Friday, April 1, 2016

Mary Worth 2284

Boy, if this is what it takes to inspire students these days -- green suit, engaging multimedia -- I'm not sure it's even worth being a substitute professor anymore.

Today's full strip

17 comments:

EvaP said...

Maybe it's because I'm related to an art historian (who sadly owns NO green suits), but it rubs me the wrong way when people refer to Leonardo as "Da Vinci"--that's just where he's from, it's not his name. Any respectable art historian would call him "Leonardo." I so hope it comes out he's not an art history prof after all, and this turns into a kind of "School of Rock" story line. One can dream, right?

Nance said...

Is some bored kid making a shadow puppet under the screen? Maybe that's what Dawn finds INSPIRING.

Toots McGee said...

I'm actually impressed by the learning technology on display here at Santa Royale VoTech. The wall behind the prof can morph from a chalkboard to a finely detailed graphical display. The students with their single sheets of paper on the other hand...

Hey fellow Worthheads, I just stumbled on something interesting at Mary Worth's homepage. There's Sunday strip content available going back to 1996 (that's before Karen Moy even).

If you start here, January 7, 1996, you can NEXT your way through Sunday strips. I haven't figured out how far this goes. Usually these syndicate people are stingy with their archives. Maybe this is a mistake and it may not be available forever. (Take the day off and read all of them to be safe!)

There's a plot about some sullen teen named Sammy and Dawn Weston who was in high school 20 years ago. Also, Ian Cameron can be seen wearing a giant red sweater with the letters UCSR, so I take that to mean that his university is supposed to be part of the University of California system?

fauxprof said...

Apparently Leonardo invented the dart board and the coffee table on casters. Also Instagram. No wonder Dawn is inspired.

KitKat said...

@Toots McGee, that archive is quite a find - thank you! I invite my fellow Worthheads to view MW for January 28, 1996, to see a blonde woman who looks exactly like my Barbie doll from back in the day. I remember that pink satin sheath gown and faux ermine wrap like it was yesterday.

Rocketing back to today:
Is that Princess Leia floating behind Leonardo?
I thought Harlan Jones was African American, but today he appears to be Latino.
Dawn is doing automatic writing (with a plastic knife).

carlnepa said...

Maybe it's me, but don't Leonardo's eyes change direction between the panels? Maybe his hologram is bored with it, too. If I was paying college level fees for this course, I'd expect a lot more information than what I learned in 7th grade.

Vince said...

I hadn't noticed prior today that Harlan's green outfit was chosen to coordinate with the wall color in the classroom. Toots McGee, I noticed the single sheets of paper also, but, given the high-tech nature of this classroom, they may actually be high-tech devices designed to look like sheets of paper for old time's sake, just like the screen showing the Leonardo da Vinci collage was designed to look like a chalkboard.

Vince said...

Yes, carlnepa, you are right. I noticed that Leonardo appears angry in the first panel and then maybe something like sad in the second. The technology is makes it seems as if he's right there in the classroom.

RockDoc said...

Maybe it's an April Fool's joke, but those crazy kids have pulled their desks up leaving only about 5 feet of floor space at the front of the class!

Toots McGee said...

I'll just say one more thing about the archive and leave the commenting to current day: Round about October 1996 is where Mary meets Jeff!!!

LisaM said...

Pleeeease don't let that be the depiction of the Mona Lisa that Pat P. was waiting for.

Yahoonski said...

Thanks, Toots. I do have the day off, but I don't know if I can bear to read them all, because most of the characters were just as obnoxious then as now. I must say, however, that the pre-Moy dialogue rang much truer to actual human speech. And Giella did much better with perspective back in the day. His faces were much more sharply rendered, too, reminding me a little of Mac Raboy's work in Flash Gordon. My favorite tidbit thus far was Mary's description of the Bum Boat after her first date there with Jeff: "A greasy spoon down by the marina."

Pat P. said...

LisaM: It looks more like Leonardo's portrait of Judy Garland.

Anonymous said...

Prof's snappy green suit w/the Sansabelt pants may be made of some chameleon-type fabric that changes color according to the color of the classroom he's in. Now I'm off to check those archives! Thanks for the tip, Toots McGee.

tkraft said...

SPOILER ALERT: Professor Harlan Jones turns out to be an old classmate of Wilburs' who will try to convince Dawn and other members of the College to form a marching band (OK, that's as far as I can get with this, but maybe another talented MaryWorthandMe member can now adapt the lyrics of "Seventy Six Trombones" to fit the thought and the Music Man parody/parallel). However, the real shocker of this Spoiler is that none of this will become apparent or developed until the Fourth of July, 2016 in another glacially-paced plot. Trouble in River City indeed!

Petunia said...

So Dawn's been wearing ugly purple outfits for twenty years? Yikes!

viscosity said...

That's not even a picture of Da Vinci. It's Saruman from Lord of the Rings. Perhaps Harlan is showing a movie today.