Bird poop, Dawn’s emotional crisis, etc.
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Shoe, 9/16/26
More than 20 years ago, I had the idea that it would be fun to start a blog sharing my opinions about Wilbur Weston’s sex life with the world, and mostly it’s been OK, but I have to say that I also have from the get go felt compelled to share the news that the characters in Shoe are birds, which has led me to explain a surprising number of times that a bird is outfitted with a cloaca rather than an anal sphincter, and thus just kind of poops whenever its bowels fill up enough and doesn’t have control over the process like me or (hopefully) you. The Perfesser is a fishhawk and thus an obligate carnivore, but his compatriots of vegan species must be doing truly horrifying things to their digestive system if this is the sort of thing he’s writing about in his column.
Mary Worth, 9/16/26
Speaking of the sex lives of the Weston family, how’s Dawn, who has been established as secretly pining for Tommy, doing with that whole situation? Well, she’s reached whatever the stage of secret pining is where you go bowling with your love object and his girlfriend. Look, she’s even wearing a bowling shirt! She’s really into this! Anyway, her reward for this is to learn from Tommy that Mary Worth and Ian Cameron have successfully initiated the sort of secret cheating affair that she yearns for but can’t have, which has to hurt. Note that Tommy is whispering in panel two: Obviously he wouldn’t tell Brandy this, she’s way too good for this kind of gossip.
Dick Tracy, 9/16/26
It’s no “eaten alive by rats,” but “bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the neck while your wraparound sunglasses display a BSOD” is pretty hardcore, not gonna lie. I certainly hope Widescreen custom-programmed the embedded processor in those glasses himself to keep track of his vital signs in order to deliver a final bit he would never see; if these are just some off-the-shelf smart glasses from Meta or something, I will lose respect for him as a hacker.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/16/26
Sorry, there’ll be no crime or kidnapping fun in Rex Morgan, M.D., this week, but there will be drama, in the form of Rex finally being unable to escape the conclusion that his sons are pretty stupid. Remember, one of these kids is Rex and June’s biological child and the other is adopted, so we’re really gonna settle some nature vs. nurture questions here in ways that will not reflect well on our protagonist.
70 replies to “Bird poop, Dawn’s emotional crisis, etc.”
DT (next strip) FULL REBOOT – and behind the visor, the AI meatspace agent rises, an unkillable zombie…
I hope Dawn is paying attention. Mary was a staunch defender of Tommy against his accusers when he was at his lowest point and now he is not hesitating about spreading vicious rumours about her. Tommy is a lowlife, Dawn, not because of the drugs but because he is an ungrateful backstabber! Find someone better!
“Come on, kids, pay attention in school! I will not be able to pass you my job if you are completely incompetent! I did not create a legacy strip!”
RMMD-“We’ve also learned what pronouns are. We have to state them every morning.”
MW-“Yellow rubber baby bumpers.”
FC-Quick! Throw Jeffy in the oven!
RMMD thrill at the strips showing Rex trying to recall the family passwords for Schoology, only to find the boys are on SeeSaw! Everyone will be on the edge of their seats as he finds the right tab to give the schoolwork updates and wait! there’s even a Plan Of The Week message from the teacher!
What pushed perpetual guest writer Eric Costello to write such a gory death for this cybercriminal? Was he a victim of phishing or ransomware and he developed a grudge against hackers?
Vegetarian here (well, pescetarian, actually) and my poops are just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Shoe:
I’m a vegetarian, so maybe I’m taking this a bit personally, but this comic strip is… actively incorrect? I know it’s all in service of a pun, but Shoe and its depressed bird-people have not earned the goodwill necessary to disrespect dietary fiber like that.
RMMD: “You boys need a tutor!” Enter recently paroled and freshly disguised Rene Belluso.
The veganism debate is like the existence of God debate. What separates members of the two camp is a prerational intuition (do animals have worth equal to humans? is there a supreme maker?), making every argument pro or against completely useless for rational debate. I can assure you that non vegans will cheer at this factoid, vegans will become enraged and it will move a lot of clicks for the dying newspaper. Is it true? No one cares
Why is the blond kid’s head hanging half off his neck? Shouldn’t Rex, as a physician, maybe look into that?
