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Archive: Mary Worth

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Soapy Tuesday

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Mary Worth, 6/25/13

Ha, I bet you thought that once Beth and Tom had admitted to Elinor that they were totally in heterosexual love and planned to get married and Elinor miraculously came around to the point of view that Beth shouldn’t live a solitary, unhappy life for the rest of her days, all the conflict in this plot was over and we could move onto something more interesting, with that something to be introduced during a pool party. WELL I GUESS YOU THOUGHT WRONG, DIDN’T YOU?? Here we are and we’re still paying attention to these three mopes! What dramatic conflicts remain for our protagonists? Will Beth’s gratitude for Mary’s intervention transform into adoration and then into obsession? Will she manage to alienate both Elinor and Tom with her incessant Mary-worship? Will Mary’s beatific face appear in a floating picture-thought-bubble in at least one panel of every strip for the remainder of this storyline? Let’s hope!

Spider-Man, 6/25/13

I think we can all agree that “Irony, anyone?” is pretty much the greatest Newspaper Spider-Man narration box ever. It will be harder to come to a consensus as to which panel represents the ultimate Newspaper Spider-Man image: Spidey gazing forlornly into his empty wallet, or Spidey rubbing the back of his head and staring dumbly off into the middle distance.

Mark Trail, 6/25/13

Baker’s been here for two days. Has he seen anything? Stay tuned to find out!

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Get used to being abruptly pointed at, Tom

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Momma, 6/23/13

One of my favorite/least unfavorite Momma bits is Momma’s recurring nightmare that she and/or her children in some combination will be reduced to panhandling, due to her children’s shiftlessness and incompetence. I enjoy these installments because they’re about her constant mid-level anxiety that she and her family are trembling at the boundary of middle-class respectability and could be pushed out into the abyss at any moment, but the actual “jokes” of the strips generally take the form of weird passive-aggressive wordplay on signs that the Hobbes-hobos are displaying for the benefit of passers by. Today was actually the first time I noticed that these signs aren’t makeshift cardboard placards propped up in front of them but actually attached to the wall, which implies both a certain resourcefulness and collusion with the building owner. Come to us when can’t even afford thumbtacks, Momma! Then we’ll know you hit rock bottom.

Panel from Mary Worth, 6/23/13

Haha, look how startled Tom looks by this demand. “But that … that’s kind of my thing! It’s my trademark relationship move!”

Mark Trail, 6/23/13

“How are we going to get the kids interesting in birdwatching? Breakdancing? Do the kids still like breakdancing? Should we tell them that birds breakdance?”

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If Crankshaft’s sass-mouth landed him in a TSA prison I’d rethink some of my political views

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Better Half, 6/22/13

There’s something about Stanley and Harriet’s affectless naivety that just kind of breaks my heart. Like, if Leroy Lockhorn said this, it would be an extremely sarcastic response to a failed attempt by Loretta to get him to eat better, and would also have nothing to do with the actual amount of potato chips he ate. Whereas I picture Stanley imagining that Harriet will find this hilarious, and also carefully counting all the potato chips he ate over a two-day period in order to make sure the joke was also accurate.

Crankshaft, 6/22/13

Sorry everybody if I got you super excited Monday about Crankshaft gracing us with some New York-themed puns. It turns out we had to sit through a whole week of Crankshaft being an asshole to everyone who works at the airport first. Look, in panel three we can see two people hating him at once!

Mary Worth, 6/22/13

Haha, thanks, Tom, I will very much be seeing that grossly exaggerated wink in my nightmares tonight! Still, worse will come when I awake, because then I’ll be unable to stop trying to figure out the precise combination of sexual acts “I was in the mood for meat … but seafood sounds really great, too!” is a metaphor for.