toys anymore. Marvin has been doing something similar this week, except that the toys and Marvin kind of hate each other, and now his parents have told him that he has to leave them in his toy box almost all the time, and they’re going to die.
Mary Worth, 4/10/26
Despite her fearsome reputation, Mary is, honestly, fairly conflict averse. She’s still reeling over the time Harvey stormed off because she gently suggested to him that maybe he’s not “in love,” he just got horny over a fake lady on his phone. So she’s really trying her darndest to get Sharon to show up at Charterstone without saying the words “scam” or “$200,000,” and it’s really quite impressive.
Hi and Lois, 4/10/26
I feel like this would make a little more sense if this was just a random young person for Hi to be scornful towards, but, you know what? I’m enjoying the scenario we’ve been given here, where he’s taking an elevator ride with his own son, who has turned his back on his father and is listening to music or a podcast or maybe even just white noise rather than trying to interact with him in any way.
81 replies to “To be fair, everyone in Marvin kind of hates each other”
And if they’re inside the toybox, the cartoonist (I can’t be bothered to look him up) doesn’t even have to bother drawing individual toys.
Archie-Mr. Weatherbee will send Archie to detention for this.
MW-Mary is taking her time savoring this meal.
Hi & Lois:
I find today’s strip pretty funny, although not for the intended reason (and to be quite honest I’m not completely sure there is an intended reason it’s funny). Hi’s just so sad about the death of elevator music. “It used to be they would pump in least-common-denominator trash whether you wanted it or not, and you had to listen to it for the duration of the ride! Now we all carry amazing futuristic devices that let us hear exactly the kind of music we want to hear instead! It fucking sucks!”
MW – Are we just going to have to put up with Mary’s cat gazing fondly and reverently at her now? Or is there still some lingering hope that they may eventually forget about the cat, like they did with Tommy’s deer in Apartment 3G?
H&L: Hi is both surprised and saddened by individual ear speakers. “Hey, where are the wires?”
Hi yearns for a world with elevator music again, because it was one of the few things universally acknowledged as more dull than Hi & Lois.
MW:
“Can you come to Charterstone this week?”
“Well, I’ll have to ask Dad for some gas money, because finances are a little tight.”
“Okay, so you’ll talk to him on the phone….”
MW:
An impressed Muffin grins approvingly at Mary’s ability to deflect what was an an extremely straightforward question from Sharon.
H&L: The reason that there’s no elevator music in that particular elevator is that it in fact isn’t an elevator at all. Based on the weird arrangement of buttons and other controls on the console panel, it appears that Hi and Chip are inside some sort of simulator designed to train its occupants to be astronauts on an Artemis mission to the moon, to operate defense shields in the war with Iran, or to use AI to generate a comic strip, except of course that the “punch line” button was left out.
Marvin: So Marvin’s toys are planning on killing him, is that what I’m getting? This strip has always been part horror story, but the non-excrement angle is new.
MW It’s already been said many times and many ways, but Mary’s phone holding technique is really something to behold. It’s like she’s about to use it as a throwing star against a band of ninjas just off panel.
H&L I’m sort of disappointed to see that this scene is actually taking place on about elevator, when there are many more options for a much funnier second panel reveal. A police lineup, a coroners lab, maybe one of those basement chambers in the Saw franchise…
MW: But, how will Mary, in all honesty, claim the win on her next date with Jeff? Good thing she’s practicing her pussyfooting.
MARVIN: Marvin’s mom has a garage sale and the toys are scooped up by the Keane family. You wanna talk fathead kids!
Hi and Lois:
Is wearing one’s baseball cap backwards a universal symbol for having had to take one’s SAT or ACT at least twice?
Luann: Give the baby his bottle, Bernice, and shut him up.
S4th: Why don’t they do anything? Because they don’t exist, just like Nona and Faye don’t exist unless they are on panel for Hilary to annoy. Besides, them existing would mean Ces creating four more characters to eventually turn into clones of the two of you and you wouldn’t want that now, would you?
JP: It ain’t over, she ain’t safe, and you being there ain’t no comfort, lady.
Marvin – I’ll bet he took a dump in th box. There’s always something there to remind you….
MW – Even the cat is anxious to see the expression on her face when she learns her sole inheritance will be an antique ascot collection….
H&L – You slackers have ruined everything – even the blessings of elevator music….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Hi and Lois:
“They also don’t have Muzak in elevators on farms that are used as foodstuff storage units, because that would cut against the grain!”
