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Mary Worth, 12/19/19

Man, that smile Mary has in panel two? That’s her realizing that she’s finally making headway in this, her most difficult meddle yet. Sure, Estelle’s been unlucky in love — but can she really be cajoled into falling for Wilbur, who didn’t seem like much of a catch even before his recent downward spiral? It would take all of Mary’s powers to achieve these goals, and the sense of satisfaction success would bring would warm her black heart for weeks. “And yet, despite his obsession with his ex-girlfriend, and his obnoxious drunken behavior, you miss him, Estelle? Very interesting. Very improbable. And very gratifying.”

Marvin, 12/19/19

Meanwhile, speaking of terrible smirks, I at first assumed Marvin was being incredibly smug about how his family had failed at Christmas, again. “Eh?” he seems to be saying. “My father has ruined the holidays, and my parents will fight over it for months to come? Eh?” But I think the reference to A Charlie Brown Christmas speaks to a more specifically mercenary malevolence: the horrible baby thinks that if his family takes in a sad, neglected tree, they’ll become universally beloved, just like Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, to which I respond: 75% of Peanuts strips aren’t about Charlie Brown shitting himself, kid.

Blondie, 12/19/19

Hey, Blondie trufans! Can you simply not get enough of such classic Blondie gags as “Dagwood carries a huge pile of boxes so you can’t see his face” and “Dagwood has a freakish, improbable hairstyle, with two bits of hair that were originally intended to be cowlicks now extending from his cranium like antennae?” Have you ever wanted both of these tried-and-true bits combined into one unbeatable punchline? Well, today’s strip is for you, my friends.

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Shoe, 12/15/19

Ha ha, you know what’s a novel part of modern life? A “drive-thru” window, assuming you consider the 1970s and ’80s, when drive-thru windows became omnipresent on fast food restaurants, to be recent enough that someone might find their existence noteworthy! Anyway, what today’s Shoe asks you to imagine is this: what if there were a mortuary that had a “drive-thru drop-off window,” and while drive-thru windows are usually a means by which you can access an establishment’s goods or services without leaving your car (something already available to funeral customers), the implication of “drive-thru drop-off” seems to be that you’d drive up to the mortuary with a corpse in your car, and just heave it out your window and into the funeral home, then drive off, presumably to have your car’s upholstery cleaned, because of the dead body smell. Pretty funny, huh? Yes, this is definitely the juxtaposition of two discordant ideas for comical effect!

Panel from The Lockhorns, 12/15/19

One would assume that whatever gelatinous off-green mass is on everyone’s plates here is the evening’s main course, so it’s honestly weird that Leroy is only now pulling out this even more inscrutable selection of appetizers. Presumably their preparation was terribly botched even by Loretta’s standards and the decision was not to serve them, but then Leroy fished them out of the trash and stashed them at the ready on the off chance that a wordplay opportunity like this would present itself. Dinner with these two must truly be among the most tiresome things anyone could imagine.

Marvin, 12/15/19

I revisit the concept of comic book time, in which characters always exist in more or less the current calendar year but never age, a lot on this site, but today’s Marvin in some ways reverses it. Usually I imagine characters like Hi and Lois’s Trixie frozen in time, aware of their eternal infancy but unable to break out of it. But today we learn that for Jenny, Marvin’s birth wasn’t that long ago, and her pre-motherhood life is still recent enough that she can catch up with an old friend from those days without much oddness or awkwardness. Sure, he’s a terrible baby who brought her to tears, but she’s confident that will pass, as he naturally moves on to other stages of life, learning to speak, read, and, of course, use a toilet. Meanwhile, in real life, I’m the one who’s trapped. I’m the one who’s been making jokes about Marvin shitting himself for nearly thirteen years now. The characters in these strips are just scribbles on paper, and the prison of the comics is a prison for me and me alone.

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Happy Monday everyone! Today’s Marvin is not about Marvin’s dirty diapers! Instead, it’s about Jeff and Jenny’s dirty toilet. Look at how big and bulgy it is! Do you think we’re meant to understand that, like a diaper, the toilet has been filled with poop and now needs to be disposed of and replaced? Do you think the Marvin creative team has just forgotten how indoor plumbing works and can only think of human excretory processes in terms of diapers at this point?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/2/19

Shout-out to Rex Morgan, M.D., for showing us the moment when Buck learns that he has to change into scrubs in order to be in the room for his wife’s C-section, and the moment after he put on the scrubs and has evaluated their aesthetics, but not, blessedly, the moment during which he actually changed into them.

Gil Thorp, 12/2/19

We’re still in the “Chet gets his comeuppance” phase of this storyline, which will presumably last the rest of the week and never become particularly interesting, but I want to point out that Gil Thorp, the strip that brought us such classic catchphrases as “Ease up, friend,” doesn’t rest on its laurels. Look for teens across the country to be sassing each other with “Catch up, pal. Nobody cares” well into next spring!

Mary Worth, 12/2/19

Oh no! Iris is letting her hot young boyfriend down by choosing to age normally and experience menopause! If she really cared about him, she would maintain her fertility and, by extension, her sexual desirability just by wanting it bad enough! Guys, I’m … I’m starting to suspect that Mary Worth may not be a feminist comic strip.