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Wizard of Id, 2/2/26

Thanks to the several faithful readers who pointed out that the Wizard of Id I featured a week ago is reusing the exact same art as a strip from 2015, except the dialogue has been rewritten to be horny instead of bloodthirsty. Let’s hear it for the victory of eros over thanatos? I guess??? Not sure if this one is a repeat too, but I do find the backstory reveal interesting, in that we learn that it was the Wizard’s wife who turned him on to “this,” though it’s not entirely clear what “this” is (football, the TV set, a dimension outside Id’s pseudo-medieval setting, etc.).

Slylock Fox, 2/2/26

Look, I joke a lot about the arbitrary nature of justice in the Forest Kingdom, but years ago I was a juror on an honest to god drug conspiracy case in Baltimore, and there were significantly fewer witnesses than this, so maybe I’ve been overhasty.

Pluggers, 2/2/26

Oh, what’s that, pluggers? You think you’re trapped in a never-ending slog, where each day is exactly like the last and you never make any kind of forward progress? Well, so do the rest of us! You’re not special!

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Wizard of Id, 1/26/26

I guess a running bit in the Wizard of Id now is that the titular wizard is encountering aspects of contemporary life one by one and commenting on them as an outsider, and, look, I’ll allow it if all we get is some mildly corny jokes about emo, but I have to draw the line at “the Wizard sees women wearing much more revealing outfits than he’s used to in his culture and gets horny about it.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/26/26

Oh, man, it’s gonna be Buck, right? June’s going to get Buck, the soap opera comics’ biggest drip, who doesn’t have much going on beyond scouring Etsy for dumb nostalgic bullshit, to “cover” for her in terms of providing Rex with emotional reassurance? This is gonna be great. Rex is going to open his newly healed eyes only to lunge for the nearest scalpel so he can gouge them out and never look Buck’s stupid face again.

Dick Tracy, 1/26/26

Being a one-off ancillary character in Dick Tracy seems like a mixed bag. On the one hand, they get to wear cool outfits and have sexy, drunken adventures! On the other, they tend to stumble upon horribly mangled corpses much more than you or I would.

Hi and Lois, 1/26/26

“Plus Marky Mark is out there drowning somewhere! It’s a win all around!”

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Dustin, 1/12/26

I don’t know that I’ve really commented on the “Dustin (the character)’s second-best friend is an eight-year-old child” aspect of Dustin (the comic strip), but it’s not one I particularly enjoy, mostly because the kid himself is not very interesting as a character. I guess he’s fine when he gives Dustin someone to riff off of, or as fine as any of the other Dustin nobodies, but he doesn’t merit his own individual strips where he’s the focus, and he definitely shouldn’t be doing “I hate Mondays” jokes. That is Garfield territory, Kid Whose Name I Don’t Know And Have Run Out Of Ways To Avoid Mentioning That Fact, and while Garfield’s legal team may be currently distracted, they’re not going to take this kind of thing lying down.

Gil Thorp, 1/12/26

Lest you think that Gil’s ex is motivated by anti-heterosexual sentiment, today’s strip reveals that Coach Gerards is also seething with rage over Gil’s happy relationship. This union is going to roil the Valley Conference into levels of feverish competition that haven’t been seen in decades, to the extent that I suspect that maybe Gil is doing it to boost the athletic department’s budget.

Wizard of Id, 1/12/26

With jokes like “the King has ADHD” and “hey, how about that emo music,” someone is clearly trying to drag the Wizard of Id kicking and screaming into, if not the present, then at least the ’00s. I’m not sure this is a particularly good idea, honestly, and I’d like to think that the setup line is just emerging anonymously from the left side of panel one because all the regular characters refused to deliver it.

Dennis the Menace, 1/12/26

Man, look at Margaret’s face! She does know it, she knows it’s an aspect of her personality that people find off-putting and that’s why she has a hard time making real friends, but she just can’t help it and it’s eating her up inside!