Maybe he’s there on a court order
Post Content
Dennis the Menace, 4/16/26
OK, since I complained about yesterday’s “exciting” tax panel from Pluggers, I have to praise this one. You know what’s exciting? When you’ve been up for three days straight trying to do your taxes and you’ve missed the deadline by several hours but you can’t stop because you’ll lose your momentum. “Please, let him rest!” begs Dennis. “He does so much for us!” It’s not very menacing of him but I’ll allow it.
Blondie, 4/16/26
I really like Dagwood’s facial expression in the second panel. It’s like he’s thinking “Oh, am I being cruised? Is this the cruising section of the park? Not really my thing but I guess you should try everything once.” By the time we get to panel three he’s disappointed that he misread the situation.
Heathcliff, 4/16/26
“Heathcliff sees a therapist” is an occasional bit in this strip, and I don’t care for it because I really don’t think it’s a match for his character. Heathcliff may have any number of real psychological issues, but I think he’s pretty happy with himself and lacks the desire to change that usually drives people to therapy. Anyway, despite what the therapist says, I appreciate the fact that today makes it clear he doesn’t take the process very seriously.
Crankshaft, 4/16/26
OH WE’RE ALLOWED TO START THINKING ABOUT A SCENARIO WHERE CRANKSHAFT SUFFERS A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK NOW? LIKE, CANONICALLY, IN THE WORLD OF THE STRIP, THAT’S SOMETHING THAT’S ON THE TABLE? GOOD TO KNOW, GOOD TO KNOW
69 replies to “Maybe he’s there on a court order”
Mary Worth Alternative Strip: Elsewhere in Charterstone…
WTF, Crankshaft, he’s going to use those pruners to do a bypass on himself. I hope we get to see it.
Heathcliff: Don’t therapists use such dolls in a “show me where they touched you” situation? Might explain a lot of his antisocial behavior.
DtM: Broom? Check! Apron? Check! Alice just needs a string of pearls to complete her ’50s mom cosplay.
CS: Makes sense ’cause in the field it’s hard to find remote power for a sternum saw, I guess.
Crankshaft : Also, Crankshaft showing Pam cutting implements and telling her “You have my permission to use this to rip open my flesh and cut out my heart if an emergency warrants it”.
…I think “Crankshaft is a danger to himself and others and must be stopped at all cost” is an emergency that warrants it.
…Too far?…MW “Why would we think less of you for looking for love? That’s so normal that there are dating apps just for seniors, after all! It’s not as if looking for love means you’d be trying to hook up with someone younger than me or be so dumb as to spend piles of money courting someone you’ve never met who is completely out of your league”
BLONDIE: Whatever the stranger’s intent is, those manic eyes do not bode well.
RMMD: Dude, you should definitely be more concerned about being the last person left on Earth. (Don’t break your glasses!)
LUANN: Bernice has made the mistake of mistaking a PhD for a common sense transplant.
Blondie: Please calm down your googly eyes, sir. This is “Blondie”, for heaven’s sake.
CS: I’d worry less about a heart attack, and more about Velnagh, the Empress of Spiders, whose webs have already begun to encroach upon the neutral space of the panel.
Puppets like that are actually a pretty legit technique in therapy. A way to create a second version of you that you have more literal control over.
DtM:
“Dad has a spare pen in his pocket, even though he has one that he’s already using, because he’s like the narrator in Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ — he’s an ’eminently safe’ individual!”
DtM I love the idea of Dennis as a kind of budding reaganite republican. It’s just too perfect.
I can appreciate the thought of Crankshaft having a heart attack on his lawn and bystanders trying to save him by performing surgery with garden tools. Sorry, “bystanders”? No, the neighbourhood would be running out their doors to stand in line for their turn.
***
Oh, Dagwood. Did you really think you were going to have a normal conversation with a stranger whose eyeballs bulge out like that except when he just up and quotes some Tennyson? You’re going to be lucky to leave that park bench with your liver.
H&L [pet peeve] No, AI isn’t useful for *explaining* why the sky is blue, what it *might* be useful for it trawling the explanations written out and posted online by HUMANS explaining the HUMANS’ understanding of the physical laws that determine this. Explanations that existed long before even the internet and have been easily found on science outreach sites (try NASA! Royal Museum Greenwich!) long before AI LLMs. This isn’t Mr. Data from Star Trek, it’s a mindless computer program pattern matching an enormous set of data. And if somehow you got incorrect explanations dominating online (or no explanations), the result would be junk. GIGO. [/pet peeve]
Crankshaft – “Okay, then what are anvil pruners for?” “When all this gardening nonsense has driven you to drink and you want to get hammered.”
