But seriously, especially in his college memories it’s not surprising it’s the tits that stand out. A lot of guys will fixate on breasts whatever they’re attached to. It’s only really a furry thing if that’s the part that works for you.
I’m now thinking of the recent “Cluck Me Harder Family Restaurant” in Something*Positive (Jan 21, 2020), where the owner of the restaurant genuinely didn’t see anything wrong with having a sexy chicken mascot (or even dressing as her) – and the food was actually delicious.
Not a furry myself, but I’m told by friends who are into the sub-culture that their defining moment for our generation was “the look” Nala gave Simba in Lion King (the animated one). 😉
And even before that, apparently Disney’s Robin Hood and Maid Marian were another common awakening.
Yes, I went to IU and since the beginning Galasso’s has been recognizable as Mother Bear’s hahaha. It’s literally right across the street from campus so it’s a popular place for pizza, and of course everyone thinks the logo is hilarious.
If she’d worn the fursuit even once he’d be down there arguing with the Walkertons that Ross didn’t actually hurt anybody right now, even if he didn’t believe it. And you know what? It would’ve been worth it!
That Hank wanted Carol In a bear suit, – and not in a cat suit (lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah, civet, Manx, lynx, Minx, other, – is telling. I just don’t know what it is telling.
Joyce is terrified of swearing, and her father’s just casually saying tits in front of her. Weird parental hypocrisy or a sign that his worldview has massively shifted?
Eh, Joyce has been swearing fairly casually since the incident. If Hank hadn’t used any swear words before now it might be more of a shock, but I think this shouldn’t be too bad.
They also swore casually the conversation where Hank confessed to Joyce he has never liked Ross and tolerated him for Becky’s sake. It was them bonding a little by both cussing in the car together.
I feel like saying “tits” in a pretty objectifying way in front of your teenage, but of age, daughter is a bit different than casual swearing. Especially if Dad has always seemed asexual and non-pervy.
Nah. From personal experience, when someone is crazy with fundamentalism and finally realizes they’re crazy and gets tired of it, they can change very quickly. A bunch of things that were unthinkable become normal. A self-supporting edifice of crazy can fall very quickly once the foundation is removed.
Yeah, it’s like basically cranking it all the way to the other side of the dial. Like people who were very repressed growing up suddenly going very ‘casual sex’ in college.
They usually eventually find some kind of happy medium though after the novelty of it all wears off.
I remember that in University residence. Every fall the first year girls would realize that they are finally out from under their parents thumbs and go crazy, they usually settled down about the time mid terms started. There seemed to be a direct correlation between religious fundy level and repressed sexuality expression.
I seem to remember an earlier conversation between Joyce and her sister (about halloween?) that seemed to imply that the hardcore fundamentalist bent of their parents was a (relatively) recent development and mostly driven by their mother.
While Joyce views her parents as a monolithic entity, I feel like Hank was more going along with the strict religious nonsense out of a desire to keep his marriage together than any real belief in that level of religious fanaticism.
I wouldn’t let Hank that far off the hook. He’s the one who enforced strict gender roles at play time and told Joyce not to hang out with Dorothy because she’s an atheist and that Hitler was partly Jewish.
Hitler’s grandfather on his father’s side is unknown, but was very unlikely to have been Jewish. On the other hand there is a fair amount of evidence that Eva Braun did have some jewish ancestry including DNA analysis on what was *probably* some of her hair from a monogramed hairbrush recovered from her apartment by US Intelligence at the end of WWII which shows mitochondrial DNA strongly linked to Ashkenazi Jews.
His worldview has changed, his wife (assuming she donated to Blaine/the church to bail out Ross, which she probably did) inadvertently almost got their daughter killed, and he’s probably staring down a divorce.
Dude’s just in shock and has just dropped all social pretenses while his world is unraveling
I think it’s a lot like Joyce throwing around swears after the first attempted kidnapping – something drastically shook up his world and now the filters are off.
I’m pretty sure a lot of Christians say “tits.” And look at tits. Haven’t there been studies showing the biggest pervs (according to their internet porn searches) in the US live in Utah?
This. I was raised to be a Methodist. Our family had the usual poorly followed moratorium on swear words, so I felt like I had a good handle on what they were. I was fairly shocked in high school to find out that some people considered `tits` to be a swear word.
I think this is where Hank is remembering what it Felt like before he was molded And pressed into a honey-crusted fundie nutbar by Carol and her increasingly severe interpretation of what god wants.
“so i guess soon-to-be-divorced christians get to say “tits”, huh”
From my own experiences with fundamentalist Christian denominations, the overemphasis on masculine social norms tends to mean that Christian males are actually rather open to making crass comments of the sort Hank just engaged in. By my experience, they’re also allowed to openly cuss when it comes to things like sports. The only thing they’re not allowed to do is take the lord’s name in vain, so “goddamn” and the like are generally where the line is drawn.
Not making any real indications towards Hank or the comic, just noting that it didn’t seem at all out of place to me, coming from a Christian with a fundamentalist background. 😛
*Okay, that last line could be misleading, as I phrased it. I meant: The comment didn’t seem out of place coming from Hank. (Rather, the only reason it comes across as notable is because of what we know of Joyce, who is adverse to even the most simple of crude terms. Then again, as I did touch on, there is a gender disparity in such allowances, so who knows whether this is actually new for Hank or not. )
There’s a gender disparity with Joyce (and Carol – I expect that she DIDN’T swear much around the kids, if at all,) but also I think Joyce has internalized the fear of damnation and These Are The Rules, Which Must Be Obeyed to a WAY stronger extent. Totally possible to do so even with parents who are in no way enforcing such a strong sense, at least if you’re prone to anxiety.
I followed the link to Mother Bear’s Pizza further up. The tits are definitely of great size, you can also argue that they’re bearded what with all the fur on them. They were not blue, nor crested, and certainly not made of coal.
“Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough”
I dunno, REM’s Losing My Religion actually kinda seems to fit Hank’s present state fairly well. 😛
D-bag? Wait, they’re measuring testicle sizes in letters now as well?
Geesh- why are the progressions in gender equality always so weird, random, and minimally productive? 🙄
That is some scary bad artwork (seriously, what is going on with that elbow, that evil smirk, and those eyes that penetrate your soul?). They really need to update it with a better artist. 😛
That’s just due to the angle and the fact that she’s wearing a dress. I’ve seen actual photos that have a similar apparent distortion of size. There may be some nitpicks as to precise measurements, but we can just put that down to the bear having a specialized body measurement. It’s not *unnatural*, like the other traits are, at the very least.
I know things are different in America, but it’s still kind of weird to see a restaurant website that doesn’t have a banner saying ‘TAKEAWAY OR DELIVERY ONLY’.
You want weird? They’re suspending or expelling kids whose parents keep them out of school. And they’re suspending them for publishing pictures of school hallways crowded with mostly-maskless people.
Large parts of the U.S. are literally a giant death cult.
Not everyplace in the country is that bad. The schools in my area in Ohio are all doing full online with some offering hybrid (one to two days in school per week so you can get face-to-face time with a teacher) on a voluntary basis. The schools are looking into getting ahold of computers and internet deals for families that need them so everyone can work from home.
Might be more; publishing other kids pictures, while in school (and therefore somewhere the district is responsible for protecting), without the written permission of those kids parents.
I fondly remember a time before release forms were a common thing.
It’s terrifying, honestly. My county – and much of the state – is doing all virtual schooling for the fall semester for the public schools, at least (thank GOD,) but the amount of head in the sand-ing about a virus… do the people in power not realize millions dead is a longer term disaster for the economy than an extended shutdown, or do they just not care. I’m pretty sure I knownthe answer, but. *sobs*
(There are also a few colleges valiantly trying to do in-person classes but near as I can tell they just Desperately Believe the College Experience is Important and this can be done safely, in spite of all evidence it cannot even if all the students did things painstakingly correctly.)
