I too love it when comics and movies exist. Love those content formats
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Mary Worth, 6/2/25
Did you know that the psychological “fight or flight” response is more accurately called “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”? I think it comes as no surprise to those of us who (sadly) know them all too well that the Westons, having belatedly realized that they are in the presence of an apex predator, have gone the “freeze” route, hoping that if they sit very still and offer the most weaksauce and unrealistic excuses for not eating mushrooms imaginable, she’ll lose interest and wander off. The really sad thing is that the extremely on the nose Fatal Attraction reference is lost on Wilbur and Dawn, since they’re both philistines whose media diets consist of watching old Evander Holyfield fights on YouTube and “clean eating” influencer content on TikTok that comes right up to the edge of promoting anorexia without violating the terms of service, respectively.
Intelligent Life, 6/2/25
Speaking of philistines with terrible media diets, this strip would’ve been a good opportunity to name some of the movies, comics, conventions, or cartoons that are coming out in 2025, but instead Intelligent Life decided to simply … not? I guess what’s giving Mike life is not the movies or comics themselves, but just the reassurance that this particular form of cultural and economic production will continue at least through the end of the year.
Andy Capp, 6/2/25
Was it Cappverse canon before this point that Andy has a big juicy booty? If not, it is now, and I for one am not complaining.
140 replies to “I too love it when comics and movies exist. Love those content formats”
MW:
“And I…uh…had mushrooms already for lunch! — and that was preceded by my usual ‘breakfast of champignons‘ !”
MW: Snaps to Belle for making an apron look like bdsm wear.
MW – Careful, Dawn. Belle’s charm necklace consists of salmon squares for the last person she killed. What will be your commemorative marker? Obviously, not a bra.
MW I’m assuming that since these two are too timid to avoid death, Mary is going to save the day by busting through the door with some disarming advice. Or an AR-15. Either would be fine.
IL The way their expressions change between the last two panels really makes me wonder what (or who) they just ran over.
AC Wait a minute…white walls, yellow trim…are they staying at Marvin’s house? Ugh, is this some kind of ‘pissing yourself’ crossover?
MW: Was this entire plot just a scheme by Moy to prove that she’s seen a movie more recent than Casablanca? I don’t believe it, lady. You just looked up Fatal Attraction on Brainy Quote or wherever you get your Sunday quotations. But hey, if you’re taking requests, next prove that you’ve seen Freddy Got Fingered.
Belle is starting to look like a Phoenix Wright villain, mid-breakdown. All we need now is an over-the-top flailing animation with her repeatedly collapsing/yanking her own hair/bursting into flames/etc…
Evander Holyfield?
I’ve been calling him Ollivander Holyfield all this time.
Clearly Josh made a typo as he tends to do sometimes, right?
(Googles the name)
It’s Evander…
Where was I?
MW:
“If you don’t eat this, Dawn, I’ll force you to get a hairdo just like mine — which is even worse than what you sport right now. And when you think about it, now, that’s saying something!”
Wow, Intelligent Life is really giving Herb and Jamaal a run for its nonspecific medium of economic exchange typically in the form of coins and banknotes!
IL: With no prior knowledge of this strip, I can only assume it takes place in some dystopian future where the entire concept of fictional entertainment is an obscure novelty, and where any form of verbal dissent is harshly punished. Hearing his friend use the word “unneat” is enough to make Skip perspire in terror.
Dustin: I’m not as familiar with this comic as some others, so, does it make a difference if this woman is a professor at a college or a manager at work? (I’m guessing no.)
GT: The attacker is handling the ball, isn’t she? I can’t tell.
Luann: “The Circle of Life” story for a fish and a dragonfly doesn’t have to be twelve lines.
FC: This one is actually relatable. There was quite a hunt (a successful one) in our home for my wife’s engagement ring once.
I predict Mary will come to Wilbur’s door, one of the twits will yell for the police, and by next Sunday Belle is being arrested.
MW: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we all eat this vegan seafood chowder made with mushrooms, and find out who is right… and who is dead.
CS: Oh good, is Ed finally going to die? Did Batiuk come up with the ‘elegant solution’ of letting Ed build AI so he can wreck the neighborhood without having to be in the strip anymore?
MW: What is even going on in this story? Why are they avoiding Belle’s cooking when they haven’t surmised that she’s trying to poison them? What have they been eating for the past two months? Has Wilbur been accidentally spilling it every single night, or has Belle stopped trying to murder people? Maybe they’re reacting to something she did two months ago, and abandoned. Why can’t they throw her out, ask her to leave, call the police, or even say what the problem is? Doesn’t she have a job to go back to?
