You didn’t post the one where Wilbur shows off his Matrix karate moves?

I lost a lot of respect for Saunders when I learned he doesn't draw the strip, just writes it. OTOH the writing is so incredible I can't stay mad at him.

Could have fooled me.

Grunching. Loved the OP!

It made me think of one that I didn't read, because it wasn't even trying to be funny and was aimed for... well I don't know who but it sure wasn't me. Apartment 3G I think it was called. I think the people were trying to be actors.

Lmao!

Alley Oop

Good question. Part of it has to do with my publisher having me under a partial gag-order. Also, I have problems with the script for our purposes.

To explain: one of the ongoing tensions for writers of serial comic-dramas like MW is figuring out what to do with the qualitatively and quantitatively distinct audiences for the Sunday paper. At their laziest, the scripts will just summarize the week's events for the Sunday-only readership. Other times, the Sunday story lines will form a distinct, but highly related narrative:. Take the strip from Sunday the 10th:



Which has a mini-story that doesn't occur in the weekday script although it is clearly in the same setting. So what happens when we get back to the Monday panels - did the wine-spill event actually take place? Or is this some parallel universe? It often isn't clear.

At it's best MW unpacks this type of ambiguity and uses it to ask questions about the nature of reality, narrative authority and cultural memory. In this case, the rather forced reference to The Matrix and is famous evocation of simulated reality and parallel universes is just a bit on the nose imo. Especially since one of MW's foremost preoccupations is the question of whether Mary is omniscient or has the ability to control minds. Not the worst strip I have seen, but since some of you are newbies to MW I don't want to scare you off with a choppy example.

Get in line LOL.

Seriously though, I will think about it.

While looking for something in the basement this weekend I came across an old scrapbook. Like I'm sure is true for most of you, this scrapbook from my youth contains my all-time favourite Andy Capp comic.



That really spoke to 12-year-old me

I don't quite get it. I think that he is playing some form of solo vollyball (at first I saw a swastica, but I was all "that cant be right").

What I can tell you is that the character of Andy smoked a cigarette up until 1983. When Andy gave up smoking some readers blamed political correctness. However, Fergus McKenna, head of syndication at Trinity Mirror which publishes the Daily Mirror, denied that the newspaper had put pressure on Smythe to change Andy's habits, saying: "The truth is that Reg himself gave up smoking and he said there was no way Andy was going to carry on enjoying cigarettes when Reg couldn't"

I don't know much about McKinna - will dig into hios background later.

Who are these clowns who only read Mary Worth on Sundays? The strip shouldn’t cater to those fair-weather fans.

Are comics like Mary Worth even supposed to be funny? What's the point? I don't get how someone can view one of those panels and have the slightest inclination to continue viewing more

I think they're hilarious.

Some more background about Sunday scripts. Subject matter and genres have ranged from adventure, detective and humor strips to dramatic strips with soap opera situations, such as Mary Worth. A continuity strip employs a narrative in an ongoing storyline. Other strips offer a gag complete in a single episode, such as Little Iodine and Mutt and Jeff. The Sunday strip is contrasted with the daily comic strip, published Monday through Saturday, usually in black and white. Many comic strips appear both daily and Sunday, in some cases, as with Little Orphan Annie, telling the same story daily and Sunday, in other cases, as with The Phantom, telling one story in the daily and a different story in the Sunday. Some strips, such as Prince Valiant appear only on Sunday. Others, such as Rip Kirby, are daily only and have never appeared on Sunday. In some cases, such as Buz Sawyer, the Sunday strip is a spin-off, focusing on different characters than the daily.

Other formats for Sunday strips include the half-page, the third of a page, the quarter page, the tabloid page or tab, and the half tab, short for half of a tabloid page. Today, with the ever-shrinking size of Sunday strips, many other smaller formats abound.[8]

Usually, only the largest format is complete, with the other formats dropping or cropping one or more panels. Such "throwaway" panels often contain material that is not vital to the main part of the strip. Most cartoonists fill the first two panels of their strips with a "throwaway gag," knowing that the public may not see them, and making them integral to the plot would likely be wasteful. Exceptions to this rule include Steve Canyon and, until its last few years, On Stage, which are complete only in the third format. An alternative is to have a separate strip, a "topper" (though it may appear at the bottom), so with the topper it comprises a three-tier half-page, and without it comprises a two-tier third-page.

Half-page Sunday strips have at least two different styles. The King Features, the Creators' and the Chicago Tribune syndicates use nine panels (with only one used for the title), while United Features and Universal Press' half-page Sunday strips (most of them use a third-page format instead) use two panels for the title (except for Jim Davis' U.S. Acres—which used the nine-panel format- during the 1980s, when most UFS strips -particularly Davis' more successful Garfield—would have a throwaway gag).

Well I for one def want to find out if the gang gets into a drunken brawl at My Thai.

Man o Man I hope you guys have been keeping up with this storyline this week, so good. Mary's in the house! And in a delicious heel-turn, she is going to sabotage Estelle - presumably out of unspoken anger at having been demoted to the second best-looking older woman at Chartestone. And Iris story-line looking to shape to be a morality tale about the perils of pre-marital sex. Will she scare of Zak! Wilbur is still waiting in the wings! Get out that popcorn boys.

The use of the bold is perplexing.

Has anyone ever done any stories about Mary Worth’s younger days? I would watch a “Yung Worth” show on CW.

No, and one of the mysteries of the Charterverse is whether people age in the same way that they do in real life, or if time even moves in a linear way. Mary herself actually seems to be getting younger - just compare yesterdays strip to the 2006 one I posted on 11/20.

Also consider today's strip:



Note that Iris (whose boyfriend just got out of college) already has an adult son, yet she apparently doesn't seem to understand the concept of pregnancy nor has she noticed any change in her menstrual cycles. Does menopause exist in this universe. And have you ever know a woman to weigh herself while wearing shoes and a bulky sweater? There is a David Lynch-like dreamlike quality to much of the strip.

This arc is making me uncomfortable. I thought comics were supposed to be funny

Really hate the bolded words

Yeah WTF is this ****?

This is just dramatic tension that Mary Worth will resolve with some sensible words about how getting old and flabby is really a stage of life that should be celebrated.