Archive: Mary Worth

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/9/22

Happy Monday, everybody, Funky Winkerbean is starting up the week with a funeral, obviously. I’m pretty sure Mary Sue isn’t someone we’ve actually met before in this strip, and Funky and Les want to make it clear that they don’t actually know her well or care that much about her, they just think it’s an important Funkyverse ritual to stop by funerals and acknowledge that everyone’s dying all the time, just some of us a little sooner than others. “Mary Sue” is of course also a derogatory term for an idealized authorial self-insert character in fanfiction, and it absolutely tracks that an idealized self-insert character in Funkyverse fan fiction would be someone who dies off-panel in order to give the sad sack main characters the chance to talk about how the whole world is falling apart, really.

Crankshaft, 5/9/22

Meanwhile, the “fun” Funkyverse strip is here to make sure you never forget the real victim of 9/11 (Crankshaft’s grill).

The Lockhorns, 5/9/22

I’m sorry, I’m usually on team “The Lockhorns is good, actually,” but I do demand that the strip keep to its mission of laser-focusing on Leroy and Loretta’s mutual animosity and self-inflected misery. Leroy complaining that it’s annoying when he has to leave the house to buy things simply won’t cut it.

Mary Worth, 5/9/22

Well, it seems this plotline is going to wrap up without much conflict, I guess the last detail to take care of is Cal, I wonder how oh my GOD Ian is going to come to Toby’s class and GLOWER at him, and possibly start pounding his chest and making what he thinks are gorilla noises, this is gonna be AMAZING

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Pluggers, 5/5/22

I think I’m discovering the shape that my Gen X pluggerdom is going to take: in constant complaints that Pluggers, the syndicated newspaper comic strip, is depicting the plugger lifestyle incorrectly! Anyway, for a plugger “logging on” is sitting on a log with a grandchild or a good buddy while fishing, are you trying to tell me that pluggers are lacking in human contact but have two-factor authentication turned on for most of their online accounts, are you for real

Mary Worth, 5/5/22

Every ongoing work of art creates narrative suspense in its own unique way. Mary Worth, for instance, is keeping us guessing this week. Yes, in any normal storytelling situation, if there had been some big drama built up and suddenly we smash-cut to one of the participants telling a third party “Oh, yes, the conflict was resolved, my husband took care of it off-panel,” we’d obviously expect that the problem has not, in fact, been solved at all! Because that doesn’t really make sense, and it doesn’t make for a very satisfying story. There’s gotta be something more to it! But this is Mary Worth, so there is in fact only a fifty-fifty chance that there’s something more to it.

Lockhorns, 5/5/22

An ordinary person would just do the Jaws music at this point, but no ordinary person would remain in the twisted, hate-filled Lockhorn marriage as long as Leroy Lockhorn. Somehow the thought of Leroy delivering this line in a soul-numbed monotone is both infinitely funnier and infinitely sadder than just having him go “Daaaaahhhh DUNH” or whatever.

Shoe, 5/5/22

While the bird-Jews of Shoe still follow the teachings of the Torah and the Talmud, it appears the bird-Christians have turned their back on the Nicene Creed and now worship the Father, the Son, and the late Jeff MacNelly.

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Dustin, 5/4/22

I’m going give the “joke” in today’s Dustin the zero attention it deserves and instead will focus on a background detail that is driving me crazy. Whenever I do something like this, I get a million comments that gaslight me like, “Josh, it’s actually 100% normal for someone to make and eat an ice cream cone at home, you’re the weird one” but: do you freaks really have ice cream cones at home???? I mean, a big thing of ice cream in the freezer, sure, that’s normal, but decent people eat it out of a bowl, or out of the carton over the sink. Having a box (?) of ice cream cones in the pantry (??), ready to fill with ice cream at any moment, seems decadent and perverse to me, but I’m just a simple, honest American who maybe doesn’t understand this modern world anymore, just like Dustin’s atlas-loving dad.

Mary Worth, 5/4/22

Wow, what’s the most boring way we could get caught up on the background of Ian and Helen’s sordid past? Is it Toby calmly telling Mary about it while eliding the juicy details? Because that’s what we’re getting. This blows. Damn it, she’s probably not even going to angrily crush that muffin into crumbs as she tries and fails to stop herself from visualizing Helen in Ian’s arms!

Mutts, 5/4/22

NOBODY EVER CLAIMED SHE WAS

THE SONG IS “SHEENA IS A PUNK ROCKER,” LIKE ONE OF SEVERAL

WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT, YOU CLOYING LITTLE DOG