Mary’s about to shatter that glass in rage
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Shoe, 10/23/26
As I move into my late middle age, I definitely have spent time pondering my legacy, and feeling increasingly proud of the decades of abstruse sex jokes about Mary Worth that I will leave behind me, to the amusement of a select but hopefully happy few. I think more artisans leave such specialized work in their wake than we often recognize! For instance, the journeyman behind Shoe is, without a doubt, history’s premier artist for depicting bird-men who react to ostensible joke dialogue by looking genuinely and sincerely depressed. This isn’t funny, Roz! She was his friend, and now she’s dead! If you think about it, there are quite a few ways they could’ve gotten to this punchline that don’t involve Clara Higgins passing away, but when you have this kind of depressed-bird-man-drawing-talent available, you don’t waste it.
Mary Worth, 10/23/26
Speaking of abstruse sex jokes about Mary Worth, I know we’re supposed to take Mary’s “negative thoughts” as referring to her troubled imagining of who could’ve been spreading rumors about her, but come on, she’s thinking about sex with Ian, right? Like, nobody wants to think about sex with Ian Cameron, but once it’s been suggested to you, it’s hard to avoid thinking about. You’re thinking about it right now. Don’t try to tell me you’re not.
Alice, 10/23/26
BIG NEWS: We have learned the name of Alice’s boyfriend, and it’s … Steve? Huh. Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed that, I admit. Guy doesn’t look like a Steve, but I suppose the world isn’t always what you expect. Oh, also, they finally met the aliens that live under her floorboards or whatever. She and Steve did. “Steve.” Still doesn’t sound right, sorry.
49 replies to “Mary’s about to shatter that glass in rage”
Shoe-Clara Higgins funeral will come with a choice of two sides.
MW-Finding out who spread rumors and extracting vengeance is a tomorrow worry.
RMMD-So are you going to blow him now or wait?
FC-“I have help from a friend name Jack.”
MW: “I mean c’mon. Ian’s not wealthy enough to touch the hem of my skirt.”
Ph: Please let this devolve into a game of ‘Stop Copying Me!’
MW: I was waiting for the next ‘daiiiiuhhh!’ expression, I’m only surprised that both Dawn and Ian aren’t sporting them in panel two.
RMMD: AugieDoggyDingDongDaddy: ‘Dessert?? Does that mean I’m finally gonna -‘
Summer Showers: ‘Don’t be silly! You’re gonna buy me some carrot cake with that sweet, sweet option money!’
From YesterThread:
@The Rambling Otter: No worries.
I think I know how you might have gotten Garagiola’s name from ‘Peanuts’. During a story arc where the kids are threatened with losing the lot where they play baseball, Charlie Brown finds Sally writing a letter seeking the support of, in Sally’s words, Joe ‘Garagi-agi-agi-agi-ola’. CB corrects her with the correct pronunciation, and Sally decides instead she’s going to write to Joe ‘DiMagi-agi-agi-agio’.
I absolutely devoured Peanuts anthologies as a kid, and this arc was also adapted for the Saturday Morning animated adaptation, so it’s just stuck with me.
Shoe:
Another day of Shoe, another brush-up against morose thanatopsis. Will the assembled fowl start singing “Eleanor Rigby” next? Will there be a group reading of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”?
GT now we can determine that the writers learned about sports from bad sitcoms / afterschool Very Special Episode plots about inclusion because that’s what practice and scrimmage is for, NOT an actual game. The cheesiest sports anime would get this better, with the athlete having to prove themselves to be featured…
Alice:
“You need to stop anthropomorphizing plastic armymen, Alice.”
MW: Of course I’m thinking about Ian having sex! Look at his face! Either Toby’s already fondling him in the middle of this soiree, or he’s trying to telepathically demand a handjob.
Mary Worth’s frown makes me hopeful we’ll have an exciting arc of “Mary teaches the gossip a lesson, Aldo Kelrast-style.”
What, you think that was an accident? In *her* strip?
Family Circlejerk: What Thel really said:
“I switched from gin to Everclear.”
Meanwhile, we’re three comments in as I write this, and no one has tried to ride the COTW bandwagon by commenting on Alice, even though it is a featured strip today. Good job. Keep it up, folks.
MT “I mean, if they sell invasive species as pets to _adults_ that’s fine, we all know adults are automatically super responsible and would never let them into the wild…”
Mary Worth:
If Ian were to play Captain Ahab in a Santa Royale Players’ production of “Moby-Dick,” it would be difficult to sort out which of the two principals was The Great White Whale.
