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Crankshaft, 7/3/26

Ugh, fine, I guess I’ll update you on what’s going on in this Crankshaft flashback: Harry Dinkle’s drunk dad was all set to debut a new song at the Starlight Ballroom, but then nobody showed up because they all liked Elvis now, and he threw the sheet music to the ground and stormed off, and later Eugene and Lucy picked it up. Anyway, then Dinkle Sr. drove away in a white-hot rage right into the lake, where he died! “That’s how he would’ve wanted to go out,” says Harry, about to play his father’s last song in the bombed-out ruins of the Starlight Ballroom. “At a real emotional low point.”

Judge Parker, 7/3/26

Hey, remember the early days of my coverage of this strip, when Sophie was a weird, unsettlingly adult-like child? Well, Neddie has scooted off to take a Hollywood meeting (you can tell because of the sunglasses) with her former roommate/writing partner and left Sophie in charge of Charlotte, who is the strip’s current weird, unsettling adult-like child, I guess to help her learn that someday she’ll grow up and become as normal and annoying as everyone else in this strip.

Crock, 7/3/26

Wow, a nose so big a maître d’ mistakes it for an entirely separate person? Can you imagine? That’s definitely the sort of thing that would lead someone to seek cosmetic surgery!

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Mary Worth, 7/2/26

Obviously, as a long-running, hidebound artform, comic strips are remarkably static when it comes to depicting the details of everyday life — Dagwood still wears his tuxedo to work, even if he changes into a polo shirt for the weekend. Still, it seems like some strips are finally visually acknowledging one of the most important facts of modern life, namely that most of us spend most of it dicking around on our phones, even when we’re ostensibly hanging out with other people. If Martha Wilson is doing it, surely we can’t be surprised to see Dawn staring slack-jawed at TikTok while her father is ranting about how no daughter of his is going to be friends with an ex junkie.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/2/26

I was going to make a joke about how as a warrior, Hagar would be disgusted if his daughter married a low-status farmer, but then I remembered that Norse chieftains all owned farms worked primarily by enslaved laborers, and then this strip just got a whole lot darker.

Pluggers, 7/2/26

I can’t believe it, but I’m definitely arriving at a place in my life where I increasingly feel like pluggers are being done dirty by their own comic strip, which by rights ought to be a celebration of the gumption and folkways of the American working class but instead is more and more often just stuff like “You know you’re a plugger if you’ve got a big fat ass.”

Dick Tracy, 7/2/26

“Is it a sex thing? The two Xes in the name make me think it’s a sex thing. You ever have sex in a chair, Sam?”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/1/26

Oh, hey, so it turns out June was so snooty about those buskers last week because she could tell that the lady with the violin wasn’t really playing it and their amp was just pumping out prerecorded music. This could’ve been just another minor irritation for the Morgans except that these evil twins seem to know June and Sarah???? It is honestly funny to think that they know not just June but also her minor child and have travelled all the way to their hometown and think it would’ve been “sweet” to “scam” them (by tricking them into putting money into their little tip bucket even though they aren’t really playing music???), but that’s not, like, their main mission or anything. It would’ve been sweet, but the prospect won’t distract them from their overall goal (tricking other people into putting money into their little tip bucket even though they aren’t really playing music).

B.C., 7/1/26

Pretty sure this is just what shingles is. You’re about to get shingles, Curls!

Heathcliff, 7/1/26

IT’S “HAMKY SACK,” C’MON HEATHCLIFF, I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO SPELL THIS OUT FOR YOU