Sadly Lois does not have anything better to do than whatever this is
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Hi and Lois, 10/10/26
What really makes this strip, obviously, is Lois in the second panel watching over this scene from inside anxiously, with her arms folded. She wants to make sure Chip is capable of forming appropriate emotional bonds so he doesn’t turn out a broken loser like Thirsty, and also wants to make sure the boys rake the yard properly so their house isn’t a neighborhood eyesore like Thirsty’s.
Crankshaft, 10/10/26
Do they really make pilltainers that are as long as a man’s torso? That’s not a thing, right? Maybe that’s why Crankshaft looks so put off in the last couple panels. The joke in this strip was supposed to be about this comically large pilltainer! I carried it all the way over here! Now you’re telling me the joke is about an app that electrocutes you? This is amateur hour, we gotta get our shit together!
Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/10/26
“The devil wears crocs, and also walks on tippy-toes, which looks really unnatural but it’s the only way to really convey to the reader that he’s wearing crocs, and we already got most of the way into putting together a strip based on this joke and don’t have time to come up with another one, so I guess we’re just going to draw him like this??!”
Mary Worth, 10/10/26
“No, it’s … not true! I mean, yes, it would be gross if it were true, but it’s not true, therefore it’s … not gross? I gotta wake up and start making a diagram here.”
43 replies to “Sadly Lois does not have anything better to do than whatever this is”
Mary Worth:
“Yes, it’s gross! — you know, like you, Dad.”
Hi and Lois:
“Dad, why is our shrubbery purple? — I’ve never seen purple shrubs before!”
‘Mary Worth was here, Chip.”
Yeah Grimm, Crocs are famously of the devil. Suspicious that you don’t know that.
Crankshaft is inaccurate, it is impossible to deliver people an electric shock through their phone. I’ve tried!
Mother Goose and Grim-Crocs are an evil far too evil even for the Devil.
RMMD-“Yeah. I was trying to hit the drummer.”
MW-Truly amazing to have several dreams based on the same thing in one night.
FC-“Typical. Guess I’ve got to do it myself. Again,” Mommy says.
Funny how the good people of Charterstone weren’t saying it was gross when Ian and Toby got married.
MW: “No, it’s… not true… I can’t be dreaming of Wilbur!!”
Mary Worth:
I see from today’s second panel that Toby is having her recurring “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” nightmare again.
Crankshaft:
“Why don’t you just mix your pills up and take them out of sequence, Ed? — at least that’ll give you an excuse for your addled behavior!”
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“The Devil Wears Crocs” — didn’t Matt Demon star in that movie?
Crankshaft : …when you come up with a single panel sight gag, but HAVE TO have EVERY strip follow the “three panels, last panel smug one-liner with smirk” formula…
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Dick Tracy : NotLurch reacts to the cops discovering they have no walkie-talkie reception by muttering HOWIENOEL to himself.
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Hi & Lois : Lois is frowning with her arms crossed not because the men are giving up on raking the leaves, but because she knows that “bonding with the couch” means she’ll have to clean it afterwards.
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Mary Worth : Toby’s “NO!… IT’S NOT TRUE!” is actually aimed at WILBUR’S statement. She knows that nobody gives a shit about Ian’s sex life, it can’t be true all of Charterstone is gossipping about it!
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Rex Morgan M.D. : A belligerent giant country singer beating his entire back-up band unconscious in a drunken rage IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS ACT sounds like something really interesting!… Which is why this strip is having it happen in a distant flashback, off-panel, with the assurance from the characters that nothing like THAT will ever happen again.
Six Chix: And so ends the human race not with a bang but a slice.
The stars must have aligned, it’s my birthday, and I actually encountered a Crankshaft comic that I found funny.
H&L: “Good try, though. We’ll meet up in a couple months to shovel snow together and see if that takes.”
CSh: “..and by ‘electric shock’ I mean ‘notification’. It’s a completely normal app.”
MGG: /earlier that evening/ “Honey, could you mark ‘candy’ on the candy bowls so I don’t forget what I’m looking at? I need to put on my formal suit to greet the children”
MW: You can tell this is a dream, because Dawn and Wilbur would never ever describe Mary as ‘gross’. They couldn’t even think it, lest their face betray them…
Chip then goes inside to play “Date Everything” a dating sim where literally anything in that game (notably the furniture and appliances) turn into humans.
Going to make a bond with the couch, the fridge, the clock…
@matt w: But apparently it IS possible to turn a laptop into a napalm-delivery device with a simple thumb drive. Just ask Dick Tracy! You can’t ask Widescreen though, ’cause he’s dead.
JP: ‘What happened? DOGE happened, that’s what! I’m the only CIA person left! Everyone else went to work for some guy who goes around wearing a stupid alien mask!’
RMMD: ‘Hoo boy! This void we’re standing in is just getting more and more empty!’
@The Rambling Otter:
Happy birthday! — may you have many more years of engaging commenting skills!
@Bob Tice: So did Hellen Mirren
@Bob Tice: Thank you! ^^
Crankshaft: Worst of all, Crankshaft’s comically large pills are all suppositories.
