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Archive: Mary Worth

180

Keep in mind Mary considers baking soda to be a spice

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Pluggers, 12/18/18

This is something you don’t usually hear me say, but I like the cut of this elder she-plugger’s jib! I particularly like that you can tell that her grandchildren left literally minutes ago and she’s already wining out. Is she going to bother picking up any of their junk before getting blotto? She sure isn’t! Is she worried about drinking red wine while wearing white pants? She gives not a single solitary shit! This ecstatically drunk grandma is definitely one of my top ten pluggers of the year!

Mary Worth, 12/18/18

It’s going to be fun seeing how close Mary can get to the question she actually wants an answer to — “So, are you guys still fucking on the regular or what?” — without coming out and saying it. In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy the incredibly tiny plate that muffin is sitting on in panel two. You don’t expect Mary to just hand over a muffin without a plate, do you? She’s not an animal.

Crankshaft, 12/18/18

They say consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I’ve never claimed to be anything other than petty and small, so I’ll say this: it drives me crazy that the Funkyverse contains both weirdly named psuedobrands like “McArnold’s” but also actual brands like Amazon. It forces me to conclude that Amazon paid to be mentioned in the strip, or, more likely, that McDonald’s paid not to be mentioned.

181

Soapy Monday

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Mary Worth, 12/17/18

You know what we haven’t had in a while is a good Ian-Toby story! Pretty sure we haven’t checked in with their marriage since that time Ian made Toby pretend to cook dinner for his boss while she was trying to work on her art show so she briefly left him and had to lay low at Mary’s until Mary got tired of that and convinced her to go back. Anyway, today we’re learning how Toby has learned to describe her passionless marriage in a socially acceptable way, so I assume this storyline is going to be about some hot thing tempting her to stray, ultimately without success. On the other hand, the final panel implies that maybe it’ll be about how she killed him and made clothes out of his thick, lustrous pelt.

Gil Thorp, 12/17/18

Well, it’s another cinematic shot from above, and at least Mike Filion doesn’t look like a warped homunculus, but I’m having a hard time parsing what emotion we’re supposed to be reading from him here. Regret, at not getting to see Soto “pound” those banana splits? Relief, at getting away from the other players? Sleepiness? Is he just asleep?

Mark Trail, 12/17/18

Urgh, are these guys on a different team from Becky or what? Nngghgggngh, when is Mark gonna punch somebody?

146

Jeff was prepared to bury that cat at sea, so he’s pretty relieved right now

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Mary Worth, 12/10/18

It’s been two and a half years since new-ish Mary Worth artist June Brigman took over the strip and we’ve seen most of our beloved major players at this point. Almost all of them have gotten what I would call aesthetic upgrades of varying degrees of subtlety — Mary has been glammed up most of all — but I think the improvements to Dr. Jeff’s boat are on a whole different level. This is the only image of it I can find in my archives, but y ou can see that it used to be a somewhat dumpy pleasure craft with a roof, suitable for tooling around Santa Royale harbor at extremely limited speeds. Now it’s a sleek cigarette boat, perfect for zooming out into the Pacific and letting the wind ruffle your hair, and if Dr. Jeff wanted to make a side trip to the coast of Baja to pick up some black-market pills that he can “prescribe” to his friends and neighbors, he can do so knowing he’ll be back at the Bum Boat in time for their 5:15 reservation.

Gil Thorp, 12/10/18

Let me tell you an Extremely Buffalo Story: in the fall of 2009, I went to Buffalo, New York, where I grew up, to visit my family. The coach of the Bills at that time was Dick Jauron, who had muddled through three consecutive 7-9 seasons and wasn’t doing much better that year. The day I arrived, a billboard on the Thruway near Ralph Wilson Stadium had been unveiled that simply said “FIRE DICK JAURON,” and that evening, the very top story on Channel 4’s local news was an exclusive interview with the dudes who had rented the billboard — and yes, it was just these three extremely Buffalo-looking dudes, with sweatshirts and mustaches, and when asked why they had pooled a not insignificant amount of cash to send this message, one of them looked straight into the camera and said, extremely sincerely, “Well, somebody had to do something.” And then, a few weeks later, the Bills did fire Dick Juaron. Sometimes, the system works! In hopefully related news, I’m extremely looking forward to this year’s basketball-season Gil Thorp storyline.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/10/18

Against all odds and good sense, we’re apparently going to be treated to even more of the “Funky’s dad is horny” storyline this week, and while I still overall find it distasteful I gotta admit that I didn’t see this twist coming, where Funky’s dad seduces Holly’s mom and then Holly and Funky become brother and sister. Awkward!