The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Mary Worth

155

Honestly more comics characters should be sent to Donetsk oblast, it’d really shake things up around here

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 2/16/26

What’s going on in Gil Thorp? I’m not talking about the day-to-day plot; I’m talking about the near-future background setting, where the heavily armed “New Milford” PD lacks a monopoly on legitimate violence and must negotiate with authorities in schools, which remain separate, self-governed jurisdictions like medieval European universities. I guess we should’ve known that we were dealing with a landscape where centralized constitutional government had broken down completely when it turned out that the local juvenile detention facility doubled as a gladiatorial combat arena.

Dick Tracy, 2/16/26

The “Dick is betrayed by his partner” Dick Tracy storyline has abruptly wrapped up, and now we’re going to smash cut to … the Donbas Front, I guess? Look, the West has been looking for ways to push Russian troops out of Ukraine for years now, and having Dick Tracy shoot them in the back for “resisting arrest” is certainly not the worst idea anyone has come up with.

Mary Worth, 2/16/26

Meanwhile, despite several opportunities, the “Toby and Ian get parrots” Mary Worth storyline has singularly failed to abruptly wrap up, and in fact we seem to have gotten stuck in a “Mary and Jeff enjoy a post-plotline-wrapup at the Bum Boat” loop. Jeff could’ve short-circuited this by choosing his pie “a la mode” as usual and then dying of a massive coronary event, so I guess, against all odds, he’s enjoying this experience, or at least prefers it to death.

147

Various sadnesses

Post Content

Shoe, 2/11/26

Shoe is a comic strip about depressed bird-people that is pretty committed to the gag-a-day format, but it’s actually been doing a continuing story of sorts for the past week or so. The story is about how the Perfesser bought a beautiful classic car that has turned out to be impractical and unsuitable for everyday use, giving him a specific reason to be depressed beyond the strip’s general sense of ennui.

Crock, 2/11/26

Wow, I bet you assumed Crock’s Legionnaires were involved in a rapacious colonial war to build up the glory and wealth of France, but apparently they will sometimes impose harsh punishments on French industrialists who aim to exploit the colonized population in ways that violate the laws of the Métropole! It really makes you think (about how child labor isn’t really a suitable subject for jokes, and execution by firing squad probably isn’t either).

Mary Worth, 2/11/26

JESUS CHRIST JEFF SHUT UP DO NOT ASK HER ABOUT THIS SHE WILL RECOUNT THE WHOLE STORYLINE AT YOU AND WE JUST NOW GOT OUT OF IT I’M BEGGING YOU

127

Bygone times, mostly

Post Content

Mary Worth, 2/10/26

OK, finally, finally we have absorbed the lessons (?) of the great Toby-Ian parrot story, and after eating those vegetables we get our dessert. That dessert is hot beefcake in the form of Dr. Jeff, who, after fitting a hood that’s too long to close onto his sports car, is taking a break to casually lean back, with his lilac shirt unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up to tease us with glimpses of his James Dean-esque undershirt and rippling forearms, like you do. Who wouldn’t want to go on a “sunset cruise” (wink) with this guy? The Mary Worth trufans certainly can’t resist!

Hagar the Horrible, 2/10/26

I guess we have Lucky Eddie awkwardly announcing that he’s staying outside in the first panel so that it would make sense for him to be asking this question to set up the punchline in the second. But I prefer to think that he knows Hagar all too well, and simply doesn’t want to watch Hagar murder the inhabitants of his former home and plunder whatever wealth they have, just like he murders most of the strangers he encounters on their journeys.

B.C., 2/10/26

I appreciate the single tear the cute chick “Grace” is crying for the farmers here. “Being a farmer sounds tough,” she’s thinking. “I’ll definitely urge my nomadic hunter-gatherer band to avoid agriculture indefinitely, and only interact with settled communities when we raid them for surplus goods.”