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Mary Worth, 9/20/23

You know, if you’re a Worth-head come lately, you might think of Mary Worth as a strip primarily about a core rotating cast of characters (Mary and Jeff, Wilbur and the sad parade of women who at one time or another had sex with him for some reason, Saul and Eve and their dogs, Ian and Toby if we’re really desperate). But for most of this strip’s history, Mary was a sort of Rod Serling-esque figure who served to introduce us to stories about one-off characters who wandered through Charterstone and/or the greater Santa Royale area and then left once their plot had been resolved, never to be seen again. I sincerely miss stories like “An old lady does not want her daughter to date” and “Charterstone’s local pervert uses truly sick art to seduce the unwary” and “Uh oh! A child has been kidnapped!”, and I am honestly very hopeful that the absolutely huge slab of man-meat that is Keith Hillend (he’s named that because he’s bigger than the end of a hill) will end up being the center of a new self-contained story instead of getting entangled with, say, Dawn.

Gil Thorp, 9/20/23

I don’t care that much about this flash of intra-Mudlark coaching staff drama, but I do want to say that it very much tracks that the Coach of the Year Award, a trophy they apparently just give to Gil every year, is referred to by its abbreviation, COTY, pronounced “coaty” and so universally known that you can just slip it into indignant accusations like “You insulted Gil when he won COTY!” and be sure that everyone will know what you’re talking about.

Pluggers, 9/20/23

That’s a murder weapon, right? Those stains are more blood than rust? We can all agree this plugger is going to “fix” things, via murder, which ought to “do the trick”?

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/16/23

Shoutout to Rex Morgan, which, when its armed kidnapping plot rapidly devolved into discussions about the easiest way to transfer money, decided to keep digging and get into a whole thing about ordering room service. “I’m armed, remember?” says Rene, in a desperate attempt to drag the excitement level back up, but nobody’s listening, nobody cares.

Gil Thorp, 9/16/23

Shoutout to Gil Thorp for just having Gil deliver pure unadulterated gnomic bullshit directly to the cameras. “We just need to refocus … I have a feeling this is going to be a long season,” he intones, transfixing readers at home with an eerie Kubrick stare. You don’t need to go so hard, Gil, it’s only week one of the season!

Pluggers, 9/16/23

Wait, is Pluggers implying that a thing that we had in the past and no longer have might’ve been less than perfect? UNACCEPTABLE, BURN THE HERETIC

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Dustin, 9/14/23

Apologies (?) for not showing you yesterday’s Dustin, which consisted of Dustin asking his dad to guess the global gross domestic product, and Dustin’s dad guessing $100 trillion when the actual answer was $102 trillion (according to the strip, anyway, but if you think I’m doing any research whatsoever to fact-check a gag in Dustin you are sorely mistaken), and there was some bemused discussion of how his guess was quite close in relative terms despite being off by $2 trillion, a very large sum when considered on its own. Anyway, this was annoying but not that annoying — certainly not that annoying by Dustin’s usual standards — so I didn’t bother talking about it here. But repeating the exact same “joke” today, with nothing new added other than a shuffle in the lineup of characters saying it? Well, that’s annoying enough to bring to your attention. If they try to get a whole week out of this concept, I’m going to be very annoyed indeed.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/23

See, if you’re going to do a themed week, you really need to follow the lead of The Lockhorns and do it with a real purity of purpose and tight focus. This week is apparently “Lockhorns anniversary week,” the theme of which is that Leroy and Loretta use the occasion to attack and belittle one another in anniversary-specific ways, as opposed to the more general ways in which they do it over the rest of the year.

Gil Thorp, 9/14/23

Wow, it looks like Toby and Rod really used their time in prison to sharpen their football skills, huh? This is going to send an important message to student-athletes everywhere: that the best way to get a leg up is to go to juvie where they’ll be forced to play football for the entertainment of a sadistic warden, so they need to do some crimes, but not crimes so serious that they get sent to adult prison, where the sadistic warden can only be entertained by no-holds-barred steel cage matches.

Blondie, 9/14/23

Love the way Elmo is solemnly making direct eye contact with the reader in the final panel here. This truly is an important lesson about school picture day that America’s children need to learn, which is why it’s so tragic that no children read Blondie.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/14/23

RENE THEY ARE ONLY TRYING TO PAY YOU THE MONEY YOU ARE OWED AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE, WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE CRIME AND THREATS WITH YOU