At first, I wasn’t going to comment on these. One-panel comics aren’t usually worth talking about, and these seemed little more than the meanderings of a woman who is bitter about one thing or another. Then these comics blew up, so I was like, “fine, I’ll acknowledge their existence and write up a review.”
For the setting, try to imagine a curious land in which most people don’t have to grow their own food, but meals are already fully prepared and delivered to peoples homes. Not only is rape illegal, there are no roving rape gangs on the prowl in rusty pickup trucks. What’s more, the homes are crisp and cool inside in the summer, and when there’s snow on the ground in the winter, the homes are warm inside, and glowing display screens deliver limitless free entertainment on demand.
But, there’s a catch: human nature remains mostly the same. The human adaptation to conflict that has been cultivated over the course of aeons still remains. Therefore, the people started questioning their idyllic peace and halcyon luxury. Then, grumblings came, acknowledging first world problems as though a prize awaited the cynics: “My coffee is too hot”, “thirty seconds is too long for an initial boot up”, “my delivery was delayed until tomorrow”.
At the center of this maelstrom of abject ingratitude is one housewife and her adversarial relationship with her husband. That’s right, we’re reviewing Momlife Comics.
Momlife Comics was written by Mary Catherine Starr, who gives us the first hint of her politics by listing her pronouns in her bio. Because her pronouns apparently weren’t already evident from the fact that she’s a mom. She also made a BLM statement, so you know that she’s not racist.
Wow, how stunning and brave, considering the current political zeitgeist!
Mary’s IRL husband is aware of the comics, and is okay with them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a Jack Murphy and wrote up an article touting the benefits of cuckolding.
Let’s start this review off with the most famous cartoon in the series so far:
Both are valid uses of the peach, and the one who gets to it first decides what happens to it. But notice that the build-up is the woman thinking about someone other than herself. How dare that man want to eat something that he paid for, from a table he paid for, in a house he also paid for!
Wow! Look how much more work that woman is doing! Patriarchy and such mushuggunah!
The missing context: the woman took all the bags, leaving the man to bring back just one. Was she aware that she could take multiple trips to the car? She’s likely to smoosh something if she tries carrying in that much at once.
Pattern established: Woman imagines some rule, but doesn’t tell man about it. Woman then gets angry at man for breaking the rule he didn’t know about.
Another pattern established: Woman gathers everything to herself, leaving nothing for the man to do. Woman then complains that she does everything.
Mary also does comics where she reverses the gender roles, which is supposed to be clever because she leaves us to determine the irony without beating us over the head with the obviousness of the point that she’s trying to make.
Get it? Because men are generally more career-focused, and women tend to be more family focused? Though it’s hard to say definitively whether Mary intended to throw shade on the fact that men and women are different, and that because of these differences they tend towards different life choices. It might be that she’d prefer a world where they made similar choices, even if that meant less excuse to hear the sound of her own voice, complaining.
I wouldn’t put it past her to complain about the rain as though she’s blaming someone for it.
Mary is such a victim in her own mind that she even sees herself at fault for bringing her own children fast food. Or are her children the only ones in the universe who would complain about fast food? Sure, it’s garbage, but kids don’t know that.
It was my intention to review this webcomic, but I instead feel tempted to psychoanalyze the author, as her comics have given a window into the soul of a troubled woman. It’s obvious that from an impressionable age, someone was able to sell her a victimhood narrative, and this resonated with her life in the hard streets of sheltered suburbia.
Since her webcomic got noticed, she produced this comic in an answer to the trolls:
Along with a notice that she’ll block trolls. Which is a mistake, because it’s a reaction that trolls look for, and they’ll take any that is any indication that they’re getting to someone. And the above comic accomplishes this masterfully.
As far as art quality goes, Mary is evidently of the opinion that if you only do one thing right, you’ve got a comic. In Mary’s case, that one thing is body proportions. Aside from that, everything is wrong. The thick, inconsistent line art, the lack of facial features, everything is just wrong. Maybe Mary can draw better than a toddler. But bring elementary school students into it, and she’s out of her league.
Okay then, let’s grade this pile. Momlife Comics gets a score of 2.6 out of 10.
Gentlemen, I know that the dating game is flawed. But tread carefully. Getting hitched to the wrong woman can be quite taxing.
One of the classic signs of an abusive relationship is joking at the expense of one’s spouse in public. These comics give ample cause for concern.