One of the reasons I forgot about Mary Worth is because this came in the mail with art by June Brigman, and I am absolutely enthralled:
Friday, February 5, 2021
Mary Worth 3560
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One of the reasons I forgot about Mary Worth is because this came in the mail with art by June Brigman, and I am absolutely enthralled:
11 comments:
Welcome back from your two-day break, Wanders. You missed Gary’s wake, so you might want to go back to Thursday’s strip to catch up. For some reason — solemnity? The colorist was AWOL? — that strip is in black and white. It’s a bit noir-ish, but I’m miffed that we don’t know what color suit Gary was laid out in.
Today: Banned from Philadelphia for making men in suits uncomfortable by giving them the side-eye, Eve sticks a pin in a map and relocates to that place — Santa Royale.
Eve’s recollections have been baffling.
Before I say anything else, intimate partner violence itself is serious and if Eve stayed in a relationship with a cruel man who abused her physically, she obviously experienced deep trauma. There must have been other psychological elements to Gary’s cruelty that kept Eve from getting help and/or getting away from the abuse.
But in Karen’s hands we just know that Gary was cruel and he tripped Eve and we get no other context so it just seems stilted and, yes, silly. Our incomplete picture of Gary is that he liked business suits and liked tripping his wife. Did he laugh about it? Did he gaslight Eve and say she was clumsy? I guess we won’t know unless Eve is going to open up further to Saul , or, God forbid, Mary.
Today, we find out that Gary died just one year ago. Huh? The artwork sure fooled me. So Eve’s trauma is still pretty fresh and so probably hasn’t gotten the help she needs, and she won’t if she doesn’t go beyond Saul or Mary. Saul hasn’t processed his own grief and Mary doesn’t believe in actually doing the work to acknowledge past traumas and learn to cope with their after effects.
This isn’t my first rodeo. I know Karen Moy quickly gets out of her depths when telling stories of trauma . When I laugh at the idea of Gary as a dapper prankster, I’m laughing at Karen and her shortcomings. I know the daily comics form doesn’t have enough space to flesh out the whole backstory, but without at least a panel or two to place the tripping in patterns of other behaviors, this memory sequence is bizarre. Oh yeah, and then Gary died, the end is um, I don’t know what to think anymore. I just know I don’t need to hear Mary’s take.
Sorry to go on. I don’t post many comments anymore. I guess I’ve been saving up my ire/amusement.
There was another dapper character named Gary maybe just before the time of Mary Worth and Me.
His name was Gary Dent and he wanted the Charterstone condo board to through out this older lady named Ella Byrd. Ella was giving psychic readings in her residence and Gary wasn’t happy, mainly because he thought she ripped him off when Ella didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.
I still remember the image of Gary Dent angrily throwing money in Ella Byrd’s face.
Throw out not through out
As Eve continues to go on and on and on, examining her past interactions, I can only hope that tomorrow's strip shows Saul sound asleep on the bench.
HelenClark
Eve did look much younger at Gary's wake. I thought he must have died 20 or 30 years ago, but, no, it was just last year. Her mixture of grief and relief has aged her. I know these situations are complicated emotionally, but, from what we saw of Gary, he was purely a mean clown, so the grief part seems overblown. Maybe she is grieving what she lost by being with him.
But... what came in the mail??
So after freaking out perhaps a dozen or so times a day, Eve finally moved to S.R. because somebody told her nobody wears suits there.
Hey, why not? It's no sillier than cats in the Space Force.
(I love this line of copy: "The intrepid Captain Ginger struggles to keep his fellow felines united against a hostile universe―and their own worst feline instincts, too." Their own worst instincts? What, do they all decide to nap on the control panels during an attack by the canine starship?)
-- Scottie McW.
@Mary Ellen
I couldn't see it either at first, but then I switched off my ad blocker and there it was. Try it.
-- S. McW.
@Scottie McW: I imagine the crew’s worst feline instincts are knocking loose objects off surfaces and urping up hair balls in inopportune spots.
I’ve been feeling too badly for Eve to summon up much snark. I’m wondering if her rapid aging in the year since Scary Gary’s death is misplaced guilt. Maybe she thinks it’s her fault that she made him so angry he stroked out?
@Scottie and @Faux Prof. Yes. And scratching the computer touch screen. It’s very clever if you live with cats. Nothing like a good hair ball joke. Give it a try.
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