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Dennis the Menace, 4/16/26

OK, since I complained about yesterday’s “exciting” tax panel from Pluggers, I have to praise this one. You know what’s exciting? When you’ve been up for three days straight trying to do your taxes and you’ve missed the deadline by several hours but you can’t stop because you’ll lose your momentum. “Please, let him rest!” begs Dennis. “He does so much for us!” It’s not very menacing of him but I’ll allow it.

Blondie, 4/16/26

I really like Dagwood’s facial expression in the second panel. It’s like he’s thinking “Oh, am I being cruised? Is this the cruising section of the park? Not really my thing but I guess you should try everything once.” By the time we get to panel three he’s disappointed that he misread the situation.

Heathcliff, 4/16/26

“Heathcliff sees a therapist” is an occasional bit in this strip, and I don’t care for it because I really don’t think it’s a match for his character. Heathcliff may have any number of real psychological issues, but I think he’s pretty happy with himself and lacks the desire to change that usually drives people to therapy. Anyway, despite what the therapist says, I appreciate the fact that today makes it clear he doesn’t take the process very seriously.

Crankshaft, 4/16/26

OH WE’RE ALLOWED TO START THINKING ABOUT A SCENARIO WHERE CRANKSHAFT SUFFERS A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK NOW? LIKE, CANONICALLY, IN THE WORLD OF THE STRIP, THAT’S SOMETHING THAT’S ON THE TABLE? GOOD TO KNOW, GOOD TO KNOW

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Heathcliff, 2/8/26

I gotta respect these guys for saying to hell with the NFL’s trademarks and hanging a giant banner that says “SUPER BOWL” from the ceiling of their living room to mark their Super Bowl party. Sure, it’s not strictly necessary, but it’s festive, and what if an outside viewer caught a glimpse of the room and had forgotten what day it was and needed a signifier in order to parse what exactly they were looking at? These revelers are true heroes. A living room “SUPER BOWL” sign, a dip cat, aliens and robots trying to stymie that dip cat for some reason, but not really trying very hard — all good, normal stuff.

Rhymes With Orange, 2/8/26

I kind of enjoy the way these people, who I assume just recently died, are casually chatting as they queue up to be tortured for all eternity. They spent their life weighted down by sin, so they aren’t surprised to be here or anything, though they are surprised to discover their sins are actually cute li’l anthropomorphized demons.

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Heathcliff, 2/1/26

Before the heavy crown of Heathcliff stewardship descended upon Peter Gallagher from his uncle, he contributed comics panels to Weird NJ magazine, which included a character named “The Jersey Tomato.” It’s difficult to find images of The Jersey Tomato online, but her whole deal appears to be that she’s a tomato who’s a sexy lady, or possibly a sexy lady whose head is a giant tomato. Anyway, since taking over Heathcliff, Gallagher has rewritten much of its DNA, and it’s impossible not to see a bit of the Jersey Tomato in this incredible new character, “The Hot Ham,” a ham who’s a hot, sexy lady, or possibly a hot, sexy lady who’s mostly a giant ham. I’m excited for this strip’s burgeoning audience of Zoomer fans to add “aromantic (except for hams)” to the long list of sexual-emotional orientations that I as a middle-aged person do not have to worry about.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/1/26

Oh, snap, it’s not Buck at all who’s picking up Rex from his surgery, it’s June’s crazy beloved Aunt (?) Tildy! A few years ago we were teased with a “Tildy is an old drunk” storyline that immediately turned out to be a “Tildy loves soda pop and takes ‘unplanned naps’” storyline, but let’s keep our hopes up that she has some kind of impairment that makes Rex’s drive home a truly terrifying one.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/26

Somewhat counterintuitively, this strip about caricatured hillbillies with occasional cameos from a big-city sharpie from the Woodrow Wilson administration was a pioneer in making jokes about cryptocurrency. So I’m excited for them to explore the crypto-adjacent world of prediction markets, where anyone can place prop bets on just about anything and insider trading is not just legal but encouraged because it makes their predictive powers more accurate (and enriches insiders in the process).

Crock, 2/1/26

I mean, obviously. What did he think the “car going in the tunnel” thing was about?