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Mary Worth, 11/24/12

Oh my goodness, Mary. You … you really want to do this? It seems like you want to do this. Fine. Everyone, once upon a time — 2006, to be exact — there was a Mary Worth storyline that involved a man who wanted to be more than friends with Mary, and it was a very important moment in the history of this blog. Click any of the links below, for the Glory and the Majesty!

• Aldo Kelrast moved into Charterstone and immediately started saying skeevy things about Mary’s lovely hands.
• Turns out he was attracted to Mary because she looked just like his dead wife (marginally less creepy than Dawn looking like Jim’s dead sister, we guess?).
• Mary told him she wanted to be just friends with him. Actually, her exact words were that “it’s best if we don’t socialize too closely.”
• Nevertheless, he kept hanging around, so she had to be a little blunter.
• Eventually, she resorted to talking like one of those ethnic gangsters from the movies in an attempt to deter him.
• It got bad enough that Mary’s friends all staged an intervention, as if that were a way that people dealt with stalkers they barely knew in real life.
• The shame of it all drove Aldo — a recovering alcoholic who had given up the booze after his wife slipped and died in the bathtub when he was passed out drunk — directly to the liquor store.
• Getting drunk and then getting behind the wheel of a car? Amateur stuff. Aldo got behind the wheel of a car and then got drunk.
• Oops, maybe not such a good idea!
• Could he really be dead? Yep!
• Our heroes felt kind of bad about this.
• But pretty soon they were able to rationalize it.
• Then Mary went and put flowers on his grave, as a final “screw you, stalk-o.”

This — this — is the backstory to what Mary is telling Dawn. If the friendship is strong enough, your aggressive paramour will understand that no means no. And if he isn’t … well, are you ready to kill, Dawn? Kill in a way that leaves no trail back to you? Because that’s what it takes, Dawn. That’s what it takes.

Beetle Bailey, 11/24/12

I normally don’t care to know any of the backstory to the half-hearted hijinks of Beetle Bailey, but I admit this one has me curious. How long was General Halftrack followed around by an eager documentarian? Do you think he knew in his heart of hearts that it had gone badly, or had he deluded himself until this moment that he’d look like a hero to movie-going audiences everywhere? Is the titular Disaster at Camp Swampy a single, disastrous incident that was caught on film, or is it referring to the metaphorical, slow-motion disaster that’s so all-pervasive that the soldiers stationed there won’t be able to recognize it until they see it on the big screen?

Archie, 11/24/12

Ha ha, I love how angry Reggie is at the space monsters, for failing to open diplomatic relations with Earthlings. “How dare these extraterrestrial chumps refuse to speak to me! Have they even seen my amazing stripy sweater?”

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Beetle Bailey, 11/19/12

I am super excited about being back in the saddle for Thanksgiving Week! What was once a celebration of getting through the year without starving to death has become another opportunity for America to indulge its bottomless appetites, so what better way to get psyched for it than to contemplate Sarge’s insatiable needs, for food, for love for … something. Attracted by the odor of the garbage that’s all over Beetle’s clothing, he waltzes into the kitchen in a fugue state, his eyes closed, his arms ready to hug, or maybe wrap around his prey and hold it down so it can be consumed.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/19/12

Sadder, unsurprisingly, is Funky Winkerbean’s annual Turkey Sale. There used to be a certain manic joy to the Westview band’s attempt to stave off bankruptcy by selling possibly non-USDA-inspected turkeys to unsuspecting saps door-to-door. A cartoonist who starts off writing strips when he’s young generally has young viewpoint characters; if he’s lucky enough to have a job for decades, of course, the viewpoint characters get old and the new young people who get introduced into the cast are feckless morons. And so the current generation of turkey salesmanship is represented by Peruvian Hat Boy here, who wanders dumbly from door to door, mumbling out half-hearted pitches memorized by rote like those dead-eyed children you see on the subway selling boxes of M&M for “school.” I suppose it’s possible that he just had his will to live crushed out of him by endless lectures about the importance of sequential art.

B.C., 11/19/12

Even grimmer is today’s B.C. Ha ha, this turkey has scavenged through the garbage to find the severed leg of one of its kin, and has now crudely attached the dismembered limb to his own chest in order to convince the world that he’s a genetic abomination, because he’s terrified of being killed and eaten!

Archie, 11/19/12

In non-horror news, Miss Grundy is sad that her students don’t know who Savonarola is, which might be more troubling if she were teaching a class about, say, the history of Renaissance Italy in general, or maybe precursors to the Reformation? Because while Savonarola is the subject of a moderately famous painting by Fra Bartolomeo, he was more of a political-religious figure than anything to do with art. On the other hand, kudos to The Savannah Roller, who’s definitely selected one of roller derby’s more obscure pun-names.

Heathcliff, 11/19/12

Heathcliff and his girlfriend, who enjoy elaborate role-play, have hired a bored pizza delivery man to “deliver” Heathcliff, for sex. You can tell the pun fills him with contempt, but work is work.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/12

If you were seeing this strip out of context, you might think that its implications about Killer’s notoriously aggressive sexual advances are really quite dark, with Miss Buxley’s worries about the “tree” being “hurt” being some kind of protective psychological displacement mechanism. But longtime Beetle Bailey readers know that it probably just has something to do with the fact that both Killer and Miss Buxley like to hump up on trees, constantly.

Mark Trail, 10/17/12

There’s a lot to say here about global income inequality, which means that someone who considers themselves middle- or even working class in the U.S. lives a life of unimaginable privilege compared to most in the developing world; or we could discuss the ambiguity that arises when employees have access to corporate luxury assets, and what this says about their wealth in practical terms. Mostly, though, I just wanted to put this comic here so that every embittered worker in the various dying wordsmithing industries can grab panel two and use it as their computer desktop wallpaper.

Apartment 3-G, 10/17/12

Guys, I’m … I’m beginning to suspect that Margo may not be very good at running a publicity agency.