Shoe:
“Thank goodness, though, that having a constant diet of vegetables doesn’t affect kidney function and result in Reno failure!”
Pluggers: Sheila, didn’t you see yesterday’s strip? That bill is caked in shit.
Mary Worth:
“This is just between you and me…your hair looks as if it just lost a fight with a cyclotron!”
RMMD:
“I think that the teacher said that some of the fractions are irrational — which means that they’re just like Aunt Tildy!”
MW: Oh, okay. So Tommy, Brandy, and Dawn became started practicing ethical non-monogamy. That’s why Dawn’s part of the last plot had no resolution, because Moy would never dare discuss such a thing. I guess Tommy’s daily depression over both of his girlfriends being out of his immediate line of sight explains why his IQ has dropped so low that he believes Nelly’s gossip.
Dick Tracy:
I appreciate how today’s strip uses both high-tech (the BSOD on his smart glasses) and low-tech (the vividly crimson blood) means to signify Widescreen’s death—as Josh notes, it’s pretty hardcore. Still, I’ve lost a bit of respect for Widescreen now that I know he uses Windows instead of having a favorite Linux distribution like a proper hacker.
Dick Tracy:
Add what just happened here to the list of more than one hundred reasons why you shouldn’t sport a mullet.
And what about those nerdlings’ clothes? Baggy gray pants and solid-color tees. Is that what the kids are wearing nowadays? Or do Rex and June just dress their two off the generic rack in the thrift store?
@Ettorre: Dawn: “Dammit, now I want him even more! Thanks a lot!” (Remember this is Dawn we’re talking about here.)
Mary Worth:
Maybe this is expecting too much of bowling alley signage, but if you put a giant green bowling pin on the facade of your building, you’d better have pins the come in a variety of cheerful colors, not the plain-ass white ones we see in the background here.
Shoe: I know it’s just in service of a terrible punchline, but seriously? You think that the principal cause of constipation is too many vegetables? That its bacon grease and cheez whiz that keeps your colon lubricated?
MW: “This is just between you and me…” said Tommy, staring up to the surveillance camera, imagining Mary watching the feed from the comfort of her condo. He imagined for a brief moment the incredible relief he would feel when the latest round of loyalty tests were over, before subtly adjusting the mic under his shirt and leaning in closer to Dawn.
DT: “Unmountable boot problem..?” “You’re…standing…on…my crotch…”
RMMD: Uh, this doesn’t sound like two kids who weren’t paying attention in school, this sounds like two kids who have never been to school, and are trying to cover it up by repeating terms they heard on TV.
Crankshaft : Oh, look, the “if someone screwed up while doing their job, it’s because THEY’RE DOING IT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE THEY HATE ME” bit again. Was it established previously for Holtron, or is this being retconned in? Because the latter is just annoying to me; Holtron being a bit of a goof is endearing, Holtron being just yet another asshole who purposefully sucks at his job feels just… tiresome, I wanna say?
****************
Dick Tracy : I swear, if Widescreen somehow survives this…
1. It’s not just the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH, it’s also SCREEN CUTS TO STATIC *AND* SCREEN SHUTS DOWN TO DARKNESS AND SILENCE. *THREE* separate metaphors for Widescreen dying, and he survives!?
2. Dick Tracy fans *NEED* a big villain death, it’s been a while!
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Frazz : “Now’s the best time to travel”!? WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING AB- Oh, your grandpa meant the SEASON/TIME OF YEAR, not *gestures towards all this*
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Luann : why is TJ being given the “makes gross food no one likes” trait? Now, it’s looking like the DeGroots keep him as their restaurant’s only chef because of his more established “commits arson for insurance fraud when angered” trait (which is *EXPLICITELY* why Nancy accepts his invitation in the last panel).
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Mary Worth : it’d be funny if this telephone game/chain of rumors went through the entire cast BUT Toby. Like, the rumor gets to Ian and/or Mary before Toby ever hears of it, assuming she EVER hears of it.
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Safe Havens : …Alex was born a Saint Bernard, but somehow was turned into a human. That’s why he’s an amnesiac orphan who doesn’t remember being a human kid, that’s why he keeps turning into a Saint Bernard with increasing frequency. I dunno why the strip hasn’t had the characters figure it out yet.
