Excited for Mary Worth to get Kafka-seque
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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/1/26
My first reaction to this panel was a very strong and visceral feeling that animals wearing fursuits of other animals is just wrong. It’s wrong! And probably you’re going to barge on in and say, ooh, Josh, are you saying that rabbits and lions and mice and foxes are all the same category of thing, as opposed to humans? Are you saying they all look alike to you? And yes, that’s what I’m saying, and at some level they believe it too! Why else does Slylock think that it’s OK to dress up as a mouse who’s as big as a fox? You’re saying he doesn’t “see” size? C’mon now.
Shoe, 11/1/26
Kudos to the artist for adding the little floating dots in Biz’s field of vision in the first panel. That’s a subtle hint that all this talk about “do[ing] it for me” and “the night [being] young” are code for drinking. He’s drunk all he can, because he’s old and can’t hold his liquor anymore! And now he’s probably going to drive home! Good times.
Mary Worth, 11/1/26
I love how Mary methodically worked her way through all the dweebs and idiot morons in her life, and each time another name was named, her thought was “Well, I guess I’m going to have to figure out who they heard this outlandish rumor from.” But as soon as Tommy announced that Nelly was his source, Nelly whom she barely knows (though she frames that relationship in her mind as Nelly rarely taking the golden opportunity to interact with Mary) — the target was acquired. Nelly’s going to pay. Nelly’s going to suffer. Does Nelly think she’s miserable? She doesn’t know the meaning of misery — but she will, and soon.
39 replies to “Excited for Mary Worth to get Kafka-seque”
Mary Worth Mashup: Any comments?
MW: If this arc ends with Mary saying, “Well, she’ll reap what she shows” and never confronting Nelly “Drag Show Eyebrows” Feneley/Fenele, I am going to commit actual crimes.
Slylock Fox:
Um, because Slylock wants to “tail” Robby, and both rats and Slylock have tails?
Oh, Christ. Mary’s going to get Nelly a fucking dog, isn’t she?
Slylock: So Sly keeps disguises of all the animals routinely accused of committing crimes in Slylockville? I think we’re getting a little closer to actually solving this crime wave.
MW:
“…This desired state of being which, isby the way, why I read this strip religiously despite my every instinct not to do so.”
— Franz Kafka
JP: ‘Uh… ksshsshshs. you’re break- -p! I must be go— —ough a tunnel! Bye, talk to you whenever!’ [hangs up] ‘Whew… I sure dodged *that* bullet!’
RMMD: And the Morgans never even knew Buck’s children had mortified him with their costumes…
DT: For those playing along at home, it was ‘Captain’ Joseph Patterson whose Chicago Tribune newspaper syndicate gave Chester Gould his big break by accepting his ‘Plainclothes Tracy’ strip for publication.
Slylock Fox, Alike Scenes: Where did Mr. ZZ Top get the buttocks hat? Shapely, shapely booty.
MW:
In today’s third panel, Lampy looks as if he’s being taken up into The Rapture.
Slylock Fox-Don’t even ask what Slylock made the costume from.
MW-A visit from Mary with a basket of muffins.
Shoe:
“This whole switch back to Standard Time has me enervated, Cosmo, so I need to ‘spring back’ from this table in order to ‘fall forward’ !”
Slylock dresses as a rat because, like Robby, rats are criminals. Every one of them. And shrews, also biologically crooked. Subscribe to his substack and listen to his weekly podcast “Shut Up, Max, I’m Talking”, but only if you can handle the TRUTH!
Today’s Mary Worth really breaks the whole thing wide open – the cat and the narrator use the same speech boxes! The cat is the narrator! This explains the insipid and frequently inaccurate quotes, but not why more of the quotes aren’t focused on the differences between wet and dry food, or on the fact that no one fed the cat today despite us all remembering Mary feeding the cat.
Luann – Of all the disturbing things in here, the most disturbing is the occasional appearance of Shannon’s dad, who looks like he went down on a woman with a merkin that wasn’t well attached.
Slylock Fox:
Solution — The rat, like the raccoon, is an Omnivore, meaning it feeds on a chain of eponymous luxury hotels and resorts throughout the United States and Canada.
SLYLOCK: Slylock should dress as a trash can and wait BEHIND the restaurants, because, anthropomorphize as you will, a raccoon is still a raccoon.
MW: I’m going to get today’s newspaper and color a red glow into Mary’s eyes in the last panel.
You’re a Plugger if you’re a moron.
MW: Mary takes a swing at Nelly in the hall but misses and punches Wilbur standing nearby square in the mouth. Nelly looks at Mary and Mary looks at Nelly and they both look at Wilbur’s bleeding lip. He spits out a tooth and they both start laughing. They hug. “All’s well that ends well!” [fade out]
Shoe: Or he could, you know, fly home, being (ostensibly) and bird and alll.
MW: Strange how Mary instantly determined it was Nelly who started the rumor and not another person who passed it on after hearing it from someone else.
