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Mary Worth, 11/24/12

Oh my goodness, Mary. You … you really want to do this? It seems like you want to do this. Fine. Everyone, once upon a time — 2006, to be exact — there was a Mary Worth storyline that involved a man who wanted to be more than friends with Mary, and it was a very important moment in the history of this blog. Click any of the links below, for the Glory and the Majesty!

• Aldo Kelrast moved into Charterstone and immediately started saying skeevy things about Mary’s lovely hands.
• Turns out he was attracted to Mary because she looked just like his dead wife (marginally less creepy than Dawn looking like Jim’s dead sister, we guess?).
• Mary told him she wanted to be just friends with him. Actually, her exact words were that “it’s best if we don’t socialize too closely.”
• Nevertheless, he kept hanging around, so she had to be a little blunter.
• Eventually, she resorted to talking like one of those ethnic gangsters from the movies in an attempt to deter him.
• It got bad enough that Mary’s friends all staged an intervention, as if that were a way that people dealt with stalkers they barely knew in real life.
• The shame of it all drove Aldo — a recovering alcoholic who had given up the booze after his wife slipped and died in the bathtub when he was passed out drunk — directly to the liquor store.
• Getting drunk and then getting behind the wheel of a car? Amateur stuff. Aldo got behind the wheel of a car and then got drunk.
• Oops, maybe not such a good idea!
• Could he really be dead? Yep!
• Our heroes felt kind of bad about this.
• But pretty soon they were able to rationalize it.
• Then Mary went and put flowers on his grave, as a final “screw you, stalk-o.”

This — this — is the backstory to what Mary is telling Dawn. If the friendship is strong enough, your aggressive paramour will understand that no means no. And if he isn’t … well, are you ready to kill, Dawn? Kill in a way that leaves no trail back to you? Because that’s what it takes, Dawn. That’s what it takes.

Beetle Bailey, 11/24/12

I normally don’t care to know any of the backstory to the half-hearted hijinks of Beetle Bailey, but I admit this one has me curious. How long was General Halftrack followed around by an eager documentarian? Do you think he knew in his heart of hearts that it had gone badly, or had he deluded himself until this moment that he’d look like a hero to movie-going audiences everywhere? Is the titular Disaster at Camp Swampy a single, disastrous incident that was caught on film, or is it referring to the metaphorical, slow-motion disaster that’s so all-pervasive that the soldiers stationed there won’t be able to recognize it until they see it on the big screen?

Archie, 11/24/12

Ha ha, I love how angry Reggie is at the space monsters, for failing to open diplomatic relations with Earthlings. “How dare these extraterrestrial chumps refuse to speak to me! Have they even seen my amazing stripy sweater?”

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Yes, just because it’s late at night on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend doesn’t mean you’ll go COTW-less!

“Josh finds him creepy, but I think Tongue Kid is the best. ‘Hey, there, what’s up. Me? Oh, I’m great. Just gonna eat this fish, live on an idyllic island. How about you? Reading Mark Trail, you say? That’s great. Look, the fish and I gotta go. You take care. Good luck with that Mark Trail thing.'” –He Brought Queenie Baby Jesus

And our runners up are as ever hilarious:

“Will tomorrow be the first Luann where two characters discuss something that matters? Spoiler alert: No.” –S. Stout

“JP: Maybe Bubba’s pot farm is just a front operation for a far more lucrative career in selling endangered marine life, which is in itself a front operation for trading stolen art, which is in itself a front operation for a snuff film studio.” –hogenmogen

“Heathcliff’s trying to say he’s innocent because of the existence of … REASONABLE TROUT! Ha ha! Oh, I hate myself.” –Dagger

“Look at that last panel of Gasoline Alley. Just look at it. Divorce it from context, and try to imagine that there is any scenario that goes with that image and those words that works unless she’s talking about delicious, tender, human children.” –Johann Sebastian Cock

“The slabs of food-pie are not for eating, of course. Just hold them near your face and FEEL the radioactivity!” –Greg

“Yes, Jim’s losing of an arm and a sibling — those are easy for him to accept. But to be rejected by Dawn Weston? No man can accept that.” –Liam

“Yep, it’s just a typical scene as two grown men exercise and discuss what teenage girls have been doing to their football players. Better add another set, no frustrations here!” –Chareth Cutestory

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And as always, we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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Heathcliff, 11/23/12

Newspaper comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not in a political sense, necessarily, but in the sense that visual signifiers and little building blocks of jokes that haven’t existed in the real world for literally years are still just taken for granted in comics, because they’ve become established running gags during the strips’ decades-long run. Take, for instance, the idea that you’d put your cat or dog out at night. This was, I guess, an unremarkable aspect of pet ownership at one point; but today, anyone living in an urban or suburban area would be judged rather harshly if they just let the dog roam free at night, and while plenty of people do have indoor-outdoor cats, even in the city, plenty don’t, and those that do almost never actively kick the cat out at night. This change in attitude happened long enough ago that, when I was a child in the early ’80s, I had to have my mom explain to me why Fred Flintstone dropped Dino on his front step in the opening sequence of the Flintstones; yet here we are 30 years later, and Heathcliff is still being comically bounced across the lawn, and Dagwood’s suburban cul de sac is haunted by packs of feral dogs at night.

Wizard of Id, 11/23/12

Meanwhile, newspaper comics are apparently forbidden to use the word “hell,” even when it’s the name of a place of afterlife punishment rather than a curse word. There are probably plenty of other perfectly understandable substitutes that could have been used instead (“Hades,” “The underworld”, etc.), but heck, let’s go with “heck,” a euphemism for the swear word that’s never, ever used to refer to hell-as-a-place, just to confuse and irritate everybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/23/12

Haha, wait, what? Greg is the new James Bond? Is he even English? Is he even attractive? Wouldn’t he be able to afford a better apartment than a third-floor walkup in a building where teachers and nurses live? I guess this does at least explain why Margo hasn’t been putting any effort into publicity, because having the new Bond in your stable of clients is probably a license to print money, assuming that the film doesn’t flop because it turns out its new star is a bland American who goes around wearing sky-blue turtlenecks.

Meanwhile, Skyler is the victim of a abrupt hair color shift, but as a young Hollywood starlet this is actually one of the more realistic instances of this typically A3Gian blip.

Gil Thorp, 11/23/12

Gil Thorp’s storyline continues to be not even interesting enough for me to bother summarizing for you, but in the interest in keeping you up to date on what’s really important, here is a sexy closeup on Gil’s sweaty face!