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Shoe : You know, it’s weird that the OTHER strip featuring horrible animal-monsters that Brookins was involved with pointed out that an all-veggie diet is actually associated with diarrhea, and that it did so YESTERDAY. Meat and Cheese and Protein clog you up, veggie fiber makes it flow
(even without bacterial infection that REALLY makes it flow… too far?…)!As to why The Perfesser is incorrectly writing that meat consumption promotes regularity instead of fiber, obviously The Treetops Tattler-Tribune has decided to sell out to the Plugger demographic.
@Ettorre: Neither, I think he just wanted to do this sight gag. I’m surprised he didn’t have Widescreen open his mouth to make his last word be that ‘THUNK!’ sound a 90s computer would make when giving you the Blue Screen of Death (get it? GET IT????).
MW: Now would be a perfect time for Dirk to reappear. With an AK-47 in hand…
JP: Welp, place your bets folks! What horrible misfortune is going to befall Judgey Wudgey and Winey Wifey by Friday?
The Return of the Return of the Return of Pavel Jr. and the ‘We Hate CIApril’ Mob?
The Return of Judge DangerDoofus and Lil’ Dunk?
The Return of the Man-Eating Bear?
The Return of CIA Boss Resting McB**chFace?
The Return of Glucas and the Twin of Sam who got Cement-shoes?
Or just CIApril got bored and decided to just off everyone in the strip and take over?
BG&SS: “What’s two plus two?” “Aw come on, Sheriff Tait, you know I ain’t had no book larnin’!” “Jes’ answer the question, Snuff. What’s two plus two?” “I dunno, five?” “Congratufications, Snuff, yeh passed!”
RMMD: I really, really hope that this isn’t a segue into this strip trying to go back to its socially-conscious roots and deal with the “boy crisis” or the universal problems with education in the smartphone/tablet/AI era, because I do not trust the writer to handle either topic with any kind of subtlety, nuance, or basis in reality.
(Also, who wants to bet that in either case, Sarah will be completely unaffected by the issue?)
Is it weird that I kinda want to see what this looks like in black and white in an actual newspaper? Normally anything in a daily strip that isn’t black shows up as pure white in the newspaper, which is why clothes and other objects in daily strips will often appear to be black, even in color, when it would make more sense for them to be some other color. So either Widescreen’s glasses would be pure white in the last panel, meaning newspaper readers would miss the BSOD reference, or the creators of Dick Tracy are able to break this rule and have something be inked in the version sent to newspapers that’s a nonblack color online.
DT: 10/10, no notes.
MW: All of these characters are way more invested in Mary and Ian’s personal lives than I would have expected.
RMMD: The “how old ARE these kids?” disease has hit the Morgan boys, who previously appeared to be about preschool-kindergarten age but now are early middle school size and learning mid-to-late elementary school subjects. If Sarah has kept pace with them she should be somewhere between her junior year and writing her master’s thesis.
Dick Tracy: Wow. A literal Blue Screen of Death. Kudos, Dick Tracy creative team!
Pluggers: Based on yesterday’s Pluggers, Sheila, first you should don gloves before touching your hubby’s filthy jeans, then put that dollar bill through the wash on “sanitize” a few times to deactivate the fecal coliforms teeming on its surface. Only then will it be safe for humanity. Or “pluggerity”; I’m not sure how that works.
MW: Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE to gossip. But, sometimes, sheer reality tells us that some things simply cannot be, in the world as we know it. Ian Cameron and Mary Worth playing Hide the Salami is one of those things. Is no one going to say, “No, that can’t be right?”
RMMD: Well, Rex, there are two college funds you can go ahead and blow.
SHOE: Seeing that The Perfesser spends most of his time in either a bar or a greasy spoon diner, I hope he doesn’t fly over my car anytime soon.
Shoe: Have the Shoe-birds never heard the phrase “Slippery as goose shit?” Why do you think goose shit is so slippery? That’s right, because they’re herbivores!
Sure, Mary Worth is having a silly plot about gossip that Mary will squash with the tip of her thumb, but can’t we all enjoy Tommy’s correct usage of “Between you & me’?
Dustin: To be fair, it doesn’t say “Blocked and Reported”…
GT: I know I’ve complained about this strip’s sports action panels for a long time, but honestly, learning about a come-from-behind victory after the fact isn’t a better option.