Pluggers: Happy All Saints Day. One of the most important dates on the Plugger calender, because it means marked down Halloween candy! Nom-nom-nom!
MW – So how does Mary know that Nellie Finelli is patient zero and the rumor started there? Isn’t she supposed to confront Nellie and ask where she heard the false rumor? I’d love that, since Nellie’s answer would be, “When I saw you giving Ian a hand job in the car while you were both saying HA HA?”
MW:
“Now, as I understand it, she struggled so much with the question of whether the ‘Y’ at the end of her last name was functioning as a vowel or as a consonant that she decided that the best thing was to drop the whole letter altogether!”
MW: She’s like Ernst Blofeld, if Blofeld had a boyfriend with a severe cat allergy.
MW: Mary will get her revenge on Nelly by giving her gluten-free muffins from Tommy’s store. Enjoy your dry, mealy, chalky muffins you old harpy.
JP Sure I have extras, but is a toga party really the best way to get your mind off – oh. No, sorry, it’s a small L.A. apartment of *course* we have no guest bed. Really, you should have just asked directly
RMMD We rag a _lot_ on Mary Worth cell phone hands, but just take a moment to examine the way June Morgan brings dishes to the table. Think of the last time you carried a plate of food and compare that to her display with flat on the palm, no hand pincer holding the edge, not even a thumb stabilizing it. The bowl is scarcely better, with the pinky finger barely giving a side grip – Actually if the pink bits next to the pinky are supposed to be the other fingers in a trigger grip then it’s far worse because she’s either broken those digits in three places or the joints bend in ways that prove she’s not human
MW — Someone must have been telling lies about Mary Worth, because one day a Charterstone resident awoke in her bed transformed into a giant rat.
“It’s the mashup of The Trial and The Metamorphosis I’ve always wanted to make happen! May it last for six weeks and make you truly miserable.” — Franz Kafka
WHAT are Cosmo’s intentions with Biz here
MW: “Misery loves company?” Nelly’s going to wake up tied to a bed, with Kathy Bates standing over her with a sledgehammer?
SF: “Hey, I know you!”
“Max, it’s me. Slylock.”
“Right! Slylock Fox from the funny pages! Wow!”
“Max, we see each other every day.”
“Can I have your autograph?”
“Max, I … you know what? Sure. Let me get a pen.”
Shoe: I’m trying to read The Perfessor’s expression in panel one. Is he being … flirty? His romantic options may be limited, but I didn’t realize they were that limited.
MW: “I guess you don’t really know your neighbors … until you secretly install cameras in their apartments. We’ll get started on that tomorrow, won’t we, snookums?”
Well, looks like Slylock keeps a box of tissues and a tub of Vaseline in the bottom of his nightstand. That’s more than I needed to know.
Slylock is dedicated to his work. Stuffing his lush, fluffy tail into that skinny rat tail costume is like wearing stiletto heels, for a fox.
MW: Well, well, well – if it isn’t the poseable, molded rubber Feline prop, aka “Muffin.” As you know, my
somewhatlive client got the boot for lack of charisma – as compared to the rest of the Animal Star cast. Apparently that requirement doesn’t apply to the Two-leggers. But we got a good exit deal, she still gets paid when her “double” appears. They need to work on the audio synch in that second panel – looks like her “meow” is comin’ outta the wall.And of course we have the triumphant return of the Doves o’ Love X 2, performing an Avian quadrille specially choreographed for the occasion. I think they call it “Revenge of the Harpy”…
JP: Worried about her furthering mental crisis, producers have signed Adrianne Ho to take over the role of Neddy Spencer.
Shoe: Get back in left field!
No! It gets late early out there.
SF: [looking out Slylock’s window] You know, a rabbit poking its head up from the underbrush is supposed to be a visual shorthand for “bucolic landscape”, but here it reads as either “stalker” or “peeping Tom”. Go home to the trailer park, bunny boy.
Slylock Fox:
Yeah, yuck it up, Max, the only reason Slylock has to suffer this indignity because you, his supposed assistant who also belongs to an omnivorous species, are too incompetent to perform even the simplest detective tasks like basic surveillance.
@MKay:
You’re on to something there.
Slylock Fox is pretty much emulating Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs movie and just like Buffalo Bill he will tuck his genitalia between his legs and dance in front of a mirror.
Mary Worth:
“Misery loves company,” thinks Mary, showing how poorly she understands the situation. Nelly wasn’t simply trying to make others as miserable as her; spreading salacious gossip filled her with manic joy! Of course, Mary’s going to fix her anyway, it’s just that “fixing” means taking away the one thing that makes her feel alive.
MW:
“A little known factoid is that I had a brother Hans who, along with me, was the inspiration for the bodybuilder parody that debuted on Saturday Night Live in 1987. Now, mind you, telling you this does nothing to advance the current plot arc, but neither does today’s installment of this strip.”
— Franz Kafka