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Mary Worth, 1/12/25

This Mary Worth storyline is sadly all too realistic in its depiction of emotional abuse and manipulation. But it’s extremely unrealistic in its depiction of someone who isn’t wearing her usual corrective lenses. I’m sorry, if Dawn’s vision is so bad that she’s just squirting ketchup all over the table in a vague attempt to season her fries, I refuse to believe she has any ability to see anything other than vague colors or shapes, or has any idea where she is or who she’s even talking to. I was also going to say that the transition that got us to “Duckgirl” isn’t realistic either, but I guess I need to keep in mind that Dirk is extremely stupid, so I’ll allow it for now.

Daddy Daze, 1/12/25

I swear that I am usually capable of processing a deliberate incongruity in the fictional world of a comic strip as a “joke,” but my least favorite instance of this is when an animal or some other entity that shouldn’t be able to read or write at all can, but is bad at it (probably the canonical version is the Far Side “CAT FUD” panel). That’s why I kind of approve of this strip, in which the Daddy Daze baby, who we are meant to understand is capable of advanced cognition that he communicates in a series of “ba”s, appears to have produced a professional-quality pamphlet, and hasn’t just handed over a piece of paper with squiggles all over it. Of course, you all know my theory that the baby is just a baby and the Daddy Daze daddy is insane, but nothing we see here precludes the possibility that the daddy produced the pamphlet himself in some kind of fugue state.

Hi and Lois, 1/12/25

Do you ever feel envious of Trixie, who lives outside the world of adult responsibilities and even childhood fears and enjoys a simple existence with her best friend, the light of the Sun itself? Well, it turns out that actually she perceives all sources of light and heat as separate conscious and jealous entities, and is constantly caught in their complex web of social relations as they jockey for status. Sounds real stressful, honestly, so maybe we should rethink our attitudes about her life.

Shoe, 1/12/25

I was about to make fun of Shoe for saying you can’t make money on the Internet, but then I remembered that he’s a newspaper editor, so he probably knows from pretty hard experience about not making money on the Internet.

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Dustin, 1/8/25

I think I speak for insufferable pedants everywhere when I say that I immediately clocked this as not being an actual line from Confucius — it’s way too touchy-feely — and felt great satisfaction when exactly 5 seconds of research proved me right. It’s widely attributed to the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, as part of the longer quote “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything,” but nobody seems to have a specific citation for it, so that’s probably not true either. I leave the details to the elite team of Brainyquote investigators in the comments, but I do think that if there were even a thin thread connecting this to Confucius, you’d find that attribution everywhere online, because the older and more exotic the source of an anodyne statement like this, the more people love it.

Anyway, it made me wonder: What would Dustin’s dad think of Confucius? I feel like his opinion would be mixed: obviously he’d be into the filial piety and respect for hierarchy, but Confucius rejected the strict codes of Legalism and emphasized that an enlightened ruler leads by means of moral example, which a lawyer would be dubious about. I also considered trying to figure out what Dustin’s dad would think about Thomas Carlyle, but it turns out that his Wikipedia article is really long, and why would I waste my precious time on it when I could be making jokes about Dawn Weston walking into a door in Mary Worth?

Mary Worth, 1/8/25

In other news, Dawn Weston, having eschewed corrective lenses for the dumbest reason imaginable, walked into a door in Mary Worth, which incredibly means that she didn’t even get out of her own apartment building before we were treated to The Mr. Magoo-ening Of Dawn Weston. Honestly, looking at those doors I half expected them to open automatically, and maybe she did as well, who can say. Anyway, I look forward to Dirk tactically abandoning his “Nerdgirl” taunt and moving on to “Bruisegirl Nosebleedchick.”

Hi and Lois, 1/8/25

Ditto, she’s been around since 1954, she’s never had any teeth, and at this point she’s pretty sure she’s never going to have any teeth. Stop taunting her! Mush is all she will ever know, across however many decades she has left to suffer in this ageless hell!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/5/25

Lord knows I’ve spent enough time contemplating the economy and politics of Hootin’ Holler, so I might as well take this opportunity to unpack its cosmology a bit. You are all, I trust, familiar with Granny Creeps, a chthonic sorceress or perhaps demigoddess who creates potions and spells from native roots and lichens and lives in a local cave — indeed, in a strip from a few days ago, we learned that she recently blocked up the cave mouth with rocks so she can “hibernate.” Today, we are reminded that there’s another town resident who tinkers with powers beyond our ordinary plane of existence: Zeldy, who works brighter, more ethereal magic, a being of wind and spirit who looks into the future rather than drawing power from the past. Now, Zeldy hasn’t been seen in this strip since 2013, but I have a terrible suspicion about why this pastel-hued, pale-skinned medium is being brought back to a strip that already has an ominous green figure: it’s called Wicked Fever and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has, regrettably, caught it.

Hi and Lois, 1/5/25

God, I love the fact that Lois and Irma have gotten into this Hawaiian bit just so they can spend 90 seconds making sure their husbands are getting drunk before they peace out. Sure, they might get weird looks at the mall, but they can be secure in the knowledge that their blotto husbands neither know nor care when they’re coming back.