“My Memory Is Shaky Regardin’ Some Of Those Years” would be a good song title, actually
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Blondie, 10/9/26
I really kind of enjoy Dagwood’s emotional rollercoaster here. The man on the TV says that “with 3D printing, anyone can become an action figure,” which I guess is a very muddled way of saying “with 3D printing you can make an action figure that looks like anyone,” but whatever, the point is that Dagwood immediately and 100% buys into it, because a guy on TV said it! They wouldn’t let him say it on TV if it weren’t true! But then Dithers tells him that actually, not everyone can become an action figure, and Dagwood can’t in particular, which he has no choice but to believe because his boss is telling him this, and his boss wouldn’t lie to him, would he? The very idea is unthinkable.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/9/26
We’ve gotten plenty of hints that Mud used to be kind of a terror because of problems with alcohol and/or drugs, but I’d like to believe that Mae Mae is hinting at the fact that this wasn’t the first time Mud pretended to shit himself onstage.
Shoe, 10/9/26
The thing about the comic strip Shoe is that it’s basically a multidecade project to see if newspapers around the country will print a picture of a bird-man who looks profoundly unwell every single day, and quite frankly I’m proud of the success it’s found!
62 replies to ““My Memory Is Shaky Regardin’ Some Of Those Years” would be a good song title, actually”
JP – There’s cool and then there’s April “Ohhhhhh! Them. Yeah, they’re all dead” cool.
I’d like to believe Mud actually was shitting himself on stage back then.
“Was I not on my best behavior?”
“It’s not that — you just sucked.”
JP: Chief Pissy McBitchface thinks ‘Oh yeah! I read something about a big explosion and knife murders somewhere in Somewhere. Where was it? People? Cosmo? Must have been in Woman’s World, but then again I was looking more for recipes for my annual family barbecue…’
Blondie-This is Dithers he probably threw an actual monkey wrench.
MW-Clearly the dream has turned into a nightmare if Wilbur is in it.
RMMD:
“I decided to go electric — you know, like Dylan did at the Newport Folk Festival. Let’s just say I went home with quite the haul of tomatoes!”
Blondie: “Anyone can become an action figure” is one thing, but if the TV is suggesting that “Anyone can print a Spider-Man action figure”, then Marvel’s trademark lawyers are about to get very rich.
RMMD:
“Okay, a little off-topic, but did I tell you that I’m goin’ as Sebastian Cabot’s ‘Mr. French’ for Halloween?”
MW: And again, staring at the top of each other’s heads.
RMMD: It would be easy to say that, due to the alcohol and/or drugs, Mud truly did soil himself on stage. But I like to imagine that, instead, he hallucinated that he’d done so, leading to the audience’s confusion and terror as he started to strip while shouting “Someone shit in my pants!”
Shoe: Showing up to a doctor’s exam whilst hungover is either a defiant choice or a quiet cry for help. Get on the 12-flap process to sobriety, Cosmo!
Blondie:
Sometimes you wonder, do the newspaper comics still “got it”, and by “it” I mean “the tendency to try to make jokes about semi-recent cultural and technological innovations long after they were novel enough to be humorously topical”? Well, between Blondie‘s pumpkin spice-themed fever dream a few days ago and today’s 3D printing gag, I have good news about at least one strip on the funny pages.
Blondie again:
This news program’s choice of graphic seems a bit misguided, since if there’s anyone who doesn’t need 3D printing to get an action figure of him made, it’s Spider-Man.
Dithers, that’s not true! They make action figures of philosophers! Philosophers!
Blondie: At this point, even the most ardent prude would be okay with Dag responding to “Tough day?” with “Yep, the coffin dodger pissed in my Cheerios again.”
Blondie: Funny thing about action figures: they don’t actually move that much! The characters they’re based on, sure, but those figures remain poseable but static. Don’t lose hope yet, Dagwood!
RMMD: “You could also say that it wasn’t a roots-country show at all, but a Cancer Society benefit that you drunkenly interrupted to sing ‘Muddy Boots’, and that the ‘review’ was more of a ‘police report’.
Shoe: Damn, did the Perfesser finally give in and eat Skyler? Well, at least the little guy seems to be making the most of it…
Shoe:
Obviously the joke is that Cosmo “listening to his body” is what’s getting him into health trouble in the first place, but honestly if you’re hearing your internal organs talk to you and give you commands, you’re probably past the point where anodyne preventative advice is enough and are in dire need of active psychiatric intervention.
Shoe: Just die already. Between you, Pluggers, and most of the cast of Crankshaft, it’s like you’re humblebragging about your inexplicable longevity.