Blondie:
“Baseball reminds me of our strip! — 10% action of some sort, 90% just kind of standing or sitting around.”
RMMD:
“Maybe I should put myself in the running for the lead role in the Glenwood Players’ forthcoming production of ‘Bob Weir: The Musical’ !”
Heathcliff:
“It was all great until Kukla, Fran and Ollie engaged me in a game of ‘Hide and Go Seek,’ and then ran away forever while I had my eyes closed!”
“There, there, little fella.”
DtM:
“Dad’s a day late — if I call that toll-free number that the IRS gives you and I report him, do you think I might end up with a little more pocket change?”
I vote for Baja to take over Mary Worth.
Dennis – “For the last time, Dennis, we are not going to have another kid just for the tax deduction. We did that once and it was totally not worth it.”
“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love” is from Locksley Hall by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a poem in which (among many other things) the narrator bitterly remembers his lover affair with his cousin Amy, which ended when at her father’s behest she married a man that he considers less refined. “Thou art mated with a clown,” he laments.
DTM: Henry is concentrating so hard because if he can get a tax refund, he’ll finally be able to afford a vacuum cleaner so Alice doesn’t have to sweep the house with a cartoon witch’s broomstick any more.
Blondie: I’ll forgive one character with weird disconcerting eyes in a strip, but that role is already taken by Dagwood. Please don’t add an entirely new kind of freakish, apparently erectile eyes to a comic.
Don Abundio, translated:
“I heard a rumor that you’re some kind of super spy”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Don Abundio!”
“Why would anyone think that?”
[Trucks: SPIES, INC.; TOP SECRET STUFF]
Also Hi and Lois used the quote a months ago, though–it grieves me deeply to say this–Lois left out the word “lightly” and Blondie got it right.
DtM – Some buyer’s remorse, Henry….
Blondie – A middle aged man’s fancy turns to prime rib….
Heathcliff – So…it wasn’t a hairball. Heathcliff puked up his inner kitten.
Crank – An old man’s fancy turns to jacking off in the tool shed….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Heathcliff: brb changing my username to heathcliff’s sockpuppet
Crankshaft: Garden shears, whatever, Pam. Give him an orange slice and tell him to chase the bambino through the tomatoes.
Luann: As usual, I can almost, kinda, sorta, if I squint really hard, see the kernal of what the Evansii might be going for. It’s the whole ‘moderation in all things, you don’t have to be so serious all the time’ thing. Hell, I wish someone had been able to give me that advice 20-25 years ago when I was a lonely adolescent/young adult not really understanding why I was so lonely and trying to convince myself I was better off alone.
But as usual, what we get comes off as snarky and stupid.
And by the way, when the HELL did Bernice propose marriage to ANYone?
RMMD: Sounds like someone could use a screening of ‘Hired!’ by the Jam Handy Organization!
JP: Aaaaanndd there we go! There’s the inappropriately quippy Neddy we all know and loathe!
DtM — Henry works in an office and no doubt receives a paycheck, which means his tax “struggles” consists largely of transcribing his W-2 onto the 1040. But he probably buys a software tax service which does the same thing with a snazzy UI/UX. Not to mention that since he likely overwithheld, which means getting an extension would be painless since he is due a refund.
But hey, the “taxes are complicated” trope is so easy. What else could you reference in the springtime, baseball?
9CL: Given that the love birds are looking down upon their parents (-in-law-to-be?) they must be on a 10m diving board. This makes it more likely that they are at a public pool. These two nitwits are lounging on a 10m board while others are surely waiting. And why does she have shoes on?
CS: Crank has ordered from Bean’s End new Aztec Collection of garden tools.
@matt w: So, what you’re saying is it should be Blondie quoting the poem…
RMMD: “Hmm, maybe if I could find a wealthy celebrity who doesn’t want their identity revealed, I could blackmail them. Nah, what are the odds.”
Crankshaft: Ed’s contemplating performing bypass surgery with gardening tools? Guys, it’s time you stopped letting him have anything sharper than a rubber ball!
DtM: Henry fills out his tax forms with a fountain pen while Alice sweeps up with a corn broom. Dennis wants his Dad to take break so they can play some mumblety-peg together.
C’shaft: “….You can use the pruners to commit ritual seppuku and have an honorable death!”
Heath: The 80’s cartoon aside, I’d just assumed Heathcliff was mute, the better to explain the bizarre and elaborate performance art he uses as a form of communication. So why would the puppet be of any use to him? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to march around her office wearing a helmet that says “Generalized Anxiety Disorder”?
