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Gil Thorp, 3/28/24

The Milford Mudlarks: the team whose players trust one another so much that they just keep passing the ball back and forth, indefinitely. Is this their key to victory? Well, they never shoot, so they never score, so no, it isn’t. But the trust! Think about the trust!

Judge Parker, 3/28/24

I’ve been commenting on Judge Parker’s April for nearly two decades, and I guess thanks to the magic of comic book time she’s probably a Millennial at this point, right? As evidenced by her steadfast refusal to answer her phone? We can tell she’s not a Zoomer because she’s at least contemplating listening to any potential voicemail the caller might leave. Anyway, her daughter, a representative of Generation … Alpha? I guess this is what we’re calling them? As a placeholder, maybe? … demonstrates that each generation reacts against the excesses of their parents. When she’s old enough to have her own phone, she’s going to answer it, by God.

Mary Worth, 3/28/24

Dawn is — and I mean this in the kindest possible way — a lot. So I can’t even imagine what her mother, who apparently cut her out of her life for years, is going to think when she shows up and says “Good news, mom! I dropped out of college so I can spend the next year focusing on nothing but the mother-daughter time I crave!” I mean, I can imagine what she’s going to think, actually, which is why I remain pretty excited about this storyline.

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Alice, 3/18/24

Happy Monday, everybody! I’ve decided to add a few more strips into my repertoire, and here’s Alice. Here it is! I would describe this art as being extremely deranged in a 1990s-specific way, and as a Gen Xer who used to read alt-weeklies when those were a thing, I’m delighted to see it. What the fuck is going on, exactly? Can the children see the aliens? Does “Aunty” (the titular Alice, perhaps?) know this is a terrifying spacecraft and is trying to protect the children from that awful knowledge, or does she genuinely think what’s clearly a solid object is “just a cloud”? Are the ends of the spaceship transparent, allowing anyone to see inside, or is this like a cutaway drawing for the benefit of us readers, even though the exterior of the craft appears opaque to the characters? Why is one of the children not saying “Look?” Does she figure the other two are already doing it so why bother? Anyway, this is great, looking forward to more of it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/18/24

Most Barney Google and Snuffy Smith Present … Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky strips consist of absolutely terrible horse-related wordplay, so I’m actually kind of glad today’s is just about horse riding, and what happens when that goes wrong (you fall off and terribly injure yourself).

Judge Parker, 3/18/24

Ahh, it’s a classic Judge Parker time skip! I love the bold font in panel two here, which indicates that Alan is yelling. I certainly hope he’s been yelling for the past two months!

Beetle Bailey, 3/18/24

Big news, everyone! Beetle and Plato have been taken prisoner by the enemy. Guess this strip will have to go on without them until they’re released, after we sign a peace treaty with whoever it is we’re at war with.

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Dick Tracy, 3/11/24

OK, fine, after my uninformed joking yesterday, I am back to reading the comics so you don’t have to and can inform you that (a) these strips are a flashback and (b) these two “dumb housecleaners” are actually retired FBI agents/Little Orphan Annie’s biological parents (you can tell by the lack of pupils, I guess?), who are somehow involved in thwarting the attempt to kidnap Oliver Warbacks. This is exactly what I don’t like about these kinds of retcons, honestly: now we have to believe that Warbucks and Annie were somehow tied together before she was even born — that’s her in utero there in panel two and three — when there was already a perfectly good origin story to their relationship (Warbucks bought her from a crooked orphanage to burnish his public image so he could keep selling defective artillery shells to that commie FDR).

Judge Parker, 3/11/24

Judge Parker artist Mike Manley is having health issues, and I have no insider information beyond that, but even though his name is on the strip a series of guest artists have filled in for him intermittently over the past few months. Today is the first showing from Gil Thorp’s Rod Whigham — I recognize those meaty hands and shocked eyelines anywhere. (This feels a bit like an echo of when then-Apartment 3-G artist Frank Bolle briefly filled in on Gil Thorp back in 2008.) Get well soon, Mike, but until then Rod’s going to be guiding us through a storyline where I assume the Spencer-Driver clan puts aside their differences and closes ranks to prevent Ann, last seen having a heated argument with this guy, from going away for murder.

Family Circus, 3/11/24

Aw, look how happy Jeffy looks here! He’s very sure he was born a whole person and isn’t an eldritch abomination assembeled out of various parts, and we should let him continue to hold that impression, even though it isn’t true.

Slylock Fox, 3/11/24

Look, the newspaper comics need all the help they can get, so its actually totally fine when Slylock Fox decides to cash in on all that SLICK SMITTY NUDE SLICK SMITTY GETTING OUT OF SHOWER SLICK SMITY DRIPPING WET search traffic.