Dagwood could have come home wearing a custom-designed Sandwich Man costume, except that would infringe on the name of an excellent sub shop in the Harrisburg area.
Blondie: I actually like the fatherly way Dithers is talking to Dagwood in panel two, made even more impressive by the way he’s teleported the coffee pot back to the coffee maker.
RMMD: This conversation comes across less as reminiscing about a substance-fueled time in his career and more like Mud is having memory issues. If only there was a doctor somewhere nearby…
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
Mud Mountain Murphy’s whole deal is that he used to be an ebullient jackass until he was reformed by the powers of the Mirakle Method/Ollman Technique, so it’s not surprising his long-ago performance was controversial. What is surprising is that, since the posters for the 1974 re-release of The Last Picture Show that we’ve been seeing on this abandoned theater for the last few strips indicate it’s been closed for over 50 years, Murphy must be an immortal vampire.
When I first noticed Mary Worth in the 1980s, Toby was suspecting infidelity back then too. Except the supposed mistress was a student, and Toby feared she was looking too old for Ian, like he was Leonardo DiCaprio with his string of girlfriends. What if she tries to compete with Mary by dressing more conservatively and getting a short gray ‘do?
3D printing is just much, much more resource demanding per unit than making moulds to mass produce your plastic action figures. I think what this strip is trying to say is there’s not enough mass market appeal to make Blondie figures commercially viable.
Blondie & RMMD Crossover: Yes, collect all the action figures from the Morgan MD Cinematic Universe! Start with the Blandtastic Four!
Mud Mountain Murphy: Has telekinetic control over all wet earth, including that he produces himself!
Mae Mae the Mesomorph: Can alter her BMI at will!
June XXI Morgan, The Summer Solstice Queen: Achieves superpowers on only one day of the year, when the sun is at its highest!
Dr. Blandtastic: Can contort his visage into a thousand different pissy-faces!
@Amelie W: Don’t underestimate the market for Funko Pop figures based on legacy comic strips.
@Glarryg: I’d like to believe Mud actually was shitting himself on stage back then.
That was his act, or rather, performance art. It’s where the nickname “Mud Mountain” came from. The roots country stuff came later, after his grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities expired, and he found that no one was willing to pay to see it.
RMMD: Just to hammer home how boring the strip has been lately, it reminds us of a time when occasionally a character would be slightly interesting.
BLONDIE: See, those broken dreams are how supervillains are born! Instead of the bumbling but lovable Salami Man, you end up with The Slicer; building The Death Deli and wreaking havoc.
MW: If Toby had half the creativity she thinks she has, her dreams would be a bit more interesting. Like, “We interrupt the Super Bowl to bring you this breaking news…” Or, a zoom-in on Mount Rushmore, revealing Washington, Lincoln, Ian and Mary.
JP: “Well, no matter. The company has hired a marriage counselor, mandated considering the crimes we can charge you. Can you send in Ms. Worth?”
DT: “Forgive me, I need to let my charcoal eye mask sit for five more minutes before I wash it off.”
Dustin: “Also there’s a photo of you in the women’s room over the instructions for ordering an Angel Shot.”
GT: I’m sorry, but this is still bugging the crap out of me. Gil is probably ignoring at least five different school policies on student-teacher interaction with this conversation, and in any world that didn’t entirely revolve around him he’d be having a long talk with administration about why showing up after hours at a student’s house while the student’s parents were out (even if he didn’t know that part) is at best an open invitation for the interaction to be interpreted in the wrong way and at worst an opportunity for exploitation.
JP: “Yep, killed a bunch of people, can I go see my kid now?”
Phantom: Well, good thing the Mollusk’s private army general didn’t look behind the one tree on the savanna…
Pluggers are ripping off Weird Al Yankovic now.
SH: And of course she couldn’t possibly give birth on or before your wedding….
Blondie being a Twilight Zone-ish horror story where there are commercials on television for products that literally turn people into action figures is the most exciting development in the strip since Dagwood discovered you can sleep on a couch.
***
Mae Mae, you can fix this old theater up to show old French New Wave movies or you can keep its conversion into a roots country music venue. Either way, you are helping to keep medical melodrama out of this comic and I salute you.
@TheDiva: I continue to insist that Pluggers in the 1980s would have been too old to be familiar with Weird Al’s work. If they listened to Dr. Demento at all, it would have been for old stuff like “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah,” dismissing even Tom Lehrer as left-wing trash.
