For decades, Mary Worth was a comic strip about an older widow who doled out platitude-filled advice to the residents of Charterstone Condominiums.  Like “Fantasy Island,” the focus was on Charterstone’s other residents, and Mary’s constant attempts to run their lives help them through their troubles.

Now, however, just as Mr. Roarke fought the Devil, so Mary is adding to her Rogues’ Gallery with Aldo Kelrast, a widower (perhaps by choice, if you know what I mean and I think you do) who has Mary squarely in his sights.  With Mary’s boyfriend Dr. Cory off doing good works in Southeast Asia, Aldo has been living up to the anagram of his last name.  He shows up when Mary least expects it (a sidler, too!), pesters her on the phone, and won’t let her sit down with a huge casserole and a good book.  What’s worse, he hides behind the pudgy face of beloved children’s-TV icon Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan.  The fiend!

The Palm Beach Post (link via the Comics Curmudgeon comments) has a handy guide to the current storyline and to Mary Worth generally.  Written by Karen Moy, the strip is drawn by superhero veteran Joe Giella.  In the PBP interview, Moy promises “something very dramatic” for the end of the Aldo affair:

Then that will lead to something else very dramatic. I don’t know if it will delight fans. I think it will hold their interest. They’ll see what character flaws can lead to.

I bet it leads to Aldo tracking down Dr. Cory in Cambodia, Joseph Conrad-style, for the purposes of removing any and all competition for Mary’s meddling-busybody affections.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was just the prelude — the countdown, if you will — to a larger set of crossovers.  Might not Dr. Cory be saved by the Ghost-Who-Walks himself, The Phantom?  And aren’t the Peter Parkers in California, not too far from Charterstone, filming Mary Jane’s movie in the Spider-Man strip?  If a mysterious young widow named Donna Troy or Wanda Maximoff shows up at Charterstone, I give it six weeks before Mary Worth has remade all of newspaper comics in her own image….

(More information on Mary Worth can be found on the Internet.)

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