Probably more desperate to believe than desperately believing. Need to differentiate what you have to offer from Khan Academy, or better yet, MIT’s vast library of free resources, somehow.
In my section of America thats not happening. My sister was stressed about suddenly having to help her children do distance learning. And come fall while they are trying allow students to come in at least part of the time I get the impression they are also going to give the students the option of distance learning.
Yep. A restaurant and bar near us closed months ahead of the pandemic due to construction. People would show up during their regular hours only to find it was closed and they started getting bad reviews because the closure was nowhere on their web site. Then when they did add a message they said they hope to open “next month”.
Other small businesses also have this thing where they have both a web site and a Facebook page and they update Facebook but not the site or at least update Facebook more often. I get why (they’re able to update Facebook themselves but they have to pay a 3rd party to make web site changes) but I still wish they’d be more explicit with the fact that you need to go to Facebook for current information.
Where I live (not US) restaurants are open again 🙂 fewer tables and more distance, as well as a max amount of people per table, being “1 family or 2 people”
Not entirely sure how one would manage to pronounce “woop” wrong. 😛
Side-note, apparently there’s now a song called “woop woop” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orrhZeXZO4s). Passable vocals and decent instrumentals, but the lyrics are quite low-grade (both in terms of content and composition). Kinda curious as to what an instrumental-only version’d sound like, but not seeing any presently available.
I know several college-associated wing places in Texas that’d offer comparable pricing on specific days of the week (Almost always Wednesdays). Mighta wanna look at it from that angle.
Top result for Wing Wednesdays in Texas was Hooters, and they offer 10 wings and fries for 6.99- and I believe Hooters is on the inflated end of pricing? So pretty good chances you can find a similar offer in your region [to the 5.50 one].
Oh, and look into Buffalo Wild Wings, they’re basically everywhere, and I think their Tuesday/Thursday pricing is similarly cheap. I know it used to be like 50 cents a wing, which’d be about 10/$5. I’ve never had them, so I’m clueless as to the quality, though.
And here I wondered if it was a reference to the Chicken with Gravy on her Tits mascot that showed up in Something Positive, right around the time they did a cameo with Mike’s wake.
Yeah, I meant the first meeting was a Patreon strip. Wasn’t 100% on the name of the fountain (I believe it’s Showalter?) so I picked a time we saw it prominently.
Given his mention of “tits”, he may be giving us a window into his unfiltered teen mind, this may be a pre-Carol dalliance that he may sometimes regret not exploring further.
Is Sarah standing by her assertion in that even the shooting is better than Hank reminiscing about a humanoid bear woman with nice tits, or saying that they need to change the subject again?
I read it as Sarah standing by her assertion that they need to change the subject, even if the new subject is a shooting in the hospital. I don’t think she’s saying the shooting itself was a good thing, just that, given that it happened anyway, she’d rather they talked about that than Hank’s mammary memories.
I know Joyce is aware of fandom stuff but does she know her dad is a furry? (Actually, after her comments on the mouse boys…perhaps that apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree)
One thing I am glad about is that Joyce is 18, so there won’t be any custody battle over her. She won’t be obligated to live with Carol, she can find safe haven with her dad, in any event she HAS to stay with family (assuming no friends can take her in, which is unlikely)
So next school break are we going to get an arc of Joyce going to a furry con with her dad, because that might be the worst thing I can think of right now
What is it about people hating on furries? I’ve never understood. There were some salacious articles about furries a decade or so ago, because some fraction of furries make it sexual – is that all it took?
There’s flurries that like dressing up as humanoid animal characters and there’s furries that get sexually excited from said dressing up. It’s about the second one. Now, I don’t see the appeal or the problem, but my best guess is that everyone thinks every fetish is weird but this one requires a lot of stuff (fluff) to join, so there’s few people defending it.
But all these fantasy beastialitists are almost probably spreading killer virus on their fur. If you’re going to be a furry during the pandemic, you should be a nudist furry. It’s only socially responsible.
Partly it’s because a higher than usual number of furries are members of the queer community. Wanting to fantasize about a completely different identity for yourself, to the point of imagining yourself as a completely different fantasy species, seems to have some significant overlap with LGBTQIA+ folks.
I also personally suspect that it has something to do with the fact that furry fandom doesn’t value the same stuff other fandoms do. It’s nearly ENTIRELY creative or transformative stuff, as opposed to curatorial. That Dude at the sci fi con, the one who’d march up to a girl cosplaying as the thirteenth doctor and demand to know what her favourite episode from the Peter Troughton era was and then ridicule her as a fake fan? He can’t really DO that at a furry con because there’s no actual canon. It’s nearly all cosplay and original art and OCs and stuff that in other geekdoms is often dismissed by a certain kind of nerd as lesser (feminine) expressions of nerdery.
Basically, dressing up as and drawing pictures of animals is considered girly and gay and a lot of the time actually IS girly and gay so it makes other nerds uncomfortable?
The fact that a higher number of furries are queer is kinda surprising to me, mostly because I’ve been part of fandoms where being a furry is radically more accepted than being queer.
Hank has noticed that the ban on dying has ended, and the Creator is now killing off bad parents. So he either
– tries to be a better dad to his mouse boy loving daughter, or
– tries to make the best of the little time that is left to him.
Your choice.
I’m guessing Joyce is currently telling herself the old logo must’ve been a humanoid bear woman posing with a pair of passerine birds. Probably posed like an Ursine Snow White.
you know with Willis’ usual behavior and the fact we’ve gone two chapters without a confirmation I feel when we get back to the Hospital there will be a dead cop and no Blaine
Nah, Blaine’s room is upstairs and I don’t think the hospital room windows open. Plus two other officers (presumably who were standing guard outside the room) were shown going into the room immediately after the gunshot.
Might take a while to get back around to what’s happening there, though.
That comment of Hank’s reminds me strongly of the conversation I had with my paternal grandmother after I was outed as bisexual by my dad. (By accident) While his side of the family was overall fine with it (liberal leftover hippies of the PNW), while we were sitting in a local watering hole with my uncle and some of his buddies, they were making some little comments about one of the waitresses, and Grandma Betty, bless her heart, turned to me and asked, “So are tits not a thing for lesbians? Because your Aunt Juanita and her wife never stare either.” There are just some moments that really drive it home that your esteemed elders (even Evangelical Fathers and little old grandmothers) were once young and vulgar too.
(Cue my uncle, “Jesus, Ma,” as his friends about died laughing)
They are for some, anyway. A friend of mine has commented that she has a problem with catalog shopping for lingerie because she gets sidetracked by the boobies.
In all fairness, those catalogs almost seem designed to distract. I’ve a theory that some of the worse-looking lingerie is deliberately modeled by the people with the nicest boobs so it looks better by association.
I think this is showing that Hank himself is suffering some buffer overload. Dude’s life (and world view) is basically unraveling rapidly before his eyes and his daughter almost died… again. Kind of how Amber is talking in emoji, Hank’s social pretenses are out the window.
I just had to go to e621 and check… Nobody seems to have lewded Mother Bear (…any more than the restaurant itself did)… Not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed. >_>
Yeah, that was a lot of characters I recognized from my childhood. And a version of red riding hood that was way closer to the original than the Grimm brothers went and censored for their compilation.
Galasso married Mother Bear as part of the merger negotiations between their respective business empires. He also had to knife-fight seven Italian pizza chefs for her hand.
College’s corruptive influence keep showing its effect on Hank. First he speak up against his wife, then he hangs out with atheists, and now bear-tits which must surely be a sin.
