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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/1/25

On the topic of bad viewing angles of cartoon heads, the characters in soap opera strips have more or less normally shaped noggins, but Truck’s facial hair really is quite absurd, as panel two makes very clear. Carefully tailoring your sideburns so that each has a distinct right angle and the two almost but not quite meet at your chin? I guess the “roots” in “roots country” refers to follicles of hair you grow in ever more ostentatious patterns across your face.

Pluggers, 7/1/25

You’re a plugger if your only tattoos aren’t tattoos at all! Pluggers do not like tattoos, or people who have them.

Luann, 7/1/25

Luann is a syndicated newspaper comic strip that has followed its title character from junior high through college. This summer, it will end abruptly after more than 40 years of publication when Luann somehow manages to accidentally shoot herself in the face with a bow and arrow. Congratulations to the whole creative team on a great run!

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The Lockhorns, 6/30/25

You all know that I hold the Lockhorns in a great deal of affection, but I am not blind to the truth, which is that they are squat, gnome-like people whose skulls are — let’s be real — lumpy and misshapen. We allow for this because they are, of course, cartoons, but it’s also true that stylized cartoons of the Lockhorns’ ilk are only meant to be viewed from a limited set of angles: in a very real sense, they do not exist in a complete three-dimensional space like you or me. Leroy and Loretta specifically should not be viewed from what appears to be an in-store security camera pointing down from the ceiling of whatever sad local drug store they’ve stopped by in order to browse the get well cards. This point of view really makes quite clear the aforementioned misshapenness of their skulls, in a way that I don’t think any of us asked for.

Marvin, 6/30/25

Two beings trapped together in a miniature world just big enough for them, yet still participating in an economic system where one must be indebted to the other? This is a grim scenario that no water-themed pun can cover up!

Pluggers, 6/30/25

Before today I would’ve said the bar for “What constitutes a joke or bit of wordplay in Pluggers” was so low that no installment of the strip could possibly fail to clear it, but that was before today, when I was confronted with “Pluggers stop at all the neighborhood kids’ lemonade stands,” accompanied by a drawing of a plugger stopping at a lemonade stand. This maybe could’ve been salvaged by showing that the plugger in question was precariously holding multiple cups to emphasize the scope of his generosity and/or thirst, but real heads know that Rhino-Man absolutely cannot afford to do that.

Mary Worth, 6/30/25

Ha ha, can you imagine being as ignorant of all the twists and turns of Wilbur’s love life as Dr. Jeff? Probably feels great! Sure, Mary’s about to tell him about it in vivid detail, but he can just open up the throttle on his powerboat until the engine is loud enough to drown her out.

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Dustin, 6/26/25

I really love the fact that Ed looks utterly joyless as he prepares to shove that forbidden donut down his donut hole. He doesn’t even want it, really; he’s just eating it to make some kind of point in his long-running battle with his wife that she’s never even going to find out about.

Pluggers, 6/26/25

This plugger, on the other hand, is gazing upon that expired can of beans with a keen expression of mingled trepidation and desire that borders on the erotic. Surely there are some risks worth taking, he thinks. Is botulism really such a terrible way to go out?

Hi and Lois, 6/26/25

Obviously Dot and Ditto did not enjoy Hi’s bedtime story, so I have to assume that the big smiles on their faces indicate that, in the moment just before they slipped off into unconsciousness, they realized that finally they weren’t going to have to listen to any more blather about fucking golf.