WHAT?!

Oh my god, this is the dumbest thing the Hemingway Complex has ever read! What an outrage! All this time we've been waiting for the true story behind Mary's lifetime of meddlesomeness, and this is it? It doesn't even make any sense! It's like, I am who I am because of this formative experience in which nothing actually happened, though I will intimate that something horrible befell Cathy! Mary, you f-ing blueballer, let Toby go back to the party which has already lasted a month and see if they've gotten out the burgers yet.

nothing to explain! at all!

ok, the hemingway complex was very patient on this one. even didn't make fun of sad mary for a few days. but sersly? maybe you're finding it hard to explain because there is nothing to explain! it's a straightforward idea that even a dunce could understand. you said in the first panel, and in one-two panels per strip for the past trillion days!!! toby is like, please stop explaining! by the time we get back to the charterstone pool party - it will be summer and the fat guy will have eaten all the burgers!!!! god!

ummmm

soooo....basically this is too sad for even the hemingway complex to make fun of. nothing funny to say about sad kids being overwhelmed by a nice gesture. still waiting for the root of the compulsion to meddle however. does someone being nice to you = meddle in the lives of others? who knew?

tough times

Oh, I see. She meant that her home was literally broken. Judging from that front yard, that's because it's in the middle of a flood.

Continuing: whaaaat?

I know that the authors of this strip, Moy and Giella, are working hard at learning to draw children appropriately - no midget adults, no bulbous heads. But something doesn't feel quite right about these two panels. It's like listening to someone with a speech impediment singing along to their Walkman.
But it's nice to see that somebody gave these kids a miniature playhouse, complete with toy-sized trees. Apparently they had those at the turn of the century.

lost in the space/time continuum with dungarees on

Uh-oh. I have a bad feeling about this. We're still headed toward "How I Learned to Meddle" by Mary Worth and the mark of doom is on that little girl. What tragedy is going to befall Cathy?

The Hemingway Complex has a children's cookbook from the 80s wherein the Flash goes to a potluck dinner. Beforehand he prepares a cake in nanoseconds. The cooling-down stage is accomplished with mighty breath that looks quite a bit like what Cathy and Mary are doing to that dandelion. Only, where from that illustration we end up with cake, in this one a flower is defoliated with the children's Napalm breath and we end up with some sort of gem.

As far as the bewildering timeline eveidenced in this strip, I feel it's important to note that Mary's character first appeared in 1939, at which time she was supposed to be sixty years old. From her activities and sporty pantsuits it seems she is now supposed to be about 65 years old. In any case, Mary would have been a child at the end of the nineteenth century. So what's with the jeans and ponytails?

hey wait

Great! Someone gave that little girl curtains and trimmed her bangs.
But wait - is this just a filler day, repeating what we know so far (Mary has struggled), or have we skipped right to the end of the story? I'm hoping for this to pan out over at least a week of sordid scenes, at least one of which actually explains Mary's ominous "My childhood made me what I am" trailer, so we'd better be seeing some action. Got that, Giella?

Little Orphan Mary

The Hemingway Complex is delirious from this astonishing strip but we are trying to hold it together to analyze just a little bit. Foremost: "broken home"! When did Mary learn that phrase? Then: divorced parents means malnourished and miserable orphan? Then: I thought she was looking out a window into gray bleakness but someone said she is looking at an empty pantry? And: This is the horrid past of poor Mary Worth? Hungry and alone? It explains her control issues, but the straight-up nosiness - in tomorrow's strip is she going to listen through the wall as the well-fed family in the next tenement apartment engages in melodrama that brings them to ruin merely because Mary kept her silence? And then she vows never to keep quiet on any issue again? And when does she get some food? Remember how a psychic moved into the building a few years ago (or last week maybe, by MW time) and after Mary brought her a casserole she disappeared? Is she back at the pool party where Toby woke up thinking she was going to go have a fun time and is now instead trapped on a bench for three weeks listening to Mary's tale of woe and Mother's best wasn't enough?
Now, look at Mary gazing into the past at her shivering orphan child self casting a creepy shadow (or has a silhouette baby shuffling up to her)! We're having nightmares just looking at it.
Now what? Does Mary get farmed out to some hick foster family? Does her Mommy Dearest make an appearance? It's only three days til Sunday and whatever is going to happen then only God knows, and maybe Toby who from her vantage point on the bench can see where this is all headed and is biding her time til she can run away and throw herself off a cliff.
We're still lightheaded. We've been on top of this strip for at least 20 years and Miserable Mary the Flashback has certainly never made an appearance before. The Hemingway Complex might even have to post on this one twice!