The only biblical story I know involving bears:
This one time, Elisha the prophet was walking along, and these two teenaged boys were like “go up, you baldy, go up!” (making fun of him for being bald.)
So a she-bear came out of the woods and ATE THEM.
Don’t mess with prophets.
It’s in the Book of Kings 2.
23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
So, usually it’s pretty clear when things are feminine in Hebrew (basically you just add an “ot” plural ending for feminine and an “im” plural ending for masculine). But I’m killing time at the moment and looked it up and this is some sort of irregular word. The word is “Dubim,” and the “im” ending is a plural ending that is usually masculine. But the number modifying it is in the feminine form. The dictionaries (lazy online search of biblical dictionaries… I can see my shelf full of real dictionaries from where I’m sitting but I’m not THAT motivated) are telling me it’s feminine, but the masculine form is not really functionally any different.
So basically, the sources I’m looking at all seem to agree this is feminine, but the only reason I see to think that is the gender of the number (treated like a modifying adjective) which I don’t find trustworthy because the numbers have weird gender endings and are frequently not used grammatically correctly (either in the ancient or modern world).
You didn’t want to know this much about Hebrew I’m sure, but there you have it!
So, did I get it right? From your analysis so far there is no reason to assume the original author made a point of specifying she-bears, but the poor translators got caught in the grammar and had to put it in do be sure not to do the source material disservice?
@ Bagge, Possibly. It’s also likely there’s some related word in another language or some other obscure grammatical detail that’s giving a clue about the gender and my Hebrew is too rusty to catch it.
Oh! New pic! I’m a little disappointed actually. I usually comment on obscure biblical references and it’s always more fun to have my comments accompanied by a woman in a hijab!
okay so i just gotta say that if they’re gonna go the “bechested bear in a teddy” route then maybe change the name? mother bear needn’t be sexy. please go with stepsister bear for our modern audience thank you.
For no particular reason other than my essential weirdness, I’ve got the feeling that the’humanoid bear woman’ was Mrs Galasso (before her marriage) in a costume that her parents were convinced was ‘good marketing’.
*chuckle* I remember how much my deeply-religious parents loosened up on their language and subject matter after I turned 18. I suspect Hank would have done the same, but held off to avoid constant fights with his wife. Now he’s lost his last fuck to give on that front and is trying to look overly casual with the “godless.”
Frankly, I doubt Hank is going to lose his Christianity unless the writing takes a sudden dive. Forty-plus years of walking with God doesn’t evaporate overnight just because you realize that your wife is a bongo and atheists are nice people. However, I do expect that he’s going to be changing churches VERY soon.
It’s a credit to Joyce’s growth that she’s hardly even fazed, unless the overly-dramatic red face and steam is being saved for the next strip.
I think he’s going to struggle for a while, trying to reconcile his values and his religion, while shedding the baggage that is Carol’s toxicity. This awkwardness is a byproduct.
my parents weren’t particularly religious and loosened up around swearing when my brother and I started to swear (no need to protect our ears anymore I guess), but around 18 they stopped trying nearly as hard to hide their racism from me/us
This implies they tried to hide their racism. Which further implies they didn’t want to raise you to be racist. Even further implied here is that they knew racism was wrong in the first place.
It could happen. Some atheists lose their religion in their teens and twenties, others are religious for decades and lose their religion later in life. There are even some atheists who were pastors for decades before they realized they no longer believed in their religion.
Could happen. But there’s a lot of middle ground between a Carol christian, and an atheist. I see Hank spending some time soul searching, maybe trying a Unitarian Universalist church. Maybe that search leads him to atheism, but I don’t think it’s a straight trip there, not as long as Joyce believes too.
To be fair, from his world-view, she represented a threat to his daughter. A bad influence. He’s only just today figured out that atheists can be good people even though they’re not God people.
Yeah, I’ve come to find that the older generations pick odd moments to throw out on point descriptors.
I worked with a guy who was this very nice old man, often carried around a bible at work and would read it in his spare time. One day we’re talking about someone and he is referencing a female coworker in another area and just out of nowhere describes her as, “the one with the real big titties.”
I’m not going to lie, it was an apt description and I immediately knew who he was talking about, but damn. Could he have not gone with “glasses and dark hair” or SOMETHING?
1. Poor Hank, processing bittersweet memories of dates with Carol during their college years. As soon as Joyce asks if they’re good memories, he changes the subject so he doesn’t have to answer on the spot.
2. How are so many people here surprised by the Mother Bear’s logo? I’ve never even been to Indiana, never mind that restaurant, but I looked the place up when Galasso’s started showing up more often to see how the comic backgrounds match the real place.
3. What’s up with good restaurants and weird logos? I know a really good local place whose logo is a blatantly traced 80s Mario wearing an apron and holding up a sub. What it lacks in ursine honkers it makes up for in copyright infringement. The food’s damn good though.
Galasso: “DAUGHTER, I JUST OVERHEARD INFORMATION ABOUT AN ASSET THAT MIGHT AID IN OUR STRUGGLE FOR POWER. MAKE SURE TO IDENTIFY AND SHOW OUR CUSTOMERS SOME ‘TITS'”
Connie: “I can do that, father.”
Pamela: “You will not, daughter.”
It occurs to me (as it has before) that Willis’ naming of the very religious Browns with average Anglo names (Hank and Carol) and the very unreligious Keeners with Biblical names (Jeremiah and Deborah) has to be deliberate.
Unreligious but at least one’s culturally Jewish, and both names have been reasonably historically common in Jewish communities. (Which is in part why I always forget which of the Keeners is.)
I’m sure they did, they just gave her a PG rated version like most parents do and left out any sort of controversial stuff they might have gotten up to in their college years.
Reminds me of this one restaurant in my old hometown that had a big naked dude that was covered with his mustache and beard all the way down to his feat. Looked like a Dwarf.
No one knew why, but the restaurant kept the mascot for like 20 years. One day they took it down, restaurant closed within a year. Probably new management and a coincidence, but still it is weird what mascots some places uses and how they stay in our memories.
Am I an idiot for not realizing Galasso’s was Mother Bear’s this whole time?? I guess it makes sense it’s literally across the street from Read…oh no, I *am* an idiot.
So, I guess the lunch will interrupted for the group to go to the hospital?
But I imagine they’ll be barring people from going inside for safety reasons. Guess they’ll wait outside and Joyce and Hank can have a nice talk not involving bear bosoms.
I love reading this comic as an IU graduate. I laughed so loud at this reference that I had to explain to my partner. A little awkward explaining the big tiddy bear, but man— I loved Mother Bear’s.
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“so Hank, what’s your fursona”
“I STAND BY MY ASSERTION”
Hank, truly a man of culture
Hank Ditka, Mike’s lesser-known brother
Why does everyone jump to the furry interpretation, might it be more likely that he likes big tits?
Mostly I suspect that it’s funnier.
But seriously, especially in his college memories it’s not surprising it’s the tits that stand out. A lot of guys will fixate on breasts whatever they’re attached to. It’s only really a furry thing if that’s the part that works for you.
I’m now thinking of the recent “Cluck Me Harder Family Restaurant” in Something*Positive (Jan 21, 2020), where the owner of the restaurant genuinely didn’t see anything wrong with having a sexy chicken mascot (or even dressing as her) – and the food was actually delicious.
Oh yeah! Damn… that was kinda equal parts hilarious and disturbing. At least bear tits was just a sign.
… I mean, unless the restaurants name was, like, some pun on the word “honey”…
0.0 I did not expect to hear that.
Well. It’s Walky! Hank did refer to the good book, and the really good book.
Willing to bet that he’s referring to the type of bird, and this is going to be a fun gag in a bit :D.
