Mary is FAR too old to be these two’s mother by the way, I’m just going to say it
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Dennis the Menace, 5/31/26
I know that “Dennis isn’t being menacing at all in this one” is one of my (hopefully) beloved running bits, but I’m really not sure how they’re gonna top today’s installment, in which Henry is clearly starting to panic and Dennis with childlike innocence calms him down and offers a practical solution that quickly solves their problem. Dennis The Very Helpful Child would not be a very popular comic strip if marketed in that way but here we are!
Mary Worth, 5/31/26
Aw, isn’t that sweet! Mary is like a second mother to both Tommy and Dawn, which means they can’t hook up, that would be incest, please do not allow them to hook up. Anyway, “self-abuse” is usually a euphemism for masturbation, right? He’s running to make up for years of jerking off? I don’t think this is something I would tell to my newly discovered spiritual sister or a girl I was trying to hook up with. I think that would be bad either way.
Blondie, 5/31/26
Contemporary masculinity is constricting in really odd and unfortunate ways. Like, I think for most of the last 50 years or so we would’ve accepted a guy who likes to loudly sing old Dean Martin songs in the bathtub as being well within the boundaries of manhood, but apparently now we need to establish that Dagwood is using an extremely masc shampoo during this whole process. It doesn’t smell good, like shampoo a woman would use! Its odor is truly unpleasant. That’s how you know it’s for men!
47 replies to “Mary is FAR too old to be these two’s mother by the way, I’m just going to say it”
Mary Worth:
“She’s like a second mom to me. You know — like a ‘Mommie Dearest,’ or a ‘Ma‘ Barker.”
Mary Worth:
“If you arranged all of my worthless bromides in a three-dimensional display, would that be a ‘Dyerama’?”
— Wayne D.
MW: Extra negative points if he confesses said self-abuse was committed while thinking of any of the following people nekkid:
1) Dawn
2) Mary
3) Zach
4) Wilbur
5) Aldo
Blondie: The shampoo must smell like baking mozzarella cheese.
Luann: At least he didn’t spin around and collapse imitating a ‘dumb’ animal like his ‘smart’ daughter…
S4th: Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
JP: ‘The explanation is we need more booze money, Ann, because no one is going to hire two rummies like us. So hop to, woman!’
MW: They had learned to love Big Mother…
MW: Dawn is also unsure what Tommy means by “self-abuse.” That’s why she has a fist ready for action in the next-to-last panel.
Blondie:
“…that’s amore!”
“Wow! — the dude’s singing about eels!”
Mary Worth:
“She’s like a second mom to me!”
“That’s interesting — because when I asked her way back when what happened to you following your conviction, she said, ‘The only thing that beat him to the big house was the lights on the bus!’ “
DtM:
“Have you seen your mother, maybe, standing in the shadows?”
“Nah — she’s in our last panel, with a lot of other regular-looking people!”
Blondie: When you deliver a pizza to the Bumsteads, don’t even bother with a box. Just put it on the hood of your car to keep it warm. If you’re lucky, he’ll even put on a bathrobe when he runs out to get it.
MW – “Don’t worry, Dawn. I haven’t given up self-abuse forever, and I’ve just added you to my spank bank.”
Interesting take on Mary’s age. It really makes you wonder about the dynamics in these stories.
The last two Blondie panels could easily have been a daily strip on their own. I’ve seen plenty of “daily strips stretched to Sunday length” in my day, but I haven’t seen one where the content used to stretch it out has such a tangential relationship with the punchline.
Blondie-“Macho, macho man I gotta be a macho man”
Slylock Fox-Slylock discovered that Shady was illiterate.
MW-About today’s quote. Everything in the universe is imperfect. The only perfect thing is Mary Worth.
MW-And I read nothing from Tommy and Brandy’s conversation implying a breakup.
FC-“Who posted pictures of me on the Internet,” Thel asks.
Family Circlejerk – I think it was Thursty Thurston who rang the doorbell although there are many other candidates out there.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – So Sideburns Guy is pimping Mae Mae out. Now we know the true story of the Glenwood Motel.
@Bob Tice: Don’t get me started, you’ll regret it.
“When an eel nips your heel and a-maka-you squeal, that’s a moray.”
“He’s a comic, a ham, and his name’s Amsterdam, that’s a Morey.”
“When our habits are strange and our customs deranged, that’s our mores.”
JP: With the sudden pivot to “let’s get Ann a job as a sassy waitress,” Judge Parker has outdone its previous record for dropped story lines. What happened to Bogdan and the stolen car? Is Charlotte still crying in the barn? Is the CIA still running a Norwegian operation?
