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Gil Thorp, 6/15/22

“Look, I’m only asking this because one of my dumb students put me up to it, but: were you guys in the mob or what? It’s ok, you can tell me. I’m not in the mob. I asked to join, but they said no. I didn’t want to do crimes or anything, they just seemed like cool guys to hang out with, from all the movies and everything.”

Mary Worth, 6/15/22

Folks, you know — you know — that I am Mary Worth lifer at this point. Even before the day I first brought the phrase “Wilbur makes an overture” to the world’s attention (the overture, FYI, was to Iris, a romance storyline that began in the year of our lord 2004), I was all in, and remain entirely tangled with this strip on a personal, emotional, and frankly professional level. But the thing is, when they know you need them, they can go to some pretty out-there places, because they know you have no choice to go there with them. Like “Dawn’s boyfriend is going to dump her for a domestic violence victim he met while he was one of her caregivers at the hospital, because they both named their cats after Star Wars characters, also Dawn is out clubbing with random dudes but he doesn’t know and that doesn’t figure into his calculus.” Pretty grim stuff, man! But I’ve got no other options now. I’ve gotta ride this one as far down as it goes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/15/22

“Oh, and I also did a bunch of extremely illegal things that they’re gonna put me in prison for. That’s gonna put a crimp in my whole crime-fighting career as well, I guess.”

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Mary Worth, 6/12/22

The thing about Mary Worth, the character, as well as Mary Worth, the strip, is that they are both very moralistic in tone but their actual morality is often pretty flexible. One of the very first storylines featured on this blog involved Mary telling her friend Anna to pursue an old flame at her high school reunion, even though he was now married. Fortunately, he turned out to be recently divorced so that he and Anna could almost immediately get married themselves, but the point is that you’d think Mary’s in favor of couples staying together, but Mary might be like “Hmm … what this? A young woman who refers to Princess Leia as ‘Leia Organa’ and quotes from the one of the movies from the new trilogy that normal people stopped thinking about immediately after it ended? She seems like a fine match for Jared! All I have to do now is mention that his current girlfriend is freak-dancing with anyone who asks down at Rock It to speed this process along!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/12/22

Well, we sure were enjoying that storyline for a bit about a guy who wanted to be a superhero, which we think of as a noble pursuit, but then it turns out he was a crazy person, which maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise given the whole “wanted to be a superhero” thing. However, in addition to thinking that you can cure crime with surgery, the Street Sweeper also bought some extremely cheap handcuffs that may have just been part of a “hot cop” costume from Party City, so I think a lot of our philosophical questions are about to get resolved, at gunpoint.

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Blondie, 6/9/22

We all talk a lot about how Dagwood wears a full-on tuxedo every day to work, which none of his coworkers do — Mr. Dithers doesn’t even wear a suit jacket! — and that this is truly bizarre behavior, would make him a social pariah, is probably the result of some kind of personality disorder or maybe he lost a bet, etc. However, one thing I feel like we’ve never discussed is that he must be unpleasantly hot, like all the time. Yet he defiantly eschews any attempts to mitigate this, even to the extent of taking off his jacket, which I assume means that he’s also just drenched in sweat, constantly, over the course of his workday. A fun thing to imagine as he’s getting yelled at for goofing off, that he must smell pretty bad too!

Gasoline Alley, 6/9/22

I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Gasoline Alley because … well, I mean, why would I. I wouldn’t enjoy typing it out any more than you would be able to muster up enthusiasm for reading it. I will merely give you the bare bones — that back at the end of March Rufus and Joel were told that the the “Hollywood folks” were looking for them, and now, two and half months later, having intended to travel to Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, they have mistakenly arrived in the city of Hollywood, Florida, instead. Even this is probably more Gasoline Alley plot information that you ever wanted or needed, but it’s important to set up today’s good news, which is that Joel and Rufus appear to be dying, so we probably won’t have to deal with any more Gasoline Alley plots ever again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/22

“Yes, when I received the call from the man known as ‘the Street Sweeper’ asking if I could ‘cure crime,’ I did know that he had kidnapped the deceased at gunpoint and was refusing to hand him over to the police. But am I responsible for the carnage that happened seconds after I bluntly told him I couldn’t? Not according to my lawyer.” –Rex Morgan, in what most commentators will agree was one of the most disastrous interviews given on local TV news in a decade