Nope, other commenters research has yielded a well endowed bear.
https://motherbearspizza.com/
Furries were inevitable.
“Ten-Inch Tuesday” at Mother Bear’s Pizza? Wow.
I think it’s great that Mother Bear was trans all the way back then!
Not a furry myself, but I’m told by friends who are into the sub-culture that their defining moment for our generation was “the look” Nala gave Simba in Lion King (the animated one). 😉
And even before that, apparently Disney’s Robin Hood and Maid Marian were another common awakening.
Don’t forget Lola Bunny and Minerva Mink who were blatant furry bait.
I never became a furry but I would be lying if I said Fifi la Fume from Tiny Toons didn’t give me pause from time to time.
You’ll probably find older furries who got their first faint stirrings from a certain scene in “What’s Opera, Doc?” or possibly “The Big Snooze.”
Yes, I went to IU and since the beginning Galasso’s has been recognizable as Mother Bear’s hahaha. It’s literally right across the street from campus so it’s a popular place for pizza, and of course everyone thinks the logo is hilarious.
I did not expect Sarah to react more 0.0 than Joyce did.
When you find out you and your future father in law have the same kink…
That’s a superweird ship, but I’m 100% okay with it. Also I love Sarah’s reaction.
Reasons Hank and Carol’s marriage is falling apart:
1) Her generally inflexible and judgmental nature.
2) Supporting a church that had an armed kidnapper released.
3) Her defense of same, even after said criminal endangered their daughter and her friends lives for the second time.
4) Wouldn’t wear a fursuit, even on Hank’s birthday.
Number 4 is the real reason they’re going to have a divorce. 1, 2 and 3 are just the excuses needed.
If she’d worn the fursuit even once he’d be down there arguing with the Walkertons that Ross didn’t actually hurt anybody right now, even if he didn’t believe it. And you know what? It would’ve been worth it!
Noah’s Ark was not realised in their marital bed.
That Hank wanted Carol In a bear suit, – and not in a cat suit (lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah, civet, Manx, lynx, Minx, other, – is telling. I just don’t know what it is telling.
so i guess soon-to-be-divorced christians get to say “tits”, huh
Joyce is terrified of swearing, and her father’s just casually saying tits in front of her. Weird parental hypocrisy or a sign that his worldview has massively shifted?
They’ve already said ‘asshole’ and ‘damn’ in front of each other.
That was heated, this is a pretty casual situation in comparison.
Eh, Joyce has been swearing fairly casually since the incident. If Hank hadn’t used any swear words before now it might be more of a shock, but I think this shouldn’t be too bad.
The shock won’t come from the word per se, but from its implication that her father is a sexual being.
His long-repressed inner pervert is reemerging.
Didn’t Hank and Carol casually reminisce about making out at the fountain or something? Ages and ages ago.
They also swore casually the conversation where Hank confessed to Joyce he has never liked Ross and tolerated him for Becky’s sake. It was them bonding a little by both cussing in the car together.
I feel like saying “tits” in a pretty objectifying way in front of your teenage, but of age, daughter is a bit different than casual swearing. Especially if Dad has always seemed asexual and non-pervy.
He also griped about the “goddamn gophers” tearing up his lawn in a bonus comic once.
Tbh it seems pretty compatible with standard parental hypocrisy to me
He has changed a lot since family weekend. Fast enough to be alarming, medically.
Nah. From personal experience, when someone is crazy with fundamentalism and finally realizes they’re crazy and gets tired of it, they can change very quickly. A bunch of things that were unthinkable become normal. A self-supporting edifice of crazy can fall very quickly once the foundation is removed.
Yeah, it’s like basically cranking it all the way to the other side of the dial. Like people who were very repressed growing up suddenly going very ‘casual sex’ in college.
They usually eventually find some kind of happy medium though after the novelty of it all wears off.
We used to call it: “The minister’s kids go bad in the most entertaining ways.”
I remember that in University residence. Every fall the first year girls would realize that they are finally out from under their parents thumbs and go crazy, they usually settled down about the time mid terms started. There seemed to be a direct correlation between religious fundy level and repressed sexuality expression.
The problem with some fundamentalists is they ignore the mental part.
Can confirm.
I seem to remember an earlier conversation between Joyce and her sister (about halloween?) that seemed to imply that the hardcore fundamentalist bent of their parents was a (relatively) recent development and mostly driven by their mother.
While Joyce views her parents as a monolithic entity, I feel like Hank was more going along with the strict religious nonsense out of a desire to keep his marriage together than any real belief in that level of religious fanaticism.
I wouldn’t let Hank that far off the hook. He’s the one who enforced strict gender roles at play time and told Joyce not to hang out with Dorothy because she’s an atheist and that Hitler was partly Jewish.
Hitler’s grandfather on his father’s side is unknown, but was very unlikely to have been Jewish. On the other hand there is a fair amount of evidence that Eva Braun did have some jewish ancestry including DNA analysis on what was *probably* some of her hair from a monogramed hairbrush recovered from her apartment by US Intelligence at the end of WWII which shows mitochondrial DNA strongly linked to Ashkenazi Jews.
Took me a bit to dig this up but here’s said conversation https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/cablenews/
I think it’s more that he wouldn’t talk the way he wanted to in front of his wife.
The first thing my dad did when my mom left was go skydiving, because he’d always wanted to and she’d never let him.
This has the same energy to me.
His worldview has changed, his wife (assuming she donated to Blaine/the church to bail out Ross, which she probably did) inadvertently almost got their daughter killed, and he’s probably staring down a divorce.
Dude’s just in shock and has just dropped all social pretenses while his world is unraveling
I think it’s a lot like Joyce throwing around swears after the first attempted kidnapping – something drastically shook up his world and now the filters are off.
I’m pretty sure a lot of Christians say “tits.” And look at tits. Haven’t there been studies showing the biggest pervs (according to their internet porn searches) in the US live in Utah?
This. I was raised to be a Methodist. Our family had the usual poorly followed moratorium on swear words, so I felt like I had a good handle on what they were. I was fairly shocked in high school to find out that some people considered `tits` to be a swear word.
I think this is where Hank is remembering what it Felt like before he was molded And pressed into a honey-crusted fundie nutbar by Carol and her increasingly severe interpretation of what god wants.
It feels like Hank is about to reclaim himself.
I think bittersweet memories of dates with Carol at Mother Bear’s Pizza are flashing through his mind right now.
Honey-Crusted Fundie Nutbars! Now more holier than thou!
I was thinking it was Hank starting to treat his daughter like an adult.
“so i guess soon-to-be-divorced christians get to say “tits”, huh”
From my own experiences with fundamentalist Christian denominations, the overemphasis on masculine social norms tends to mean that Christian males are actually rather open to making crass comments of the sort Hank just engaged in. By my experience, they’re also allowed to openly cuss when it comes to things like sports. The only thing they’re not allowed to do is take the lord’s name in vain, so “goddamn” and the like are generally where the line is drawn.
Not making any real indications towards Hank or the comic, just noting that it didn’t seem at all out of place to me, coming from a Christian with a fundamentalist background. 😛
*Okay, that last line could be misleading, as I phrased it. I meant: The comment didn’t seem out of place coming from Hank. (Rather, the only reason it comes across as notable is because of what we know of Joyce, who is adverse to even the most simple of crude terms. Then again, as I did touch on, there is a gender disparity in such allowances, so who knows whether this is actually new for Hank or not. )
There’s a gender disparity with Joyce (and Carol – I expect that she DIDN’T swear much around the kids, if at all,) but also I think Joyce has internalized the fear of damnation and These Are The Rules, Which Must Be Obeyed to a WAY stronger extent. Totally possible to do so even with parents who are in no way enforcing such a strong sense, at least if you’re prone to anxiety.
