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Archive: Luann

168

Jamaal’s actually working, someone has to while Herb ruminates endlessly

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Luann, 4/2/26

“Oh my gosh,” you’re probably thinking. “Is Luann, the wildly ribald but perversely sexless comic strip about college students, implying that Les and Tara had sex?” No, dummy. She just came over to use and critique Les and Gunther’s bathroom. Remember, young men and women who are attracted to each other do bathroom–adjacent stuff all the time in this comic. It’s what they have instead of sex, I think!

Mary Worth, 4/2/26

“People have limits on which illusions they can accept,” says Toby, steadfastly refusing to turn around and see the pair of parrots eating out of a giant salad bowl on her counter. She needs to believe that this isn’t her life now! That’s the illusion she chooses to accept.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/2/26

Actually, Herb, making a mountain out of a molehill would take a great deal of dirt indeed, as the two are wildly divergent in size. That’s what gives the expression its meaning!

145

Cranky Wednesday

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Hi and Lois, 3/18/26

Look, we’re all adults here. Well, maybe some of you are weird kids with grown-up taste in ironic internet websites, I don’t know, but my point is, let’s ignore Trixie’s insipid heliocentric rambling and turn our eyes to the fun little domestic drama in panel one. Check out how beaten down and defeated Hi looks; that’s a man who has passive-aggressively talked about high energy bills for weeks even as time slips further and further into air conditioning season; and rather than be gracious after he’s given in, Lois is doing a little pantomime of concern: “Oh, but can we afford it, Hi? Will we need to dip into the children’s college fund, in order to keep the temperature in here below 80 degrees?” My own natural thrift puts me tentatively on Hi’s side here, but they could be taking other steps, like following Trixie’s lead and pricing solar panels, or at least taking off their sweaters.

Judge Parker, 3/18/26

One of my least favorite little narrative devices is when some character makes a daring and self-destructive move in order to achieve some goal, and then comes out on top against all odds, but when he does, announces that he understands he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. This happens more often than you’d think, and it’s especially annoying in cases like this, when Randy is like “I’m a bad person! I’ve suffered nothing for my choices and actually had a pretty cool time getting broken out of prison by my hot, murderous wife, but I just want to apologize for my wrongs! Probably my daughter doesn’t love me anymore, right? Whatever, she’s someone else’s problem now, which, uh, I again acknowledge I should feel bad about.”

Luann, 3/18/26

A thing about the comic strip Luann is that sometimes you’ll get a whole week’s worth of strips where one character just passive-aggressively talks shit about another character within earshot of them. And the shit-talker is the one you’re supposed to be sympathetic towards. It’s wild stuff!

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In these times

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Luann, 3/3/26

Look, man, I get that comic strip time is in some ways just an insurmountable problem for strips where the characters don’t really age, but the way you get around this problem is by just kind of ignoring it and not by having your character mention the impact that an important historical event that happened 25 years ago had on their career journey. Is Brad in his mid 40s now? Is Luann a period piece that takes place sometime before 2012 or so? Does Luann take place in an alternate universe where 9/11 happened in, like, 2019? Those are the three options, and you brought this on yourself by being specific, Luann.

Mary Worth, 3/3/26

“That’s just the way of the world these days! No doubt she’s spending her time convincing a much older man that she’s his girlfriend and getting him to send her intermittent Venmo payments. That’s the 21st century for you!”

Pluggers, 3/3/26

BIG NEWS: Pluggers have heard about ChatGPT and they think it’s for … finding mayonnaise? We might have to consider shutting down human society and technological advances entirely until we can figure out what’s going on.