“‘Time away?’ I recognize that euphemism. They decided to tell everyone Wilbur was in prison, didn’t they? It’s less embarrassing than the truth.” –Peanut Gallery

“Is the ‘Winter Olympics’ reference topical or coincidental? I mean, he could just as easily have said, ‘I feel like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush,’ which would pass for topical to Blondie’s readership.” –Pozzo

“I don’t know why today’s strip prompted me to think about this, but when Dagwood’s body is autopsied his stomach contents are really going to cause a kerfuffle in the coroner world.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Crankshaft died while praying, so he won’t go to hell. As a last act of spite, he won’t grant us any satisfaction.” –Ettore_Costa, on Twitter

“Hagar is hopeful because he’s finally discovered that he can have a Box Of Arrows delivered directly to the battlefield. Lucky Eddie knows this is just the beginning of a hyper-capitalistic frenzy that will separate the Vikings into a struggling mass of low-paid gig workers and a tiny exploitative elite who will profit from sending them on increasingly dangerous raiding expeditions.” –But What Do I Know?

“‘Wilbur!’ should be the only line of dialogue permitted in Mary Worth from now on.” –Nigel Richardson, on Facebook

“It’s okay, Joey, cry it out. But make it quick. All these bodies aren’t going to hide themselves.” –jroggs

“You’re a plugger if your only cruising option is an extremely-low-traffic public bathroom.” –Roto13

“Mary has gotten to the point in her gaslighting where she’s now producing a cloud of methane around her at all times and we can already see the effect it has on Ian. He should be caber tossing Wilbur out of his apartment and reclaiming everything that mayonnaise fingered wiener touched but instead he’s placidly smiling at him with the look of a man who is both watching an amusing news story and wishing for death.” –Needless_Exposition

“Some say it’s a miracle? SOME SAY IT’S A MIRACLE? The very demons of Hell saved your life, Wilbur.” –Professor Well Actually

“I’m convinced today’s episode is a cruel and elaborate pantomime put on by Toby, holding her phone just offscreen, to whom the other characters are glancing to see if they’re getting their lines right. Wilbur’s going to be a TikTok sensation, but not for the reasons he thinks.” –pastordan

“Crazy that the Blondie comic we know today is the retooled version meant to be more relatable in the wake of the Great Depression. Nothing says ‘man of the people’ like a dipshit in a bowtie saying, ‘Are you guys psyched for the big game?’ then cutting off your response with a demand to serve him food.” –Dan

“Ever thought how boring this job would be if we didn’t give the Mitchells a smaller table every time they come in?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Cressida? Honestly, not one of the Bard’s best works. None of the Problem Plays are standouts, to be sure, but the genre confusion in Troilus and Cressida is so extreme as to render the play unenjoyable, no matter what Joyce Carol Oats says. Honestly, I’m surprised the drama club is planning to stage it at all. Oh, you meant Cressa? She’s out in the garage having trouble dividing six by two.” –Voshkod

“A few minutes later Rex walks out of the exam room. ‘Nope. That guy wasn’t funny at all.’” –Liam

“Intruigued by those hand gestures June is making. ‘Yep, just snip him, spank him and send him on his way. TGIF, ammirite?’” –pugfuggly

“The delivery of the line ‘I guess birthdays have a drawback,’ as if this has literally never occurred to Toby before, puts her at about 25, tops.” –T Campbell

“I love how Harry’s expression changes between the first and final panels. ‘Jello shooters? I don’t know if a school organization should be promoting alcohol and — was that a pun? Ha ha, you sons of bitches, I’m in!’” –pugfuggly

“Oh, Wilbur. You’ll never understand people. Or animals. You suck!” –matt w

“Poor Thel! She can dream about a construction worker with a jackhammer and it has nothing to do with sex!” –Joe Blevins

“I hope this leads to a remake of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ where Wilbur actually dies but nobody believes it and they don’t even go to the funeral.” –Ronconi Riccardo, on Twitter

“‘I’m sure glad I’m on your staff!’ won the Least Erotic Dialogue award at the AVNs last year.” –nescio

“Even if Wilbur didn’t call, wouldn’t somebody who worked at the resort call the cruise line? ‘Hey, a disheveled guy in soaked clothes showed up here claiming he fell off one of our ships. Should we straighten out the liability or just quietly shoot him?’” –Alex Parker-Spencer-Driver

“I’ll keep you from driving off a clef! Unlike our mutual friend and colleague Bull Bushka, who very recently drove off a cliff and died! Haha!” –jroggs

“Snuffy and Loweezy evidently haven’t mastered fork protocol past the ‘use as weapon’ stage.” –Pozzo

“Even if Snuffy could afford dental care or had insurance, there’s no way he’s going to let a hoity toity fluoride-touting ‘expert’ stick a drill in his mouth. It’s highly likely he also whittled those dentures himself.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“‘This is a partial prospectus we have prepared for you to peruse!’ is not how Hollywood people talk. Our Mr. Wallet is clearly getting scammed by a couple of Paper Moon-era con artists, who will trick him into thinking a film is being made about his life. A year from now, they’ll get him to pay $60 for tickets, popcorn, and candy to see what will turn out actually to be that disappointing Bruce Willis action movie. (Yes, the effort-versus-payout ratio of the scam is quite low, but no one in this strip is exactly a genius.)” –BigTed

“Mary gaslighting Estelle again and again and again is the most on the nose, yet subtle, Groundhog Day reference on the comics pages today.” –Where’s Rocky?

