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Zits, 8/25/26

As I recently noted, Zits is only running new strips on Sundays now, with the dailies being reruns from its deep library, and I assume that this one came from those heady days in the early ’10s when you could get away with simply saying “bacon” and expecting people to accept it as a punchline, or indeed as a self-contained joke. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see some truly disturbing aspects of this trend that we might have missed during the pro-bacon frenzy of the times; in this case, we can see that Jeremy, no doubt driven by the bacon-mania running rampant in his peer group, has simply grabbed bacon right out of a still-smoldering pan sitting on a red-hot stovetop burner, which means that surely the bacon fat is burning him severely, and the smell of the cooked bacon and the lad’s own sizzling flesh must be mingling horribly in the kitchen air.

Mary Worth, 8/25/26

If you think panel two of Jeff lounging casually against the side of a sports car with his sleeves rolled up looks familiar, that’s because it’s identical to one that ran during a different phone call with Mary back in February. I think we can assume, then, that this is a reliable fantasy sequence that Mary keeps stashed away in her mind palace for her to enjoy instead of trying to accurately visualize whatever presumably less sexy stuff Jeff is doing in real life right now. In that context, the fantasy car’s hood, popped open and clearly too large to fit properly into a closed position, takes on an obvious significance.

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Blondie, 7/12/26

Back in early 2024, Dithers had to regretfully report that DithersCo wasn’t using AI tools to boost productivity, with his employees mostly using their computers to play dumb and possibly scammy games on Facebook. In the subsequent months, it appears that the company has adopted AI — but, sadly, primarily as an automated toady for the boss, who has become the latest CEO to succumb to AI psychosis. Ironically, Dagwood and his coworkers are immune, since they refuse to engage with their devices on any level deeper than “Renegade-Rhino-Rummy.”

Zits, 7/12/26

I hadn’t mentioned it here, but earlier this year Zits went into reruns on weekdays and is now only doing new strips on Sundays. But that doesn’t mean the strip is shying away from storylines relevant to today’s teens, including real dark ones like “Jeremy gets dumped for a computer.”

Mary Worth, 7/12/26

Man, I didn’t think you could beat “Wilbur Weston thinks I’m a druggie loser so I might as well do drugs” for sheer patheticness, but then today Mary Worth hit us with “I’m going to flush these perfectly good drugs that probably cost me a week’s worth of pay from my minimum wage job down the toilet so I can live up to the version of me that Dawn Weston believes in,” respect. It’s amazing to think about how much more embarrassing this is than if he had just put “local bald guy thinks im losser should i do drugs yes or no” into ChatGPT or Yahoo! Answers or whatever.

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Hi and Lois, 12/8/25

Let’s forget for a moment the incomprehensible/not funny punchline of this one and try to understand the lead-up to it. Why is Chip telling his father, who is watching exactly the same movie that he is, that there’s a parental warning on it? Shouldn’t Hi be just as capable of reading it as Chip is? Is it written in some format that only teens can read, like, uh, Minecraft font? Is there a Minecraft font? Is Minecraft still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025?

Zits, 12/8/25

Honestly, while I’m fine with the Zits parents (who were my boomer parents’ age when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but becoming Gen Xers, I’m a little unsettled by Jeremy (who was just a few years younger than me when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but being into things that contemporary teens are into, like Minecraft. I mean, Minecraft is still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025, right? “Watching” Minecraft? Surely the syndicated newspaper comic strip Zits wouldn’t steer me wrong about teens!

Gil Thorp, 12/8/25

In 1966, Gay Talese transformed the art of magazine writing with “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a profile that turned Sinatra’s refusal to give an interview into a central part of its structure. Will Gil Thorp do the same for the newspaper comics with “Gil Thorp Has A Serious Respiratory Illness Of Some Kind”? I mean, maybe? Or maybe Gil will just sweat a lot, who knows.

B.C., 12/8/25

The characters in B.C. live with a strange mix of stone age technology and modern conveniences and attitudes. This is not a criticism! I get that this is, in fact, the central joke of the strip! However, today’s installment does make me wonder if one of the modern things they have access to is the rabies vaccine. I worry!