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Mary Worth, 12/4/25

“Good lord, Josh,” you’re almost certainly saying, “it’s been days since the first unpleasant Ian-Sunny encounter and you haven’t kept us updated, what is going on?????” Well, Ian has beaten a tactical retreat to the shower, where he is fuming, fuming at his humiliation. This oddball is going to grandstand like never before! The stakes could not be higher!

Gearhead Gertie, 12/4/25

Gertie marital dysfunction watch: Gertie’s husband, learning about a new venue for NASCAR racing, has preemptively compromised on their next vacation, hoping to combine some of the racing action his wife loves with a relaxing beach day of the sort that you’d think would appeal to just about anybody. “No,” says Gertie. “Fuck you. That’s not how this works. You know that’s not how this works.”

Daddy Daze, 12/4/25

I can never really figure out to what extent the conversations between the Daddy Daze baby and the Daddy Daze daddy are supposed to be “real,” and I guess that question can be extended to basically anything you see happening in the strip. Still, I feel like “your pre-verbal, non-walking baby is roaming the house in the middle of the night” is a scenario where you get out of bed and put them back in their crib, rather than just going back to sleep? I dunno, I’m not a parent, maybe the conventional wisdom has changed on this.

Pluggers, 12/4/25

You’re a plugger if you get invited to the sort of social events whose cancellation you’re notified about via a formal notice delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

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Mary Worth, 11/30/25

Ahh, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: when Ian returns from his weeks-long “teachers conference” and confronts the bird who has taken his place and reduced him to a mere “friend” of the household. This bird was perfectly nice to Mary when she came over, so he obviously isn’t strictly speaking aggressive towards newcomers; rather, he just instinctively recognizes Ian as his main antagonist going forward and has decided to go on the attack from a position of strength as the current possessor of the disputed territory. I’m glad this week’s Sunday Mary Worth Quote® is from David Mamet, because that implies that the dialogue that ensues after the final panel is just a nonstop stream of colorful obscenities.

Pluggers, 11/30/25

Why is this plugger looking so depressed? Nobody’s making him eat that pie. Nobody’s making him work as a mall Santa either, unless you count his underfunded retirement account as “someone,” I guess. Still, you’d think he could at least spend a minute to enjoy the pie.

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Dick Tracy, 11/25/25

Ah, man, remember the Dick Tracy vampire car storyline from 2016? It was a fun one, and I personally would follow the principle of “don’t stop in the middle of your not-so-interesting storyline to remind your readers of a more interesting one,” but I’m not in charge of Dick Tracy. I do appreciate that advances in solid state storage have allowed Dick to keep a 3D image of a cool vampire car on his watch, for him to amuse himself with whenever the conversation about clown crime gets tedious.

Mary Worth, 11/25/25

It appears that Mary Worth takes place in a universe very much like our own, with the crucial difference that television never invented the concept of a studio audience or a laugh track; instead, the characters themselves laugh in an aggressive, artificial way to let the audience know that a joke has just happened.

Blondie, 11/25/25

When Dagwood says “Are you ready to take Thanksgiving to another level?”, it should come as no surprise that it’s a sex thing. The hat stays on, ladies.