Or who are enforcing it on children, while not on themselves, which isn’t exactly rare.
Ugh, so true.
Never would have expected Hank’s first wandering eyes to be some bear tiddies, but here you go.
Who says that’s his first wandering eyes?
It was a set consisting of great tits, blue tits, bearded tits, crested tits and coal tits.
I followed the link to Mother Bear’s Pizza further up. The tits are definitely of great size, you can also argue that they’re bearded what with all the fur on them. They were not blue, nor crested, and certainly not made of coal.
Following that link with the context of this discussion in mind, “Ten Inch Tuesday” really jumped out at me.
You did know that the poster was referring to birds, right?
Although Hank may be referring to byrds.
Did he then graduate to blue footed boobies?
I think Joyce just learned something about her father.
HANK WHAT??? lmao hank consistently reminds me of my own father and I think if my dad said that I would lose my mind.
Yeah, he should at least have said, “Excuse my French,” afterwards.
Wow, Hank! I’m all fr people losing their religion, but slow down.
He’s gotta rip the religious bandaid right off, baby, and how to do that faster than reminiscing about humanoid bear tits and contemplating divorce?
He’s following Becky’s example, break out in a explosion of glitter!
Wait till he starts drawing tits on whiteboards.
The Chalkboard Tiddy Bandit was the scourge of IU class of [this year minus about 30].
(Dry erase boards weren’t around yet.)
At some point, they will have been.
Hank’s like 60 so it’d be closer to [this year minus 40]
Becky and Hank walking around campus screaming to no one in particular.
Becky: Hey! Guess what? I’m a lesbian!
Hank: And I’m questioning my religion!
This needs to happen.
“Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough”
I dunno, REM’s Losing My Religion actually kinda seems to fit Hank’s present state fairly well. 😛
I really wanna hear about the busty bear woman. I don’t give a shit ab out Blaine’s corpse. He didn’t have nice tits at all. Total A-cup if that!
more of a D-bag if you ask me
It can be both.
Besides we don’t really know if Blaine had nice tits or not. I mean there must be some reason that Yuri found him attractive.
D-bag? Wait, they’re measuring testicle sizes in letters now as well?
Geesh- why are the progressions in gender equality always so weird, random, and minimally productive? 🙄
He was also a B-hole,which is Joyce-approved gender-neutral terminology.
Mother Bear’s Pizza. It’s a real place.
This didn’t disappoint. Way more interesting than the flat chested dead body of a delusional mob stooge in my opinion.
1. I knew someone in the comments would deliver.
2. Not gonna lie, I had higher expectations for that bear.
She’s a sailor scout.
Will 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 please you?
That is disturbing…
To Joyce maybe.
Hello, new avatar.
fantastic
Hello Hank-busty bear lady ship.
That is some scary bad artwork (seriously, what is going on with that elbow, that evil smirk, and those eyes that penetrate your soul?). They really need to update it with a better artist. 😛
Also, here’s a photo of the storefront for Mother Bear’s, which also features that logo: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0f/16/18/57/mother-bear-s-pizza-west.jpg
Not going to mention the strangely undersized legs?
That’s just due to the angle and the fact that she’s wearing a dress. I’ve seen actual photos that have a similar apparent distortion of size. There may be some nitpicks as to precise measurements, but we can just put that down to the bear having a specialized body measurement. It’s not *unnatural*, like the other traits are, at the very least.
I WENT DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE SO NOW YOU HAVE TO JOIN ME
https://motherbearspizza.com/
Honestly, I was expecting worse.
You know what Hank? Fair enough. And the first thing I see is ‘ten inch Tuesday’ so I think they’re really leaning into it.
Ok, that was worth the detour
Came to the comments to find out what the heck restaurant that is, was not disappointed.
I thank you for sharing this with us, you’re making the world a better place.
That bear woman kind of does have a nice pair, not gonna lie.
Badly drawn, but they do draw the eye, indeed.
I may have just discovered my next gravatar tbh
Not if I DO IT FIRST
Porque no los dos?
¿Por qué no todos?
I think Ryek Hvek beat you to it.
Taffy, you magnificent bastard.
Perhaps the relocated to the Dallas are and opened a new restaurant next to Pee Jee’s bar.
I thought of that, too. But that was chicken, not pizza. >_>
That is exactly where I went at first, before I remembered it was a chicken.
Seeing someone with a Sydney Yuus gravatar say “that is exactly where I went at first” made me giggle.
I wonder if the Mother Bears Pizza web team routinely look up which new web pages are linking to them.
I know things are different in America, but it’s still kind of weird to see a restaurant website that doesn’t have a banner saying ‘TAKEAWAY OR DELIVERY ONLY’.
You want weird? They’re suspending or expelling kids whose parents keep them out of school. And they’re suspending them for publishing pictures of school hallways crowded with mostly-maskless people.
Large parts of the U.S. are literally a giant death cult.
yep. suspended for, among other equally BS but less terrifying reasons, “criticizing the school online”
nothing here is okay please send help or let the decent people leave
Not everyplace in the country is that bad. The schools in my area in Ohio are all doing full online with some offering hybrid (one to two days in school per week so you can get face-to-face time with a teacher) on a voluntary basis. The schools are looking into getting ahold of computers and internet deals for families that need them so everyone can work from home.
Might be more; publishing other kids pictures, while in school (and therefore somewhere the district is responsible for protecting), without the written permission of those kids parents.
I fondly remember a time before release forms were a common thing.
Which is a rule the school will crack down on when it makes them look bad, not when kids are just posting pictures like they do these days.
It’s terrifying, honestly. My county – and much of the state – is doing all virtual schooling for the fall semester for the public schools, at least (thank GOD,) but the amount of head in the sand-ing about a virus… do the people in power not realize millions dead is a longer term disaster for the economy than an extended shutdown, or do they just not care. I’m pretty sure I knownthe answer, but. *sobs*
(There are also a few colleges valiantly trying to do in-person classes but near as I can tell they just Desperately Believe the College Experience is Important and this can be done safely, in spite of all evidence it cannot even if all the students did things painstakingly correctly.)
Probably more desperate to believe than desperately believing. Need to differentiate what you have to offer from Khan Academy, or better yet, MIT’s vast library of free resources, somehow.
This ongoing pandemic…may finally see us do something meaningful about runaway tuition costs.
In my section of America thats not happening. My sister was stressed about suddenly having to help her children do distance learning. And come fall while they are trying allow students to come in at least part of the time I get the impression they are also going to give the students the option of distance learning.
A lot of restaurants just don’t really update their websites much.
Yep. A restaurant and bar near us closed months ahead of the pandemic due to construction. People would show up during their regular hours only to find it was closed and they started getting bad reviews because the closure was nowhere on their web site. Then when they did add a message they said they hope to open “next month”.
Other small businesses also have this thing where they have both a web site and a Facebook page and they update Facebook but not the site or at least update Facebook more often. I get why (they’re able to update Facebook themselves but they have to pay a 3rd party to make web site changes) but I still wish they’d be more explicit with the fact that you need to go to Facebook for current information.
Where I live (not US) restaurants are open again 🙂 fewer tables and more distance, as well as a max amount of people per table, being “1 family or 2 people”
Menu looks good.
It does, yeah. I’m a bit surprised to see a couple of Australian wines on the wines list. I bet they pronounce “Woop Woop” wrongly.
Not entirely sure how one would manage to pronounce “woop” wrong. 😛
Side-note, apparently there’s now a song called “woop woop” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orrhZeXZO4s). Passable vocals and decent instrumentals, but the lyrics are quite low-grade (both in terms of content and composition). Kinda curious as to what an instrumental-only version’d sound like, but not seeing any presently available.