@Guts Dozier: Tommie’s deer wasn’t really forgotten, though, was it? She took it to some sort of animal sanctuary and spent months there mucking horse stalls and falling in love with the guy running the place. Granted, the deer was never mentioned again after she left, but that was also around the time that the strip devolved into a fever dream.
Mary is ready, with one flick of her wrist, to decapitate an intruder with the phone’s specially sharpened edges.
MW:
“I’ll be there in a few days — which, let’s not kid ourselves, with this strip is going to be like a few months in real time!”
MW: A few days later, Sharon arrives to find that the remainder of her father’s savings have been given to scammers posing as private investigators, as the latest step in Hart’s desperate bid to find Trixie. This could have been avoided had Mary bothered to tell her that her father was being fleeced, which would have resulted in her coming over that same day.
@Vulpes: I ate breakfast at McDonald’s today, and the background music was a song with a chorus about women “shaking their ass.” I’ve also heard things like “Welcome To The Jungle” and gangsta rap in grocery stores. So yeah, I would welcome the return of Muzak. If only to get rid of spoken lyrics, which defeat the purpose of background music anyway.
Family Circus: Peanuts had the kite eating tree. Family Circus has the Whomping Willow. For some reason, that warms my heart.
Luann: It’s kind of funny that a neurodivergent 12-year-old boy correctly discerned Bernice’s motives. Her panel 2 expression seems to be “am I really this obvious and desperate?” Yes, Bernice, you are.
CS: It turns out the “info” they fed into this AI was Lillian’s past appearances in Crankshaft. And it’s reacting to Lillian’s appearances the same way we do. Good thing they didn’t feed it Batton Thomas, or SkyNet might become self-aware.
Pluggers suck at everything, even making their own coffee.
MW: “A few days” to RECONNECT is good. That should give Mary time to get next month’s condo fees in advance.
Marvin’s parents told him he has to leave his toys in the toy box all the time so the artist can copy-and-paste the same panel and change the dialogue to bang out this week’s strips before hitting the golf course.
I feel like Sharon was about to bolt into action, but then Mary uttered the fateful words, “And both of you could reconnect,” and Sharon had to recalculate on the fly. “Um… plane tickets usually get cheaper on Tuesdays…”
Fudge Packer – In keeping with the great tradition of Mr. Tuggle, Mike Manley makes it appear that Mr. Ed and not Neddie is asking Charlotte if everything is ok.
“Fathead”? We know they did not say “fat” but the thing Marvin constantly makes!
I’m sure you all know the one about a guy being bit in the penis by a rattlesnake, his friend running off to get help and being told he has to suck the poison out and returning to tell his friend, “You gonna die.” That’s the joke in Shoe today.
Today on Hi and Lois: No Exit, but with a teenage son who ignores you, and set in a turquoise elevator. Tomorrow: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in a midcentury modern with Lois and Irma as the titular characters, featuring Trixie as Hamlet.
Mary Worth: I love the way Mary’s cat stares at its owner, thinking, “I can see right up your nose!”
Marvin: The artist thought he’d figured out a way to draw next-to-nothing today, but then his editor told him, “It’s too static. Try zooming in on nothing for the middle panel.”
Sharon seems resigned more than angry. How many times has Harv-y wasted his savings on obvious scams? Is Sharon considering not only the money her family has lost but also how they have contributed to keeping an industry based on human slavery alive?
H&L: The “kids these days and their personal listening devices” thing is particularly bizarre coming from Hi, who as the father of a high-school-aged child would have himself grown up in the Walkman/Discman era. It’s all part of the same strange alchemy that keeps comic book characters from aging but also keeps the adults in that Boomer-era mindset.
MW: Mary will spill Widower Hart’s dirty laundry to Toby or Dr. Jeff, but when it comes to informing his (only?) child who has a much larger stake in her father’s well-being, she can’t bring herself to broach the subject. “Just…come visit him for a few days, would you? No particular reason…”
At last, Mary’s plan is revealed. Here we thought it was about the immorality of online dating, or penetrating Harv’s delusions about his fake girlfriend, or getting back the money since it’s just unfair some people could give away $200,000 and get nothing for it. But no, it was the daughter all along. An adult woman having a busy life in another city doesn’t have all the time in the world for her widowed father? That won’t do. Doesn’t she realize he’s is lonely? Time for them to reconnect.
Mary Worth: “A few days? You’re like 15 minutes away, half an hour, tops.” “I know, but it takes time to find two doctors and a lawyer for the incapacitation paperwork.”
H&L: Kudos to Hi for showing up to support his son’s new job as elevator operator but he loses the kudos for shit talking about the ambience.