@ValdVin:
Dustin: I’m not as familiar with this comic as some others, so, does it make a difference if this woman is a professor at a college or a manager at work? (I’m guessing no.)
It’s DustinDad in drag+Blackface, going out of his way to insult and humiliate his son.It’s the temp agency person, who sets Dustin up for those office jobs he’s perpetually shown having (but that we are meant to infer he is constantly instantly fired from)and also non-office jobs Dustin is sometimes shown to take like a duck to water, but those never count because they’re not “real” jobs.@Banana Jr. 6000: MW: They’ve tried nothing and they’re out of ideas. It’s because of this sort of nonsense that Wilbur has Mary writing his advice column for him.
Instead of popping a cap on our ass, they’re popping an ass on our Capp.
FC: “Don’t sweat it, Thel, it was only a CZ.”
“You mean I pushed out these four melonheads for a lousy CZ?”
RMMD: “Might have to go sit on a BENCH for awhile.”
AC: After lo, these many years of knowing Andy as a scrawny Cockney, I for one, am a bit disturbed. That much avoirdupois will roll him right off any pub stool before the drinking does.
RMMD: Happy ending: Cody loves his newfound papa, AND is a top-notch wedding planner!
MW: As expected, Wilbur is a useless pile of quivering jelly. It’s all on Dawn and her Bowling Ball of Fury.
@ValdVin: I am only too familiar with Dustin and the woman runs the temp agency he ‘works’ with, though why they keep him on I have no idea. He must be killing their reputation. The yelp reviews must be vicious.
RMMD-They are doing wonderful things nowadays with dna testing.
MW-Time to call the cops and have Belle taken away.
FC-Wait until she finds out that it’s just glass.
Dennis the Menace-“Remember what we tell the cops? it was an accident.”
@The Rambling Otter:
Ramble on, Friend!
I miss rambling with you and the others on CK.
Mary Worth: I too recognize many of these cultural references and completely understand what is — I’m sorry, but what exactly keeps Belle’s head attached to her torso? Springs? Pipe cleaners? A series of puppeteers, like a Chinese parade dragon? I know it’s late in the game, but I feel like we need answers to this very important question before we proceed with this narrative.
IL: If 2025 is shaping up to bring us more comics like Intelligent Life then bring on the killer AI deathbots.
Also IL: Their looks of horror in the last panel make me hope that the Intelligent Life guys took their eyes off the road for too long and just noticed they’re speeding towards a brick wall. RIP, Intelligent Life guys. You died the way you lived: mixing vague topical real-world politics with tedious nerd references.
Intelligent Life: There is simply no other way to read not-Skip’s facial expression in panel two than “I-ma bait Josh into featuring today’s strip on his blog, my one and only form of earned media exposure!” Mission accomplished, I guess?
Talking of big juicy booties, Jephthy’s fetishes are particularly unsettling on Questionable Content today. It’s almost verging on Ed Gein territory.
Get help, Jephthy.
MW: One of the cleverest anti-predation techniques is when a threatened prey animal alerts an even bigger predator, which results in the first predator either fleeing or being eaten (either way, it’s a win for the otherwise-defenseless prey). All Wilbur and Dawn have to do is make urgent squawks of imminent death, and Mary will come bursting in and disembowel Belle with an ice cream scoop.
@Braxwel Brontë: Ooh hey! Thanks :3
Sorry about that, my browser blocks the CK Comments for some reason, I guess maybe it has viruses or something?
(Another to the list of things to complain about with Comics Kingdom)
For the longest time, I assumed that the comments were literally shut down. Until I temporarily disabled my web protection to see that they are apparently still there, but still, I didn’t go back on (because I don’t want anything dangerous happening to me) But then again my protection blocks any sites that might possibly have anything that sounds the slightest bit NSFW, like looking up the entertainer Dick Van Dyke on TvTropes. NOPE…
Mary Worth – What Wilbur and Dawn don’t know is that Mary has been feeding them small doses of poison in her muffins and beige squares for years, in order to build up their immunity. It was to prevent them from committing suicide caused by her meddling (which is why she had to flee to Santa Royale to begin with). This is, of course, something she learned from watching The Princess Bride, another classic film neither Wilbur nor Dawn have ever watch.
Intelligent Life – I can’t tell if this comic is purposefully vague in order not to step on a landmine that is our culture wars and political fighting, or if the comic creator is actually the target demo of The Big Band Theory, a person vaguely aware of nerd culture who is willing to chuckle at vague jokes.
I lean toward the latter, because the prior fear of offending anyone assumes you have a platform where you’d get noticed, and nobody outside Josh regularly reads this strip.