Mary Worth:
“They seem happy. Let me think about what I might do to turn their dispositions saturnine so that they have to come crawling to me for relief.”
Oh, wow, Clara Higgins got high up because she was a circus stiltwallker? That’s pretty amazing coming from a couple of flight-capable birds who are in a fucking tree right now.
MW: Eat, drink and be merry, my friends, for tomorrow we SMACKDOWN.
RMMD: That was a whole lot of nonsense just to get somed damned dessert. I’ll bet ice cream in front of the TV is looking pretty good right now.
DtM: When you realize that the dog has more effective parenting skills than you.
ALICE: What’s the punchline? The aliens are not picene. How about, “Ar-gus you could be right?”
@The Quiet Man: Charles Schulz dropped the names of real baseball players a lot (along with Charlie Brown’s hero, the fictional and hapless Joe Shlabotnik). According to Baseball Reference, once when Lucy destroys Schroeder’s piano, the replacement comes with an autographed picture of Joe Garagiola, so that might be another place you remember it from.
I think that’s where I first heard of him from; I definitely remember a strip where Schroeder is sitting around catatonically mumbling, “she destroyed my piano” or something like that.
We also learned that Steve lives there! Unmarried partners cohabiting is still surprisingly rare. Though do we know that Alice and Steve aren’t married? What else is Alice not telling us?
Alice: This reminds me of the line attributed to movie mogul Sam Goldwyn who opened a film script and yelled, “Steve? You can’t name your main character Steve! Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named Steve!”
MW: “Hmmm, I suppose a three-way wouldn’t actually be considered cheating, would it? No, stop it, Mary! But still…”
Sunday strips for the soaps often retell the previous week, but RMMD has just spent the past 5 weekdays retelling Sunday’s strip, right up to the dessert comment. Which makes me wonder what is left for tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll just stare blankly at each other over a slab of cheesecake, or whatever is easiest to draw.
What… is this expression on Toby? I’m really asking. They could have drawn her with mouth doing literally anything else– vacuous smile, vacuous toothy grin, etc. — but instead, she’s gaping like the most gormless of baby birds. Is she… singing to him? Is she gently telling him that his beard is stuck in her hair? Whatever she’s doing, Ian’s pained grimace is pretty funny. Sorry, buddy, you did this on purpose; tell you what, bring the parrots to Maui with you to distract her and it’ll be like you’re not even there.
DtM: Ah, the dog has trained your simple-minded child. Menacing indeed!
MW: Again, why was Tommy invited to this party? Was it to liven things up, by which I mean, was he supposed to bring the drugs? Mary could really use some right now!
MW: Mr. Diva is rewatching Archer right now, so maybe that’s why Toby’s face in panel two reminds me of Cheryl Tunt in the middle of one of her choking fetish ecstasies.
Shoe: Why specifically a circus stilt walker? Is that more respectable than, say, a freelance stilt walker who hires out for parties and events, or someone who does it merely as a hobby? Can you even apply the word “respectable” to someone who walks around in long stripey pants?
“to the amusement of a select but hopefully happy few.”
We few, we happy few, we band of ‘mudges;
For he to-day that snarks his best with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This blog shall gentle his condition;
And scrollers in the world now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they wrote not here,
And hold their comments cheap whiles any types
That quipped with us upon Curmudgeon’s day.
A few days early, I know. . .
Mary’s rage gives me hope that we have entered the second phase of this storyline in which Mary will undergo several different training montages in which she not only hones her meddling skills but also develops enough upper body strength to shred the one who has dared imply she has had sexual thoughts or actions with *anyone* let alone with Ian.
Shoe: No no no, Shoe : she was a crane. Come on, these bird jokes practically write themselves!
MW: I see that Mary is using a special teetotal glass, which is just a closed glass globe on a stem. Not too practical but at least it gives you something to do with your hands.
Alice: Steve doesn’t even believe that basements exist. When you live in a world as two-dimensional as this one, it’s hard to even conceive of such a thing.
DT: The house is going to blow up with the culprit inside it, isn’t it?
Luann: God, how awful was Bernice’s home then?
Phantom: This is AI in a nutshell: people assume it’s “thinking” in a human sense, but it’s just mimicking previously established patterns.
Pluggers almost never do the housework.
Didn’t Pluggers used to pride themselves on keeping things spic and span? When did they turn into pathetic slobs?
@CanuckDownSouth:
Isn’t that the Gil Thorp model?