Also Mary Worth: Why is Mary saying the out-loud part quietly? Why is she not being direct with Sharon about what’s happened? Oh, right: because then how would we squeeze a week’s worth of awkwardly-held phones out of it?
“Oooooh, there’s gonna be DRAMA!” that cat’s thinking. Or maybe just, “Meow.” Or it’s not forming any thoughts, per se, but more of a hope this human will feed it. I don’t know what cats think, or even if they’re anywhere near as being sentient in the same way we are, no matter what Mary’s weird teenage friend tries to tell us.
***
Screw you, Hi. The Sony Walkman was released in 1979, we are approaching the 50th anniversary of personal, portable music that lets people tune out the world. You are not canonically old enough to have been alive before this, and you have probably never heard elevator in your life! Nostalgia is bad enough, but nostalgia for a time before you were born is mind rot. Screw you, Hi!
H&L Chip actually heard his dad’s comment perfectly well through his well-set music/podcast volume, he’s just befuddled and wondering whether he misheard it completely because Musak in elevators hasn’t been common for much, much longer than AirPod sensory bubbles. Heck, I think in the *80s* we were figuring out the background stuff at grocery stores and whatnot was called “elevator music” because that *used* to be its main venue.
MT Every so often I come back to this one to goggle at the authour’s grasp of a land zoning/ development dispute. Keeping in mind it’s been said that Ted crass owns the land the solar energy project wants. Does… does the writer think a property owner can be *forced* to build something from somebody else’s plans? or that he wouldn’t be compensated if the city tried to expropriate the land (and better yet, get a nice profit by threatening to tie it up in court and therefore be able to sell the land for $$)? that *solar energy projects* are just plopped up out of the goodness of some environmental group’s hearts and don’t make profits?? My toddlers setting up rival dragon / magic pony / LEGO kingdoms had a better grasp of property rights than this!
@Bob Tice: “Well, I’ll have to ask Dad for some gas money, because finances are a little tight.”
“Yes, ever since my husband, John, disappeared while on a business trip to Thailand…”
(I will continue to predict this, even though I think it’s unlikely even for Mary Worth, just to have bragging rights if it is the big “twist” of this story.)
JP: Charlotte keeps weighing her options:
Keep sitting on this pile of horse manure or rejoin the Parker household? There has to be a third option!
FC: Would have drawn Jeffy with his head completely encased in a hornets nest but that’s just me.
BCN: Can confirm the debate is like that. (I’m Team Indoor Cat myself, because we have coyotes and foxes and large prey birds in the area in addition to cars.)
C’shaft: If knowledge of Lilian’s existence brings an LLM to terminate its own, I will never say a word against her ever again.
Dustin: Dustin immediately recognizes his boss has set a vague goal with no definable metrics, and opts to quit now rather than bust his ass and have his boss fire him anyway for some equally vague shortcoming.
GT: Yeesh, even by Gil Thorp standards that was a half-assed way of dealing with an Issue Facing Young People Today. Isis (Iris?) is vaguely threatened with deportation by a cop, her family goes into hiding while her teammates do a performative protest and the strip focuses on the really important matters (ie. White Male Protagoinist Gil Thorp, specifically White Male Protagonist Gil Thorp’s beef with his ex) and now everything’s okay. On to golf season!
Luann: Of course Luann doesn’t do Wordle. She struggles with the maze on a Happy Meal Box.
@TheDiva:
Dustin: Dustin immediately recognizes his boss has set a vague goal with no definable metrics, and opts to quit now rather than bust his ass and have his boss fire him anyway for some equally vague shortcoming.
He’s so much on the same wavelength as his boss he magically changed the color of his shirt to match his.
Muffin looks on approvingly. “Atta girl, Mary. Lure them in slowly and surely. Then when they are in your Charterstone lair, meddle like you’ve never meddled before.”
Once again Pluggers pivots from “literally everybody in the world is a Plugger” to “Exactly one person with an extremely odd gripe is a Plugger.”
MW – “But, Sharon, take your time. I’m sure there’s no correlation between the speed at which you react and the likelihood of recovering the funds.”
MW:
“Just before I left for Goleta, Dad and I got into a pitched battle about whether ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny — I sure hope we can mend fences!”
Crankshaft – She spends all day in a room by herself because Lillian is a loathsome hag.
In case anyone has forgotten.
Non Sequitur – The answer to the follow-up question is Pilgrims.
Pluggers – He hasn’t washed the mug or run vinegar through the coffee maker since 2012. Duh.
Jump Start – I usually read this and move on to the next strip without thinking about it, but I do enjoy Frank’s devotion to Klondike Ike.