“A key concept in Nietzsche is the eternal return, the idea that an Übermensch should embrace with joy the fact that life repeats identical to itself forever. This strip shows that if you are still wedded to Platonism and Christianity like Hi, you will never be happy. Embrace nihilism!” –Ettorre

“I’ll just say this, ladies: everybody thinks Wilbur is already dead. Throw him down a well and blame his ghost if anyone thinks they saw him after the cruise liner. It may not work, but at least in jail there won’t be Wilbur.” –jerp+jump

“I was going to crack wise about the unhealthy codependence of keeping awful Wilbur around so they can bond about how awful he is, and then I realized that I read this strip and am now commenting on it with other people. Estelles all, the lot of us.” –matt w

“Dawn Weston: Old enough to carry on affairs with older men to re-enact her deep rooted daddy issues, too young to drink during the day and suppress them.” –Needless_Exposition

“We all know what Rex is thinking: Do I bring a cross claim against Sarah to indemnify us? I mean, it was her fault after all, it’s my money, and she is a pain in the ass.” –Lawyerbob

“DustinDad specifies that he ‘ended up driving‘ to get the food. This gratuitous information for the benefit of the unseen audience tipped her off that she was expected to help him set up a joke. It’s distasteful, but it pays the bills!” –Peanut Gallery

“Nothing but wholesome tap water for our boy Dick, thank you. And no ice. Don’t forget, people in hell want ice water, which obviously means they were sinners when they were alive, which means ice is only for sinners. (The evilness of milk is self-evident.)” –made of wince

“We can only hope that Wilbur is not on one of those cruise ship private islands but on one of those rich person private islands where men are hunted for sport.” –Glod Glodsson

“This man woke up on a beach and immediately assumed that he’s Chuck Noland (Cast Away) and panicked that he will starve to death before taking a single step, let alone 100 FUCKING FEET to confirm that there are no other people around! Either he’s the stupidest man on Earth or he has a humiliation fetish that has to be satiated even if he thinks he’s by himself.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Of course Mary means ‘low quality’ when she says ‘poor.’” –nescio

“Seeing Dustin in uniform really brings home how utilitarian his character design is. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying I’m sure that exact cartoon figure walked me though creating a spreadsheet circa 1995.” –Schroduck

“Caring for Lisa’s birds in our own backyard? Where no one can see it? Come on, Summer, think. What’s the point in melodramatically honoring the kind nature of my dead wife without an audience?” –jroggs

“Truly, Mary Worth continues to outdo itself, as Mary spins from the grieving Dawn to the grieving Estelle, lost in the all-too-appropriately-colored sea of brown. Dance, dance, Mary! Dance in the mess you have created!” –pastordan

“Dustin, you blundering fool! That spider knew you were coming, and spent all night building a web that spelled out SOME MILLENNIAL.” –Peanut Gallery

“Wilbur’s going to Tom Sawyer his own funeral, hopefully just in time to see Ian sip a glass of wine and curtly declare, ‘Never cared for him.’” –Dan

“A birdfeeder filled by a man’s beloved dead wife — most boring ghost story ever, or best long-running gaslighting ever? Either way, Funky Winkerbean‘s answer will be sure to disappoint you.” –Voshkod

“Everyone’s thinking about Wilbur here, but is there a character in Mary Worth that could be turning up unannounced in Mary’s(?) apartment to greet three visibly weeping women with ‘Hey, Ladies!’ that would not be extremely funny? There really are no bad options.” –Liminal Space Battleship Yamato, on Twitter

“The best part is that apparently no television news outlet thought Wilbur’s survival from a plunge from a cruise ship only to wash up on an island against all odds was newsworthy. They were probably at first all excited about hearing this amazing tale of survival and thought, ‘What a lead story!’ Then they took one look at our hero and thought, ‘Nah.’” –Joe Momma

“I like how that branch disappears between the two panels, as if Roz’s lawyer is just out of frame, dismantling her restaurant to get his cut.” –pugfuggly

“‘What could be worse than getting unfriended over a baloney sandwich?” That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. Dagwood literally doesn’t know any scenario worse than that because he has no actual problems.” Joe Blevins

“Thank God! Indeed, thank Yog-Sothoth, the All-in-One and One-in-All, the Opener of the Ways, who has brought Wilbur back to us through terrifying dimensions beyond the mere few that humans can comprehend! Indeed, a normal human would have been driven beyond sanity by the experience. Wilbur just asked if there were peanuts.” –RogerBW

“I imagine the world from Les’s perspective is like the scene where John Malkovich goes into his own head, except everyone is Lisa and says ‘Lisa’ repeatedly.” –Banana Jr. 6000