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Archive: Mary Worth

155

Josh asks: How DARE you

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Blondie, 11/23/25

Two very important details here. One, Dagwood has his handkerchief out and at the ready when he knocks on Herb’s door. He’s already on the verge of tears and knows he won’t be able to hold back once this conversation starts — the conversation that he thinks will be among the last with his best friend while they’re still neighbors, before they inevitably begin to drift apart. The second is that Herb clearly put Tootsie up to relay the strategically redacted information about his career prospects to Blondie precisely in order to set up this scenario, and to exploit his friend’s soft heart. Never have I felt more tenderly towards Dagwood, or more harshly towards Herb!

Mary Worth, 11/23/25

Oh no! Toby’s beloved friend Sunny had a backstory, and that backstory is that he was illegally trafficked into California! I guess Toby and Sunny are about to go on an Incredible Journey-style journey to find Sunny’s real home, in the compound of the Mexican parrot smuggling gang where he was born. Will they still accept him, now that he laughs like Ross from Friends all the time?

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/23/25

On one level of conceptual reality, R2-D2 is a droid living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and on another level R2-D2 is Kenny Baker and a series of other actors inside a mechanical prop in various movies and TV shows put out by Lucasfilm. Or, in Mother Goose and Grimm, R2-D2 is an actor who had a movie career, presumably playing R2-D2 the character in the Star Wars movies? I don’t find this mix of narrative planes very coherent, to be quite honest, and I don’t think it’s funny to make R2-D2 into a coffee machine either. He helped blow up the Death Star! Show some respect.

126

He’s already named “Ozob,” how many clown aliases does one guy need

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Dick Tracy, 11/21/25

Look, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, and I’m not going to say I’m glad that Sheriff Somners plummeted to his death off that cliff. But if the guy saw this horrifying country fair act where “Roacho the Clown” ran around spraying poison onto two weirdos in comically grotesque giant bug costumes and thought to himself, “Now this is the vibe I want at that local charity event,” then I question his judgment, honestly.

Hi and Lois, 11/21/25

Hmm, this seems like good news, so why does Hi look so disappointed by this big reveal? Because Ditto is describing a shift from a violent and primitive mode of production to a more orderly capitalist one, and Hi is familiar enough with the theory of historical materialism to know what comes next: full-on communism.

Mary Worth, 11/21/25

I was gonna do a riff here about Mary suspecting that Toby has taken a lover, but look at her face in that first panel. She’s clearly more like, “Wait, is another person here? Does Toby know someone socially other than me and Ian? Hmm. Hmm. No, sorry, that just doesn’t add up.

153

Mmm … quality pellet food

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Intelligent Life, 11/19/25

For my sins, I have come to be able to recognize the various recurring characters in Intelligent Life, even if I often forget their names, and I can tell you that the guy in the background in panel three is not one of them. I think it would be good if more nameless background characters showed up to roll their eyes at the terrible punchlines in this strip, though. Maybe it would inspire enough shame to grind this whole enterprise to a halt!

Mary Worth, 11/19/25

A thousand miles away, at a boozy conference dinner, a disgruntled waiter was hovering over a tableful of academics, who in turn were trying not to stare at Ian Cameron as he stood facing away from them just out of earshot. “But that card has a $10,000 limit!” he hissed. “What do you mean it’s overdrawn? We heart pets? I don’t have any pets and I definitely don’t heart them! This has to be some kind of mistake! Please, I’m going to lose face in front of the people from Oberlin! I’m begging you!”

Dick Tracy, 11/19/25

“In our case, it was the opposite. Ozob was short here by now. He did the vacation and slowly entered the same province!”