Rex Morgan – Ye gods, didn’t we spend a couple of weeks on this “plot” point already?
FC – Better call an ambulance. The fall knocked Jeffy’s head backwards.
RMMD:
When one’s eyes are as close together as Mae Mae’s are in today’s second panel, that’s usually a sign that there’s an extra chromosome lurking around. Just sayin’.
“Hi and Lois,” the comic strip about bipolar disorder, is definitely in a “depression” phase lately, huh
MW: Mary’s dialogue is a perfect match with her cuisine: a sea of featureless beige punctuated by the occasional indistinct lump.
FC: Jeffy has fewer talents than a chimpanzee.
Phantom: Jeez, Worubu, why so smirky? I’m going to enjoy tomorrow, when the Unknown Commander crushes you like the booger you are.
9CL: I guess Amos thinks Edda is pretty, huh? Who saw THAT coming?
DtM: Quite a bit of menacing today. Dennis knows Joey will throw up at his own home after he eggs him on to eat a whole bowl of jellybeans.
@I speak Jive: Lillian is also pushing 100 years old. Seems like the kind of minor detail
Tom BatiukAmelia and Emily would forget to tell an AI prompt.I totally get the Marvin dynamic – it’s a classic struggle for small, quirky communities. The Enthusiast sounds like a fascinating read though!
CS: Keep reading, girls. Wait until you get to the part where the AI has written, “and I also, out of petty jealousy, ruined my sister’s one chance at happiness”.
FC: Thel is thinking, “Damn, why couldn’t that tree be a lot taller.
If this were anything more ambitious than Marvin I’d give them credit to a great Twilight Zone episode.
Luann: An “I don’t really like you, and you don’t really like me, but we each have something for the other” storyline was predetermined here. I’m on board with it.
Any Pluggers finished cup of coffee is redolent with the epic history of months of not being cleaned. If they take it black, that means many fewer notes of bacteria growing on the remnants of sugar and milk.
Dustin: Great “second chance” there, middle manager. Nothing creates fewer mistakes than ordering an under-underling to work faster than everyone else, and fixing them won’t derail your best workers..
H&L: When Hi started at Foofram elevators had attendants. I guess Chip is in for a reminiscence of Muzak’s history.
Beetle Bailey gives a nod to Mort Walker’s grawlixes.
BG&SS: Given how the Hootin’ Holler Science Fair was won by the geocentric solar system model titled How Copernicus Was Wrong and Burns in Hell, I’m guessing Jughaid doesn’t have a sundial to fall back on.
Phantom:
“Okay, Ms. Dai, a little off-topic, but what with your martial feats on the record and in the books, have you ever considered having your own TV series called ‘Patrolwoman,’ like Angie Dickinson’s ‘Police Woman’? — you know, you could be, like, a Sub-Saharan ‘Pepper Anderson’ !”
On Crankshaft, belatedly : wait a minute, has the strip forgotten that Lillian RUNS A BOOKSTORE? You’d think THAT would both require AND provide content for a constantly updated website/internet presence?
Of course, this is just Batiuk exorcising his own struggle to but any sort of interesting content on his own blog, and HE doesn’t own a bookstore, so…H&L- well, the strip could have gone a different route- “we used to talk to each other in the elevator, but now you ignore me”. Either way, they wouldn’t need a punchline.
BLONDIE: Our heroine seems fully aware of her hubby’s financial infidelity, and is doing something about it in her own way.
Lockhorns: Even the Lockhorns are getting into AI punchlines, though Leroy’s glare at Loretta over her little barb is kind of amusing.
DT: “I need you, after all Dick Tracy has defeated you numerous times but this one time I’m sure you’ll come out the winners.”
Marvin: The Toy Story movies were also known for their groundbreaking animation as they depicted toys come to life in a realistic manner. But if the artists had been lazy as hell, they could have just given us muffled voices coming from one side of a toy box and called it a day.
Hi and Lois: Ironically enough, Chip was listening to a light instrumental version of “The Girl From Ipanema” through his earbuds.
Pluggers: Are they telling us pluggers don’t take their coffee with four sugars and heavy cream? (And if this guy thinks his plain Maxwell House smells of “mint,” it’s time for his third neurological checkup in a year.)
@Lauralot: One of the saddest examples of the modern funnies page is that while Blondie and indeed ALL the Browne/Walker/Johnny Hart comics have been artificially resuscitated and still shamble the Earth (even fucking ARCHIE, for God’s sake), the syndicate has never considered a revamp of Apartment 3G.
