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Mary Worth, 9/25/19

“You must feel like you’re on a roller coaster of emotion, dear! Me, I like to keep it on an even keel. If something bad — or good — happens to me, I use the power of my mind to to smooth that memory down until it’s just one more in a series of low-impact incidents in a calm, orderly life. Feelings are for the young and the poor, I always say!”

Dennis the Menace, 9/25/19

I think we need to admit to our selves that Dennis’s menacing, despite being right there in the name of the strip, is really an an informed attribute — something the other characters claim to believe without any evidence within the narrative to back them up. Today’s panel, in which Mr. Wilson declares “That Mitchell kid is more dangerous than the nuclear arsenals that can wipe out the human race with a simple press of the button! He’s an extinction-level event in red overalls, I tell you!” while Dennis flops goofily around on his lawn, is perhaps the clearest evidence of this yet.

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Folks, you know I don’t generally just link to products and services that are not my own for no charge. But I know well enough not to bite the hand that feeds me, and no hand has fed me more over the past 15 years of comics blogging than Mary Worth’s. Thus, I am pleased and honored to report that the official King Features Mary Worth store is here with some fantastic merch. Would you like a bold Aldo Kelrast Must Be Stopped or Mary’s Muffins: They’re Worth It shirt?

Or how about a more subtle “You Look Like You Can Use Some Advice” or WWMD: What Would Mary Do? shirt?

Mary Worth trufans will be purchasing all four and delighting/confusing their friends and acquaintances. Don’t delay!

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Mary Worth, 9/21/19

Longtime friend of the blog and Heathcliff obsessive Brandi Brown has a theory that 9/11 never happened in the Mary Worth universe, and after this strip, I’m finally convinced. In a world where commercial airlines were never weaponized, lax airport security allows even gross foreigners like Hugo to just pop off for an hour or two for a quick makeout session while storms over the midwest delay the daily Santa Royale International-Charles de Gaulle nonstop flight. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Josh, what about the special Mary Worth strip commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?” Well, while the Apartment 3-G that ran that day makes a fairly explicit reference to the attacks and the Twin Towers, the Mary Worth strip just features Mary leaving a message for some lady about her son who died ten years before, which, he could’ve died in any number of ways! Didn’t have to be in a terrorist attack. The fact that this lady saw that Mary was calling and let it go straight to voicemail makes sense in any version of the timestream, of course.

Family Circus, 9/21/19

Ha ha, kids sure do say the darnedest things, especially after you’ve sought shelter from a natural disaster but just left them upstairs to stare out of a completely unshuttered and unprotected window!