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Mary Worth, 6/14/23

Look, I know I have to tread delicately here, because organized dog fighting is very real and very awful. But since this is Mary Worth and we know that any threatened horrific violence is never going to actually happen, I feel like we can enjoy ourselves and admit to ourselves that Mary making direct eye contact with the reader, with an expression that’s worried (but also maybe a little excited?) and announcing “it’s a highly secretive blood sport that can occur anywhere!” is very funny.

Gil Thorp, 6/14/23

Ah, the vapecrime plot has been resolved by, uh, sending all the vape teens to juvenile prison? I’m sure they’ll be fine and come out of the experience better people. Meanwhile, in more important news, the girls’ team has made the playdowns and [squints at last panel] THE PLAYOFFS WHAT THE HELL ALL THESE WOKE CHANGES TO THIS STRIP HAVE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME

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Mary Worth, 6/11/23

Yes, blah blah, Saul breaks down sobbing because his beloved Greta has become bait for for fighting dogs (DO NOT WORRY, THERE IS ZERO CHANCE THAT A DOG IS GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY IN A MARY WORTH PLOT, GRETA WILL BE FINE), but what I want to focus on is that Mary sets this up with “I was reading the paper, and also watching the news on television.” We get it Mary, you have a diverse and varied news diet (made up of sources that were widely known before before 2001 or so).

Bizarro, 6/11/23

I know that the “oh, is there a Mrs. Potato Head?” genre of joke is tempting, but — and I’m sorry to be a killjoy — it would work a lot better if not for the fact that there is a Mrs. Potato Head, and she was introduced as part of the Potato Head extended universe in 1953, just a year after Mr. Potato Head debuted, and she appeared, voiced by Estelle Harris, most famous for playing George’s mother on Seinfeld, in three different Toy Story movies. That said, I appreciate the route this strip took with it, which is to imagine a human woman married to a literal plastic toy, whose eyes sometimes fall out when you’re in bed with it, as you would expect them to.

Family Circus, 6/11/23

Gotta go with Dolly as having the best imagination of the Keane Kids here. She’s dreaming of unleashing some ancient Pharaonic curse onto her family, and frankly I’m rooting for her.

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Mary Worth, 6/10/23

Look, I am a huge animal lover. My wife and I have two cats that we dote on and spend a probably unreasonable amount of time thinking and talking about. We also trapped and neutered many feral cats who made their way through our neighborhood, and three of them now live in our yard full-time, and we feed them even though none of them will lower themselves to allow us to pet them or anything. If any of them were to disappear one day (something that is inevitably going to happen with the ferals), I would be devastated. And yet even in my grief, I would never assume that the fate of one of these beloved creatures would ever be worthy of coverage on the local news. I’m sorry, I know Santa Royale isn’t a big media market like Los Angeles, but there simply isn’t a news day slow enough for this.

Judge Parker, 6/10/23

Remember when Sophie was a weird tween and used her telescope to spy on her sister doing “that tongue thing” with a long-forgotten boyfriend? She sure took it all in stride then, just wryly smiling at the thought of it, though I guess it’s a little more surprising to physically stumble into your recently divorced parents making out than it would be to observe the human mating process from a safe distance through a specialized scientific instrument.