Andy Capp – It’s Pride Month, and Andy Capp is honoring a small, but dedicated based of queer fans. Yes, the creators read your slashfic, and they want you to know you are seen and appreciated.
@Lauralot: You might be onto something. The next strip could be Belle screaming “I could lose ALL of THIS! And we wouldn’t want that now, would we? WOULD WE????” as she straddles Dawn and shoves the poisoned food down her throat by the handful.
Wilbur, being no Rip Torn, just sits there and watches, wishing he could finger or be fingered one last time before Dawn throws him into a moving propeller. This time there would be no last minute, studio-mandated ADR’d “I’m okay!”
(And lest anyone think otherwise, I’ve never actually seen ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ myself. All I know are the clips used in Doug Walker’s ‘First Viewing’ of the film which I found more hilarious than his actual ‘Nostalgia Critic’ review of it.)
@Bob Tice: A+ pun, excellent
@Banana Jr. 6000: Belle has only been trying to murder Dawn and Willa so that Belle can be the only highlander in Wilbur’s life. Wilbur only caught on because Willa was almost Belle’s goldfish snack that absolutely did not smile back.
Dawn never smiles back and Wilbur prefers only his and his goldfish’s wellbeing over his daughter’s – and since Wilbur has replaced Dawn as his co-dependently enmeshed number one with Willa, he also dismissed Dawn’s concerns and fears.
TL:DR
Belle only tried to poison Dawn with drain cleaner, secret ingredients, and possibly poison mushrooms- and only Wilbur’s attention and newly heightened love of a previously second banana goldfish may have saved everyone’s lives…
@The Rambling Otter: The comments aren’t necessarily a security risk. Some systems block what they deem unnecessary javascript or trackers, which comment systems often contain.
Andy Capp, Leroy Lockhorn and Dagwood Bumstead get together once a year for an annual boys’ weekend. It’s at an exclusive resort with no amenities other than comfortable couches for long naps. Oh, and porn.
Intelligent Life: This strip is like a parody of a incredibly banal, generic comic strip with stilted punchlines, with the sort of lame “geek culture” humor you’d expect from a late 2000s geek humor-based webcomic that would run for a few years on some webcomic hosting site to little notice.
DT: So, is this guy the same guy as the apartment dweller? Evil twin? Doppelganger? Or alter ego split personality? Or someone who is a master of disguise?
MW: How do Dawn and Wilbur both know to distrust Belle’s food? The audience can tolerate a lot – variable room layout and geometry, but the creators have to play fair.
MW: Call me crazy, but that vegan seafood chowder made with mushrooms looks almost exactly like that hamburger gravy on white rice served with roasted glazed carrots. Or like something dredged out of the litter box after several cats have had diarrhea.
MW: Karen Moy has a remarkable talent for making every storyline she writes the most insane ever. Truly remarkable.
Fatal Attraction for Willa and the Far Side for Dawn.
All of Belle’s attempts to off Dawn seem to be inspired by the Larson classic: “When Dumb Animals Attempt Murder”.
I guess conventions can only do so much with AI, so you’ll have that going for you in 2026, Mike.
***
Quick, Wilbur! Take Dawn and fall off a ship! It’s your only chance for survival!
@Tonio: By “porn films” we mean a video of a guy waking up, putting on a bathrobe, eating ice-cream, laying on the couch for a few hours, watching TV while drinking beer, then going to bed.
Actually, this almost fits that alternate music video for Bruno Mars’s “The Lazy Song” where Leonard Nimoy does pretty much that (plus a bunch of other lazy stuff)
Reading Intelligent Life on here, every time Josh shows it, makes me cringe like no tomorrow.
Sure, Josh tries to salvage it with his own witty repartee but I don’t think that that’s possible.
It’s not even the whole geek culture thing that bugs me, but they all seem to be about these two “Penny Arcade” wannabes talking about how life sucks and will continue to suck. HAHAHAHAHA FUNNY….
@Professor Well Actually: And yet STILL ends up incredibly boring at the same time.
“Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”? That’s not the “Four F’s” I learned in zoology class.
And then she murdered them both. So, if there’s a morel to this story, children, it’s eat your mushrooms.
IL – I want to believe that someone challenged the author of this strip to use the word “unneat” in a sentence and this is the best they could come up with.
IL: I’ve long since determined that Intelligent Life is written by and for people who have heard about geek culture but don’t really know anything about it, but really, couldn’t you spend five minutes looking up the Marvel movie or Disney+ Star Wars series debuting this year? Hell, even Karen Moy managed to reference the one line everyone knows from Fatal Attraction.
