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Gil Thorp, 5/12/26

The Vegas sportsbooks have had a rough last few years. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association that states could set up their own regimes of regulated sports betting, and many did, leading to a flurry of betting apps available on every phone; then in early 2025, Kalshi, a “prediction market” that let users bet on any upcoming events and that claimed to be a futures market and thus regulated by the federal government, decided that betting on sporting events was just another kind of predicting and because they were under federal jurisdiction, they could offer sports betting everywhere, even in states that banned it. Still, I don’t know if “betting on high school golf” is what’s going to bail Vegas out on this one, though maybe they signed some kind of deal with the Valley Conference back when they were doing prison football, which you have to admit is more exciting.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/12/26

I’m not a big fan of the way that mermaids in Mother Goose and Grimm are depicted as just kind of floating around even when they’re not in the water. I’m also not a big fan of the really numb facial expression on this undersea king’s face; like, he’s not outraged or horrified, he just spent a minute looking at an old acquaintance — not a friend, really, but someone he knew enough to talk to, knew about his family — all dead and fried and sitting in a cardboard box and eventually he thought, you know what, I can’t bring myself to eat this one. But that’s a lot grimmer to think about, so I’m going to mostly complain about the floating thing instead. Are we expected to believe this is some sort of underwater fast food restaurant, despite the presence of a normal human guy behind the counter? C’mon.

Curtis, 5/12/26

Hmm, I don’t know, Curtis, I actually think that learning how to recognize when your boss is using company resources to indulge his own obsessions to the detriment of the health and safety of the organization and its employees is a pretty useful skill in the professional world! But then, so is gaslighting, so I do honestly see both sides here.

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Luann, 5/11/26

So Luann has a boyfriend named “Phil” now, and sure, the strip has done a certain amount of classic Luann stuff about their relationship where its treatment is simultaneously unrealistically chaste and unpleasantly horny, but I have to admire the fact that they’re setting up a “two people in their early 20s who are dating are thinking about cohabitation” plot and they aren’t immediately getting sexually weird with it. Instead they’re making it about how Luann isn’t a functional adult, which, you know, fair.

Family Circus, 5/11/26

You notice how there’s only one of every animal kind here? Sadly, for disobeying God’s commands, Jeffy and Dolly will be forced to watch Earth’s biodiversity crumble as the last representative of each species grows old and dies. Whatever grotesque future humans descend from this brother-sister pair will have only whatever plants survived the Flood to eat — or, horrifically, each other.

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Judge Parker, 5/10/26

There have been hints in this strip that Judge Parker Senior is slipping away into alcoholism or maybe just dementia, and … look, he’s kind of an asshole, and sure, Katherine seems to be on top of his apparent disappearance as this strip opens, but you have to imagine that she leaves those keys where he can find them even though she shouldn’t, and, well, maybe today’s the day when he’s going to drive into a wall and she’ll be rid of him and, since his kids are themselves both kind of assholes, get that money. It turns out that he was just making a sandwich, though! Oh well.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/10/26

Despite my endless attempts to parse the anachronisms of Hagar the Horrible, I do of course realize that the anachronisms are key to the jokes, like the mix of the modern concept of a “hospital” with our vague ideas of ancient medicine here. Anyway, today’s punchline is whatever but I think “Take those leeches out of here! I’m not a blood buffet!” is very funny! A hearty chuckle was had, by me.

Mary Worth, 5/10/26

“I know many people who are smart, successful, resourced, but because of loneliness, they throw almost everything away for an illusion! Now imagine how loneliness would affect a dumb, poor failure!” [SMASH CUT TO: MEANWHILE, TOMMY BEEDIE WEEPS]