Think I’ll stick with the classic Calabria for my “w(h)oop w(h)oop” fix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yGqO5aZaME 😛
If you pronounced “Woop Woop” with the “oo” as in “boot”, that would not be the way that the makers of Woop Woop wines pronounce it.
wup wup?
Throatwarbler Mangrove?
They’ve been in business for several decades, so they must be doing something right.
They are a pizza shop across the street from a residence, pretty much a license to print money.
Man, $5.50 for 10 wings? I’m in! Except it’s a bit of a drive from Texas.
I know several college-associated wing places in Texas that’d offer comparable pricing on specific days of the week (Almost always Wednesdays). Mighta wanna look at it from that angle.
Top result for Wing Wednesdays in Texas was Hooters, and they offer 10 wings and fries for 6.99- and I believe Hooters is on the inflated end of pricing? So pretty good chances you can find a similar offer in your region [to the 5.50 one].
Oh, and look into Buffalo Wild Wings, they’re basically everywhere, and I think their Tuesday/Thursday pricing is similarly cheap. I know it used to be like 50 cents a wing, which’d be about 10/$5. I’ve never had them, so I’m clueless as to the quality, though.
Done and done. Thank you for taking the initiative!
Suddenly thinking of the big-boobed chicken lady restaurant across the street from the bar in Randy’s Something Positive
Where they just happened to be having a wake for a certain blond haired guy?
And let’s try the
And the a tag didn’t work..
Here’s the link
https://somethingpositive.net/comic/hardly-appropriate/
Why is Mike dead in that strip?
Because people wanted him to be alive.
Because Sir Willis, Randy Milholland and Jeph Jaques have a very strange friendship.
I had forgotten about the Mike-looking guy in that strip!
Ok, Hank’s got a point.
And here I wondered if it was a reference to the Chicken with Gravy on her Tits mascot that showed up in Something Positive, right around the time they did a cameo with Mike’s wake.
That’s, um, an interesting choice for a family restaurant mascot.
But then again, Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit already exist…
I’m pretty sure Betty Boop was never really intended for kids. If I’m not mistaken, she was pre-code. Jessica Rabbit is a sendup.
Good point.
Now I want to know what this bear woman looked like, for scientific research of course.
Also, the news is spreading quickly huh? Wonder if Linda will still want Amber out of school considering the “threat” i.e. her dad, is now dead?
Oh almost certainly. She has to take it out on someone and the vulnerable daughter of a murderous asshole abuser is the perfect target.
*murdered asshole abuser
See emeraldbeacon’s post, above!
Even more so. You just know that Linda totally believes in the Bad Seed theory of criminality
Not so sure…. because what would that say about Sal?
Of course, that assumes that Linda has the kind of self-awareness to compare the situations.
I’m guessing good at the time but in retrospect bad and/or sad
Yeah, it’s probably that he met Carol here.
They met at the fountain where Joyce stood up to them about Dorothy for Bible study during their freshmen year, per Patreon bonus strips.
They probably went here for a lot of dates though.
That scene was no patreon strip right? . I think you mean that one.
I think they mean the strips about Hank and Carol meeting at the fountain when they were in college were on Patreon.
Aahh, thanks for clearing that up 🙂
Yeah, I meant the first meeting was a Patreon strip. Wasn’t 100% on the name of the fountain (I believe it’s Showalter?) so I picked a time we saw it prominently.
Given his mention of “tits”, he may be giving us a window into his unfiltered teen mind, this may be a pre-Carol dalliance that he may sometimes regret not exploring further.
Is Sarah standing by her assertion in that even the shooting is better than Hank reminiscing about a humanoid bear woman with nice tits, or saying that they need to change the subject again?
both?
Hank’s standing by his assertion that Mother Bear had nice tits.
Oh, Hank! He’s so full of surprises.
I’m assuming it’s Hank standing by his assertion, but I could be wrong.
I think he’s doing so because he finds his earlier blunder less distressing than talking about another shooting.
I read it as Sarah standing by her assertion that they need to change the subject, even if the new subject is a shooting in the hospital. I don’t think she’s saying the shooting itself was a good thing, just that, given that it happened anyway, she’d rather they talked about that than Hank’s mammary memories.
*plays “God’s Own Drunk” on the hacked Muzak*
I know Joyce is aware of fandom stuff but does she know her dad is a furry? (Actually, after her comments on the mouse boys…perhaps that apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree)
You mean the cub didn’t crawl far from the nest.
One thing I am glad about is that Joyce is 18, so there won’t be any custody battle over her. She won’t be obligated to live with Carol, she can find safe haven with her dad, in any event she HAS to stay with family (assuming no friends can take her in, which is unlikely)
The concern might be paying for college tuition. Even if Hank has money, a messy divorce could still bleed.
Oh, didn’t think of that… she could take out a student loan. She’ll be fine on the school front, at least.
Why not? Becky has her own place now.
Was not expecting bear tits from Hank if I’m being honest. Ol’ boy let his hair down with the quickness
Lost in the memories, pre-religiosity? (memories of mammaries?)
His first time meeting Carol was supposed to be for a bible study.
Yeah wow, I was amazed at the speed there. Just straight to the bear lady’s tracts of land.
So next school break are we going to get an arc of Joyce going to a furry con with her dad, because that might be the worst thing I can think of right now
Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet.
Remember Pugsley Adam as a Thanksgiving turkey?
What is it about people hating on furries? I’ve never understood. There were some salacious articles about furries a decade or so ago, because some fraction of furries make it sexual – is that all it took?
Even geeks need someone to look down on.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Geek_Hierarchy
There’s flurries that like dressing up as humanoid animal characters and there’s furries that get sexually excited from said dressing up. It’s about the second one. Now, I don’t see the appeal or the problem, but my best guess is that everyone thinks every fetish is weird but this one requires a lot of stuff (fluff) to join, so there’s few people defending it.
But all these fantasy beastialitists are almost probably spreading killer virus on their fur. If you’re going to be a furry during the pandemic, you should be a nudist furry. It’s only socially responsible.
Acceptable targets, and it’s not cool at all.
Partly it’s because a higher than usual number of furries are members of the queer community. Wanting to fantasize about a completely different identity for yourself, to the point of imagining yourself as a completely different fantasy species, seems to have some significant overlap with LGBTQIA+ folks.
I also personally suspect that it has something to do with the fact that furry fandom doesn’t value the same stuff other fandoms do. It’s nearly ENTIRELY creative or transformative stuff, as opposed to curatorial. That Dude at the sci fi con, the one who’d march up to a girl cosplaying as the thirteenth doctor and demand to know what her favourite episode from the Peter Troughton era was and then ridicule her as a fake fan? He can’t really DO that at a furry con because there’s no actual canon. It’s nearly all cosplay and original art and OCs and stuff that in other geekdoms is often dismissed by a certain kind of nerd as lesser (feminine) expressions of nerdery.
Basically, dressing up as and drawing pictures of animals is considered girly and gay and a lot of the time actually IS girly and gay so it makes other nerds uncomfortable?
The fact that a higher number of furries are queer is kinda surprising to me, mostly because I’ve been part of fandoms where being a furry is radically more accepted than being queer.
Isn’t it more likely that it is the big tits that stuck out in his memory, not the fact that the woman is a bear?
I’ve spent the last couple hours writing scripts for things and none of it can hold a candle to this comic, it’s perfect
You know what they say, 20-something years of practice makes perfect.
Hank saying ‘tits’ bothers me more than the actual murder perpetuated by a law enforcement officer.
It feels like a man that has driven over the edge and is now just serenely watching the scenery as he drifts down to earth.
well put.
God I wish that were me.