MW: What exactly is Belle planning on doing? Standing over them and waiting until they break down and eat the poisoned chowder?…Actually, that might work for Wilbur; he probably won’t last ten minutes before his gluttony overrides his self-preservation.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Behind one of these doors is either a handsome young man or a ferocious tiger!”
“I actually like ferocious tigers better than handsome young men”
“That’s just the first two doors…”
“I haven’t even started on the invertebrates yet!”
MW: Once again highlighting the problem with slippery comic strip time – it takes weeks of soap opera daily strips to go over events of one evening, so Moy lets it slide and has Dawn go to Mary after “weeks” of Belle. If the writer could just let go of that and this were approximately Day 3 of Belle’s weirding-Dawn-out-pushy eat my food! it would still be crazy, but a crazy that makes sense
– Belle kinda notices Willa, but it’s only after a few days that she actually sees Wilbur talking to his fish
– in a few days nobody notices a missing photo / Xed out eyes (unlikely but not as unlikely as this lasting weeks)
– Dawn has only had to dodge a few Belle meals, Belle hasn’t taken a pause of a couple weeks in trying to poison her, and Dawn hasn’t eaten any of Belle’s concoctions
– It’s only a few days of pushy eat-my-stuff so Dawn can’t articulate to Mary why that makes her uncomfortable, especially with her dad asking her to get along
– It’s only a few days so Dawn doesn’t think it’s that bad, surely she shouldn’t leave when Mary offers to have her stay over
H&L: Considering how “chocolate milk from brown cows” is a typical childhood joke, maybe Bobby is kidtrolling instead of a kidspiracist.
@Voshkod:
I’m lichen that pun.
MW – This reminds me of the old man who’d been widowed three times.
“What happened to your first wife?”
(feeble old voice) “She died eating poison mushrooms.”
“And the second?”
“She too, died from eating poison mushrooms.”
“What about the third?”
“She wouldn’t eat her mushrooms.”
There’s a major court case happening in Australia right now (or was, recently) where a woman is being charged with killing two family members with poisoned mushrooms she baked into Beef Wellington. It’s probably good I wasn’t on the jury, because I think she did it. She served her and her husband’s portions on different colored plates, and one of the guests even mentioned that at the dinner…
My point is, I’m patting myself on the back for my mushroom-avoidant behaviors.
And also never pissing off my family enough to have them want to poison me.
MW: Dawn doesn’t want to OD on mushrooms because she’s already eaten some only makes sense if they’re psychedelic mushrooms which might tie up some long running loose ends: why her mom kicked her out, why she still lives in Charterstone, why she can’t complete college, etc
C’shaft: Crankshaft heard that AI is prohibitively destructive to the environment and wants to jump on the bandwagon.
Dustin: Well, for starters he put up with your abuse, which I imagine is more than can be said for most people at this temp agency. The average tenure at that place must be at Liz Truss or Anthony Scaramucci levels.
GT: At least in the past we’d have narrative boxes to clarify the vague sports sequences…
Luann: Kid’s brains are indeed amazing. Bernice’s brain, which automatically takes Shannon’s word that she has twelve pages of story rather than assuming this is a snap estimate by someone with little sense of scale and/or she’ll get bored and want to watch Bluey after ten minutes, is rather less amazing.
RMMD: So. Truck and Varla had a brief, unhappy marriage, one that ended on such bad terms that Varla never told him she was pregnant. They also never communicated to any meaningful degree in the ensuing years, as a child would surely be mentioned in such communication. But she still wanted to honor her loser ex by naming her son in part after him?
@Old School Allie Cat: There’s been more than one case of people poisoning themselves after relying on AI to identify mushroom species. Belle may have an iron-clad defense with this one–that is, if she’s actually using poisoned mushrooms an not depending on the Westons to ignore the strong odor of Clog-B-Gone coming from their bowls.
Dustin: Who ever heard of a performance review for low-end temps? You do the work you’re assigned for a period of time, and then go home. Maybe the company that leased you will give your agency some feedback at the end of it, but that’s about it. And there certainly aren’t any “accomplishments” to be had. The whole premise is ignorant, and it’s just an excuse to dump on Dustin (and by implication his entire age cohort) some more. Which is all this comic strip is.
@Terry Rhoden: This strip is like a parody of a incredibly banal, generic comic strip with stilted punchlines, with the sort of lame “geek culture” humor you’d expect from a late 2000s geek humor-based webcomic that would run for a few years on some webcomic hosting site to little notice.
Like Philip said: it’s The Big Bang Theory.
“2025 is shaping up to have some pretty neat stuff going on, Skip!”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’m hoping to learn how to turn my head to the side so I can speak directly to you. If it works, I’ll teach you, so you can start checking the rear-view mirrors before making lane changes in front of semis.”
