Folks, it’s time for me to make my annual late-December holiday three-cornered multi-city voyage of the damned to see various parents, step-parents, in-laws, friends, Romans, countrymen, etc. Since most of you will be similarly occupied this week, I give you the gift my absence, so my hilarious wit doesn’t constantly distract you from the good times you’re supposed to be having with your families. I’ll be back blogging sometime between Dec. 31 and Jan. 2, whenever I have recovered and the mood strikes.
If you must have comics fun between now and then, perhaps you should consider voting in the First Annual Worthy Awards? This momentous occasion, put on by faithful reader Wanders, is a must-read event for all Mary Worth fans/foes/frenemies.
And speaking of awards, keep an eye out for the winners of faithful reader True Fable’s Bee Grinding Awards coming (I assume) in a comment on this very post!
“I feel sorry for Mary Worth. She’s a pitiable creature doomed to roam the earth listening to the problems of vague, weak-willed blondes. Call her The Wandering Shrew.” –Joe Blevins
“Lynn, driven to despair by her own tale of woe, decides to attempt suicide. But what method, she wonders? Fling herself in front of the rink zamboni? But why bother when Mary Worth’s bony, unyielding shoulder is so close! ‘I’ll just fling myself on her and fracture my skull!’ she thinks. But after being spattered with brains and skull fragments many a time, Mary is wise to this ploy, and now wears shoulder pads.” –ouranosaurus
“Gah, yeah, how could that one SMOKIN’ HOT bug-eyed hydrocephalic baby with glasses be attracted to that other extremely similar-looking bug-eyed hydrocephalic baby with glasses? Marvin should be illegal.” –Canaduck
“In defense of Shoe’s having nothing to do with birds — or shoes — it is merely doing what countless comic strips do: comment on our modern world through the lens of an arbitrary, not intrinsically humorous gimmick-world. Thus, Crock and the Foreign Legion; B.C. with its Christian cavemen; Apartment 3-G and its male cloning program; Momma and its Freudian hellscape.” –teddytoad
“Also, there is no power on Earth that can stop me from interpreting ‘After Greg died, I was a robot’ literally.” –Violet
“[Mary Worth] tells Lynn she should get on with her life and skate perfectly … just like her evil dad! Only MW drew tears first … deep-buried, painful, angst-ridden tears … the elixir upon which she sups.” –Wug
“You know, I suddenly realized something very sad. I’m a faculty member at a university in New England. My girlfriend lives in New York and is a former dancer and choreographer. I have at least a few friends and colleagues in the world of classical music and musicology. If there theoretically exists an audience outside of the Juilliard student body for the pretentiousness and self-absorbed pettiness that define 9 Chickweed Lane, it would be me. With God as my witness, I don’t know whether to be more disturbed by the fact that I am being micro-targeted by Brooke McEldowney more precisely than by the marketing department at Whole Foods or by the fact that he has failed even in that pitiful and degrading ambition.” –Master Softheart
“The original draft of this comic would have simply gone as follows: [Panel 1] Bird Woman: ‘Ever since I did it, I feel so much younger!’ [Panel 2] MacNelly: ‘Yeah, that’s right! I just made you think about *bird sex*!’ That nonsensical punchline in which ‘doing it’ inexplicably means ‘destroying all evidence of my existence in a sort of symbolic suicide rather than accept my own mortality’ rather than the usual meaning was added by the editors.” –Warren
In response to the above: “I never once, in all the discussion over the last day about this Shoe comic, thought about ‘doing it’ in the sexual sense. The ennui and disgust emanating from Shoe effectively killed the thought completely.” –Niall
“Spider-Man was originally going to say ‘O RLY’, since that’s what all the kids are doing on the Internet these days, but he chickened out at the last minute and fell back on one of his standard villain retorts, resulting in the awkward double negative. Can’t blame him, though, considering the implausible dialogue he has to work with: ‘I’m recapping the plot to you now!’ ‘I’m emphasizing the actions that are occurring right in front of your eyes in response to your plot recap!’ ‘O — DON’T COUNT ON IT! … I … wait, what did you just say? Shit, can I get a do-over?’ [Jameson crashes into the wall]” –ChargeMan
“Big Time’s sidekick, Hathair McHenchman, has got to be the stupidest looking minion ever.” –Brick Bradford
On Summer’s Winterfest date: “Nah, she’ll go with Cory Winkerbean — he’ll show up underdressed, sullen, and probably drunk, then humiliate Summer in front of God and everybody. Les will start a fistfight with Funky over it, landing both of them in the hospital (busted nose; heart attack). Summer and Cory will meet in the hospital lobby after visiting hours and awkwardly make up, out, love, a child, a loveless marriage, and ruined lives for all.” –Uncle Lumpy
“I like how Big Time didn’t even have to take the gun out of its holster; it just sort of motion-lined out of that general area. Perhaps his TRUE super-power is teleportation and he’s just keeping it a secret because, you know, it’s Spider-Man and nothing cool can be known.” –Erik
“God help us all, but could that be Ziggy’s son? Guess all those years of walking around without pants finally paid off.” –Pozzo
“Fake Spidey decides to stop Big-Time from killing now? I guess even he knew that Big-Time’s clock-dropping escapade would fail. He’s sort of like a parent keeping an eye on his kid. ‘Sure, drop a clock around, have your fun, Bigel — HEY DO NOT SHOOT ANYONE. DO NOT. NO.'” –HastyPenguin
“I didn’t even get how Shoe’s line was supposed to be a pick-up line until you made me realize that it’s horror and madness. I, uh, I still don’t really get the joke, but now I’m vomiting blood.” –Malethoth K
“Boy, that Guido Tomas has a thick neck. You know what they say about guys with thick necks, dontcha? If so please tell me; I just find it kind of unsettling.” –Li’l Bunnë FooFoo
“I can relate to Marvin’s dog. Just like him, it also takes me longer when I think about Santa.” –Red Greenback
“I do appreciate that Santa is cringing in anticipation of the dog-sex joke to follow. I know the ‘he sees you when you’re sleeping’ has always been creepy, but it’s nice to know that Santa still has some standards.” –Lettuce
“Here’s a great way to elude your pursuers while you are running away from them in a half-dried up swamp with a gigantic Saint Bernard dog: quietly yell at the top of your lungs, ‘Hey Pop!’ That’ll throw them off your track every time.” –Little A. a Fan of One Big Happy
“Margo’s icy stare in the second throwaway panel looks like a challenge: ‘Throw this panel away, foolish newspaper editor, and feel the wrath of Margo!'” –Craig
“I’m amazed at Sunday’s Apartment 3-G. In the space of four panels, Tommie goes from coy to playful to flirtatious to Estelle Getty.” –Dingo
“For a guy who’s shaped a little too much like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, maybe Jamaal shouldn’t go around quoting Victor Hugo.” –BigTed
“Yes, I’m having some difficulty controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE!!! It’s a side effect of the (still incomplete) unfreezing process.” –Vince M
“Oh my God! Herb’s going to make a coat out of Jamaal! Either that, or he’s trying to become the subject of an Oliver Sacks book, The Man Who Mistook His Life Partner for a Coat.” –Joe Blevins
“At long last, we have the answer to the question which has dogged generations of art scholars: What if Jack Elrod drew the Pietà?” –Mac
“Wow, it looks like Mark ran out of big bold font right in the middle of a sentence. Like the swamplands, big bold font must be conserved.” –Digger
