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Gearhead Gertie, 7/3/25

I am if nothing mercurial, and do you know what I’ve decided? I like the Gearhead Gerties where the focus is on Gertie’s perpetually put-upon husband. I’m done feeling bad for him. He had to have known what he signed up for. His wife is Gearhead Gertie, for Pete’s sake! I like his grumpy little face in the second panel as he endures this latest NASCAR-related indignity. Ha ha, he has to watch TV sticking way up in the air, for NASCAR reasons that I don’t fully understand!

Pluggers, 7/3/25

Over the past several years, I reached an age at which some of my parents and in-laws have reached ages at which stairs, and the need to accommodate their lives minimizing the number of times they go up and down them, became an important thing we all had to think about. Stairs, man! You think you’ll be able to use them forever with ease, but I’m here to tell you: that’s probably not true. Anyway, today’s featured plugger is not yet at the stage where he can’t use the stairs, but it’s a lot harder to use them than it used to be, and he knows in his bones it won’t ever get any easier, and every time he goes up, the little pep talk he gives himself needs to go a little harder in order to do its job. In its quiet way, this is the most genuinely harrowing Pluggers panel since Rhino-man hocked his TV.

Hi and Lois, 7/3/25

You know I’m on the record as being in favor of Hi and Lois depicting “Thirsty” Thurston as a lovable drunk, but I think it’s a little too on the nose for him to just be blurting out his various disorders like this. “I’m getting addicted to online gambling!” “I let my lawn and my hair get so unkempt because I’m very depressed!” “My wife doesn’t love me and I don’t think she has for a long time!” C’mon, let us use our imagination a little here.

Mary Worth, 7/3/25

“Remember the last time they took a father-daughter vacation together, and they almost died in a cruise ship disaster? I think this one will finish them off for good.”

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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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Panel from The Lockhorns, 6/29/25

One of the great mysteries of The Lockhorns that haunts all of us Lockheads is the identity and nature of the non-Lockhorn people who make occasional appearances in the strip. They never have any dialogue, instead just staring dumbly at our title duo as they engage in their passive-aggressive antics, and generally are not, with the exception of a few medical professionals and Leroy’s bartender, recurring characters. And yet we must assume a certain degree of intimacy has somehow developed before we see the vignettes in which the strangers appear, because often they’re in the Lockhorn home! I suppose we can guess at what drives their interest in seeing the inner workings of this hell-couple’s dynamics. For instance, this lady no doubt wonders if the rumors are true: does this seemingly anti-intellectual downwardly mobile lower-middle-class suburbanite pair really enjoy playing chess at home? And does Leroy really lurch about in a grotesque parody of a victory dance when he wins? Still and all, now that her curiosity has been sated, the visitor won’t be back. For most people, a little of this goes a long way.

Mary Worth, 6/29/25

On the one hand, Wilbur’s glad Belle is once again being heavily medicated by her brother, who looks exactly like him but taller. On the other hand, he still wants to grab a last-minute ticket on Spirit Airlines and jet over to Florida and have sex with her. Is this normal, Mary??? Oh, wait, you’re saying it is normal? I, uh, did not expect that, and frankly don’t really like it.