“Isn’t it obvious? Ozob is planning on creating hybrid clown/vampire car technology. When you open the door, infinite vampires pour out and usher in a new age of darkness and despair for the world. A world full of despair is the ultimate bull market in the business of clowning!” –RoofPig, on Patreon

“Interesting choice of quote in the throwaway panel. I’m assuming this is about Toby not carrying the burden of the past (i.e., the horrible conditions her bird escaped from) or worrying about the madness of the future (Ian absolutely losing it when he comes back to an apartment strewn with sunflower shells and bird shit).” –pugfuggly

“If that coffee spout was about six inches lower, the tragedy wouldn’t be that former movie star R2D2 turned to retail, it would be that he turned to sex work.” –Where’s Rocky?

“‘My best friend is leaving!’ As he’s your only friend, you’re technically correct.” –ValdVin

“Sonny has spent the last two weeks trying to keep Toby from seeing the major-for-Santa Royale story about the exotic wildlife on the loose in the news. Hence the steady diet of sitcoms and soap operas. If he stops laughing, the game is up.” –Harmless little bunny

“I’m CRUSHED the artist added ‘Root’ to Dick’s bottle, clearly at the last minute. Dick’s a beer-with-lunch guy, not a $2 bottle soda guy! Christ, next you’ll tell me he voted for Mondale!” –A Grave Mind

“This storyline could go two ways and the suspense is not killing me. Toby could fall deeper into the delusion that Sunny is the lone survivor of his South American species and on arrival in another continent has gained super powers, or the trauma of the truck crash will build up an insufferable ennui in his soul leading to a premature death and funeral that all of Charterstone must attend.” –SabeHombre

“How far off is the panel where a plugger is depicted enjoying his bidet? Really sorry for sharing this thought (and, indeed, for having it).” –Kyle

“Perhaps Ian has quit academe and moved into the lucrative world of parrot smuggling, which would explain his month-long absence at a ‘conference.’ Ever since the crash happened on his watch, he’s been on the run from the cartel who expect to be made whole.” –Charterstone: Dune

“People are criticizing Mary for not understanding that Sunny is just imitating what he sees on television. But me? I commend him for showing more human emotion than any human character in this strip.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“Abner Kadaver is such a good pun name. It’s multifaceted. I’m focusing solely on that to avoid thinking about Blondie and Dagwood’s sex life.” –Austria

“I love how this guy is adopting the language of art criticism to discuss Ozob’s silly car customizations. ‘Ozob’s breakout work, Vampire Car, signaled a shift in approach from the solemn, if covertly ironic, form of automotive menace typified by Stephen King’s Christine, to an overtly cartoonish aesthetic drawing on influences that range from monster truck rallies to The Munsters’ Munster Koach. Critics remain divided as to whether this shift represents camp, or even pandering, versus a clever inversion in which postmodernist technique is recruited into the service of a critique of postmodernism itself.’” –Peanut Gallery

“The eternal recurrence of Crock reruns means that not only did newspapers (note to self: check if there are still newspapers) run this strip today, but also fifteen years ago, without noticing that it was about cannibalism and the joke made no sense. Nobody is watching, cartoonists! Go wild!” –matt w

“I might try this as a motivator in the morning. Just look at myself in the mirror and remind myself of the benefits of being a mammal. ‘One good thing about having a bony endoskeleton is I don’t need to moult as I grow,’ ‘One good thing about having skin is that I don’t need to live in a pool of nutrients,’ ‘One good thing about having external genitalia is that I don’t have to package my sperm into a sharp calcified dart that pierces my skin while I’m simultaneously being pierced by my partner’s own calcified sperm dart,’ etc.” –Schroduck

“I don’t see a can of beer next to Thirsty. I call fake.” –Bob Tice

“Shoe is a purple martin, whose diet consists primarily of bugs. The Perfesser, meanwhile, is an osprey, and although he’s primarily a pescatarian he will hunt his fellow birds if he needs to — for example, to take out the galliforms his boss is threatening to replace him with.” –TheDiva

“When you consider the dating scene in Shoe, those eggs are unfertilized, anyway.” –Hibbleton

“The good news is, birds actually will eat their own eggs to recoup calcium so Shoe is accurate. The bad news is, well, everything I just said.” –Library Seraph

“Since the record sale seems to have held up for five years, it might have been a manifestation of COVID asset mania. No doubt Andy lost a packet on shares in a crypto Pigeoncoin and has been futilely attempting to recoup his investment ever since.” –But What Do I Know?

“Shoe is talking mad shit for someone within boiling hot coffee range.” –ectojazzmage

“Steve, I accidentally ordered too many birdcages. Try to upsell any customer who comes in to buy bird food. Especially if they bring their bird in with them!” –Weaselboy

“Yes, this is a convoluted set-up, one requiring that Ed and Ralph play a game they’ve never shown any interest in at a community center they’ve never been shown attending and the twins to also be at the same community center they’ve never been shown attending and having nothing better to do either there or elsewhere, but all of that doesn’t matter because the punchline just isn’t that good.” –TheDiva

“Maybe the animal people are just hard of hearing. Even though Ma Barker is loudly complaining about the scam clam to Slylock Fox a mere two feet away, people are still lining up to give away their money.” –Guts Dozier

“I know how frustrating that can be. That’s why I switched to ‘Organ Blender’ hollowpoint rounds.” –RogerBW

“New Bird Lady gets all the attention here, but Roz tells a whole story with those bored, sad eyes. This is not the first time she’s met someone who thought they finally killed Shoe. It seems to be a regular occurrence. Now Roz is going to have to help this lady work through her trauma and grief, even though no one in this town tips over 15%.” –Nevin, on Patreon

