Yes, I Caught Mary Worth Today And Maybe You Should, Too

I just wanted people to know that yes, I saw today’s Mary Worth. And yes, it is that wonderful. It is not quite so wonderful as to make me jump the comic in its queue. I expect Sunday to share what’s going on in The Phantom, weekdays continuity. But today’s was a wonderful Mary Worth and it might be a shame to let it just sit there an extra month without attention. When I next do a proper recap of the plot of Mary Worth it should be at this link.

What’s happening is that Estelle, rebounding from being taken by an online romance scam, has been dating Wilbur Weston, Chartersone’s leading sandwich enthusiast. Wilbur is not even slightly over his ex-girlfriend Iris. But Estelle and Wilbur set up a double date with Iris and her new, young, handsome, financially successful boyfriend Zak. Wilbur prepared for this by combing his hair and getting too drunk to function. Estelle took him on the double date anyway, because what could she have done? Apologized that Wilbur wasn’t up to this tonight and reschedule for “sometime later”?

Anyway, after the fiasco, the disaster, and the embarrassment, she went home and had this dream about what it might be like to have a life with Wilbur.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 15th of November, 2019. The boxing gloves are there because Estelle and Wilbur’s first date after he got back from overseas was, at his choice, just hanging out at home watching a boxing documentary. Estelle hated it.

I can barely exaggerate how wonderful the comics snark community has found this. The first panel, the one-eyed cat Libby peering over a sleeping Estelle, is nice enough. But that second panel? That’s … wow. That’s … you know, that sure looks like it’s a riff on something but I can’t place what it is. If you have any ideas, please let me know. Trying to think of what is driving me … oh, about two-thirds as crazy as you might think. It’s not that urgent.

I have seen in some comment threads people snarking at how Estelle, a retiree and comfortably past the age of menopause, could be having a nightmare of having four children. These commenters are correct: there is no logical way that Estelle could have children with Wilbur, and I hope that before the story is out we shall see Estelle file a Report of Factual Inaccuracy or Inconsistency with the Bureau of Dream Management. (And to step my snark back a bit, my love has several times woken up from a dream upon realizing that details in it did not make logical sense. So, dreams, you know? What the heck?)

Anyway, I don’t know how long this dream sequence will last. It’s only on its second day now. If it could keep giving like this, then we’d have to say it could not go on too long. But there’ll probably be a limit, and we won’t see Wilbur’s Four Children again. On the other hand, Popeye’s nephews started out as a dream-story quartet of children and they were eventually promoted into real-cousinhood. Maybe someday we’ll have people asking the difference between Welber, Walber, Wulber, and Woolber.