Archive: Mary Worth

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Mary Worth, 7/28/24

Real talk: my initial thought reading the throwaway panels was “Ha ha, Wilbur wet the bed!” But no, actually, he finally achieved emotional closure about his dead fish because he had a dream where the fish called him (or his fishy dream avatar) “dad” and swam away with his friends into the fish afterlife, and then he woke up crying, which is substantially less dignified than wetting the bed.

Dennis the Menace, 7/28/24

You ever wonder what Henry and Alice talk about when they have the house to themselves, presumably because Dennis is next door making Mr. Wilson’s life miserable? Well, apparently they reflect on past Dennis menacing incidents, including ones so traumatizing that just the memory of them makes Alice feel a need to go lie down, so I have to admit my respect for his menacing game just went up exponentially.

Blondie, 7/28/24

If I walked into my barbershop and found a barber lounging casually in the chair, and he looked me right in the eye and said “Showtime!”, I would assume that I would soon be on the floor bleeding out from numerous wounds inflicted by a straight razor. Dagwood absolutely should be thankful that all he endured was some sub-par conversation!

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Mary Worth, 7/26/24

Oh, man, sorry I thought this was going to be something “normal” like Wilbur deciding to murder his fish for attention, when in fact he’s going to dream/fantasize about merging with his dead fish as some kind of nearsighted human/fish hybrid. A dead one, too! Remember how he was speculating yesterday about fish heaven? Well, in his imagining, this is fish heaven, when a fish transcends its fishy form and becomes merged with Wilbur. Imagine the sick sort of God who would consider such a nightmare to be a reward for a life well lived: this is the deity that Wilbur worships.

Gil Thorp, 7/26/24

Speaking of cruel Gods, imagine if you were invited, just briefly, to bask in the holy radiance of your Creators, except that it has to take the form of walking by a couple of dudes sitting behind a folding table at Comic-Con, where you’ll be surrounded by absolute dorks. Would probably take a lot of the mystery out of the whole thing, right?

Pluggers, 7/26/24

A lot of people use my Pluggers commentary as evidence that I’m a coastal elitist who hates real, down-home Americans from the heartland, but nothing I’ve ever said about pluggers is anywhere close to as contemptuous as “pluggers get trapped in port-a-pottys all the time, probably they fall down in there accidentally and get all covered with really nasty piss and shit, that’s a classic plugger situation and that’s the tea, sis.”

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Mary Worth, 7/25/24

Hey, remember when Mary threw a surprise funeral for Wilbur’s fish? And lots of people Wilbur knew were there, and they all paid attention to Wilbur, and felt sorry for Wilbur? Wilbur sure remembers it! But now the era of paying attention to Wilbur is over, and all he has left to console himself with are his sad thoughts and his one alive fish. But what if … there were a way … with the resources he has at hand … to reproduce those heady, bygone days when all eyes and sympathy were on Wilbur? Wilbur is 100% going to Munchausen syndrome by proxy that fish, is what I’m saying.

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/24

I actually really enjoy the contrast between Sarge and Lt. Fuzz in the second panel here. Fuzz, an effete military bureaucrat, is pecking away at his laptop, indistinguishable from a middle manager at any civilian white-collar business. Meanwhile, Sarge, the masculine shaper of warriors, has only a single piece of paper on his desk, presumably containing a list of soldiers ranked by how thoroughly he has broken their spirits in preparation for the task of rebuilding them as dedicated killing machines.

Crock, 7/25/24

Algeria has huge oil and gas reserves; but the grinding colonial war there has disrupted production, and the people back home are now suffering through a fuel crisis while these two, who are supposed to be crushing the rebels and restoring the spoils of empire to the metropole, crack wise about farts from the safety of their fortified compound. Sad!