About fifteen years ago, I discovered a blog called "The Comics Curmudgeon", written daily by a gent named Josh Fruhlinger. Every day, Josh would take aim at a couple of that day's comic strips, make some acerbic and often hilarious comments, and then open the gates to his readers, whose snarky comments were oft times truly hilarious. If you are a regular reader of the daily funnies, I highly recommend that you check out the Comics Curmudgeon at www.joshreads.com.
One of the precepts of this blog is that true comic gold lies not in the strips that are supposed to be funny (Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith et al), but in the soap opera strips, the "serious strips" like Judge Parker, Rex Morgan MD, and, most especially, Mary Worth. I have now been hooked on "Mary Worth" - a comic strip that has been running continuously in America's newspapers (and now online) since the Great Depression - for close to fifteen years now, and the sheer insipidness and cornball melodrama brings me great joy, as do the comments that appear on various online forums every day.
All this background serves as a lead in for a commentary on the current story arc that author Karen Moy, who as been writing, if you can call this "writing", this strip since 2004 and foisting upon the reader. A few months back, resident schlub Wilbur Weston got into an argument with his lady friend, Estelle, because her cat was interfering with screeching noises whenever Wibur would serenade Estelle by playing the piano and singing. Wilbur got into a fight with the cat (I did say this was insipid, did I not?) and Estelle gave him the boot. This was perhaps the first sensible action that Estelle, or just about anyone else in Moy's world, had ever made. Of course, resident busybody Mary Worth then browbeat Estelle into reconsidering her decision to break up and to take Wilbur back because he does possess some "good qualities", none of which any reader can see.
I am leaving a lot out here, but Estelle, who obviously has no self esteem whatsoever, took Wilbur back and the two of them went on a cruise to renew their relationship. All was going well until Wilbur asked Estelle to marry him, a proposal that Estelle sensibly and amazingly turned down. Wilbur pouted, went to one of the ship's bars and got drunk, something that he does with great regularity. He then decided that he would do a Leonardo DiCaprio "King of the World" pose on the rail of the bow of the ship, whereupon he drunkenly fell off the several stories tall cruise ship into the dark night time waters of the Pacific. Regular readers rejoiced at the possibility that Wilbur was now sleeping with the fishes, as dead as Luca Brasi. Of course, Moy couldn't pull the trigger, and we then see that Wilbur had washed up upon the shore of a deserted desert island. A week later, Wilbur discovered that he was actually on one of those "private islands" that cruise lines own. Meanwhile, back in Santa Royale, Mary, Estelle, and Wilbur's daughter Dawn were all mourning the death of this fatass Wilbur. Then, without calling anyone to let them know that he was still alive, Wilbur showed up back at the Charterstone Condominium community.
Like I said, I have a lot of fun details out here, but all of this led to this "recap" strip this past Sunday:
So, it looks like the women of Charterstone, even Mary, were appalled by Wilbur's inexcusable act, and this was even reinforced by Monday's strip:
Just look how pissed off Mary looks in that second panel. Surely this is the last straw for Estelle, and Wilbur will now become the social pariah that he so richly deserves to be.
Then we see today's strip, and "not so fast, my friend!"
Yep, looks like Mary is reverting to her interfering nagging self and will once again bully Estelle into taking this drunken, gluttonous piece of shit back. Here's hoping that Karen Moy will opt for a realistic conclusion and that Estelle will never again allow Wilbur to darken her door again, but we regular readers know better. They will once again be a couple, and the only good that will come of it will be the comments of snarkers on the online Comics Forums.
No comments:
Post a Comment