Minus “man”
Well that’s because we knew some police and the mob were buddy-buddy—at that point, murder isn’t overly shocking.
But this line—THIS LINE—is…startling. Personally, it shocked me more than literally anything else in the course of DOA. Like the whole thing.
Hank has noticed that the ban on dying has ended, and the Creator is now killing off bad parents. So he either
– tries to be a better dad to his mouse boy loving daughter, or
– tries to make the best of the little time that is left to him.
Your choice.
I’m guessing Joyce is currently telling herself the old logo must’ve been a humanoid bear woman posing with a pair of passerine birds. Probably posed like an Ursine Snow White.
It bothers me that he and Carol have raised Joyce to feel constantly ashamed of thinking anything like that but now it’s suddenly cool.
you know with Willis’ usual behavior and the fact we’ve gone two chapters without a confirmation I feel when we get back to the Hospital there will be a dead cop and no Blaine
Nah, Blaine’s room is upstairs and I don’t think the hospital room windows open. Plus two other officers (presumably who were standing guard outside the room) were shown going into the room immediately after the gunshot.
Might take a while to get back around to what’s happening there, though.
I don’t need to see Blaine’s corpse, I wanna see Ruth suplexing that non-grandma.
Hear! Hear!
Even if Blaine took out the cop, he couldn’t get far, given his mob connections turning on him, the absolute beating he’s taken, etc.
Or worse, Blaine with a gun heading to Mike’s room, or holding it to the head of a hostage, probably one of the characters.
That comment of Hank’s reminds me strongly of the conversation I had with my paternal grandmother after I was outed as bisexual by my dad. (By accident) While his side of the family was overall fine with it (liberal leftover hippies of the PNW), while we were sitting in a local watering hole with my uncle and some of his buddies, they were making some little comments about one of the waitresses, and Grandma Betty, bless her heart, turned to me and asked, “So are tits not a thing for lesbians? Because your Aunt Juanita and her wife never stare either.” There are just some moments that really drive it home that your esteemed elders (even Evangelical Fathers and little old grandmothers) were once young and vulgar too.
(Cue my uncle, “Jesus, Ma,” as his friends about died laughing)
They are for some, anyway. A friend of mine has commented that she has a problem with catalog shopping for lingerie because she gets sidetracked by the boobies.
In all fairness, those catalogs almost seem designed to distract. I’ve a theory that some of the worse-looking lingerie is deliberately modeled by the people with the nicest boobs so it looks better by association.
My mom used to tell stories about how her mom used to flirt with dudes all the time when out and about.
You sound like you have a good family. Do take care of each other.
…tits???
Obviously it was a bear-woman with some birds perched on their shoulders, as a symbol of the Harmony Of Nature.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
More an icon of service to the flock: https://motherbearspizza.com/wp-content/themes/motherbears/img/motherbearslogo.png
I feel like Joyce is suffering some severe buffer overload here.
In two more strips we’re gonna see her sit bolt upright and squeak “Did — you just say TITS”
I feel like Willis very carefully pulled her out of frame.
Nah, she’s not going to be able to say it when it comes time to ask.
Joyce: “Did you say Ti… ti… ti-ti-”
Sarah:” Tatas? Nope, he said TITS!”
I think this is showing that Hank himself is suffering some buffer overload. Dude’s life (and world view) is basically unraveling rapidly before his eyes and his daughter almost died… again. Kind of how Amber is talking in emoji, Hank’s social pretenses are out the window.
Even Sarah was shocked. Dang Hank! You really got them.
Yeah, that Sarah “I think my nana got me this one” Clinton is shocked probably says more about breaking stereotypes than anything else.
I guess this is where we start to find out Hank was only so devout to keep Carol pleased
That’s plausible. In fact I’ve kinda had that impression for a while.
He seems to be devout in other ways, he just doesn’t seem to care as much for appereaces as Carol does.
Fazbear Entertainment took a turn for the sexy.
Googled “Mother Bears Pizzia in Bloomington”, Hank wasn’t kidding it’s a real thing: https://motherbearspizza.com/wp-content/themes/motherbears/img/motherbearslogo.png
Doing the lord work.
I just had to go to e621 and check… Nobody seems to have lewded Mother Bear (…any more than the restaurant itself did)… Not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed. >_>
I’m personally disappointed.
Are there lots of riots and lewding in Bloomington these days?
I should not have looked up mother bear rule 34.
P.S. The restaurant wasn’t the first thing that came up and I *really* don’t wanna look any further.
Yeah, that was a lot of characters I recognized from my childhood. And a version of red riding hood that was way closer to the original than the Grimm brothers went and censored for their compilation.
Joyce: Go on?
Hank: Tits.
Hank. Oh Hank. I love you.
Quck, Sarah. Start talking about Joyce’s eating habits. That’s the only safe topic remaining.
Galasso married Mother Bear as part of the merger negotiations between their respective business empires. He also had to knife-fight seven Italian pizza chefs for her hand.
Seven evil ex chefs?
College’s corruptive influence keep showing its effect on Hank. First he speak up against his wife, then he hangs out with atheists, and now bear-tits which must surely be a sin.
Bear tits is only second base, if I remember correctly — so that’s just a misdemeanor.
The only biblical story I know involving bears:
This one time, Elisha the prophet was walking along, and these two teenaged boys were like “go up, you baldy, go up!” (making fun of him for being bald.)
So a she-bear came out of the woods and ATE THEM.
Don’t mess with prophets.
Ah, nope, two she-bears.
It’s in the Book of Kings 2.
23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
Then there’s the story about the Preacher and the Bear …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP96n0gyNz0
So they did specify she-bears. That implies tits. (Or is Hewbrew one of those languages that routinly gender everything?)
also, I think that was not entirely proportional respons.
So, usually it’s pretty clear when things are feminine in Hebrew (basically you just add an “ot” plural ending for feminine and an “im” plural ending for masculine). But I’m killing time at the moment and looked it up and this is some sort of irregular word. The word is “Dubim,” and the “im” ending is a plural ending that is usually masculine. But the number modifying it is in the feminine form. The dictionaries (lazy online search of biblical dictionaries… I can see my shelf full of real dictionaries from where I’m sitting but I’m not THAT motivated) are telling me it’s feminine, but the masculine form is not really functionally any different.
So basically, the sources I’m looking at all seem to agree this is feminine, but the only reason I see to think that is the gender of the number (treated like a modifying adjective) which I don’t find trustworthy because the numbers have weird gender endings and are frequently not used grammatically correctly (either in the ancient or modern world).
You didn’t want to know this much about Hebrew I’m sure, but there you have it!
I love this comment section. Gold star.
So, did I get it right? From your analysis so far there is no reason to assume the original author made a point of specifying she-bears, but the poor translators got caught in the grammar and had to put it in do be sure not to do the source material disservice?
That’s pretty much how the Bible works, I think.
Plus she-bears would be extra tough! Even in the ancient world, nobody wants to mess with a mama bear.
@ Bagge, Possibly. It’s also likely there’s some related word in another language or some other obscure grammatical detail that’s giving a clue about the gender and my Hebrew is too rusty to catch it.
Oh! New pic! I’m a little disappointed actually. I usually comment on obscure biblical references and it’s always more fun to have my comments accompanied by a woman in a hijab!
I don’t even know where to START here…
Hank didn’t have that problem. Start with bear-tits and go from there.
ive decided to start with the murder of Worst-Dad, but you have a point!
Also I’m guessing this is where Hank took Carol for their first date.
Along with just about every current and former couple who are or ever have been part of the faculty or student body!
Hank is showing his appreciation for Belgian-French mathematician Jacques Tits!