Blondie: Daggy chose Manly-Man Shampoo™ in the Sweaty Gym Sock scent. It gets Blondie off.
Alice’s attempt to run away from her horrible husband and son was thwarted again. Keep on trying, Alice, I believe in you!
MW: “Me? Oh, I’ve just been lurking behind shrubbery and passing judgment, while contributing absolutely nothing to the world. Same old.”
BLONDIE: There’s manly, and then there’s Dagwood-manly. There’s no way that shampoo doesn’t reek of deli meats.
Tommy and Dawn are correct. Many people, including me, when thinking about Mary say “she’s a real mother…”
Where did Dagwood get “shampoo… FOR MEN!”? Does the podcasters he listen to have a line of such products? Dagwood would not care about crypto or reactionary politics, but I guess he would religiously listen to a podcast preaching a highly caloric diet without vegetables
The perspective in “Blondie”’s last panel is terrible but at least we can be sure it is not AI, just legacy comics craftsmanship
@21 Ettorre: Is your question serious? Every major grocery store and large drugstore has a selection of shampoo for men.
Tommy uses the term “self-abuse” because Mary told Tommy he could learn something about addiction by watching the classic movie “The Man with a Golden Arm” but Tommy is a Gen Z who doesn’t watch black and white movies, so he assumed it was about masturbation
@Baja Gaijin: Sure the stores have shampoo designed for men’s scalps. But this is “manly-man shampoo”, which implies a product designed to prey on masculine insecurity
@Josh Ggbet: Interesting take on Mary’s age. It really makes you wonder about the dynamics in these stories.
It’s perhaps more revealing of the psycho-dynamics of the story creators.
The threat to Dagwood’s masculinity isn’t so much the Dean Martin songs as the “slutty French maid costume” bathrobe.
@25 Ettorre: Yeah, we’re not shopping at the same stores. I always laugh when read the labels.
@Ken:
“When you ask for the name/Of the treat in the flame/That’s ‘smore,’ eh?”
“What’s the word — not arcane — meaning ‘love,’ when in Spain?/That’s ‘amor,’ eh?”
“OK, dad, now Crazy Ivan! Uh, one ping only!! Sorry, that’s all I got from the memes. I’m way too young to have watched Red October or Run Silent Run Deep.”
@Ken: They’ve dropped tons of JP storylines, but they *did* note the car was found abandoned.
Blondie:
I’m fixated on the rubber duck in today’s strip. For one thing, it’s not yellow, and since this is a Sunday strip the odds are good that that is the cartoonist’s original vision. I’m sure there are plenty of white rubber ducks out there available for purchase, but in a visually conservative medium like comic strips it’s a shocking innovation. It’s also not floating on the water, instead sitting precariously on the edge of the bathtub while it’s forced to be audience to Dagwood’s off-key warbling. Finally, it just appears in the second panel of the second row—it’s not there in the previous panel, and Dagwood isn’t carrying it at any point. I’m not sure how or if these facts form a coherent whole, and you may think it’s pedantic to harp on such minor details, but considering Dagwood specifically mentions it I feel justified in focusing on it, especially since the alternative is to just pay attention to the quintillionth “ha ha, Dagwood sure likes food!” punchline.
Blondie: Second take. The first one was spoiled when the Pizza Guy said: “It’s that bum, Dagstead”
DtM: Funny that the artist includes a bit of Alice’s legs in the shot to show that she too isn’t riding on someone’s shoulders. Thereby removing the one interesting thought one might have about today’s comic.
@CanuckDownSouth: Which basically amounted to the same thing. Did the cops do any investigation as to who ‘stole’ it? Did they not question Ann about the ‘theft’ since she was the last person to be in charge of the vehicle? Did Bogdan keep the big honking wrench for a souvenir or did he leave it (and his fingerprints) behind? Further, if he ‘abandoned’ the car close enough to Cavelton for the local cops to find it (as opposed to the Highway Patrol or cops from two towns over) then doesn’t that mean Bogdan’s still somewhere in Cavelton, probably dying from internal injuries?
No time for all that! Judgey Wudgey needs his pleasant but tasty meal and meandering conversation with Ernest Borgnine at the local greasy spoon!
@Ken:
When I was in undergrad, I learned that the resident advisor for the dorm in which I was housed was none other than a burrowing rodent! “Vole R.A., whoa, oh! Vole R.A., whoa, oh, oh, oh!” I exclaimed upon making the discovery.