JP: Any day when Katherine can limit contact with Alan to a chaste goodbye kiss is a good day.
Phantom: So you going to DO anything, O Ghost, or are you just going to stand there pontificating?
Pluggers steal from their loved ones.
Safe Havens: Alex turning into a dog completely at random for the rest of his life, his life is permanently ruined.
-reads notes- what? This is supposed to be whimsy?
-storms out-
Shoe: A “new study,” eh? Who paid for that study? Was it perhaps the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA)? Do some damned journalism, you alleged journalist!
MW: Here’s my impression of Dawn at the bowling shirt store: “Do you have it in brown?”
DT: I do not understand the sequence here. Okay, first his glasses displayed static, then the final burst of electrons of a CRT television set powering down, and then the BSOD? So did his glasses turn back on just to do that?
RMMD: The saddest part here is that the Morgan boys seem open to the possibility of learning things, even if they’ll never achieve it.
@TheDiva: All of these characters are way more invested in Mary and Ian’s personal lives than I would have expected.
They live in a hell-world where only a dozen people exist, and everyone else is a faded mauve zombie condemned to hover in the background until they get involved with one of the real people’s lives. Of course they’re focused on those people.
You’ll note Nelly was brought to full life by spying on Mary and Ian, but could only partly vivify Alma (a second-order effect), who retained much of her purple coloring. Brandy suffered a similar fate when she went off to Florida, losing contact with Tommy and gaining a violet tinge which she still has. I need hardly point out the significance of the mauve coloration, given Mary’s clothing choices.
MARY WORTH: Hah! Toby is going to be so embarrassed when she angrily calls Mary “a cheating whore” at the surprise party that she and Ian had been secretly spending weeks planning for her (oops, I hope I didn’t “spoil” this obvious conclusion for you guys)
MARY WORTH (2): Tommy (just last arc): “Thank you Mary Worth, for looking past vicious, hurtful rumors that can traumatize a vulnerable person and instead trusting that I had enough inner goodness and character to shine through all of that.”
Tommy (today): “Dawn, Some woman I barely know said Ian and Mary are doing it! Can you believe what a hoochie-mama she turned out to be?!”
MW: Just a heads-up, ‘Mudgeons! We better be bracing ourselves for the longest, meanderingest, most pointless Mary Worth story to date because for every person this gossip touches by the time it gets to Mary, however many weeks upon weeks of strips that takes, Mary will take just as long to contact-trace the rumor, person by person, backwards, running the story in reverse, until she reaches Nelly and platitudinizes her before forgiving and completely forgetting.
@Tom: RMMD: I wouldn’t worry. Remember a few weeks ago, when the twins were planning to kidnap Sarah, and Sarah went and visited a (probably) special-needs friend who happened to have the same hair color and dress as Sarah — leading many of us to speculate the twins would kidnap the wrong girl? Nothing came of that. Likewise, the boys are just talking about school, and that will continue for another day or two, going nowhere, then vanish forever.
@Anonymous: MW telephone game
I am mildly pleased that I called this one a few days ago, pointing to Rockwell’s “The Gossips.” My pleasure is completely negated, of course, by the dreadful knowledge that this will go on for weeks if not months.
@CanuckDownSouth, DT: Came to post same.
Curtis: I actually guffawed. Nicely done.
MT: I also guffawed at “If I die in this cave, my ghost will sue you!”. Also nicely done.
MW: “Sshh. Keep your voice down. The fetus, possibly alien, in Brandy’s bowling orb might get upset. Frankly, I’m terrified.”
@MKay: And seeing as he’s a human-sized(?) bird
This his hypothetically horrifying.
Dick Tracy mission control center. Hundreds of men in white shirts and ties buzz around their desks while monitoring a giant countdown clock and projection TV carrying panels from the day’s installment. As Widescreen appears the room falls silent. Ed Harris paces in the back, shoveling one stick of gum after another into his mouth. At long last, the final shot of Widescreen goes up, and the crowd erupts. The announcer intones into his microphone “5:32 a.m. Central Daylight Savings Time, and that’s a wrap. We have successfully deployed a metaphor dating back to 1985. Drinks are on Ed Harris.”