Sarah’s pity pizza comes with an unexpected price.
okay so i just gotta say that if they’re gonna go the “bechested bear in a teddy” route then maybe change the name? mother bear needn’t be sexy. please go with stepsister bear for our modern audience thank you.
or daddy bear and suddenly the mascot is a hefty, literal bear in leather with a come hither smirk
that’s it i’m going into advertising.
What are you doing, step-bro bear?!
I have a daughter who is in her 20s, has 2 children, and talks to me in way more detail than I would like about her sex life.
…I don’t think I could say that a cartoon bear has nice tits in front of her. Lordy I am a square.
Well now, I wasn’t expecting to find out Hank was a furry…. Huh.
For no particular reason other than my essential weirdness, I’ve got the feeling that the’humanoid bear woman’ was Mrs Galasso (before her marriage) in a costume that her parents were convinced was ‘good marketing’.
Why, Hank.
Tizzits!
Damn you, Willis. Stop teasing us for another day.
*chuckle* I remember how much my deeply-religious parents loosened up on their language and subject matter after I turned 18. I suspect Hank would have done the same, but held off to avoid constant fights with his wife. Now he’s lost his last fuck to give on that front and is trying to look overly casual with the “godless.”
Frankly, I doubt Hank is going to lose his Christianity unless the writing takes a sudden dive. Forty-plus years of walking with God doesn’t evaporate overnight just because you realize that your wife is a bongo and atheists are nice people. However, I do expect that he’s going to be changing churches VERY soon.
It’s a credit to Joyce’s growth that she’s hardly even fazed, unless the overly-dramatic red face and steam is being saved for the next strip.
I think he’s going to struggle for a while, trying to reconcile his values and his religion, while shedding the baggage that is Carol’s toxicity. This awkwardness is a byproduct.
my parents weren’t particularly religious and loosened up around swearing when my brother and I started to swear (no need to protect our ears anymore I guess), but around 18 they stopped trying nearly as hard to hide their racism from me/us
😐
This implies they tried to hide their racism. Which further implies they didn’t want to raise you to be racist. Even further implied here is that they knew racism was wrong in the first place.
People are weird.
Does it imply it any more than implying that hiding the swearing means they knew that was wrong?
It might just imply they didn’t want their kids to out them as racists by accidentally repeating stuff.
It could happen. Some atheists lose their religion in their teens and twenties, others are religious for decades and lose their religion later in life. There are even some atheists who were pastors for decades before they realized they no longer believed in their religion.
Could happen. But there’s a lot of middle ground between a Carol christian, and an atheist. I see Hank spending some time soul searching, maybe trying a Unitarian Universalist church. Maybe that search leads him to atheism, but I don’t think it’s a straight trip there, not as long as Joyce believes too.
I suspect that’s a closer take on it than either the “Hank was only ever strict because of Carol” or the “Hank’s changing drastically” options.
Carol’s Christianity is what she uses to justify his hate.
Hank’s Christianity is what he uses to justify his love.
I don’t believe there was any love involved in his reaction to Dorothy at family weekend.
To be fair, from his world-view, she represented a threat to his daughter. A bad influence. He’s only just today figured out that atheists can be good people even though they’re not God people.
YEAH HANK?? hoo
Is it me or there’s a missing speech balloon in panel 3? Jeremiah seems to be saying something.
Probably just some mournful complaint.
I admit, iad.
I read it as awkward smiles, but you might be on to something. Hopefully it gets fixed soon if so.
Yeah, I’ve come to find that the older generations pick odd moments to throw out on point descriptors.
I worked with a guy who was this very nice old man, often carried around a bible at work and would read it in his spare time. One day we’re talking about someone and he is referencing a female coworker in another area and just out of nowhere describes her as, “the one with the real big titties.”
I’m not going to lie, it was an apt description and I immediately knew who he was talking about, but damn. Could he have not gone with “glasses and dark hair” or SOMETHING?
Remembering Joyce is partially autobiographical and wondering if Willis’s dad ever told him that he’s a furry.
desperately need to change subject AGAIN
Three takeaways:
1. Poor Hank, processing bittersweet memories of dates with Carol during their college years. As soon as Joyce asks if they’re good memories, he changes the subject so he doesn’t have to answer on the spot.
2. How are so many people here surprised by the Mother Bear’s logo? I’ve never even been to Indiana, never mind that restaurant, but I looked the place up when Galasso’s started showing up more often to see how the comic backgrounds match the real place.
3. What’s up with good restaurants and weird logos? I know a really good local place whose logo is a blatantly traced 80s Mario wearing an apron and holding up a sub. What it lacks in ursine honkers it makes up for in copyright infringement. The food’s damn good though.
ursine honkers
Hank is not so much having a breakdown as he is having a slow tumble down. I imagine momentum will take over soon.
“Who’s the guy in the window?”
FOOOOOOOOLS!
Ooooo! So do we get a bearwoman+Hank slipshine in the future? 😮 *excited squeel*
SO looking forward to bachelor Hank!
It’s absolutely worth a one-panel day-dream-sequence!
Galasso: “DAUGHTER, I JUST OVERHEARD INFORMATION ABOUT AN ASSET THAT MIGHT AID IN OUR STRUGGLE FOR POWER. MAKE SURE TO IDENTIFY AND SHOW OUR CUSTOMERS SOME ‘TITS'”
Connie: “I can do that, father.”
Pamela: “You will not, daughter.”
It occurs to me (as it has before) that Willis’ naming of the very religious Browns with average Anglo names (Hank and Carol) and the very unreligious Keeners with Biblical names (Jeremiah and Deborah) has to be deliberate.
Unreligious but at least one’s culturally Jewish, and both names have been reasonably historically common in Jewish communities. (Which is in part why I always forget which of the Keeners is.)
Yes, but my point stands. I think the naming is deliberate.
Also, “Dorothy” means ‘gift of God’.
A thing to keep in mind is I named Joyce’s parents in 1998 and Dorothy’s parents in 2013.
I love Sarah desperate expressions in the 5th panel.
Why do y’all think Hank is a furry just because he pointed out a fact lol
Why is everyone shocked by Mother Bear’s pizza existing? The fountain has a naked mermaid y’all
Why do I have the sudden feeling that Joyce’s parents never told her much about their youth?
I’m sure they did, they just gave her a PG rated version like most parents do and left out any sort of controversial stuff they might have gotten up to in their college years.
(Dorothy’s phone buzzes a 2nd time)
“…and some old lady back at the dorm just got her ass handed to her by Ruthless.”
Reminds me of this one restaurant in my old hometown that had a big naked dude that was covered with his mustache and beard all the way down to his feat. Looked like a Dwarf.
No one knew why, but the restaurant kept the mascot for like 20 years. One day they took it down, restaurant closed within a year. Probably new management and a coincidence, but still it is weird what mascots some places uses and how they stay in our memories.
Thats a helluva observation to make in front of your daughter… and her friends… and parents of one of those friends…
Am I an idiot for not realizing Galasso’s was Mother Bear’s this whole time?? I guess it makes sense it’s literally across the street from Read…oh no, I *am* an idiot.
So, I guess the lunch will interrupted for the group to go to the hospital?
But I imagine they’ll be barring people from going inside for safety reasons. Guess they’ll wait outside and Joyce and Hank can have a nice talk not involving bear bosoms.
If Carol gets to drop an F-bomb, then Hank gets to say the T-word.
Does Ruth get to drop the C-word?
Billie already dropped Mary.
He changed his attitude quickly, Jesus
While the right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment, there is no such right to bear tits.
There is where I work.
Oh, “bear”, not “bare”. Nevermind.
Furry confirmed. Also her eyebrow is escaping.
I love reading this comic as an IU graduate. I laughed so loud at this reference that I had to explain to my partner. A little awkward explaining the big tiddy bear, but man— I loved Mother Bear’s.