Hi and Lois:
“Maybe if I start singing ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?’, your mother will get the hint that I’d rather be doing something other than this.”
GT “I want to be the _best_ football player” “And _Goshen_ is the place to accomplish that? Where they use a different field length, smaller ball, and tactics that are strongly shifted by having a different number of downs to play??” “You realize this comic strip was _not_ made to challenge the ‘dumb jock’ stereotype, right?”
The “devil wears crocs” is an attempt to play off of “the devil wears Prada”.
The weird tippitoe things is a visual reference to the high heels used in the movie ads.
The movie was released 5 months ago. So people might not get the “timely” reference.
GT: Isn’t there some art thing where you learn to draw people so they don’t all look the same age? God forbid they should add a baby to the storyline.
MW: If Toby knew that Tommy knows too, she could add the whole grocery store to her dreams.
The crocs are so dang bad and stupid, even the in-comic dude giving out candy is staring at them and frowning.
Only Beetle Bailey could do a crocs joke that was visually less appealing. The humanoids in the Beetle-verse have their toes stacked vertically, instead of splayed horizontally.
@davep: _that_ explains it – because tippy-toes is definitely not the only angle to recognize Crocs with, their clunky shape is pretty obvious with normal flat feet.
H&L: The real reason Lois looks anxious is that the yard’s not done yet and the batteries on those shock collars only last an hour.
The legend of Foam-Heeled Jack finally reaches Mother Goose and Grimm.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
Does… does Grimm know that that’s not actually the Devil? It’s a child, who is dressed as the Devil for Halloween and happens to be wearing crocs. You’d think that would be obvious, but considering Grimm’s expression and the use of “??!” he seems genuinely confused and dismayed. Someone should probably explain it to him before he has some kind of religious crisis because he believes the spiritual adversary of mankind enjoys casual footwear.
Pluggers really did an amazing job with the artwork today showing this plugger in the midst of a serious medical crisis and still making it funny. I like the expression on his face as he realizes that his negligence over his personal health has caught up to him. “Uh-Oh That’s Not Good” should be added to every Pluggers comic from now on.
Hi and Lois:
This would be a typical nothing punchline if it had said “form a bond on the living room couch”, but because it says “with the living room couch”, it’s a grim statement that both father and son desire a relationship with a piece of furniture more than with each other. No wonder Lois looks so sad back there!
What’s really weird about today’s Mother Goose is that it is only October 10 which means that either Mike Peters is unaware of what day Halloween is or else he thought this joke was so great that he couldn’t wait until Halloween to publish it. I hope he has a backlog of cartoons with different kinds of footwear that would he hilariously unexpected for a devil to wear and he wants to get them all out before the end of the month.
Hi and Lois: Given the number of leaves blowing in the wind, raking them now seems a futile or even Sisyphean task.
Who still rakes leaves by hand anymore? If it’s really that important to you just buy a leaf blower like every other person the last 50 years. They aren’t that expensive especially if you buy one used. I like that Hi genuinely thought that raking leaves was a good way to form a bond with his teenage son. I hope they are also picking up the piles of dog poop all over the yard for maximum bonding experience.
H&L: Lois looks so sad and anxious because she’s a ghost! Look at how her head blocks the top of the window, and we know the window’s closed from the “glass lines” comics use, so her semi-corporeal from is just floating in front of the house!
That, or whoever resized the clipart forgot to put their “Lois scowling” layer under the “window” layer.
@davep: That was “The Devil Wears Prada 2”
The original was released quite a few years back.
@Doc Wonmug: “The crocs are so dang bad and stupid”
Um… why?
They’re convenient, comfy and easy to wear.
Unless you’re speaking strictly from a fashion point of view.
@MKay: MW: If Toby knew that Tommy knows too, she could add the whole grocery store to her dreams.
Toby’s already dreamt about several people she shouldn’t know were gossiping, so I bet he’ll show up Sunday in the mandatory recap of the dream sequence. Besides (as other comments here have said) this dream is mostly about recycling artwork — I think someone speculated Brigman is on vacation?
@Anonymous: I have never needed a leaf blower for my small yard, but then I have never had the “OMG what a _terrible_, _onerous_ task” attitude either
C’shaft: Say what you will about Pluggers (I certainly do), at least it’s capable of containing its jokes about the drawbacks of growing older (increasing number of medications, forgetfulness) to a single panel.
MW: Well, that’s it then. This is the most disappointing dream sequence in the history of Mary Worth.
6Chx: ”So….what kind of vibrator do you use….?”
RMMD: Big deal. Everybody wants to punch out the bass player.
JP: April murdered several hundred people during her grand tour of Europe? She’s going to be have one interesting conversation with St. Peter up at the pearly gates.
HtH: Oh, this is all sorts of wrong.
“No, it’s not gross! It’s a score!”
MW: I didn’t think this storyline would end with Toby dreaming of Wilbur and subsequently choking on her vomit in her sleep, but that would probably be better than whatever slowly unfolds over the next few weeks.