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Archive: Mary Worth

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If Wilbur’s outside with a boombox, call the cops

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Hi and Lois, 11/19/19

Yes, the joke is that “Ha ha, what if an … unlikely person used social media, wouldn’t that be something” (I guarantee that just about every garbageman in America has at least one social media account), but the real story here is Hi. Why does Hi feel compelled to come out at some ungodly hour of the morning to talk to the guys who pick up his trash? Isn’t the whole point that you put it out at the curb the night before and then they pick it up as they come by? Today he looks particularly miserable to have been forced by his pitiless Creator out of a nice warm bed to be the wordless sounding board for a terrible “PHONES, amiright folks” joke. It must be particularly galling that he could just look at this picture on Instagram whenever he wanted, at his leisure.

Sam and Silo, 11/19/19

Ha ha, the town’s only cops are sexually aggressively pursuing local women, as is their wont! “Like in a horror movie,” one of the women says, “but in this case, it’s true.” What a fun, whimsical strip!

Mary Worth, 11/19/19

The bouquet of roses is apparently Wilbur’s go-to “NOOOO, TAKE ME BACK” move, but this time around he decided to have them delivered rather than just attempting to ambush her with them — a wise move to avoid immediate, face-to-face, extremely funny disappointment.

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“I’m listening” is what Marty says to people who call into his radio show right before he runs off to take a dump

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Gil Thorp, 11/18/19

Well, weeks after making the mistake of trying to blow the whistle to Milford’s “mainstream” (i.e., Thorp-friendly) press, Chet is doing what he should’ve done in the first place, which is talk to Marty Moon, preferably in a context where Marty can get as drunk as possible with a non-Marty person paying for the drinks. So the setup is right, but the execution is botched. Marty says he’s listening but you can see in panel three that he’s already tuning out Chet’s blather about “two-a-days” and “Sam Finn” or whatever. C’mon, Chet! Lead with the scissors-throwing! Everyone loves a good scissors-throwing!

Family Circus, 11/18/19

“Daddy” may be back at the help of the Family Circus, but the layers of narrative artifice on display during “Billy (age 7)’s run” are still present. Dolly prays to the Christian God, but He does not exist within the Circus’s circle; the Father and Creator is downstairs, watching football. (Of course, in real life, this God is dead, and in-panel reality is sustained by Jeffy, depicted here as His prophet.)

Mary Worth, 11/18/19

Crouching in your office chair, airing your hairy legs out and pressing an ice pack gingerly against one side of your head doesn’t exactly scream “patented hangover cure” to me, but I guess Wilbur’s the expert! I don’t want to say every plotline in Mary Worth should involve Wilbur getting dumped or otherwise romantically devastated, but, like, every fourth one or so? That’d be great.

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The Wilburbabies will box each other to determine which is the most powerful

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Pluggers, 11/15/19

“What would a young one think a ‘telephone book’ is? Probably a catalog of smartphones — that is, a printed multipage document, filled with pictures and pricing information for various models of smartphones, which gets delivered to you in the mail or you pick up at a cell phone store. Once you’ve picked the smartphone you want, you’d call up the company to buy it, or maybe fill out a form from the back of the catalog and send a check along with it. I’m sure this is a real concept that kids are familiar with, and that they associate with the phrase ‘telephone book.’” –A plugger, apparently

Mary Worth, 11/15/19

Hard to know what to even say that could add to this objectively perfect strip. I guess what really makes it work is that it viscerally makes us understand what it’s like for Estelle to have a nightmare about Wilbur siring four identical Wilburbabies with her, because after seeing that second panel we’ll all be seeing those same Wilburbabies in our own nightmares tonight, and every other night until death finally takes us.

The Lockhorns, 11/15/19

“So, did you bring a dish? I said it was pot luck. You know what that means, right? A meal where people bring dishes to share? It’s a pretty standard English word.”