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Pluggers, 3/30/26

Wait, so we’re saying that pluggers … don’t like sports? Watching the wildly popular NCAA basketball tournament is non-plugger behavior? Pluggers prefer to pore over their financial statements, like a bunch of fucking nerds? Is that what pluggers have come to these days? This is much more shocking than them being poly now or whatever.

Archie, 3/30/26

I have to say that a dark horse for “most unrealistic aspect of Archie comics” is that Veronica, daughter of the most cartoonishly wealthy family in town, attends the local public school with the plebes. That having been said, this is a decent joke, and in my opinion what really makes it is that it’s Archie who’s been assigned the task of delivering the RSVP, despite the Lodges canonically having a butler.

Dick Tracy, 3/30/26

Oh, hey, I guess we know why Silver Nitrate has had such anxiety since he’s been in prison: turns out he’s a snitch! I sure hope none of his fellow prisoners read the syndicated newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy.

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Hi and Lois, 3/27/26

A thing about Hi and Lois and comic strip time that you really have to keep in mind is that Hi and Lois has been in newspapers with Trixie as one of its characters since 1954, but Hi and Lois just had their youngest child within the last year. She’s a baby! She’s pretty much brand new! That’s why it’s deeply psychotic to see them grinning broadly about how happy their bird friend is about being an empty nester. You just reset that clock! You’re nearly two decades out from singing this cheerful tune! Are you not listening to yourselves?

Pluggers, 3/27/26

Pluggers sing in the shower so their spouse will know they’re OK, and choose lyrics to reaffirm the fact that they’re bisexual and polyamorous. Yeah, that’s right! It’s 2026 now! Pluggers are bi and poly! Get on their level.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/26

I’m willing to follow Gil Thorp to a lot of places, so I would’ve accepted it if the strip had told me that this year’s golf program was going to get mildly interesting. But very interesting? Nope. Not buying it. This is golf we’re talking about, c’mon.

Crankshaft, 3/27/26

I’m sorry if my last Crankshaft post gave you the impression that the title character would be slowly and tragically fading away into senility over the coming months. In fact, he’s going to be very rapidly but still tragically smeared all over the highway in the next few minutes. I regret the error.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/15/26

The characters in newspaper comic strips generally keep their vocabulary squeaky clean, and the Hootin’ Holler crew doesn’t even resort to grawlices as far as I can remember. That’s why I’m pretty horrified to learn today that, while we’re not seeing him in action, Snuffy is just letting loose with a nonstop stream of obscenities, blasphemies, and slurs around the house, presumably where Jughaid and li’l Tater can hear. Grim stuff! (It’s less surprising to learn, as we do in the throwaway panels, that even the Holler’s lone semi-legitimate businessman doesn’t know the difference between deflation and disinflation, as flatlanders generally struggle with that as well.)

Pluggers, 3/15/26

BlueSky, one of several social media sites where I post daily links to my blog, has an auto-moderation feature that deemed yesterday’s Pardon My Planet demonic sideboob “adult content.” Well, sorry, I’m doubling down on the smut. Check out today’s Pluggers! Depraved furry pornography! Unspeakable filth! This is the sort of thing America wants to see in the newspaper now and we all need to come to terms with that fact!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/26

Oh, man, were you excited at the prospect of Mud Mountain Murphy and Lorna Starr/Mae Mae Clodfelter getting to know each other over several days of cafe breakfasts, and maybe feeling a spark of attraction that could eventually blossom into romance? Well, too bad. They already knew each other, it turns out. We’re skipping all of that! Better luck next time!