CS: I seriously can’t decide if we’re supposed to think Crankshaft is making a joke, or that he really thinks “bypass trimmers” are for heart surgery. And if the latter, is it stupidity or dementia? And in either case, why is this man allowed to drive a school bus?
GT: ‘Oh, no… [answers phone] Look, Iris, I’m in the middle of a GOLF game here! I need to concentrate! [sobbing over the phone] Ibis, I told you, this golf tournament is what’s going to put me on the map! I’m sorry about your father and [sound of gunshots over the phone] … well, that took care of itself, thank goodness. [puts phone back in pocket] Okay, let’s shag some balls!’
RMMD: i repeat what I said yesterday, sales dude will figure out who Mae Mae is and will take and sell a photograph or attempt blackmail.
@The Quiet Man:
On “Zane ran away when Bernice proposed marriage” : It’s also an interesting choice of words considering Zane was wheelchair-bound.
Also, Bernice PROPOSED to the manager of Weenie World after she chased Ann Eiffel away!? She, a teenager, PROPOSED to an adult who was her boss AFTER a big incident involving sexual harassment in the workplace!?
…Maybe
(hopefully)the strip is just making stuff up. Like how Bernice got over being Nil’s muse (interesting HE’S not in the floating heads of past romances), something that’s happened off-panel that we readers are finding out JUST NOW. I wonder what Derek did that made him “a user” (or, more precisely, what the strip now believes he did).Dustin: Please, like Dustdad wouldn’t have snuck into the Bypass Burger and scarfed down a combo meal rather than deign to eat the food his wife spent hours preparing.
Luann: Great, so when you’re an even more boring and self-righteous nag than you are now. That’ll really bring the boys to your yard.
MW: “Now, if you’d sent a huge amount of money to someone you’d only talked to online, I might question your judgement…”
Crankshaft-We can only hope that if it happens to Ed he ends up impaling himself on the blades.
RMMD-You could always hire yourself out to lonely women.
MW-“Then you won’t think less of me when I tell you I was scammed out of $200,000.”
Blondie-Dagwood doesn’t need a season for his thoughts to turn towards love of food.
Luann-Bernice is going to die a lonely old maid with only Luann around to eat her corpse.
H&L: Hi looks sad because he now realizes his father telling him “The sky is blue because the ocean is blue.” is a bunch of horseshit.
Marvin: I know bathroom jokes are the lowest form of humor but Bitsy squatting to take a shit right in the living room in P2 is such a commitment to the bit that you gotta admire it.
@Liam: “Then you won’t think less of me when I tell you I was scammed out of $200,000”
…when you find out your inheritance is $200,000 less than you were expecting. Because the only place I’m ever acknowledging that fact is in my last will and testament.
@Baja Gaijin: Sick.
Gotta hand it to the Blondie creative team: “Vin Scully’s spirit is now employed as a psychopomp and is here to escort Dagwood to the afterlife” is not a gag I saw coming.
Every year the baseball season begins a little earlier. It’s been a long time indeed since it began in mid-April. How long? Well, it was back when the creators of Blondie were paying attention to outside reality. That’s how long.
@Bob Tice: So, when Alice asked him to get started on the taxes a month ago, he said “I would prefer not to?”
@CanuckDownSouth: Ah, you work in the industry too, I see.
@Hibbleton: Randall Munroe’s latest “what if” explains why the sky is blue. It’s not the usual answer…
Josh, I have to disagree with you. Heathcliff visits the therapist is a fantastic running bit. I mean, that’s the basis of the “Let’s Talk About Ham” strip, which led to a fantastic song by Hot Dad. How can you not like that?
“And then the cat broke out a puppet of himself. I thought that was OK, because we’d been doing some puppet therapy, but I realized the puppet was holding a puppet of itself. And when I looked in close, that puppet was also holding a puppet! Which was holding a puppet. I took out my magnifying glass and it was puppets all the way down, as far as I could see, cat after cat after cat and each one was moving differently, mouthing different words. What do you think it means?”
“Well, first, I think you should stop providing therapy to cats.”
Crankshaft: “No way am I going out like Vito Corleone.”
Lockhorns: Print newspapers have Help Wanted sections, at the quarter point of this century, which aren’t just MLM scams?
GT: “Can’t you call me back later, like when I’ve turned my ringtone up to max and my daughter’s in the middle of her backswing at the par-5 tee?”
Pluggers: Why is that child bald? Is he The Littlest Cancer Patient?