@Old School Allie Cat: IIRC the statements also included that she didn’t previously make special dinners for others and got upset at someone she didn’t get along with who declined the invite – Moy seems to have seen this and decided to see if she could write an even *more* over-the-top obvious poisoner storyline.
Mary Worth: I’m sure this is leading to some moronic “twist” where it turns out Wilbur and Dawn do actually have a plan to deal with Belle that this is part of, but I frankly find it far more in-character to assume that they just decided to not do anything about Belle beyond not eating her food in hopes of not causing a fuss. Besides, that makes it much funnier when Belle just pulls out a gun and shoots them.
Intelligent Life: Intelligent Life is in a similar genre to stuff like Rex Morgan; comics that are ostensibly about some specific subject, but the writer doesn’t actually know anything about or care about said subject. In this case, the result is a comic about pointing and laughing at so-called “nerds”, except the writer has absolutely no idea what actually constitutes a nerd and zero knowledge of what things a nerd might be into beyond vague descriptions of media types they engage with and the most mainstream of mainstream works.
Andy Capp: Andy Capp begins its dramatic transition into being an ecchi manga.
@Guts Dozier: , I can only assume it takes place in some dystopian future where the entire concept of fictional entertainment is an obscure novelty,
________________________
So Intelligent Life is the comic adaption of “Overdrawn at The Memory Bank”? That explains alot, but I still must ask,why would anyone want to be doppled into teenage Pete Griffin?
Compare, if you will, RMMD’s current “child the father didn’t know about shows up out of the blue” arc to the recent Keith Hillend plot in Mary Worth. Both are terrible, but it’s fascinating how different they are in their terribleness.
Sonia showed up at Keith’s immediately hostile, and mellowed out for just long enough for Keith to muse that she might just be his daughter, given that they both love the incredibly rare beverage root beer. Then out of nowhere, Sonia starts dropping “stick it to the man”s and “Daddy-O”s and storms off because she somehow never found out that her father was in law enforcement while tracking him down. Stupid.
Meanwhile, in RMMD, a man’s secret son has arrived days before the father is set to be married, and both of them have as much reaction as Hank Hill and Dale Gribble drinking beer in front of a fence. “My mom said you’re my dad.” “Huh, don’t that beat it all.” No questions from either side? No conflict? Just “makes sense I guess.” Stupid.
Truly there is a wealth of diverse writing styles in awful soap opera comics.
FC: Bil wonders how fast he can get back to the pawn shop.
MW – Shroom trippin’ be the best….
IL – Don’t forget the wide array of cyber porn. It truly is a golden age….
Andy Crap – Am I the only one getting a JD Vance vibe….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Does Andy Capp have a big, juicy booty?
Depends.
Mark Trail Mix: Didn’t Land Shrimps™ used to deliver Candygrams™ to Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase on SNL?
@ectojazzmage: “Intelligent Life is in a similar genre to stuff like Rex Morgan; comics that are ostensibly about some specific subject, but the writer doesn’t actually know anything about or care about said subject. In this case, the result is a comic about pointing and laughing at so-called “nerds”, except the writer has absolutely no idea what actually constitutes a nerd and zero knowledge of what things a nerd might be into beyond vague descriptions of media types they engage with and the most mainstream of mainstream works.”
SEE ALSO: Gearhead Gertie; Funky Winkerbean (role of comic books in); Crankshaft (post-2022 conversion into Funky Winkerbean); The Far Side (bad clones of)
@ectojazzmage: Andy Capp: Andy Capp begins its dramatic transition into being an ecchi manga.
_______________________________________________
“Yes,me worry, BIG TIME!”- Alfred E. Neuman
FC: “C’mon, Thel. You know where it is and I know where it is.” Says Bil as he holds up PJ’s crap laden diaper.”
This way, Intelligent Life will be just as timely years from now when it’s reprinted in a beloved omnibus edition. What?
This a nice change of pace from “Andy is a alcoholic” to “Andy is clinically depressed”
MW: I always recognized close-set, beady eyes as the infallible mark of the cartoon criminal. Now Belle is creeping me out with her wide-apart, stary eyes. I suppose it’s because she’s not an average criminal, but a downright psychopath.
@Schroduck:
My MOREL is at an all-time high because of this kudos, which I am going to TRUMPET since it is so hard to BUTTON down.
Today’s Andy Capp, brought to you by Sir Mix-a-Lot
MW – Flash Gordon teleports in and wonders how hot-crazy went so quickly from “drink my potion” to “eat my mushrooms!”
