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Mary Worth, 3/25/24

Big news, everybody. They did it. They dragged out the Keith storyline and then the Mary and Jeff go on a date transition for so long that here we are at the beginning of a Weston storyline and I’m ready to throw a celebratory party. Maybe it’s just the end of the suffering talking, but I’m actually pretty intrigued that we’re going to get some details on Dawn’s mom! Remember, at least in Wilbur’s feverish memory, she’s an icy Hitchockian blonde obsessed with advancing in high society:

Panel from Mary Worth, 8/4/22

You can check out this post for an in-depth dive into Wilbur’s early ’90s introduction in the strip, when he washed up on the shores of Charterstone as a refugee after being voted out of the house by both his ex and his daughter; but then Dawn discovered that sometimes those who implement a purge during a revolution find themselves similarly purged in a later phase, and she too landed in California. What’s been going on since? What terrible revelations does her mother have to tell her about Wilbur … or about herself? I for one am unreasonably excited to find out!

Gil Thorp, 3/25/24

One thing I don’t feel like I need to know about is Gil’s son’s elite hacking skills. That’s really none of my business and I think it would be very funny if this never gets any follow up, or at least none until the syndicate finally greenlights the Jami Thorp: Cybercriminal spin-off strip.

Alice, 3/25/24

Ahh, first Alice (I will be referring to this woman as “Alice” until proven wrong about it) had to shield her niece and nephews from the horror of alien invasion, and today she learns that she suffers from an awful affliction where she cannot retain memories of happy times, only suffering. Is this strip just a tale of nightmares that never cease?

Daddy Daze, 3/25/24

I like that the opening panel here assures us that the Daddy Daze daddy did indeed take a bite out of this pizza before giving it to his son. I mean, this man is clearly insane, creating an elaborate world where his pre-verbal infant communicates entirely in a series of “ba”s, so it’s totally possible that he lives in a decaying Grey Gardens-style home that is in fact infested with very large mice.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/25/24

Sure, I’ve griped some about this Rex Morgan storyline, but if it ends with this 99-year-old cowboy showing the Count his high-tech mechanical dick, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

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Pluggers and Gasoline Alley, 2/25/24

Old people! Do you enjoy the Sunday comics as one of your last pleasures in life? Well, the whimsical “funny pages” are here to remind you that as you age, you will be beset with endless aches and pains, so much so that you will begin to believe that even in your life on Earth, you are experiencing a taste of what the damned go through in Hell. But still, one must cling to this life, imperfect as it is, as it could be swept away from us at any moment and then — nothingness, no more pain but also no more frosting. Something to think about!

Daddy Daze, 2/25/24

And don’t get too smug, young people! The time when your young body begins to fall apart is coming! And sooner than you think.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/24

Oh my goodness, Rene’s reign of grifting terror is finally at an end, stopped once and for all by the deliberate and heroic efforts of our protagonists some random guy hitting him with a car. Remember, in the Morganverse, a pedestrian getting run over results not in death but in selective amnesia, so I look forward to seeing how his personality gets rebuilt better than before, possibly with the help of the Lyle Ollman’s patented Mirakle Method™.

Curtis, 1/7/24

A longtime and beloved Curtis bit is that Curtis enjoys cracking wise about the elaborate hats worn by the ladies in his congregation. Part of the bit is that Barry, despite enjoying the quips, always begs him to stop, and today we finally learn why: having angered the Church leadership with their antics, the brothers have now been excommunicated, expelled from the community and forever cut off from God’s grace. Look for a future strip where Derek and “Onion” ask Curtis “Hey, ‘Wimp-kins,’ why the long face?” and he replies “Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?”

Daddy Daze, 1/7/24

We’re all on the same page about the Daddy Daze baby’s “ba”s actually just being nonsense babble and the Daddy Daze daddy is working out his own interior emotional turmoil when he projects meaning on to them, right? I think today’s strip neatly illustrates the process: something deep the Daddy Daze daddy’s half-awake mind has conjured up a truly nightmarish body horror scenario, which he puts into the mouth of his son, and then his higher consciousness works to transmute this grotesque image into something much more pedestrian: an anxious metaphor about the imposter syndrome that he assumes all adults share. The way he has to speak all this aloud really drives home the fact that he’s got the worst recorded case of bicameral mind since the Bronze Age.

Dick Tracy, 1/7/24

Look, I get that Dick Tracy is at least 15 to 20 percent old timey pop culture references by volume, but I feel like naming two characters after the actors who played the Second and Third Doctors on Doctor Who but you add a letter to one of the names and also don’t make the characters look anything like them is less of an “old timey pop culture reference” and more “ah shit ah shit I need to come up with a couple names for people for this storyline, uh uh uh uh uh”.

Dennis the Menace, 1/7/24

Pretty sure that “a little dehydrated” is the euphemism publicists use describe their celebrity clients who are obviously drunk or high in public, so Dennis’s little game here is the least of the menace on display.

Family Circus, 1/7/24

Don’t be sad, Mr. Snowman! That hot chocolate would hollow you out from the inside within seconds, leaving you to die screaming on the kitchen floor! You’re better off alone outside!