Soooooo interesting

I have to say that I love this new theme. (It's a theme, not merely a plot, because obviously we're going to be working on it for a long, long time.) Mary makes ominous references to her past while Toby gives comfort/dies of boredom. And so far, the dramatic revelation is that Mary was a latchkey child. (Stunned gasps from audience.) And she's still a latchkey child deep inside! Actually, outside! Look at that sulky pose. Did somebody write a letter asking for more in-depth background on the character of Mary? Or did Moy just take it upon herself to explain why Mary is so meddlesome? Cause this is clearly where it started: Mary wanted somebody to meddle with her! And nobody did! And now she is doomed to always meddle! Cause meddling is for the best!
Poor Toby, under pain of death, has to listen to this drivel, but inside she's like, I really want to get back to that pool party.

fraught with

wow - today's strip rules so hard!! i was going to make a montage of all of mary's thoughtful expressions from this strip, but that seemed like way too much work, so just check em' out on your own. 6-7 different meaningful looks!

other stuff that rules really hard:
1. 2 crazy charterstone winter pool party attendees in the background of the title panel! crazy enough to even put background characters in a throwaway panel! i so admire the artistry of this strip. guy in the blue is all jauntily swinging his arm to attract the attention of guy in the gray. don't fall down that random staircase, guy in the gray!! um, pretty much there could be a spinoff to the hemingway complex entirely devoted to background characters - so unnecessary that their very existence renders them awesome.

2. toby throws away all the cookies between panels 1 and 2.

3. drew and vera are still wandering around in panel 3, and vera has a t-rex arm.

4. mary's hand gesture in panel 6 is the 2nd best thing ever drawn. (the first best was a bunch of animals drawn by the hemingway complex's younger brother circa 2005. still featured on the hemingway complex's refridgerator to this day.)

5. wide varieties of flora featured, such as evergreens, palms, weird trees and rocks.

6. toby's gigantic head and different-type face.

7. the hope that mary is finally going to provide us with a good reason that she is such an insane meddler. this better be worth it!!!! the hemingway complex can't even imagine what could have happened to one in childhood to give one such a pervasive sense of overconfidence in one's advice-giving? like, as an impressionable child, one watched someone not meddle in someone else's life and disaster ensued? then the child was like, i must always meddle and spout platitudes? i can't wait!!!!!! i hope the flashback is drawn in b/w with old-timey background characters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

let's aim a little lower

um, what are drew and vera doing together at the charterstone pool party in panel 1? moy and giella - you don't have to draw so many gd background/foreground/middleground characters!! the hemingway complex knew it would get you into trouble someday! fat guy hogging the buffet would have been fine. you can barely even see mary and toby. all of a sudden moy's like, giella - you just drew drew and vera - their love story ended tragically remember? waiting on a star? mustard boss? vietnam? member? kinda sorta maybe? abort abort! zoom in on a couple everyone had forgotten about so mary can gloat about her meddling! she's all, remember folks, my meddling does good. if you think otherwise - you're going in the ice-cold march pool. sorry i made y'all come to a pool party in the winter. i just didn't know how else to parade around the subjects of past meddling!

Onward!

OH MY GOD! We're at Charterstone Pool Party, the best party of the summer!

Only, it's barely March. Is the Hemingway Complex on crazy pills? Because the last time we were here, it was summer, and then Drew had some crappy dates, and then Mary had a dog and gave it back 10 minutes later, and then Drew had another crappy date and here it is summer again. What? What? What is this time warp? Here the Hemingway Complex was under the impression that Charterstone time just moved very slowly (e.g. "Waiting For A Star To Fall" playing at a coffeeshop) but apparently it has sped up. Or does Mary have the ability to wind time backwards and change details to suit her whims? Are we actually at last year's pool party?!

PS, old Drew has not fared well. Here he was on track to change his life for the better and go have some fun, but Mary has strong-armed everybody to get her way (which is, Drew off to Vietnam, and no more competition for Jeff's attention). Classic evil stepmother! I think Drew recognizes what is happening to him as the plane takes off with him trapped inside:

Especially since he is backwards from the seats. He's freaking out in there, being sent off to contract cholera and be heard from nevermore.