Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 6/11/25

I find this strip genuinely funny, and particularly love the expressions on Hagar and Eddie’s faces in the second panel. Obviously they consider themselves to have landed in a suboptimal situation, babysitting-wise. But could they have prevented this? Maybe, but they’re damned if they can figure out how.

Mary Worth, 6/11/25

To be fair, Dawn, Wilbur didn’t “believe” Willa so much as “walked in on Belle trying to eat her.” I’m sure that if he had actually seen her trying to poison you he … probably would’ve done something about it? Right? Probably? Anyway, I like how they’re both vaguely smiling here. They can joke about all this, now that it’s over, Belle has been safely taken home by her brother, and the two of them are driving away from Charterstone and never coming back because explaining what happened to anyone they know is far too embarrassing a prospect to even consider. Better to make a clean break and start over in a new state with all new identities.

Garfield, 6/11/25

Today, in a very special Garfield, Odie fully grasps the concept of death for the first time. He’s not a fan!

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 5/19/25

I really appreciate how chill Hagar is about his own prosecution here. Based on the wigs, he’s probably being tried for his crimes in England, which was particularly powerless to stop Viking raids during this period, so presumably he’s sticking around out of curiosity to see what the verdict will be before his warrior band overwhelms the inadequate local Saxon levies and frees him by killing everyone in the courtroom.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/25

Snuffy Smith has been doing a storyline where Barney Google has reappeared and is practicing law with no more legal training than his big city smarts, and apparently he’s winning case after case. This just goes to show the importance of an adversarial legal system: after decades of townsfolk being forced to appear in court without any legal representation, the town’s law enforcement community has lost all ability to make even the basic arguments necessary to convict obvious lawbreakers like Snuffy Smith.

Hi and Lois, 5/19/25

Look at the big smiles on Hi and Lois’s faces! They’re positively giddy at the prospect of watching 2024’s feel-good Oscar fare like Anora and The Brutalist. C’mon, Chip, join in on the fun!

Post Content

Archie, 4/16/25

I can’t even keep track anymore of when these Archie reruns originated, and whether the coloring actually dates from that era or was added in years or decades later. All I know is that Mr. Weatherbee with his black shirt and bright red tie looks like he’s the keyboardist from some new wave band that had a cult following in clubs in the Lower East Side in the late ’70s and early ’80s before having an unexpected MTV hit with a semi-novelty song in 1984, and then their label made them do a big national tour and they wanted to play all the songs they’d written and that their real fans loved but all the dumb MTV teens who came to their shows just wanted them to play their big hit, which they had kind of grown to loathe at that point, and eventually the keyboardist snapped and started attacking the MTV teens with hammers.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/16/25

Imagine this scenario: a Viking band descends on a ducal castle somewhere on the coast of Normandy or the Low Countries. The Duke’s retinue is defeated in combat, his wealth plundered, his family slain. His army has been decimated, meaning he can no longer enforce his rule on the local peasants, so his few remaining soldiers drift away, demoralized and unpaid, leaving him alone in his ruined castle, burning for revenge. Eventually he abandons his fief altogether and buys passage with what little wealth he has left on a boat heading to the savage northern lands. Traveling alone with just his sword, he hunts down the chieftain whose attack upended his whole privileged life, determined to kill him and reclaim whatever goods he can, only to eventually discover him living in a modest hut and holding what remains of the duke’s treasure in contempt. Pretty grim stuff! I never saw The Northman, but I’m going to pretend this is what it was about.