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Archive: Mary Worth

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Teens: Good or bad?

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Gil Thorp, 4/8/22

Gil Thorp generally hews pretty closely to the holy trinity of football, basketball, and baseball/softball, but every once in a while it tries another sport out for size and I always appreciate it. Today the Milford baseballers are coming out to support tennis star Charis (?) Tompkins, and going on a journey of learning about when and where it’s appropriate to cheer in different sports. A fun fact is that my niece was a pretty high-level gymnast in high school and I went to one of her meets once and very quickly discovered that you are not supposed to loudly boo your team’s opponents, who knew, ha ha! You can’t blame me, my sole experience with competitive gymnastics at the time was a 2006 Gil Thorp storyline where one little girl just starts punching another little girl in the face in the middle of a meet.

Mary Worth, 4/8/22

Ha ha, yes, this dream sequence is shaping up to be exactly as bananas as I’d hoped! Cal looming erotically/threatening over Toby, staring into nothing with dead heart eyes, while the salmon sky burns behind him? The best part is that it’s Friday and we’re really just getting started, which I hope means we have another solid week of this.

Hi and Lois, 4/8/22

The newspaper comics are essentially an art form created by, and mostly for, those middle aged and older, so a lot of it ends being about how the kids today aren’t as cool as the kids used to be. Normally that’s not my jam, but I gotta admit, when they’re right, they’re right.

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Little Toby In Slumberland

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Mary Worth, 4/7/22

Dream sequence, dream sequence, dream sequence, everybody! You might recall that years ago, during one of her fruitless attempts to psych herself up to dump Wilbur, Estelle had a bizarre dream sequence featuring boxing Wilburbabies, and more recently Dr. Drew had a psychedelic dream sequence where he was stretched to his limit by the women in his life. I can’t wait to see what on-the-nose metaphor Toby’s subconscious is about to serve up! It’s starting out promisingly with a series of nesting gazes: Cal’s affectless face staring out dumbly from the canvas, presumably for Toby’s erotic viewing, except she’s been forced to turn her back on him and lock eyes with her too-curious students. Presumably Helen’s red, demonic face is gazing up at all this, from hell.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/7/22

Fight club, fight club, fight club, everybody! Uh, I don’t have any follow up to that, I just think it’s gonna turn out this guy is part of an underground fight club, run by other guys who won’t take “Can’t this week, I have a rotator cuff injury” for an answer.

Pluggers, 4/7/22

Man, I’m not generally impressed by the insights into the human condition served up by Pluggers, but you have to admit that “At first you’re horny, but eventually you’re just cheap” has a certain bracing veracity.

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Glenwood needs to see a doctor, but do they need to see THIS doctor

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Mary Worth, 4/3/22

It’s fascinating to me that in the year 2022, the rhythms of soap opera strips are still predicated on the fact that some newspaper subscribers don’t get the Sunday paper, while others only get the Sunday paper, so Sunday has to be treated in a special way for continuity storytelling — whether that means you take the Phantom route and doing entirely different Sunday and weekday storylines, or the Mary Worth route where you just recap everything for the week on Sunday and don’t introduce any new information. Today’s strip achieves this cleverly by showing us that Toby isn’t just crying in her car, she’s also playing the moments that brought her to this pathetic state over and over in her mind, including a fantastic vision of Helen transforming herself into a literal demon as she threatens to narc Toby out for a little light flirting. That panel should frankly be used in advertisements to get people to sign up for the Sunday paper. Do you really want to miss this, in vivid color?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/3/22

On the other hand, sometimes a strip just takes a Sunday to reintroduce you to all their characters, just in case in the year 2022 some Sunday subscriber is thinking to themselves, “Rex Morgan, M.D., what’s that thing’s whole deal” but isn’t feeling so curious as to walk over to the computer. Anyway, I’m cackling about the fact that Buck didn’t make the cut for the ancillary character panel. Not sure if they’re finally admitting that they’re never going to make Buck happen or if they feel like they need to get readers hooked and emotionally involved before learning how much of this strip revolves around Buck’s off-putting antics.

Marvin, 4/3/22

I know nobody likes Marvin, and and that it’s very understandable why Marvin’s dad doesn’t like him, but you have to admit it’s pretty wild that “I, Marvin’s dad, do not enjoy the company of my son, Marvin” is the entire punchline to this strip!