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Mark Trail, 6/9/26

The “Mark’s dad is getting romance-scammed” Mark Trail storyline has had some pleasing twists and turns: we learned Mark “Happy” Trail Sr. was sending money to a gorilla sanctuary due to the entreaties of young “Dreama,” who was hitting him up for money at said sanctuary where she claimed to work, but then it turned out that her pics were photoshopped/AI-enhanced images of Gail, the owner (?) of the sanctuary, and it turned out that Happy had also been sending AI-enyouthened pics of himself to Dreama, so it seemed like an embarrassing incident that would end with two older nature lovers finding love with each other. But today we learn that, nope, Gail is in fact evil, and has mostly been outsourcing all this catfishing to her dweeb-ass son anyway. You can tell she’s evil because she lets gorillas just wander aimlessly around the sanctuary parking lot, without any enrichment toys!

Crankshaft, 6/9/26

Oh, did you think that those pictures Eugene brought over were going to result in some emotionally affective revelations? No, sorry, we’re just learning about how the current Funkyverse cast has in fact been entangled with one another for multiple generations, in exactly the sort of plot development that everyone loved when Star Wars kept doing it. I like how the strip’s namesake has kind of wandered over from whatever it was he was doing to take in all this information. Maybe he’ll learn he’s Les Moore’s uncle or something! You never know!

Dennis the Menace, 6/9/26

Love the look of absolute delight on this woman’s face. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer at the National Potato Council and she’s here to confirm the rumors: the chosen one has arrived.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/9/26

Can you imagine a dog — a dog, mind you — that knows what lattes are and enjoys drinking them, but has never heard of pilates? Well, you don’t have to: that’s the joke in today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, printed in newspapers everywhere!

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Judge Parker, 5/27/26

The humble diner now appears to be the soap opera strips’ go-to employer for those seeking to abandon a hectic, go-go lifestyle and reconnect with good, honest work — a group that includes everyone from former movie stars disillusioned with the Hollywood grind to scammers in search of redemption. Anyway, the proprietor of this establishment was understandably somewhat hesitant to hire a literal con artist, but I predict he will quickly accede to Alan’s request so he doesn’t have to hear any more details of Parker family emotional drama.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/27/26

Not that I expect Helga to be a big expert in macroeconomics or fiscal and monetary policy, but she has only her husband and his fellow warrior/traders to blame for this! Looted silver and gold coins from England and the Carolingian Empire, along with revenue from increased trade with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds via the Russian river networks, has had a naturally inflationary effect. Sadly, Viking society isn’t advanced enough to make use of this influx of wealth by increasing productivity, so instead they’ll just face sharply rising prices for the near future.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/27/26

Look, it’s one thing for Mother Goose and Grimm to try to pass off yet another widely known street joke as a punchline in a newspaper comic — I think we’ve all come to accept that at this point. What bothers me is that it’s trying to pass off yet another widely known street joke about a retail chain that stopped operation more than three years ago. Sure, it’s true that the website formerly known as Overstock.com acquired Bed, Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property and has subsequently been wearing the deceased brand’s skin, but you know that if Mother Goose had bought that stuff via this newfangled “online shopping” process, that would’ve been the heart of the joke.

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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.