Luann: I’m cutting Bernice some slack here. My brother has used the phrase “rent, don’t buy”, on a number of occasions regarding 20-something men and women his friends have been involved with.
FC: A parking ticket case can go before a jury? Talk about a town with no crimes to judge; forget the 1990-ish automobile, this must be a 1955 rerun.
SlyFx: In panel one, Sammy has not had The Operation, so he’s humping the vet tech’s face with a little something extra.
@The Quiet Man: Luann is blind to the possibility that Bernice might prefer a female partner. And I’m not being snarky here. I’ve had a few friends that were lesbians, and they tended to have Bernice-like personalities. Maybe it’s the right choice for her.
But we’ll never know, because Luann is set in a fundamentalist Christian world. Bernice would grown up in an environment that would have stomped the very idea out of her head. Coming out would equal immediate, total ostracism fom everyone she knows (including Luann and her family).
And, that same environment would have filled Bernice’s head with ideas of heteronorminative marriage. Which would explain why she’s out making marriage “proposals” that had zero chance of being accepted, and even less chance of succeeding beyond that.
@Banana Jr. 6000: You’re right that in a better comic with better characters (‘mature’ characters, to use Karen-as-Bernice’s word) that would be an intriguing possibility. But I have a hard time seeing Bernice, as written, forming a lasting relationship with *anyone* of *any* sexual orientation.
DTM, Blondie – Tax Day and Opening Day of baseball season are both behind us. Also, who still wears a coat and tie, let alone a suit on a weekday?
I mean, Dagwood does have the one big button shirt, which is pretty casual…
Blondie: Dagwood is intrigued that he might be getting cruised, only to find out its some failure stand-up trying some schlocky new material on him.
Heathcliff: I assume the therapy is court-ordered.
Crankshaft: If Crankshaft has a heart attack, he has special gardening shears with which to CUT HIM OPEN! Why wait for the heart attack, guys?!
Heathcliff: The idea of a cat going to therapy is actually pretty legit hilarious, mostly if you picture said cat as being a real, non-anthropomorphic one. Imagine a therapist asking about a siamese cat’s relationship to his mother than grimly writing “borderline personality disorder?” on their notepad when the cat ignores them in favor of batting at a toy mouse or rolling around in a sunbeam.
Crankshaft: Careful what you wish for, Josh. Crankshaft will die of his heart attack and the comic will immediately be taken over by the Funkyverse’s true main character, Les Moore, following him on his epic quest to write a sequel to Lisa’s Story.
I kind of view Heathcliff as the cat world’s Tony Soprano, so the therapy actually seems very on brand.
MW- “Why would we think that?” “Well, I never even kissed Trixie hello, but I sure as Hell kissed 200 big ones goodbye!”
Blondie:
Wait, so this guy is a young man? He doesn’t look like it, he looks the same approximate age as Dagwood, or maybe even older. If he is young, why is he hanging out with Dagwood, who holds young people in contempt? Anyway don’t let this man’s ambiguous age distract you from his desire to fuck a baseball player, or possibly a baseball.
RMMD- Hey, Lonnie Mustache, just a heads up, see that sign on the sidewalk? Over your right shoulder? That might be a good place to start. “Poor me, poor me! Pour me another drink!” Truck and Mud are probably throwing back some long necks right now! Wonder what this guy sells, anyway?
@SideshowJon: “Tone, I’m tellin’ ya, this here cartoon cat in da newspaper is just like a kitty version of you!”
“What the fuck are you on about, Chrissy?! Calling me a fuckin’ cat, I mean what the- just shut the fuck up and eat ya gabagool!”
BLONDIE: Poor Dagwood is thinking, Sheesh! This is not how that guide book said it would play out! I knew I should have just went to the glory hole in the park restroom.
@The Quiet Man: I’m on you with on that, buddy. Bernice is fundamentally a selfish, egotistical, arrogant, overbearing, condescending person.
But if we’re going to be frank about this, I had the same observation about the real-life lesbians I knew. They seemed quick to rush into, and then angrily bail out of, every possible relationship that came along. Even if they were stable, decent people otherwise. I’d listen to my friends vent about the stupidest fights you could imagine. To me, an outsider, the world of lesbian couples seemed governed by chaos.
And I can easily see Bernice fitting into that world. Especially if she gets the instant total ostracism I mentioned. This would put her in a position of needing new an entirely social structure. I suspect a lot of LGBTQ get ostracized from their loved ones and closest friends as a result. Maybe a sudden need for a new family is what drives the above behavior.