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Archive: Mary Worth

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Mostly frisbee content

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Shoe, 3/5/22

Look, I’m not saying the creators of Shoe are trying to get us to think about the weird anatomical mechanics of their bird-man character’s asses — I am of course on the record as saying that they’ve actually forgotten that they’re birds entirely. But you have to admit that this strip features the absolutely perfect angle to remind you that, yes, the Perfesser has a huge plume of tail feathers, and that’s why he doesn’t wear pants, and then immediately hits you with his wacky story of sitting a gooey puddle of chocolate. I don’t care for it.

Mary Worth, 3/5/22

Oh my gosh, it looks like we’ve found our plot’s villain, everybody! It’s this woman who’s watching Toby and Cal’s ham-handed flirting with cold, detached disapproval. Not sure which possibility is funnier: that she’s Santa Royale Community College’s designated #metoo officer and she’s going to cancel the living daylights out of Toby, or she’s a literature prof who’s met Ian at conferences and always had an eye on him, and now that his hussy younger wife is flinging herself at some teenager she sees a chance to make her move.

Gil Thorp, 3/5/22

“…to inject me with the EXPERIMENTAL SUPER SERUM”

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I know it’s paradoxical, but you will never initiate sex by using the word “initiate”

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Mary Worth, 3/4/22

Here’s a weird thing that happens sometimes in Our Dumb Dystopia: people will make storefronts on Amazon even though they don’t have anything to sell. Instead, they set bots up to find other stores that actually have things to sell, create listings for the same items the other stores sell, mark up the price by a dollar or two, and then use SEO trickery to try to make their store a higher ranking search result than the real one. When someone tries to buy an item from their store, they just order from the real store, who does all the work, and they pocket the difference, having done nothing. This can sometimes produce truly bizarre results, like when the bots that do this for two fake stores lock onto each other, each assuming the other is real, and each keeps raising its price to be just a little higher than the other, until someone notices that soap or toothbrushes are selling for more than a million dollars. I’m bringing this up because today’s Mary Worth shows what would happen in a similar situation, except instead of two Amazon storefronts, we have two robots who have been programmed to attempt to convince a real life human to have sex with them. “But not for initiating a ‘fling’ with you!” and “go sit in the corner, Cal!” give off very strong “we showed this AI 10,000 hours of people flirting and this is what it came up with” vibes, except it was more like 20 hours, tops.

Sam and Silo, 3/4/22

The internal worlds of newspaper comic strips are extremely resistant to change, which makes them great little time capsules of social mores that were quite different not that long ago and have changed in ways most of us don’t think much about. Just as Blondie still takes place in a world where suburbanites let their dogs roam freely at night, Sam and Silo in whatever year this rerun is from failed to move up into the world where most people’s housecats would be fixed as a matter of course. Because this cat? This cat fucks, everybody. He fucks a lot.

Gasoline Alley, 3/4/22

GASOLINE ALLEY ADMITS IT: LITERALLY ANYTHING ON TV OR IN THE MOVIES IS MORE EXCITING AND FUN THAN GASOLINE ALLEY

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Not sure what else Leroy would be doing other than this, I guess, this is his only hobby

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Blondie, 3/1/22

Sorry, I know Blondie loves nothing more than mash together their characters’ extremely broadly defined character traits with whatever “topical content” they can think of, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Sure, Dagwood Bumstead 1.0, the wealthy, dissolute failson, would’ve hopped on the Panama Limited in Chicago and turned his Pullman Car into an impromptu speakeasy before rolling into New Orleans the next morning, then spent the next week in a gin and ether haze throwing beads at flappers. But 2022 Dagwood Bumstead is a smug, polo-shirt wearing suburbanite who doesn’t spend any time in whatever city his suburb is next to and he absolutely isn’t going to some gross place like New Orleans where he might see poor people enjoying themselves in an uncouth manner. I suppose it’s possible he used the request to get Mr. Dithers to “compromise” on letting him dress like a jackass at work, but I honestly don’t think Dithers needs much prompting to let Dagwood embarrass himself in public.

Mary Worth, 3/1/22

Cal and Toby’s frisbee banter is very weird, as they’re repeatedly complimenting each other on their skills at an extremely simple pastime for children. I’m wondering if Cal is supposed to be an Ultimate Frisbee player, which is somewhat more difficult, but the syndicate made them take out “Ultimate” because it wasn’t relatable or maybe was trademarked, and then the artist interpreted the resulting dialogue by having these two just hurling a frisbee at each other with maximum force from like two feet away.

The Lockhorns, 3/1/22

Gotta love the little puff of breath in front of Leroy, telling you this is a cold day. He could’ve stayed home, or in the car, but he braved the chill to follow Loretta right up to the door of the spa so he could lob this little poison dart at her at the very last minute and ensure that the entire experience was ruined for her.