SHOE: Sue Mcnally Lansing: “I’m not angling for a lucrative ‘contract’* promoting Tump’s imported ‘beef’ policy, wink wink….**”
*And given the administration we’re talking about here, I of course mean “bribe.”
** Lansing: “Oops I wasn’t supposed to say the last part out loud!”
RMMD: Rex orders June to put the kids on a complete pescatarian diet. “Wives tale or not, it’s time for a hail Mary….
FC: …because as Bil is soon to find out, blood rushing to the head doesn’t do the trick.”
Rex Morgan, MD: “Boys, your grades are so bad, you’ve lost bedroom privileges! You’ll be sleeping in The Beige Dimension until I say otherwise!”
You know what’s going to be fun? Boomers are going to read the set up to a joke and take it as fact and will warn their pink-haired grandchildren about the dangers of a vegan lifestyle to their digestive system. It was a pretty solid pun though.
***
“Ian Cameron? The fuddy duddy weirdly-bearded college professor with the hot younger wife who has him tied around her little finger? With Mary Worth, the fuddy duddy muffin baker with a handsome, clean-shaven rich doctor boyfriend?” Dawn’s not the brightest, but come on, she knows these people. If she doesn’t immediately come to the conclusion that there’s just some wholesome meddling going on here… Oh crap. She’s a Weston.
***
Why is the screen on the outside of Widescreen’s perv glasses? I think there’s a design flaw there.
Dustin: I’ve come to the conclusion that the turtle in Sherman’s Lagoon is a better and more amusing loser at love than Dustin ever will be.
“THIS IS JUST BETWEEN YOU AND ME!” Tommy shouted, over the sounds of dropped bowling balls and crashing pins.
Find a person who doesn’t fart in public – a private tooter.
Wrecks should trade in these two for the scam twins.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Or hire Henry VIII. He would be an excellent English tudor.
RMMD — “We learned something about fractions in math, but I forget exactly what.” I remember the teacher said something about half wits
MW — Yeah, because what millennial doesn’t relish gossip about the sex lives of the baby boomers. . .
I applaud it.
Tommy is smarter than Rex Morgan’s kids. Low bar, but still . . .
Tommy: Mary Worth and Ian Cameron were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!
Family Circlejerk – Bil must really be desperate for money as he resorts to shaking pocket change out of Jeffy.
@Twinkles the Elf: It’s OK, he’s just one of those Junji Ito personal balloons. Soon everyone in Glenwood will be dead!
FC- “Good. Now see if the oven is hot enough.”
MW – “Just between you and me… but if Mary and that respectable Prof. Cameron can have a little something on the side, what’s stopping us?”
@2+2=7: Fair enough
Decades ago Woody Woodpecker introduced to children the great song “Largo al factotum” from the “Barbiere di Siviglia”. Could Mary Worth replicate a similar feat, making million of children aware of another song from the same opera, “La calunnia è un venticello“? Fat chance!
People say that the the Ian-Mary thing will prove to be a misunderstanding, but I think it will be a case of ethical non-monogamy! After all, after years of stolid conservative orthodoxy, “Mary Worth” decided to go full woke. How else do you explain the sudden appearance of two black characters and the trans flag bowling alley?
@Vulpes: You’re not taking it personally. This strip will show up from everybody’s uncle who’s sharing AI slop by tomorrow morning. Shoe is the comic whose character is show smoking a cigar and telling readers “no bitching” about it or such.
Shoe could easily be sliding into “anthro birds with hack axe to grind’ territory. And that’s Mallard Fillmore’s side of the street!
Hmmmm.
“Shoe” today.
“Pluggers” Monday.
“Marvin” too frequently.
Learning about a “extreme” exercise contest called Hyrox and a controversy over what happened over the weekend to one of its competitors.
I think I know now where the world is heading.
I’m off to the store for some Immodium and Charmin.
I hope I don’t meet any bears.
RMMD- If the Scam Twins had managed to kidnap one (or both) of Rex’s sons, I don’t think he would have minded that much. He might have counted that as a win, actually.
Mary is absolutely reaping what she sowed here, spawning hordes of busybodies that are now going to turn that busybodyness on her.
@The Mighty Finn: The next day Rex will be flipping pancakes, saying to June that kids always come home on their own, and that they shouldn’t do anything.
What was Widescreen’s crime again?
Downloading a few songs illegally or something?