@Peanut Gallery:
¿Por qué Abundio le da a esta mujer un recorrido por la casa vacía de Juan?
@richardf8: it’s the Alice in Wonderland crossover we didn’t know we needed!
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Big Bang Theory minus characters that are endearing to your grandmother
@Violet: Juan’s turning his house into a museum, and Abundio is trying out for the role of World’s Grumpiest Docent.
I hope that’s it, because the only other answers I can think of are too creepy.
LUANN: Ah, well if Shannon and B continue to bond, will B then become a person of interest for TJ or Jonah? Discuss.
MW: Good plan, Belle, as many mushrooms are naturally poisonous.
MF: the strip that must not be discussed: Being for legitimate rights of one group does not mean being against legitimate rights of a different group
MANDRAKE: Bruce Wayne has had hard times.
DT: So you’re a clairvoyant, you say. Good. Give tonights’s winning lottery numbers and the winning trifecta for the Belmont Stakes this Saturday.
Ukulele Ike, are you taking the short drive upstate to Saratoga to see the race? The Belmont track is undergoing a major renovation this year. I heard Melody Mare will be there running her own merch booth and signing autographs.
MW: a person is evil if the white is drawn ABOVE the iris. No, that’s a different arc with Zac. Ok, so a person is evil if the pupil is disproportionately large or small. No, that’s a different arc with Toby teaching at the community college.
AC — As Kierkegaard once noted, not making a choice is also a Choice. Oh, and dat *ss. . .
FG: one nice thing about being a superhero is that anther superhero will rescue you when you choose to walk into a trap.
Mary’s Worst: “Oh, No! I’m tripping with the Westons!”, Belle says as Filmation cartoons of Dawn and Willburp karaoke ” Time To Change” with Ping and Libby the pandas.
@Guts Dozier: #10
Doubleplus ungood!
@Activist:
On Luann :
TJ developping a romantic interest in anyone
that’s not Bwadfeels incredibly unlikely, so I’m thinking that’s a “no”. Plus, he’d be bonding with Bernice over their shared “gets along relatively well with Shannon” trait, and do the Evansii even remember they gave TJ that trait?Bernice ending up with Jonah… Jonah is basically everything Bernice accused Quill of being when she talked Luann into dumping him, so…. Do the Evansii lack self-awareness so much they’d actually go through with this?
Intelligent Life is shaping up to have some pretty neat stuff going on — red, yellow, the letter R, stuff like that!
MW: “they’re both philistines whose media diets consist of watching old Evander Holyfield fights on YouTube and “clean eating” influencer content on TikTok that comes right up to the edge of promoting anorexia without violating the terms of service, respectively.”
I must disagree, Josh. Wilbur watches Fox News, aging adventure movies featuring Mel Gibson, “Die Hard” all winter because he tells everybody it’s a Christmas movie, obscure fishing shows on the Outdoors channel, and Lifetime because he thinks it’s “super sexy.” Now Dawn, you nailed that one.
@ectojazzmage: MW: The Westons have been eating Mary’s muffins for so long that I’m sure they can survive any poison Belle throws at them. She may have to resort to tableware.
MW: those are magic mushrooms Belle is serving. They are missing the chance to be one with the universe.
@Lauralot: I’m curious if Karen Moy may have gotten the poison mushroom idea from Phantom Thread. Though that movie has a much more interesting plot to swipe than whatever this is.
@Little Blue Bicycle: “….obscure fishing shows on the Outdoors channel….”
I bet Wilbur was a big fan of the old cable program Fishing with John. I bet he watched it “unironically.” (Finger air quotes)
MW: Isn’t the more pressing issue with that reference that it doesn’t really make sense in this context? I don’t know if refusing to eat a meal someone makes really constitutes ignoring them.
Crankshaft – The garden is smarter than those two combined.
FC – Bil shouldn’t have bought that ring from that guy on the street. He might want to take a closer look at that Rolex he bought, too.
Seriously – why isn’t Thel shining a flashlight on the carpet?
Sherman’s Lagoon – What does Miss Manners say about smacking a turtle?
Mary Worth – Alex Forrest thinks that Belle needs to dial it back.
9CL – No one else is laughing either.
FC: It’s beginning to dawn on Thel that she’ll be spending the next day or two hosing PJ’s and Jeffy’s turds through a sieve.
@Lauralot: I hope Moy watches On the Beach.
@Banana Jr. 6000: @treetown: I don’t get the sudden distrust of Belle’s cooking either. Neither Dawn nor Wilbur knew about the attempted poisonings of the food.
Luann: “Your dad will be here in two hours, not two weeks!”