Are there flamingo bird people? Now I’m wondering about birds with very long legs, and that got me thinking about flamingos, and they get their pink colour from their diet but we only see the bird people eating what appears to be the same food we’d eat at a diner, so would flamingo bird people not be pink? Sheesh, when you decide to make your comic about bird people you’ve already written yourself into a corner before you’ve even started.
***
Wait until Dr. Jeff finds out people thought Mary was having sex. He’s going to laaaaaugh and laaaaaaaugh!
MW: I’m looking forward to the Mary Worth/Dick Tracy crossover where the MCU is called in to investigate Nelly’s disappearance and Mary goes out in a blaze of glory.
Shoe: Is it just me or have there been a lot of Shoe strips about death recently? Is the writer ok?
Mary’s sagging boobs in P2 tell a different story. She’s devastated by the rumor. She’d crush that glass in P1 if she had full use of an opposable thumb.
LOL Nelly is gonna get kicked out of Charterstone
Charterstone, late night: A gray-haired figured cloaked in darkness shoves something in the trunk of a black Lincoln Town Car, “House of the Rising Sun” swells.
@TheDiva:
It was also the plot of the Star Trek episode “The Ultimate Computer,” where the guy who made the ultimate computer used his own engrams to create its neural network and WHOOPS! he was mentally unstable. It looks like, just like our real-world tech-lords, who all claim inspiration from Star Trek, our fictional tech-lords’ key skill seems to be missing the point.
Luann: So, they’re going to rename the strip “Napkin”?
GT: Good sportsmanship aside, the Karen Mom is going to show up and blame the coaches for the loss.
C’Shaft: Many are the times that I’ve been tempted to compare reading this strip to watching grass grow. I never imagined, though, that I would be using that phrase in its literal sense.
DtM: “Dear Lord,” Henry thinks to himself, “I’m raising a son who loses a battle of wits to a dog. Now who’s going to look after Alice and me in our dotage?”
FC: Tempting as it is to think up a snarky answer by Thel, my problem here is with the dowdy harridan asking her such a ridiculous question. Who thinks of maternal love as a finite entity to be divvied up between one’s children like so much rice pudding?
MW: “I won’t let negative thoughts spoil the joy I feel for my friends tonight! First thing in the morning, though, I’m putting the word out on the street…bring me their name, and by week’s end I will grind their bones into flour to bake a fresh batch of vengeance muffins!”
@matt w, Joe Garagiola: Joe also had a Second Career as a panelist and host of game show in the 70s, as well as commentator on NBC’s Game of the Week and World Series games.
MARY ANGRY! MARY SMASH!
Murky Tail:
“I mean, if they wanted to earn money that badly, they ought to have sold guns or drugs to minors instead of blue shrimp!”
FC: “I mutliply it! And by that, I mean every kid took about five fucks to get started.”
Pluggers: Nick Page and Nita Penfold are NOT having an affair. They’re merely…uh, planning a surprise party together!
DtM: Of course, drawing me, Ruff, the ball, and my father all in the same plane makes grabbing the ball quite easy.
“Yes, Toby, I have been cheating on you with Mary, and she won’t stop talking about how sexy and charming she thinks you are. So, there are three tickets to Maui, but only one bed at the time share.”
Shoe: I think either the Perfesser or Roz is admitting to looking up Clara’s skirt. Before you jump to conclusions about which one, might I remind you that Roz is bi and horny, while the Perfesser has clinical depression and rarely leaves his house.
“And, if I’m being blunt, circus stilt walkers have no business trying to board a helicopter!”
@Little Guy, Joe Garagiola: Wow, looks like I just scratched the surface for his After Baseball career(s!).
We don’t see Mary in a stern profile like that often; she looks like she could be posing to have her likeness put on a coin
DT: Regardless of active gas lines, I’m expecting chez Wodehouse to rupture and sink into the Chicago swamp, à la the melancholy House of Usher.
6Chx: Really phoning the art in these days, aren’t you, Patrinos? Or is that a Tycho Brahe replaceable nose?
Shoe: Don’t think I’ve ever seen a female stilt walker. Must be a dress thing.
Alice:
In the field of cryptography, the people sending encrypted messages to each other are commonly called “Alice” and “Bob”, in order to make things more readable than if they were just called “A” and “B”. A third character, who is trying to intercept and read the message, is often called “Eve” for “eavesdropper”. What I’m saying is that Alice‘s Alice is having an affair with someone named Bob, and she’s trying to keep it a secret from her boyfriend St-eve. Maybe Bob is one of the aliens in her basement!
MW: This could all be a dream, which would explain Ian and Toby having foreplay while no one else notices. Sunday, Nelly wakes up clenching a muffin.