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Shoe, 2/11/26

Shoe is a comic strip about depressed bird-people that is pretty committed to the gag-a-day format, but it’s actually been doing a continuing story of sorts for the past week or so. The story is about how the Perfesser bought a beautiful classic car that has turned out to be impractical and unsuitable for everyday use, giving him a specific reason to be depressed beyond the strip’s general sense of ennui.

Crock, 2/11/26

Wow, I bet you assumed Crock’s Legionnaires were involved in a rapacious colonial war to build up the glory and wealth of France, but apparently they will sometimes impose harsh punishments on French industrialists who aim to exploit the colonized population in ways that violate the laws of the Métropole! It really makes you think (about how child labor isn’t really a suitable subject for jokes, and execution by firing squad probably isn’t either).

Mary Worth, 2/11/26

JESUS CHRIST JEFF SHUT UP DO NOT ASK HER ABOUT THIS SHE WILL RECOUNT THE WHOLE STORYLINE AT YOU AND WE JUST NOW GOT OUT OF IT I’M BEGGING YOU

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/26

Hey, I have been behind on reporting on this news, but, just as both Rex and little Johnny are recovering from surgery in-strip, Rex Morgan, M.D., writer/artist Terry Beatty has been recovering from heart surgery in real life! His wife has been posting updates on his Facebook page and he seems to be on the road to recovery, but let’s keep him in our thoughts. I assume that, given long lead times, these real and fictional surgeries were not intended to coincide, just like the “Truck has to self-quarantine because he’s come down with a serious respiratory illness” storyline from the spring of 2020 was not intended to be about COVID. Does Beatty have an extremely non-fun version of the Gift of Prophecy?

Meanwhile, speaking of predictions, I’m glad to see I was sort of right when I said June would get Buck to come pick up Rex at the hospital. It’s just that he was busy! Oh, wait, I guess technically she doesn’t say he was busy, just that he was “unavailable.” Can you imagine giving Buck the opportunity to spend time with you and he brushes you off? I would be rethinking some things about my life, I tell you what.

Shoe, 2/7/26

Granted, everyone in Shoe looks extremely depressed, all the time, but that is not someone who is belting out this song in the exuberant manner of the original Bob Seger System recording. That’s a guy who’s basically whispering it to himself, perhaps in a minor key. He doesn’t need the Perfesser cracking wise at him about how bad the food is at this restaurant. He needs some time alone with himself, to ramble and gamble about in his own inner life.

Marvin, 2/7/26

This is probably a joke about how Bitsy has been neutered, but I prefer to think that he’s at long last admitting to himself that, like most characters in this strip, he’s fundamentally unlovable.

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Daddy Daze, 1/30/26

To me, the jury is still out on whether the Daddy Daze baby is actually expressing meaningful language in the form of a series of “ba”s that only the Daddy Daze daddy can understand, or if the Daddy Daze daddy simply maps his current obsessions onto his son’s meaningless babbling. Today’s strip is about one of them morbidly fixating on the idea of staring down an elephant and being trampled to death by it, and frankly I don’t think it really matters which one. These guys are really going through it! Or maybe just one of them is! But either way!

Shoe, 1/30/26

Speaking of guys who are really going through it, I know that Shoe and the Perfesser have worked together so long that they bicker like an old married couple, but “You underestimate me, but my time is coming!” is the sort of thing said between spouses in an old couple whose long marriage is abruptly ended by murder-suicide.

Heathcliff, 1/30/26

Let’s, ahhh, let’s get a little more upbeat, shall we? Look at these fellas, just sitting at the kitchen table with feedbags strapped to their faces, quietly snarfing whatever kibble’s in there. This right here is the cure to the male loneliness epidemic. Not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the Feedbag Friday moment.

Judge Parker, 1/30/26

Thank you Ann, this is what everyone who reads this strip has been trying to say for months