Archive: Mary Worth

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Mary Worth, 3/10/16

You’d think that after eleven and a half years of literally commenting on soap opera comic strips for a living, I’d be inured to their narrative quirks by now, but honestly, it never gets old to me how weird they are. Years ago somebody told me that continuity strips are written so that people who only read them two or three times a week (i.e., most people who read them, probably) can still follow the storylines more or less, which explains the glacial pacing, the constant repetition of points, and straight-up time-filling strips like today’s, in which Mary and Jeff take time out to explain to one of the Bum Boat’s employees how much they love the Bum Boat. It’s the sort of weird dialogue that in another context I would assume was paid product placement; but, of course, no actual restaurant would bother to pay for placement in Mary Worth, though a restaurant that did might be so cluelessly marketed that it would be named something like “the Bum Boat.” Anyway, Jerry is no doubt tired of Jeff and Mary’s shtick, but he knows he’s got to hide his contempt if he wants that sweet, sweet 12.5% tip.

Crankshaft, 3/10/16

Let’s ignore the ostensible plot action here and just focus on how delightfully angry Rose looks in panel one. She probably only has the vaguest idea of what’s going on or who this young woman is, but that isn’t stopping her from thinking “Fuck these people. Fuck all of these people.”

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Beetle Bailey, 3/7/16

So after a minute or so I gave up on trying to parse Sarge’s dialogue here as a joke, and then maybe 45 seconds after that stopped trying to parse it as actual sincere advice, and finally settled on just trying to figure the contexts — geographic, professional, social, whatever — in which today’s strip is taking place. Like we know from previous strips that Sarge has an office, though this one is looking more Endless Void-y than usual. But has Beetle just kind of … wandered in? To get weird, incomprehensible platitudes? From his commanding officer, who is reading them off a piece of paper, or possibly just holding up a blank piece of paper? I’m really going to have to grapple with the content of this joke to figure out what’s happening, aren’t I?

Mary Worth, 3/7/16

Aww, isn’t this sweet! Mary and Jeff are going to the Bum Boat … their place! And after that, they’ll be crashing every funeral they can, or at least I assume so based on Mary’s outfit. (In Santa Royale, crashing funerals is the closest you can get to hitting all the hottest goth clubs.)

Marvin, 3/7/16

Marvin’s usual M.O. is to mine laffs out of the title character’s constant pooping and peeing, which is gross but has a shred of respectability because, after all, he’s a baby! Pooping and peeing in a diaper is like a huge part of babies’ whole deal! But now we see the slippery slope we’ve been on all this time: if it’s OK to joke about Marvin and his butthole and what comes out of it, why not joke about his dad’s butthole now too, huh? Why not? Can you give me one good reason why not? Basic human decency, you say? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/29/16

FYI, guys, Rex Morgan, M.D., isn’t just about people giving Rex and his family money. It’s also sometimes about wacky old people! Like remember when a pair of demented seniors wandered away from a nursing home and made a small-time drug dealer’s life miserable? Or when an elderly brother-sister pair won the lottery, with hilarious results? Anyway, it looks like Rex has finally been bullied into buying that house in town, and sure, it’s in the leafy, huge-mansion part of town, but it’s also in the cranky, argumentative old people part of town! The next few days should give us plenty of the great Grimacing Rex Reaction Shots I crave.

Mary Worth, 2/29/16

[Mary Worth at the airport newsstand]: “People? Oh, my, dear, between you and me, it’s very difficult to keep up with multiple celebrities these days. Who has the time, really? No, one copy of Person, please.”

Hi and Lois, 2/29/16

I mean, you don’t want to do it so often that it becomes Funky Winkerbean-esque self parody, but if you want to end your gag-a-day strip once in a while with a son snidely reminding his father about the grim banality of his adult life, and the father just stares sullenly into space with his arms crossed across his chest, I’m not going to complain.

Marvin, 2/29/16

“I pee on it! I pee all over my phone! My phone is covered in urine. I’m a baby, but I’m depicted as having adult-level cognitive abilities, and, for some reason, I own a mobile phone, but I still pee and poop in my pants!”

Shoe, 2/29/16

“Ha ha, get it? Because of the ice cream flavor? Anyway, the actual story is that I was very drunk.”