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Archive: Phantom

195

Josh goes OFF

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/21/26

OK, I guess I respect the Mother Goose and Grimm entries where the strip remembers that part of its remit is doing riffs on fairytales, and I guess I count the public domain monsters that Universal Studios has been intermittently trying to turn into a “Dark Universe” franchise for more than a decade as being in the same ballpark as fairytale characters, but nothing about this works. Like having Dracula (I mean that could be any vampire, I guess, but you get it) ask this question makes sense superficially but honestly I feel like it raises more questions than it answers. Is he mad about this or is that just his face? Why are they hanging out together in the first place? And his question is legitimate! And it doesn’t get a good answer! And is that just a regular human lady waitress, like does she work at a lunch counter specifically for monsters or does she just have blood on tap for the regulars? And why isn’t Frankenstein’s monster doing the “Me take cup blood!”-type diction? And why does Dracula say “why” when he clearly should be saying “vhy?”

Crankshaft, 5/21/26

Sorry I got so worked up there, but since I’m already worked up, I might as well break my silence on the fact that Crankshaft has descended into endless interviews with transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas.” Normally I’d let this indulgence slide without comment but now they’re showing “Batton’s” characters from his “Three O’Clock High” strip like Harry Dinkle, who has already migrated to the current iteration of Crankshaft! We’re in danger of tearing through the walls of the Funkyverse, and I think the time-travelling janitor who arranged for Summer Moore to save humanity needs to pop through a portal here and execute everyone involved Terminator-style before it’s too late.

The Phantom, 5/21/26

Hey, remember Chatu, the infamous Python, the Phantom’s other big antagonist, the one who isn’t Eric Sahara, the infamous Nomad? Well, Chatu has just been kind of chilling in this cage since 2009 or so but, like the Nomad, it seems like he’s about to re-enter the story. Maybe we’ll get a Nomad/Python teamup that will be strong enough to defeat the Phantom once and for all! Or maybe they’ll just realize that the Ghost Who Walks takes up way too much of their mental energy and they’ll simply go do some low-level crimes that won’t attract his attention and leave him be.

Curtis, 5/21/26

A thing that I really love about Curtis is that it’s a strip that’s not afraid to get a little weird with it. The kids gave their teacher a cake for the last day of school, but whoops, the box is full of rats! Lots and lots of rats! What an amusingly odd scenario.

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He’ll get that meth lab yet, I believe in him

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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.

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Join the Navy, see … well, you’ll see some stuff, no doubt about that

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The Phantom, 5/1/26

Look, I’ll admit it: I’ve taken something of a shine to this sailor in his service whites, who’s mildly bonking the Nomad on his head with a nightstick and has decided that he’s got way too much dignity to say “Ignis Vindicta” aloud so he’s just going to call the dude “Mr. Freaky.” I mean, he’s a guard at Guantanamo Bay, so I’m very much not going to look into his opinions about human rights, but I am enjoying his vibes today.

Andy Capp, 5/1/26

I think it’s very funny that Andy Capp, a guy who’s usually badgering his friends and acquaintances for enough money to buy exactly one beer, has apparently also been doing the same thing at the local bank for who knows how long. I think the fact that he hasn’t been hit with an ASBO banning him from getting closer than 100 meters of the bank entrance says a lot about why the UK isn’t the financial industry behemoth it once was.

Shoe, 5/1/26

When you start in on this one, you think, “Uh oh, are we going to learn about the Shoeniverse’s bird-person BDSM scene?” But then you get to the second panel and realize that this is just a joke that was built backwards from an extremely thin bit of wordplay, which comes as something of a relief. Anyway, this guy only likes being emotionally abused!

Mary Worth, 5/1/26

“Mary Worth thinks loneliness and horniness are the same emotion” feels like it’s the key to unlocking a lot of stuff. Not quite sure of all the implications but I’ll be meditating on it all weekend, that’s for sure!