“I for one hope the Ghost Cat is precisely what their name indicates: the spirit of a normal house cat whose freedom from earthly bonds allows them to achieve hitherto undreamed-of levels of idleness.” –Hergen

“With a lifespan of 50 to 70 years, that parrot will easily outlive Ian, and will probably outlive Toby. And oh, the stories it will have to tell. The boring, tedious stories. Okay, maybe it won’t outlive them thanks to an accident where it flies into a window in a desperate attempt at sweet freedom. –Tabby Lavalamp

“I like the little touches that Chip brings time that outfit, like keeping that tie super loose. He’s not just grandpa, he’s drunk grandpa!” –pugfuggly

“Sincere kudos to the Dennis the Menace artist who kept everything about the art generic 1950s, except for updating the light switch to a touchpad dimmer. A+, way to let us know you’re still in the game, buddy!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“‘Now, when Ozob broke into that auto body shop, did he take anything?’ ‘Well, as you can see from today’s first panel, that’s kind of a gray area!’” –Bob Tice

“We Love Pets is having its annual bone sale! Time to stock up.” –Everything Is Better With Monkeys

“I got it … in normal human speech ‘bald’ often comes out as ‘ball,’ with the d sound buried, as few people really pop that final consonant, and in this context of buying meat near thanksgiving, particularly after the word ‘butter,’ I just assumed he’d actually said ‘butterball.’ The confusion would only arise if he had written his request, but if he actually wrote the word down, you might question his cognitive abilities, or consider his written language might have been affected by a stroke. Anyhow, how many pounds?” –Chance

“Half of Gearhead Gertie strips are ‘The death of Dale Earnhardt was the greatest tragedy in human history’ and the other half are ‘lol fast cars go crash.’ It was only a matter of time before the threads got confusingly crossed.” –Schroduck

“Sarge’s newest recruits are his younger self pulled to the present through the timestream, his evil mirror universe doppelganger, and his illegitimate son.” –ectojazzmage

“Is the county CALLED Nearly, or is this a dig? The Almost State Fair. The Not Quite World’s Fair.” –MKay

“Mary brings a third muffin for Toby’s ‘guest’ but after the big reveal realizes that listening devices alone are not enough. It’s time she installed some cameras in Toby’s apartment.” –Hibbleton

“It’s been obvious for a while that these two aren’t humans exactly, but today provides a little more insight into their biology. So far we can describe them as small oviparous homonids lacking teeth, probably an adaptation to the rocky crags where they evolved, preying in seabird nests.” –pugfuggly

“Round up the kids in detention, we’re taking them to The Museum of Art Puns to suffer.” –nescio

“We are such social animals that anyone deprived of human companionship will slowly go insane, even if the human whose companionship they’re deprived of is Ian Cameron.” –matt w

“Hang him from where, troops? HANG HIM FROM WHERE?” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I had believed until last week that Greg was the guy at the DMV who told you that you were missing a piece of documentation after you stood in line for an hour and that you had to go get it and stand in the line again. But then we learned he’s the guy who tells teenagers they can’t have their licenses because they bumped the curb parking. Why does he even NEED coffee for a day filled with such joy?” –richardf8

“‘The kid is onto me,’ thinks Greg. ‘I just pray he never finds out whose boot it was.’” –Peanut Gallery

“Hootin’ Holler still uses snow and ice to preserve food, as electricity is rare and service is spotty. Lil Sparky just ate a family’s entire vitamin supply for a week, and they will now suffer even worse malnutrition than the average Holler resident.” –Philip

“I’m always fascinated by the crystal ball Shoe strips. All of the characters are bitter cynics, so why do they keep going to crack wise at the local fortune teller? Is this what people resorted to in the days before social media let you mock WitchTok from the comfort of your own couch?” –Schroduck

“Thirsty yearns for the olden times that he’s never experienced but has heard about, when beer was considered ‘liquid bread,’ a way to quickly, easily, and safely hydrate and obtain necessary calories at the same time. This is not comical, this is a tragic tale of a man born three hundred years too late.” –Tom

“What’s that you say? You have ‘evidence’ before you secure an indictment? You say you wait for indictments before executing rough street justice? You say your suspects are not grotesquely deformed, with too on-the-nose names? My, my, my. To each their own, I suppose. [Caressing pistol trigger lovingly] I sure hope he turns out to be a clown, though.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“Which is a euphemism for what really happens. They fuck. Each other. Constantly and interchangeably. This is Hollywood, kid. You’re too young to understand this now, but it won’t be long before curiosity leads you to flip through the supermarket pages of People and the National Enquirer and all will be revealed.” –cheech wizard

“Those corks indicate each of these wines have been opened. Is ‘Clea-ar-ance’ located in the BacqueWash region of Frawnce?” –Virginia

“His doctor has long given up on him. His wife is checking his life insurance policy. He knows his diet is killing him, but he cannot stop. ‘Next time,’ he promises himself, but ‘next time’ will never come. His fate is sealed as the future body at an open casket funeral where a dog man asks his wife ‘who is this for again?’ and the caption is ‘You’re a plugger if you’ve been to so many funerals, you’ve lost track.’” –Old Man Shadow

“The guy totally in shadow with the mysterious, ominous axiom — he’s death, right? The only reason Herb is smiling is that he’s come for Jamaal.” –Lawyerbob

“Oh, right, my bucket list included seeing a sunset. Welp, there it is. Time to die.” –Voshkod