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!