Wary Morth:
“Mary’s like a second mum to you too? Oh, so we’re like brother and sister! Thank heavens, I now have the perfect excuse to not submit to being your summer romance!”
____________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
“Keep this going? Are you crazy? How many days do you think people will be interested in coming here to eat your less than mediocre food just because some of it is being served by a washed out ex Hollywood actress?…..oh, right, I see why your café was a failure all these days now.”
____________________________________
Flylock Socks:
Shady: “Ha ha, the joke’s on you, jackal: shrews can’t read!”
____________________________________
Murky Tail:
“Rabid Rusty” would be a good name for a death metal band.
RMMD Are you going to stay around so we can keep this going? Because clearly everyone will find this ex-celeb waitress just as fascinating the 2nd, 3rd or 356th time and I’m already planning for this to be the new normal because I have as much business acumen as ability to check the identity of waitstaff I’m hiring.
DT I’m trying to figure out what’s more likely – Sam’s grabbing a baton because the way to survive a car crash in the Tracyverse is to punch out the impact, or he’s actually trying to get this newfangled “seatbelt” contraption to work in the split second before the collision.
JP I wonder why the inking lines are so much thicker on the Sunday than the weekdays, I didn’t think they got shrunk more.
BF Look, if you still want to do dailies but don’t want to do the full week so you stick a couple on the Sunday you’ve pledged to continue, I get it. But please stick to top/bottom rows like last week not side-by-side 2x2s. This is confusing to read.
Archie—Ahh, stamping prices on cans. Nothing takes us back 50 years than having that clicker hanging around your waist and stamping everything. Fun fact: did you know that hairspray and Kleenex will remove the price? Spent many hours stamping and then later removing prices as they changed. None of those damn scanners for us!
Blondie: Yes, “That’s Amore” is nearly seventy-five years old at this point and long ceased to be culturally relevant except as a pun setup. But it’s been previously established that all of Dagwood’s musical selections are food-based, so it’s in character.
MW: Yeesh, we’re barely past the first plot point and the characters are already singing Mary’s praises! At this rate the three-week post-mortem will be unendurable.
(Discussion topic: Which title character is more aggressively shilled by their author, Mary Worth or Gil Thorp? Talk amongst yourselves.)
@MKay: “There’s no way that shampoo doesn’t reek of deli meats.”
You’ve also described Dagwood’s sweat, voided liquid, solid waste, and precious bodily fluids. With that kind of scent, how does Blondie know that he’s showered at all?
Blondie: What kind of accent is “When ze moon hits a-yoo eye” meant to be? It’s certainly not from within a thousand miles of Dean Martin’s. When I read it, I can only hear a Hogan’s Heroes comedy Nazi, perhaps making fun of one of his Italian Axis comrades.
DTM: And that was the last time the Mitchells ever dared step outside their gated suburb.
MW: Today’s strip made me realise an awful truth – Mary Worth is in fact closer in age to my mother than my grandmother. It would not sound weird if I referred to a 65-75 year old retiree as my second mother. Of course, I’m an aging millennial with two kids and a mortgage, and not a stoner slacker who is a plausible love interest to a college student, but you know.
I don’t think Mary is too old to be Tommy and Dawn’s mother. She has white hair and wrinkles, but that’s not unusual for people in their 60s. Certainly that was her age in 1934, when she started selling apples, and she hasn’t changed since then. Tommy and Dawn would be remarkably immature if they were in their 30s or 40s as they appear to be, but then again they would be remarkably immature if they were 15.
C’shaft: “By the way, I took out a second mortgage in your name to pay for all this. You don’t mind, do you?”
DT: Going by the throwaway panel, Ettinger is looking forward to the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Dustin: “My laziness and lack of motivation are better than your laziness and lack of motivation, because I’m a middle-aged white man and the universe revolves around me and my preferences.”
JP: “If only I knew someone who practiced law, or who did so for the balance of his adult life!”
@Voshkod: Henry does seem like the kind of guy who’d have a BluRay of Das Boot on a shelf. Maybe Dennis was forced to sit through that?
(Excellent movie, but not if you’re an eternal six year old with the attention span of a guppy)
DtM – What Dennis doesn’t know is that Henry is already planning to play submarine later that night when he gives her a torpedo amidships.
@Unca Bob: There are states where you still have to do that (as of 2012 at least). I worked at the corporate office of a low-end retail chain. Some stores had to stick prices on every individual candy bar, every tin of cat food, every 5-cent plastic impulse toy in the place. That sounds like one of the circles of hell.