Luann: Just to clarify the continuity – Les gave his FROST speech, goes off stage and has a whole interaction with Luann, the class pauses, and now we see the end of Luann’s speech? Or did Les incorporate that whole ironic reaction to the news of Tara moving in with Phil as an example of what not to do in FROST? If so, he’ll get top marks.
DT: Is that Lurch?
FG: Again, interesting! Is the twist going to be that it is a simulation and not the real biological Ming?
Hi and Lois: A good lazy-deep joke. It is lazy since it uses the basic notion that the son is just interested in partying, so a school reportedly famous for partying would of course draw his attention (see Chico State). It has deeper meaning, however, when dad points out what many have learned to their economic regret that higher education should be pursued with some purpose in mind and not “just to go”. It is still a lot of money and time which could be better spent.
Judge Parker: OK – the creators have done a lot to help save this arc which is sputtering. CIApril casual, “naw, don’t worry, they are all sleeping with the fishes in a fjord” is just what is needed.The CIABossLady(CBL) doing a Mrs. Broflotski imitation “What, what, what!?” is perfect. Does this mean CBL doesn’t know about the Russian gulag and all the people April killed there? Or the swath she, Randy and Bogdan cut through to get out of Russia? At least now, she knows now why she isn’t getting any call backs from her messages to Norway.
MW: Ian’s blissfully unaware, snoring away. Maybe this explains how Ian ended up with Toby: she is not too bright, very insecure.
Phantom: Does the Phantom have the power to cloud men’s minds? Have these guys found the Python and retrieved him?
Nancy: By the way, there is a off-off Broadway show “A Morning with Ernie Bushmiller” about the notable Nancy creator.
JP: Huh, seems like the Central Intelligence Agency lady’s agents haven’t centralized all of the intelligence regarding April’s bloody, stabby rampage across Scandinavia and other assorted arctic environs. She might want to work on that before kidnapping private citizens off streets on Hometown, USA.
Blondie: What the heck did Dagwood think 3D printing is? And what does he think action figures are? We’ll never know, but it’s good to ask the tough questions.
@Gil Bates: Storylines and excitement not included. Free June’s ugly hair cowlick included with EVERY figure!
This is a funny strip on a meta level. You can see Blondie’s
creator,writer, copyright-holder wondering: “I have seen action figures of comic book characters selling for a lot of money, even c-list superheroes! “Blondie” is a venerable institution, maybe I can make some money out of it before it enters public domain? Nothing, you say? I guess it’s time for another sandwich shop fraud then!”A remake of La Grande Bouffe involving birds? That’s even weirder than the original! Ah, who am I kidding! Nothing is weirder than La Grande Bouffe!
“Shitting yourself on stage disgusted most members of the public, but it delighted the small circle of sophisticates that make up the bohemian artistic circle of this town. This exactly the kind of people who might be interested in retro movies!”
“Tough day?”
“Yeah, the boss still won’t get the break room TV fixed. We’re stuck on same channel all the time, and it’s not a good one. It’s called the ‘Set-up Channel,’ and all it does is broadcast weird holiday factoids, recipes, and inane blabber.”
Pluggers: boy am I glad he said “shoes”
Achewood did a much better version of today’s Shoe strip like 20 years ago, but something something water is wet.
Luann: This joke would work better if Fogarty was clearly interrupting Luanne at the beginning of her speech. Because 14 pages is way too long for what seems to be about a 5-minute classroom speech.
Pluggers: The real caption should be, “Pluggers are too stupid to take their shoes off to verify they were shined.” Or, “Pluggers are too fat to be able to remove their shoes to verify they were shined.” Or “Psych! Pluggers do not wear shoes that need shining. They wear shoes with Velcro straps or Crocs.” OK, this is it: “Pluggers are too poverty-stricken to be able to afford shoes that need shining.”
BLONDIE: I’m trying to figure out why they’re showing a Spider-Man action figure on that TV commercial. Spider-Man’s been an action figure long before 3D printing was ever a thing. Shouldn’t they be depicting some random overweight middle-aged guy as an action figure to get the point across? The figure could even come with accessories, like a can of beer and a TV remote.
BB: I’m pretty sure these guys are all putting on an act so the Pentagon thinks they’re too stupid to send over to Iran/Iraq/Vietnam/North Korea.
CS: If you paid for your flu shot, you should have found a reputable drugstore to get it. Any Walgreens or CVS Pharmacy will vaccinate you for free.
DtM: So Dennis is angry that Mr. Wilson’s killing annoying flies? The flies are your competition, Dennis! It’d be like Ray Kroc getting mad a people for leaving 1-star reviews at Burger King.
