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Crock, 11/9/25

Now, obviously part of the whole deal of Crock is that it takes what’s objectively a pretty grim situation — a remote outpost of an army engaged in a grinding colonial war that we know with the hindsight of history that they’re going to lose — and uses it as a setting for a mostly light-hearted and zany series of comical vignettes. Still, sometimes the grim seeps through more than others, and you gotta admit that “angry troops attempt to lynch their commanding officer, only for him to trick them into falling to their deaths in turn, leaving him alone to wander the desert” is one of those times.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/9/25

Now, you may wonder why Hagar, who seems well aware that his years as a notorious pillager have created a very lucrative brand, doesn’t simply cut out the middleman: instead of letting the Duke of York profit by association and then stealing said profits, why doesn’t Hagar simply charge visitors to his own village, go on a highly paid speaking tour, and publish Horrible, and Profitable: What Today’s Leaders Can Learn From My Years Of Terror Around The North Sea Littoral, which will be bought by CEOs at airport bookstores everywhere and handed over to their assistants to summarize? But Hagar is savvy enough to understand that his brand wouldn’t survive any such attempt to “go legit,” so any profit he’d gain from such a move would be fleeting. Plus he can’t read, so the book thing probably hasn’t even occurred to him.

Mary Worth, 11/9/25

No offense to David Attenborough, but I’ve never really cared for birds. Like, I guess I don’t dislike them, and of course they’re beautiful to look at, but I’ve always found them off-putting up close — they just seem clearly further away from us, evolution-wise, than cats and dogs, and looking into their eyes they always feel kind of alien to me. The fact that they’re actually quite intelligent just adds to my unease. So, no shade on the many fine people who are bird lovers out there, but I’m just saying that for me personally, if a parrot I had encountered outside had figured out where I lived and begun rapping on the windows demanding to be let in, I would not be quite as enthusiastic about it as Toby is here.

Hi and Lois, 11/9/25

I really love Hi’s quick three-panel transition from triumph to anxiety to crushing depression. Honestly, the final panel with the “punchline” is completely unnecessary and even detracts from things a little bit.

Crankshaft, 11/9/25

The name of this painting is of course a Crankshaft-level bit of awful wordplay, which is why it’s great that he looks so horrified. “Oh god, I talk like this, don’t I? Why haven’t they murdered me in my sleep?”

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Hagar the Horrible, 9/30/25

Hagar is the protagonist of this strip, so we usually see things from his perspective, and I have to admit I never really tried to figure out what his crew might think of him. Indeed, his warriors do most of the fighting and dying in their various raids, but Hagar (perhaps already relatively well-off, as minor gentry?) gets the lion’s share of the booty and uses it to take his wife and favorite lieutenant to white tablecloth restaurants while they settle for scraps. Anyway, the way the guy in the back answers Hagar’s question implies that he’s contemplating the choice between asking Hagar for more money and spending that money on fancy food, or skipping several steps and simply eating Hagar directly.

Beetle Bailey, 9/30/25

I guess the point of this strip is that the U.S. Army isn’t just an office job, but rather a calling, and even the least of our brave warfighters might find themselves deployed at a moment’s notice wherever necessary to protect America’s people and interests. Unfortunately, by taking a phone call from his mother, Beetle has violated every opsec rule and revealed the location of his unit to the enemy, and will be killed by a drone-launched missile in approximately seven to nine minutes.

Pluggers, 9/30/25

I’m genuinely digging this plugger’s facial expression here. It’s not “Ah, another way in which my body is failing as I slowly decline towards death,” as you might expect. No, it’s sharp and genuine alarm. “Tennis elbow? But … I don’t even play tennis. Who’s been playing tennis with my elbow?”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/30/25

Mother Goose and Grimm: this is clearly a single-panel joke. You are 100% allowed to do single-panel jokes! You do them all the time! It’s also a very bad joke, but if you kept the proper structure, it would at least take up less of our time and cognitive energy.

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Hagar the Horrible, 9/5/25

Real Hagar heads know that Hagar is illiterate, and while Lucky Eddie also was at one point, he later learned to read and write. I suppose it’s possible that he was inspired to learn languages beyond his native Norse — Greek, for instance, which would be useful for reading the scriptures of the new religion from the south, and which he could pick up from Swedish kinsmen who served in the Varangian Guard in Constantinople. This knowledge may have led him to see that streak of light in the sky and dub it asteroeidēs, or “star-like.” Unfortunately, 18th century astronomer William Herschel will ultimately get the credit for coining the term, because the only person to hear Eddie say it was Hagar, and he said it right before they were both vaporized.

Six Chix, 9/5/25

OK, fine, I’ve said my piece about how most comics really lay too hard on the relationship between dogs and fire hydrants, but to their credit, at least they know what that relationship is (it’s pissing). Today’s Six Chix, on the other hand … have they watched Doctor Who? I guess you don’t draw this detailed a version of the 11th Doctor in dog form, and of his TARDIS in fire hydrant form, without having watched some Doctor Who. I myself have watched quite a bit of Doctor Who, and before today I would’ve said that the Doctor did not as a rule piss on his TARDIS, but now I admit I’m starting to doubt myself.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/5/25

Really loving Cody’s facial expression in the last panel here. “Hey, man, you can say that, but I know I was just kind of pushing on his chest imitating what I’ve seen on TV, probably inaccurately. The paramedics saved him, it’s OK to say so. No need to be condescending.”

Mary Worth, 9/5/25

“I learned that John Singer Sargent was part of a cosmopolitan milieu, traveling between the great world capitals and painting society’s elite! I want a comparable experience, which is why I want to go with this old lady to her ghastly mid-century condo complex in exurban Southern California for a week.”