Post Content

Dustin, 4/12/26

To misquote Mystery Science Theater 3000, you should never reference a good comic in your shitty comic, and say what you will about Garfield but it’s a relentlessly efficient machine for amusing 8-year-olds, whereas Dustin has never amused anyone ever. Today’s strip makes it clear that Dustin requires three separate characters to achieve what Garfield does with one. This is not something you want to draw attention to!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/12/26

I don’t like this one because Ma Goose’s uninhabited shirt in the mirror looks exactly the same in both panels, and that makes it clear that she’s turned her head 180 degrees without any other part of her body moving. It’s uncanny. Is that something birds can do in real life? I don’t really care, honestly, they don’t as a rule wear shirts in real life so I don’t think that’s actually relevant.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/12/26

Oh, wow, this is actually a good bait and switch: we thought Mae Mae’s cover was going to be blown by the suspicious mustachio’d non-Mud customer at the diner, when in fact her cover’s going to be blown by Mud, because he absolutely cannot keep a secret or even have a thought without immediately verbalizing it. Not sure if he’s relapsing or if the Mirakle Method simply didn’t cover this situation, but either way, it’s more than Mae Mae’s feet that are in danger!

Hi and Lois, 4/12/26

I guess in theory I’m all for Hi and Lois updating itself for modern suburban life, but I gotta say “the Flagstons and Thurstons take their cuck stuff to the golf course” is a little bit more than I can handle.

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/26

Yeah, it is a good thing they aren’t playing for money! Imagine if the Smifs had learned that Sukey, a being that they have long treated as a beast and a possession that does manual labor at their bidding, were intelligent enough to understand the concept of the exchange value of currency — and, moreover, had somehow already acquired possession of enough of it to wager. The implications would be truly horrific.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/4/26

After some reflection, I’m OK with an entire Mother Goose and Grimm strip that consists of a glimpse into the internal monologue of a character we’ve never seen before as he dances with Mother Goose. What’s unsettling me is that he’s a human and none of said monologue includes reflection on the fact that he’s dancing with a human-sized bird. Do you think he already mentally covered that ground before we got here? Do you think he has a plan for when Ma Goose’s person-sized bird boyfriend shows up, and tries to peck him to death or swat at him with his powerful wings?

Mary Worth, 3/4/26

Ah, man, I guess it’s time to start the “blame game” for why our boy Harvey has gotten himself catfished. I think we can all agree that it’s probably a woman’s fault, and “Trixie”’s puppeteer isn’t even female, so I guess the problem is … Harvey’s daughter, for living a fun go-go single life in fast-paced Goleta and not spending her every waking moment monitoring his screen time? Enh, that’ll do.

Post Content

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/15/26

You’d think I’d be happy to see a strip that eschews “someone wants to defy the laws of nature and have sex with a half-fish being” for “someone wants to obey the laws of nature and eat a half-fish being,” but sorry, I just don’t find it likely. Why would Atilla become fish-mad in the (literal) face of a being who is, in terms of the bits you usually interact with, mostly human, and yet ignore Ma Goose, who is 100% bird, albeit an anthropomorphized one? And sure, in real life a cat is far too small and a goose far too ornery for that conflict to go well for the cat, but these characters are roughly the same size so the power dynamic is different. You can make your silly fantasy comic setting increasingly convoluted and I will fight it every step of the way!

Luann, 2/15/26

Meanwhile, in Luann, everyone is fully human, yet nobody is acting like a normal human being. “I’m going to give my husband a gift card to a lingerie shop for Valentine’s Day, in the expectation that he will immediately become horny, rush off to purchase some erotic underwear for me, and then come back so I can put it on and then we can have sex. The ideal time to initiate this process? When our college-age daughter is standing inches away from us. She’ll be impressed!”

Dustin, 2/15/26

The thing about Dustin’s mom is that she exists in a reality where the comic strip Dustin is not in the newspaper. Unlike her, we unfortunately will read through the day’s news, feeling terror, anger, jealousy, and encroaching old age in turn, only to get to the comics section, encounter Dustin, and feel mingled contempt and disgust.