@Ettorre: @Ettorre:
La Grande Bouffe has an extended scene where one of the guys’ dying from his digestive being clogged because his oppressive mother trained him into losing the ability to fart, so his intestines are jammed, and the main character and love interest lady have to (incredibly grudgingly) squeeze his tummy in an effort to try to get the poop to plop out of him, only for it to be insufficient, and the guy dies anyway, if I recall correctly?
Yeah, nothing is weirder than La Grande Bouffe, a movie that appeals to the same bohemian artistic circles Fergus “Mud Mountain” Murphy appeals to.
Rex Morgan: I genuinely love the facial expressions today. No snark, they’re really good.
RMMD: “I think I might have played here.”
No, you kept talking and singing over a movie and got thrown out.
“That would explain everyone telling me to shut up.”
Blondie: Don’t be sad, Dagwood! You have the proportional sandwich-eating abilities of a spider!
@Rover Berkeley:
On Spider-Man being used to represent a “new” action figure : didn’t another Comics Kingdom do a similar gag recently (or was it Blondie both times)? And the action figure of Spider-man in question was pretty much the same clip art?
…I wonder if this is the Spinning Crown voicing jealousy about how Spider-Man returned to Newspaper comics… as an exclusive feature in USA Today (rather than them, their partner of several decades).
Shoe: The Critic did this joke better… when Jay’s son was on a diet.
Jay: Don’t let your stomach be the boss of you.
(After his son leaves the room)
Jay’s Stomach: Eat a triple cheese pizza.
Jay: Yes Master.
Jay’s Stomach: Now dance for me…
(Starts dancing)
RMMD – No, Mud was on his best behavior for that concert. But it was before the mass spraying of Roots Country Mind Control Drugs over Glenwood. Back then, everybody hated that shit-kickin’ music!
MW Is that an energy drink she’s holding? With a straw? Or is that supposed to be one of those new probiotic sodas? Ohh, trendy!
Shoe – “Let me hear your body talk.” Body: “Let’s get a physical, physical, I wanna get a physical…” The Perfesser’s body needs to make up its mind.
@51 Peanut Gallery: Was it called shit-kickin’ music” because of Mud’s unpredictable colon’s after effects?
@Anonymous: Wait, Spiderman is back in the newspaper comcs? Someone tell Josh pronto!
@Anonymous: I’m pretty sure it was in Blondie, but I can’t find it. Elmo was supposedly playing with a Spider-Man action figure, but in all three panels it was the same clip art Spider-Man as in today’s strip.
I’m guessing they only have to work that clip art into one more strip to win the bet!
@matt w: Heck, long before 3D printers they sold sold an action figure of John A MacDonald, first Canadian Prime Minister, complete with booze bottle accessories…
@Baja Gaijin: Poor Muddy heard someone call country music that, and took it literally.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Why is the telephone so far away from you on the desk?”
“Those things are positively teeming with germs”
“And that remind me, I want you to make a call for me”
Crankshaft: Money back guarantees also went away with Thalidomide, Vioxx, and Fen-Phen, Ed.
Gasoline Alley: Can we just skip to the inevitable “Someone wipes their ass with a handwritten Abe Lincoln letter” climax already?
Dustin has a reputation? I thought he and Fitch were simply assessed by complete women strangers who accurately sized them up as mediocre potential hook-ups or long term material.
MW: Not to get all Director of Photography here, but whose idea was it to put Wilbur in such an unflattering closeup, and also so close to his daughter they look like they’re kissing in the next panel?
FC: Dolly is jealous enough of PJ that she thinks stealing mommy’s heels will prevent another attention-getting infant in the house. And for once, given Daddy’s undisclosed preferences, she’s right.
H&L: Hi, if you’d been paying attention to his academic and extracurricular career you’d know that while State is a safety school for every other kid in town, it’s the brass ring for Chip.
DtM: Some ungrateful kids need to get malaria, dysentery, or salmonella before appreciating insect control.
Blondie: It’s great that the news anchor is just showing a picture of Spider-Man for this story. “When the character is wearing a full bodysuit that completely covers his face, it could be literally anyone in there … even you!”
RMMD: “You owe this town a sober performance, Mud! And I’ve bought this entire theater to force you to give it to them!”
Shoe: Showing up drunk/high/both at a doctor’s appointment is a power move. I respect it.
@ComicallyChallenged:
Blondie: Teleport? Perhaps, but I like to imagine an awkward pause between panels as Dithers steps over to put the pot away, then back to Dagwood.