Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Mary Worth 1,440

You can't stop living! Let's walk by the water. You know, where your sister stopped living.

Today's Full Strip

22 comments:

mrvy said...

The plot should advance tomorrow. We can tell by Dawn's "!" and the rays of fear emitting from her in panel 2.

fauxprof said...

I'm searching my memory banks, which ain't what they used to be, for clues to Dawn's checkered love life. Having read Mary Worth for thirty-odd years (some of them very odd, indeed), this is a little sketchy, but...

Dawn had a sort of boyfriend several years ago, close to her own age, whatever that is or was. He developed a psychological problem that was severe enough to entail being institutionalized. Then there was the age-inappropriate and commitment-phobic jerk, Dr. Drew. After that, of course, we had the post-adolescent clueless jerk, Dave. And now, another psycho nutball (to use clinical terms).

Dawn has either the worst luck or the worst judgment you can imagine.

heydave said...

Dawn is a magnet
The weirdness inside of her
Attracts all that's dumb.

KitKat said...

Welcome back, Wanders!

@fauxprof at 7:54 AM, I did not know about Dawn's pre-Dr. Drew romances, so thank you. I missed the boyfriend who had to be institutionalized, but Jim is quickly tilting to psycho, so we may have a reboot.

Two questions: (1) Does Dawn EVER go to class? (2) Would Jim qualify for Wilbur's "I'm Alive" column?

Nance said...

@KitKat--Remember, Jim is a teacher. Unless he is on medical leave, he's missing a lot of school as well.

Dawn is the most insensitive, narcissistic individual ever. She is completely tone-deaf to anyone else's emotions. I think she has a type of autism.

But, of course, since Dawn learned the valuable lesson that Life Goes On when she got over Dave due to the Crisis Averted aboard the doomed cruise ship, she is Wisdom Personified. Now she's a behaviorist, and the only way for Jim to move forward is extinction therapy. See what Psych 101 at the junior college can do for you?

Dave in Parma said...

How does Jim defense the slap that is inevitably coming from Dawn's right hand as he holds her left?

Dave in Parma said...

For all the time she spends in the cafeteria, is Dawn consider a 'resident?'

fauxprof said...

@heydave: Love the Haiku. On a related note, I propose a new rule that anyone who uses Twitter MUST compose all their tweets in the form of Haiku. That ought to reduce the traffic.

Anonymous said...

Take your stinking paw off me, you damned dirty ape.

Delilah said...

Welcome back, Wanders! I've missed my daily MW riff fix.

phoebes in santa fe said...

Nance@9.06a - very astute reasoning, there. But what if it's Moy with a touch of autism?

Thorpnotized said...

No secret message today?

Mike in Cleveland said...

Jim appears to be sliding in and out of reality. Now he's confusing Dawn with his helmet-haired sister, and he has to "protect" her. (And in a true MW tradition, the trivial comparisons march on.)

Now, the "you seem almost...familiar" comments have a more ominous meaning. Jim is starting to blank out the memory of his sister and the events of her death, and is beginning to hallucinate that Dawn is his sister. This is way beyond Dawn's "Mistress of Wisdom" approach of "When you fall off a horse, ya gotta get right back on."

This is epic insanity on Jim's part. It'll be touch and go for a while; Dawn won't be able to clear this up until way at the end of the semester, and not without Wilbur and Mary's meddling "help."

The final triumphant panel will have Jim (perhaps with a grateful tear in his eye) standing and waving at the rail of the new ferry, a picture of confidence as he crosses over...

Muscato said...

You know, we - and Dawn - have assumed that Jim is hanging around Mountview for some unspecified post-arm-loss reason.

But I wonder if Fauxprof isn't on to something, and he's actually just wandered away from the psych unit...

But more importantly, now that we've worked through an ocean liner and are in the middle of a ferry - what's the next Santa Royale-related object to sink?

Not Moy said...

Well, in the real world, we would know that romance is not in the cards because men aren't attracted to women who look like their sister. But with Moy, you never know. This could get creepier than it already is.

Carlye said...

God help us, is this going to regress into a "Flowers in the Attic" kind of plot? I thought this was a family oriented strip.

brick said...

@Mike in Cleveland at 2:17
Whether standing at the rail of the new ferry or on THE PIER, Jim's final panel should include his left sleeve, unpinned, flying free in the ocean breeze.

Ben said...

No secret message? I suspect foul play. Any vigilantes around?

Wanders said...

Sorry. I'd coded the secret message wrong. It's up now.

Punky said...

I just realized with horror that we have been reading about whiny Dawn for FIVE ENTIRE MONTHS. She got dumped by Dave back in MAY, setting in motion this entire train wreck (OK, cruise ship wreck/ferry wreck). To quote Karen Moy from her Q&A: "My predecessor sometimes wrote stories that lasted 18 months apiece. But that's too long in today's world. The pacing was too glacial. I try for three stories per year." I think Dawn has way overstayed her welcome. And don't get me started, re "glacial."

ethel mertz said...

Did Jim just crush Dawn's wrist, causing her hand to stand straight up?? Gee, I hope so!

KitKat said...

"Jim...let go of my arm! I realize you miss your left arm, but you can't have mine!"

Continuing the saga of the morphing pink milk cartons -> glasses, today's strip features a glass containing a suspicious brown liquid and a bendy straw. So appetizing!