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Archive: Hi and Lois

131

Sad lady eats sad muffin

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/26

There’s a whole social media trend of young people posting images of food service on airlines in the days of yore accompanied by captions like “RETVRN” or “THIS IS WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU,” and I hate to point out that these are mostly (1) ads for (2) first class service in an age when (3) even coach class was much more expensive than it is today, accounting for inflation. It seems that this kind of rhetoric has filtered down to the young people of Hootin’ Holler who are (both literally and, in terms of their ability to afford air travel, figuratively) miles away from the nearest airport, so I’m here to tell them: you still get snacks! They’re still handing out little bags of pretzels or whatever. Maybe not on Frontier or Spirit, but Spirit went out of business, so maybe handing out snacks is here to stay. Keep hope alive!

Dick Tracy, 11/10/26

Dick and his partner standing at crazy dutch angles relative to everyone else, somehow, while odd shadows falling from no obvious light source make everything very dramatic? Mysterious femme fatale emerging from an incongruous corner doorway? I do not regret to inform you that Dick Tracy has, to use a technical term, gone “full-on German Expressionist.”

Hi and Lois, 11/10/26

Wow, Thirsty gets a new pillow every year? I’m gonna say it: that seems like it’s pretty often. More often than I get one, for sure. Seems like something you’d only do for someone who’s doing horrible stuff to/on/near his pillows, and now I wanna know what.

Mary Worth, 11/10/26

“It’s because I keep spreading vicious false rumors about people and it alienates everyone! Uh, I mean, about other people, people not in this room, that’s it.”

142

Good faces

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Marvin, 11/5/26

The facial expressions in the second panel here are bone-chillingly perfect for the vibe of this strip. Marvin’s dad has a face that says “I want to watch football but I’m going to do the absolute bare minimum to care for my toddler son, and also probably a lot of uptight people are going to think that I’m not even doing the bare minimum,” and Marvin has a face that says “Oh no! I’m going to be stewing in my own poop, for extended periods of time!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/26

Speaking of good facial expressions, I appreciate Rudy’s here. Like, I guess I’m not excited to look at the face of an ostrich in genuine distress because his head and neck are covered in ants, but if I have to, I want to see it done well, and they really nailed it here.

Hi and Lois, 11/5/26

I don’t think Hi and Lois should do strips where little kids talk about dead dogs! I think that’s a little grim, even for the current no-punchline iteration of the strip!

Pluggers, 11/5/26

You’re a plugger if you’re suffering all the time and you want everyone to know it.

133

Your boring-ass house is not where in the world

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Hi and Lois, 10/25/26

Given how much time I spent parsing Hi’s fantasy self-image as a young Major Leaguer a few weeks ago, I’m kind of tickled by his vision of his real childhood, where he looks exactly like he does now, same haircut and everything, except smaller, and his dad looks exactly like he does now except with a mustache. Speaking of Hi’s dad, it’s kind of weird that Hi and Lois are probably in their early 40s at the oldest and they never seem to visit or be visited by their parents, right? I guess spending fall weekends cheerfully breathing in a toxic mix of fine particulate matter and carcinogenic chemicals might have something to do with it.

Heathcliff, 10/25/26

Not to be a downer about it, but a big bone-in ham like that is basically a corpse, right? Or at least a sizable chunk of one? So I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s inhabited by a vengeful ghost of some kind, though the fact that it’s haunted by three of them implies that we know a lot less about matters of the spirit than we may think.

Mary Worth, 10/25/26

Lot going on here, but the panel I’m really hung up on is “People gossip about things they don’t comprehend.” I mean, I buy that most people don’t comprehend why Toby and Ian are together. That’s because they don’t know them well enough to get a sense of the various personality problems that have significantly limited both of their romantic prospects.

Panel from Dick Tracy, 10/25/26

Oh, come on, Crimestoppers Textbook! Carmen Sandiego and her coconspirators at V.I.L.E. have their sights set on stealing historic treasures and natural monuments. They have no time for petty door-to-door-salesperson scams!