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Mary Worth, 3/11/25

I have to admit that I’ve never fully understood the arrangement Wilbur and Mary have where Mary subs for him as “Ask Wendy” when he’s too busy travelling (or too busy masturbating nostalgically to the hot sales director from Orlando that he met while traveling). Like, is she doing it as a “personal favor,” for free, or is he paying her, and if so is he paying more or less than what he makes? I guess what I’m getting at is that Wilbur doesn’t seem that emotionally or for that matter financially attached to the column, and I’m guessing that a syndicated newspaper column that your name doesn’t actually appear on is one of those things you can pretty easily convince your bosses to hand over to another person of your choosing, especially once you tell them said other person has actually been writing it for some time. On the other hand, don’t forget that Wilbur literally won his job as an advice columnist in a contest, and I while I always assumed it was a thing where people submitted sample advice to the paper and they picked whoever was best at it, maybe it was more like the deal where you meet the Devil at a crossroads in rural Georgia and go toe-to-toe with him in an advice-writing competition, winning a new job but losing … your eternal soul. Wilbur would have a hard time being rid of that sort of job, but if he could just get Mary to sign this contract, a lot of his problems would be taken care of … no need to read the fine print, Mary…

Luann, 3/11/25

In classic Luann fashion, Luann’s terrible date has somehow morphed into a large and complex event over at The Fuse, about which I have two things to say: (a) Tiffany is right, “Transfuse at the Fuse” is a more fun way to brand this than a giant boring sign that says “BLOOD DRIVE”, and (b) Tiffany should not back down just because she suddenly noticed that this guy named “Phil” or whatever is cute, since we’ve already seen his date with Luann and as noted seen that it was terrible, mostly as a result of his off-putting personality. Stand your ground, Tiff, he’s going to read at you off of index cards, you as always deserve better!

Rhymes With Orange, 3/11/25

I mean, it’s going to break most of her, honestly — pretty much all her organs and body parts, and then she’ll die. That’s how fly swatters work: by delivering shattering blunt force onto the body of the fly.

Shoe, 3/11/25

ME USUALLY: Shoe is such a jerk. Sometimes I wish he would take a minute and reflect on his wreck of a life. He won’t like what he sees!

ME TODAY: Oh god, OK, this might’ve gotten too dark, actually

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Shoe, 3/10/25

Man, it would be concerning if you were a bird parent from a species that primarily ate fish and your son didn’t want to eat fish, especially considering that, bird-wise, the main way you get fish for your kid is to eat it yourself and then barf it up for them. I can see why you’d write a pleading letter to the editor of the local paper, though it’s pretty funny that said editor would just be like “ditch your ungrateful kid and get with a cat instead.” This may be affected by said editor’s species: Shoe is, as helpfully pointed out by a surprisingly comprehensive table on the Shoe (comic strip) Wikipedia article, a purple martin, a largely insectivore species in contrast to his fish-happy employees Cosmo Fishhawk and Loon. Everything else aside, domestic and feral cats are also one of the main predators of bird species, but the purple martin’s current conservation status is “Least Concern,” so I guess he’s not too worked up about that either.

Heathcliff, 3/10/25

Now that I’m returning to Heathcliff on the regular, I must report that it’s still following its late-era dream logic to surprising and disquieting places. Heathcliff hates dogs, sure. The local dogcatchers are a tight-knit society with their own social institutions, I buy that. Said dogcatcher community respects Heathcliff because of his aforementioned hatred of dogs, makes sense. And so they … get lower back tattoos of Heathcliff’s face? To signal all this information to one another, sexually? Yes, the chain of reasoning holds together, but if the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

Intelligent Life, 3/10/25

I once cruelly but accurately described Intelligent Life as being “about a number of unpleasant people who are obsessed with ‘nerd’ franchises (i.e., most of modern film and TV entertainment) in the most boring way possible.” I guess I should’ve added a compliment about its one redeeming feature, which is that it’s almost never about pissing and shitting. Too late now, I guess!

Pluggers, 3/10/25

Oh, you’re telling me that a plugger will substitute lower-cost calories when the price of a favorite foodstuff goes up? Are they ever so special and financially rational? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Professor Hal Varian, who’s written extensively on economic substitution effects?

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Crankshaft, 2/23/25

Wait, why does John need Crazy Harry’s help? By Spider-Man logic, if he had been bitten by a radioactive cleaning lady, shouldn’t he have gained the proportional strength and powers of a cleaning lady, including access to common cleaning lady tools like stepladders and the foresight to deploy them? Or are we actually operating on real-world logic, and after suffering a tragic bite he’s just feeling increasingly feeble and woozy, due to radiation poisoning?

Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/23/25

I really love the aside in the last sentence that Slylock can afford the more expensive wand. He makes good money as the Forest Kingdom’s primary enforcer, OK? He absolutely can throw away $8 on a whimsically shaped bubble-making wand if he wants to. In fact, he’s tempted to do so, even though it makes the same normal spherical bubbles the cheap one makes, just to conspicuously display his access to wealth. He’s not poor, got it????

Shoe, 2/23/25

“Also when I say ‘getting married’ I mean ‘making a suicide pact.’ Six of one, half a dozen of the other, amiright? Ha ha!”