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Heathcliff, 6/11/26

It’s true that California has higher gas prices than the rest of the country, but I guarantee that every time you’ve seen a viral picture on social media of a station with shockingly high gas prices with a caption of “OMG Cali gas is crazy,” it’s one of two specific stations in Los Angeles where the prices are $2 or even $3 higher than they are everywhere else in the city for various odd reasons. One of these is in Chinatown, close to where I used to live, and once I was walking past it and saw a dark purple Bentley and there was something odd about it and I said to myself, “Wait, is that thing covered in velour?” so I went up to touch it and … reader, it was, or at least a thin layer of some vaguely fuzzy-feeling velour-like substance. No idea what the owner did when it rained, but I am 100% sure that that’s what’s going on with Heathcliff’s car.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/11/26

Look, I know that being hilariously nonspecific is one of Herb and Jamaal’s beloved running bits, but … Rev. Croom is clearly talking about hell, and all the people who are going there. He’s a Christian clergyman, he believes in hell and that’s what he’s talking about! Don’t give us this “inferno abyss” business, I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to say “hell” in the newspaper these days.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/11/26

It honestly bothers me so much that Ma Goose is delivering this extremely tepid joke to an unknown interlocutor over the phone. There are multiple named characters in this strip that she lives with that she could’ve bounced this off of! Then we could’ve seen their reaction! You know, because the comics are … a visual medium?

Crankshaft, 6/11/26

Like, for instance, it’s important that we can see Harry Dinkle’s face so we know how completely unenthusiastic he is about all this. If you just had the dialogue, you might think he was excited to go on a little adventure, rummage through his old memories, and help out his friends, but in fact he doesn’t look like he’s feeling much of anything at all. “Didn’t the strip I was in end?” he’s thinking. “Why am I in this one? Why am I here? Why can’t I die?”

Rhymes With Orange, 6/11/26

Folks, do you ever look up in the sky at clouds and wonder if they get horny? Well, they do … in the whimsical world of the comics.

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Gil Thorp, 6/8/26

Isis, a Mudlark student-athlete, was taken by ICE earlier this year, and she’s now being released after much protest by fellow students, and this big local news story with national implications is being covered by … local podcaster Marty Moon, using the same iPhone camera streaming setup he uses to comment on high school golf? Honestly, I’ve never been more concerned about the health of the Milford media ecosystem.

Beetle Bailey, 6/8/26

I have to admit that I’m not really sure what the “joke” here is supposed to be, so I’m choosing to believe that Beetle wasn’t sure whether to dig a foxhole as he learned to do as part of his military training or to dig a hole that would be appealing to an actual fox, so he tried to split the difference and has satisfied nobody.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/8/26

Mae Mae is wiped out by her first two mornings of honest work in years, and needs to go take a nap before dinner. Mud is amorously moved by her choice to take self-care in this manner, and honestly it’s the most romantic thing I’ve seen in the comics pages in years.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/8/26

For one brief, terrifying moment, I was convinced that Herb and Jamaal was going to introduce the concept of polyamory to its audience via one of its child characters. But, thankfully, it was just setting up a joke that’s been circulating in print and online for nearly 40 years instead, which is frankly much more on brand.

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The Phantom, 5/4/26

President Goranda is, according to the extremely detailed Phantom wiki I just discovered, the leader of Ivory Lana, the country that was the setting of the storyline that just wrapped up, and, look, I get that it’s fun to be like, “Wow! There’s our friend! He’s on TV!” but if your friend is literally a president, he’s going to be on the news a fair amount. That’s like one of a president’s main jobs! So no need to get all worked up about it, is what I’m saying.

Mary Worth, 5/4/26

Oh hell yes it’s a Tommy storyline, everybody! A storyline where Tommy is sad! I don’t think we have to ask why he’s sad — the main driver of negative emotions in the Mary Worth universe is romantic failure, so I assume his onion ring fiancee just dumped him. The more fun question is how he’ll react. Will he turn to weed? Pills? Crack cocaine?
Our lord and savior Jesus Christ? I am very excited to find out!

Herb and Jamaal, 5/4/26

If you’re wondering “Which comics did a ‘May The Fourth Be With You’ joke today,” one of the answers is obviously that the dork-ass nerds over at Intelligent Life did it, which I’m not even going to bother showing you because you could’ve guessed that in advance. But if you’re wondering “Which comics did a ‘May The Fourth Be With You’ joke today and somehow managed to completely fuck up the phrasing in baffling ways,” then the possibly also not surprising answer is Herb and Jamaal, apparently.

Beetle Bailey, 5/4/26

OK, fine, newspaper comics are fundamentally an art form by and for old people at this point, but I still think that doing a strip whose punchline is “Everyone younger than 45 is literally an alien to me” is a little on the nose.