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Archive: Mary Worth

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Ashlee gonna upgrade to SUPER-ASHLEE, watch out world

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Mary Worth, 7/14/21

It looks like Ashlee is really learning some important lessons here. Physical objects, like watches, can have emotional resonance for their owners, which makes you feel bad about stealing them. But money? Money’s totally fungible. Who’s gonna care about money? Ashlee’s about to grift Drew out of a bunch of money, is my point.

Dennis the Menace, 7/14/21

I like that this panel sets up a fun little mystery (why is Dennis being driven somewhere by the Wilsons?) and then immediately solves it (they’re taking him to prison, where he’ll pay for his many crimes).

Hi and Lois, 7/14/21

“Hey, you know how our baby loves staring directly into the sun? Well, I know you said we shouldn’t just let her spend hours crawling around on the floor next to the giant picture window without any supervision, but hear me out on this better idea I just came up with.”

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Death, love, and taxes

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/21

Hey, do you guys remember Phil Holt, who was (I guess?) a thinly veiled stand-in for Jack Kirby, and who Darrin met at a children’s party once, and then he died and left his valuable comics to Darrin, then took up residence in the same spectral hell-dimension that Lisa haunts? Well, he and Flash Freeman had some bad blood, which I guess is supposed to mirror some real-life comic book drama from the Good Old Days, but one of my constant positions is that I love newspaper comics and am extremely lukewarm on comic books, and that was true in 2004 when I started this blog and remains true today in 2021 when comic book franchises have swallowed all other media, so I refuse to do the research as to what the real-life analogue of the “subterranean” is. The point is that this is setting up the real identity of the figure who’s mysteriously interested in Flash and Ruby’s Hall of Fame induction. Do you think it’s supposed to be Phil Holt? Do you think that everyone involved in making Funky Winkerbean forgot that he was dead, or maybe assumed even ghosts needs some kind of pass to get on the Comic-Con floor?

Mary Worth, 7/10/21

Wait, hold on, I had always assumed that, what with her substance abuse problems and her legal issues, Shauna had in fact been the dumpee in her relationship with Drew, which led her to strut her way back into his life looking her best (?) in an attempt to win back his heart. But no, she left him! This is delicious. No wonder Ashlee is so determined to hold onto Drew, this is a guy who will absolutely stick around while you extract all the emotional and financial value from him that you can.

Gil Thorp, 7/10/21

Ugh, it’s a bad idea because the labor necessary to pull this off represents a huge new expense, and you wouldn’t make the money back because libraries don’t charge people! Honestly, Abel, I know this is (hopefully) the last day of it but it’s like you’ve forgotten what your entire deal in this storyline is.

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Technically, during the Purge, all crimes are legal, so Thirsty’s in the clear

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Mary Worth, 7/4/21

Not too much to say about Shauna vs. Ashlee: The Rumble At The Clinic For Drew’s Love except that the art here genuinely delights me. The dynamism of the hair-pulling in the middle row, the striking series of symmetries in the bottom row — it’s all great. I’m very sad that readers who don’t get the throwaway panels are missing out on the extreme Shauna closeup and quote from Yungblud (definitely an artist that I, a cool young person, had heard of and didn’t have to look up on Wikipedia to learn that he and Halsey broke up because they “worked better as friends”). Anyway, the next time this strip spends another six months on “dogs are good, actually,” we’ll have this moment to reflect back on and sustain us.

Hi and Lois, 7/4/21

I’m absolutely dying for an insight into whatever editorial process within King Features and/or Walker Brown Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC led to notorious local drunk Thirsty Thurston pointing to a box full of obviously illegal fireworks and calling them “legal fireworks.” Honestly the only way this would be funnier would be if Thirsty were doing an exaggerated wink at the reader when he said it, or if he blew several fingers off in the final panel.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/4/21

I’m not even going to bother with today’s dumb “mystery” and instead want to draw your attention to the Frankenstein-style monster looming in the bathroom doorway. It’s truly tragic that Count Weirdly, one of the last living humans in this animal-dominated world, is so lonely that he’s stitched together a shambolic golem out of the no doubt numerous human corpses available and animated it using forbidden science, just to have a friend.