Oh god this arc is going to last two more weeks isn’t it?!
DT: It’s easy to scoff, but I heard this guy’s so good he can predict a Dick Tracy plot twist, something I’m not convinced the writers can do best of three.
IL, meta: I really hate to defend Intelligent Life, but I feel like that’s maybe the joke? All he has to look forward to in 2025 is the same media landscape that already exists, but with different names, and that’s just going to have to be enough. On the other hand, this is a strip that doesn’t have any problem having a character talking about all the great stuff coming up this year in frickin’ June, so maybe I’m giving it too much credit.
JP: Well, Neddy, the main reason was that you had the brilliant idea for an oldster sweatshop made of storage containers. Then it turned out to be an actual deathtrap, so you fled to Alaska and waited for people to forget that it was all your idea and instead blame Godiva Danube for signing the cheques. Remember now?
RMMD: Has my headcanon that “Truck” Tyler doesn’t actually have a first name, just a nickname and a surname, just been confirmed?
SH: Okay, but … why? I don’t mean “why are the refreshments inside where they won’t blow away or get sand in them?” that makes sense, I mean “why is there also a fake refreshments tent with plastic food?” What purpose does it serve? Also, it sure is good for this environmentalist-when-it-remembers strip that there’s never been anything problematic about plastics on a beach!
Andy Capp – Andy does not have a big booty. He’s just too lazy to get up and use the loo.
@The Rambling Otter: The Rambling Plugger?
@The Rambling Otter: CK flags the most innocent comment as profanity and emails me a stern warning. Bad boy!
As one of a handful of people who fondly remember the short-lived Spider-Man 2099 comic series, I’m coming to fear that Belle was subjected to the same gene therapy as Miguel O’Hara, as evidenced by her pale (presumably hyper-sensitive) eyes and her fangs. When Wilbur and Dawn continue to refuse her cooking, no doubt she’ll resort to restraining them with her webs and either injecting them with venom or tearing them apart with her retractable talons, before fleeing into the cyberpunk wasteland of Nueva Santa Royale.
MW: Uh, guys, why don’t you ask Belle why she’s not preparing a plate for herself and joining you? I’d like to see what lame excuse she comes up with.
@Violet: Por qué esta mujer con Abundio? Y quien es Sra. Veronica? Esposa de Abundio? Si sí, como se dice ‘skeeveball?’
MW: OK, I can understand why Belle wants to get Dawn out of the way, as ridiculous is that is, but if both plates are poisoned why would she want to kill her cash cow (or prize pig, in Wilbur’s case)? Unless she just kills for the thrill of it she still hasn’t gotten Wilbur to marry her and change his will in her favor.
@Pork Larder (mystery hero): Does he deal with this using a Depends, adding to the volume, or did he really lay heavy into the pub stew?
Or is his ass just swollen from the kicking he took on the shinty pitch for cheating?
I favor this last hypothesis, because I cannot accept Andy Capp becoming Dagwood Bumstead, and this strip is far too close to that for my comfort.
@MKay: AC: Andy would consider the Cockneys, who live in the east part of London, to be a bunch of southern softies. He’s from Hartlepool in north east England and proud of it, as they are of him.
The heartbreaking thing is this is literally EVERY Intelligent Life strip ever published. The background changes slightly. There are clowns in Congress, they are a bunch of clowns…but, there are COMIC BOOKS and MOVIES. It kinda makes you yearn for Bazooka Joe, which is no more worthless, and comes with yummy gum (they still make it, right?).
@CIA Advisor to the Jungle Patrol:
FONDLY remember Spiderman 2099? What the shock, man?
Intelligent Life: I actually think the non-specificity of this strip is because it was drawn in 1975, when they assumed that by 2025, ordinary people would be driving underwater cars.
Dustin-Why Dustin hasn’t become a serial killer yet is beyond me.
@Tom T.: 1975, when they assumed that by 2025, ordinary people would be driving underwater cars.
____________________________________________
Or underware cars like the Calvin Klein™Tightly Whitey 2000™
@Guillermo el chiclero: But would offing Wilbur be a thrill, or just a grim necessity, like swatting a fly?
I’m sorry, it’s just insane to me that the Mary Worth character who has had the most interesting and consistent sex life over the years is Wilbur freakin’ Weston. Sure, Belle has crazy eyes, but we all know that crazy energy probably makes her a complete dynamo in the sack, right? Wilbie PULLS, man, that’s all I’m saying.
@A Grave Mind: I only read one Bazooka Joe comic.
William Shakespeare: Joe, do you think I should put more fire in my work?
Bazooka Joe: I think you should put more of your work in the fire.
