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Hi and Lois, 3/23/25

Look, you know I’m a genuine fan of Hi and Lois’s new melancholy, punchline-free vibe, but I’m sorry, “spring is here, time to ramp up our loathing of our aging bodies” is too dark and I’m going to need them to ratchet things back a bit.

Mary Worth, 3/23/25

OK, we all knew from the get-go that Wilbur’s vacation fling with funny hair was going to show up at his condo from the get-go, but I don’t think any of us could’ve predicted that she would arrive just as Wilbur was sorting through his surprisingly diverse shoe collection as part of his plan to strike the perfect balance between aesthetics and endurance for his upcoming karaoke outing. Will Belle be into Wilbur’s whole shoe deal, will she be repulsed by it as somehow unmasculine, or will she not find anything noteworthy about a bedroom with shoes strewn randomly around the floor and bed? The answer will tell us all a lot about this lady.

Heathcliff, 3/23/25

Heathcliff! You probably shouldn’t be putting forth the effort to communicate with the dog community in their own language at all, and if you’re going to stoop to that level, it should be to make them quake in fear, not chortle at your wit. You’re letting down all your dogcatcher fans!

Luann, 3/23/25

“I guess you know you’re old when you used to live in a civilization with a strong literary culture but now you need drastic pharmaceutical intervention just to stay alive.” “Ha! Under no circumstances should you put that on a t-shirt, it’s way too depressing.”

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Shoe, 3/10/25

Man, it would be concerning if you were a bird parent from a species that primarily ate fish and your son didn’t want to eat fish, especially considering that, bird-wise, the main way you get fish for your kid is to eat it yourself and then barf it up for them. I can see why you’d write a pleading letter to the editor of the local paper, though it’s pretty funny that said editor would just be like “ditch your ungrateful kid and get with a cat instead.” This may be affected by said editor’s species: Shoe is, as helpfully pointed out by a surprisingly comprehensive table on the Shoe (comic strip) Wikipedia article, a purple martin, a largely insectivore species in contrast to his fish-happy employees Cosmo Fishhawk and Loon. Everything else aside, domestic and feral cats are also one of the main predators of bird species, but the purple martin’s current conservation status is “Least Concern,” so I guess he’s not too worked up about that either.

Heathcliff, 3/10/25

Now that I’m returning to Heathcliff on the regular, I must report that it’s still following its late-era dream logic to surprising and disquieting places. Heathcliff hates dogs, sure. The local dogcatchers are a tight-knit society with their own social institutions, I buy that. Said dogcatcher community respects Heathcliff because of his aforementioned hatred of dogs, makes sense. And so they … get lower back tattoos of Heathcliff’s face? To signal all this information to one another, sexually? Yes, the chain of reasoning holds together, but if the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

Intelligent Life, 3/10/25

I once cruelly but accurately described Intelligent Life as being “about a number of unpleasant people who are obsessed with ‘nerd’ franchises (i.e., most of modern film and TV entertainment) in the most boring way possible.” I guess I should’ve added a compliment about its one redeeming feature, which is that it’s almost never about pissing and shitting. Too late now, I guess!

Pluggers, 3/10/25

Oh, you’re telling me that a plugger will substitute lower-cost calories when the price of a favorite foodstuff goes up? Are they ever so special and financially rational? Should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Professor Hal Varian, who’s written extensively on economic substitution effects?

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Gil Thorp, 3/6/25

Damn, Gil Thorp really has become a playground for amoral narrative outcomes. First Marty falls off the wagon and improves his drip immeasurably, then Coach Gerads bounces back from being beaten up by his own students to become the insouciant antihero of the Valley Conference. Goshen’s defeat of Milford on the football field presumably drove a local car dealership out of business, but Coach Gerads clearly doesn’t care who he drags down to hell with him.

Wizard of Id, 3/6/25

You guys know how I’ve been adding some old reliables into my rotation again? Well, Wizard of Id is on the list, but I haven’t really talked about it here because it’s frankly even more dire (in a boring, non-fun way) than I remembered. But a strip where the title character attempts to bend the cost curve of his avian-flu-stricken kingdom by shitting out a bunch of eggs? Well, I admit that one caught my attention. Not sure if the stars floating around his hindquarters are supposed to represent pain or magic or maybe both.

Luann, 3/6/25

“Sounds like you need to kiss?”

“What? Kiss?”.

“Yeah. Komfortabler Innovativer Spurtstarker S-Bahn-Zug. It’s a family of bilevel electric multiple unit trains built by the Swiss company Stadler Rail. I think taking a train ride through the European countryside could really help you focus on what’s important in your life.”

“Wow, this is a pretty strange way to flirt.”

“Flirt? You mean Flinker Leichter Intercity- und Regional-Triebzug?”

Heathcliff, 3/6/25

Heathcliff’s father is out of jail now, but after years of incarceration, he still has psychic scars. In a twisted way, prison feels like a safe place to him. His soul will never be free, and I think that’s sad.