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!