This is a festive opinion cartoon.

There is nothing more Super Sunday in Mobile than Mardi Gras Joe Cain Day and the Merry Widows. This year is even more super, as the Widows will be celebrating their 50th anniversary. Good Lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise, it’s destined to be a hoot.

If you’ve never experienced these veiled wailing ladies dressed in black festive funeral garb, do yourself a favor and check them out first chance you get. They start drinking early Sunday morning, then take a bus to the Church Street Cemetery around 11:20 AM to mourn their late husband Joe Cain and fuss over which one of them he loved the best. Eventually, they dance and stumble back on the bus, and you can follow them to Cain’s old house a few blocks away at 906 Augusta Street where they throw black beads and roses to the crowd. It’s a street party with jazz music and dancing. It’s a sight.

Every so often, Joe Cain Day lands on Super Bowl Sunday. And it happens again this year. If you go this Sunday (today,) watch out for those Merry Widow wardrobe malfunctions.

I drew a version of this cartoon sometime after Janet Jackson’s famous nip slip at the Super Bowl halftime show a few years back.

Read everything you need to know about the history of the Merry Widows right here in my colleague John Sharp’s story.

Happy Super Bowl Mardi Gras Joe Cain Merry Widow Sunday, y’all.

Related Mardi Gras content: Who loved Joe the best? For 50th time, Merry Widows to gather for a Mardi Gras tradition – al.com

Mobile enters Deep Gras, the home stretch of the Mardi Gras season – al.com

Mobile to open more parking to accommodate Mardi Gras crowds – al.com

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JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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