Classy…
I don’t know if Bazooka Joe’s shtick is that he’s a complete asshole, or the writers are.
MW: Belle looks like the alien from Alien.
I actually believe Belle is going to lead the Westons into an ayahuasca ceremony. How is Brigman at drawing serpent gods?
@The Silent Penultimate Panel: It’s like how Seinfeld wrote George Constanza to be the ultimate loser, yet he’s had at least 30 girlfriends over the course of the show, including Marissa Tomei (playing herself)
Intelligent Life: With “Penny Arcade” when the two guys would discuss movies and videogames, they would actually discuss specific movies and videogames and give actual punchlines as well.
Why have the rotten fish when I can have the steak?
MW: Belle has made meals for them but not for herself and is hovering over them with death in her eyes, refusing to take no for an answer and making murderous innuendo. I think at this point it might be ok to kick her out of your apartment, although I have to admit that I’m not the one with an advice column, or who should be dead but isn’t.
MW: Hang on, is this whole thing inspired by the Erin Patterson mushroom case whose trial is happening as we speak?
@The Rambling Otter: #118: Years ago one of the late night talk show hosts (Don’t exactly remember who but it might have been Conan O’Brian or Jimmy Kimmel) did a spoof of the Bazooka Joe comics where Mickey Rourke (Who was at a real low point in his career at the time) beat Joe to death with his fists and took over his strip.
@The Rambling Otter:
Well, sure. Penny Arcade is awesome. Intelligent Life should be a beatable offense.
@The Rambling Otter: I thought the same and even when the comments do show, the login feature doesn’t always work right. So no more screaming fish gifs from me when Willa makes an appearance – although June Brigman came mighty close to that meme last week which I fully appreciate.
@4 pugfuggly: on Mary Worth: Mary’ll bust through the door with trite advice and a basket of carrot muffins.
@11 ValdVin: on Luann: Let’s see: “A pretty (ugly) dragonfly, Flies down to the water, And an ugly fish eats it. The End.” Four lines. Easy peasy.
@24 I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: What’s keeping Belle’s head on? Splak! and plenty of it.
@37 treetown: on Dick Tracy: This guy is Rene Belluso. He has to sit out a few more storylines in Glenview until his triumphant return to grift another of Rex Morgan’s inner circle. I’m hoping for Aunt Tildy this time.
@38 Charterstoned: Wanna see a clearer picture of Belle’s Vegan Seafood
GlopChowder?RMMD: Cody inherited is father’s sideburn genes.
@83 Guillermo el chiclero: Drive to Saratoga? No, Ukulele Ike’ll take his Lear Jet. He’ll wear his scarf, it is apricot.
@Baja Gaijin: Dear me. He is an ostentatious fellow, isn’t he?
(Didja know Klaus Voormann played bass on that? The guy who designed the Beatles’ Revolver album jacket?)
@131 Ukulele Ike: You know Carly was singing that song about you.
@The Rambling Otter: You know, bringing up old KeenSpot properties isn’t entirely fair when you’re dealing with syndicates that lack both the technical skill and the editorial chutzpah to bring anything like that to market.
@Veronica: All of this reminds of a joke I read in the reader’s digest long ago. A lady of society was preparing a mushroom feast for her mushroom hunting club, including a preparation of death angel (which, like pufferfish, is not toxic if correctly prepared). She gave some to the dog to make sure it was OK. The dog was fine, so she served it, and as they were finishing up the neighbor kid rushed in and told the hostess that her dog had died. Off everyone went to get their stomach pumped and when the hostess returned home, the neighbor kid said “I’m real sorry, but I didn’t get the license number of the truck that hit your dog.”
Dustin: Hey, that’s also what Dustin heard from the sex worker he hired for 30 minutes.
@ValdVin: re GT: You could say the attacker’s arm is in an unnatural posture, but what does that even mean in this strip? Looking back a few days, I can see the Milford keeper making a save while the fabric of spacetime unravels behind her.
@richardf8: I had read that one too!
@richardf8: “lack both the technical skill and the editorial chutzpah to bring anything like that to market.”
Then hired people who actually have skill as opposed to those who don’t. It’s just common sense.
I remember all those years when there were no movies, cartoons, or comics. The 1880’s were pretty rough.
@JustSomeGuy: But you only had to wait until 1907 to have The Dancing Pig!
MW: There is the notion that this version of Belle is nothing more that Dawn’s hallucination. Note that Dawn had mushrooms for lunch and now doesn’t want to OVERDOSE. Belle exists on the edge of Dawn’s mushroom-induced madness, and even Dawn recognizes this. Not to worry. With the right cupcakes, Mary can talk her down.