On the other hand, imagine if they gave it to an “artist” on the level of the Gil Thorpe strip. Such an abomination must never be!
Mary Worth: [“And both of you could reconnect… because if there’s one thing older people enjoy, it’s when their adult children come by to lecture them about their love lives and finances!”]
Marvin: I really hope this plotline ends with the toys rebelling and trying to kill Marvin in recreation of the scene where King Kong gets captured.
Hi And Lois: The out-of-touch old people who write newspaper comics must be getting REALLY desperate for things to complain about if they’ve been reduced to bitching about the lack of music in elevators.
MARVIN: Just saw a trailer for Toy Story FIVE, one of the few sequels that actually seems to be making a Valid Statement about how kids are abandoning toys for electronic internet devices. What I’m saying is, if these toys are planning to commit a war-crime to win back Marvin’s “love” from his iPad, the cost would far outweigh any benefits. Which would be a perfect comment on our national situation.
@PixelMuse:
Pardon me, but I can’t tell if this is some snarky reference that’s totally over my head, or meaningless bot spam. Not clicking that link in the name, though.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Bring back Muzak – I second that. We ate at a local diner a couple of times last week, and the background music was twangy country with growling vocals. I felt like I stepped into RMMD. The music was annoying, but not quite as bad as that vocal fry singing style I’ve heard. And rap is inappropriate and unacceptable as background music.
Get off my lawn!
@Tabby Lavalamp: #38:
“nostalgia for a time before you were born is mind rot”
My favorite pet peeves are “Remember when doctors made house calls” or middle aged people reminiscing about being teenagers in the 50s, like the 60s and 70s never happened. I’m going going to be 71 in a few months and I don’t ever remember doctors making house calls. Maybe before WW2 they did but you’d have to be well over 100 to remember that. As for the other, my late mother-in-law was a teenager in the 1950s and she’d be 90 if she were still alive. C’mon, guys. Elvis would be 91, James Dean 96, and Marilyn Monroe 100.
GT: Today the role of Isis’s father will be played by Luis Guzman after a long bad night.
FG: Whoops, lots of deadly boobytraps I see. Apre vous, Bok, old buddy.
Baldo – Gotcha – WOJOHOWIECZ it is then.
MW – The cat is thinking, “I’ve taught you well. Do not get directly involved in the humans’ struggles. Set them against each other, let them fight it out among themselves, and YOU will emerge victorious. Keep this up and maybe someday you can be a cat!”
@I speak Jive: I looked up Muzak on the good ol’, ever accurate Wikipedia.
It’s had several owners, most recently a company called Mood, which phased out the name Muzak in 2013.
The name came from a portmanteau of ‘music’ and ‘Kodak’ which was trademarked in the 1950s.
They’re still around but who knows. They used to have a distinctive ‘Percy Faith Meets The Rolling Stones’ sound but now is a “Smooth Jazz” ala Squidward Tentacles.
I agree with I Speak Jive about thrusting pop music into inappropriate settings.
A couple of months ago, I was in a grocery store playing “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull.
“Sitting on a park bench (dun-da-dun-dun) Eyeing little girls with bad intent”.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Can I see you again sometime?”
“Sure, but I don’t get out of the house much”
“Goodness! This visit is such a surprise”
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood!”
GT: Isis is well aware that Kylie and Mahatma Kane Jeeves are merely playing her for the free Egyptian food.
@UncleJeff: I agree, but on rare occasions the music fits. Like the time I was in Whole Foods and heard The Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket.”
@Buck Ripsnort: Strips like Apartment 3-G are just not that popular to warrant revamping.
At comicstriphistory.com, there is a series of posts called “Paper Trends” which monitor a sample of 300 newspapers from year to year, starting in the 1970s and continuing to the present, to see what strips become more or less published over the years.
The most recently published data is from 2005. In the sample of 248 papers for that year (some of the original sample had gone out of business by then), Blondie appeared in 209 of them. Beetle Bailey was in 179, Hagar the Horrible in 154, B.C. and Hi in Lois each in 99, The Wizard of Id in 82.
Apartment 3-G, however, was only in 4 papers from the sample. Even by the standards of the soap opera strips it was not doing well — Rex Morgan was in 36, Mary Worth in 27, Judge Parker in 16. And that was still several years before the strip became incoherent with indoor scenes taking place outside, dialogue not matching the art, etc.
@Peanut Gallery: The big box hardware store where I used to worked played through an assortment of pop tunes with store promos interspersed.
We’d get the store closing announcement that coincided with “Closing Time”, “Home” and “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place”.
@Bob Tice: #49- RMMD- Mud and Doug were unaware.