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Mary Worth, 8/31/26

Hey, everyone, here’s a fun fact, if by “fun” you mean guaranteed to deliver the epiphany that oh my god I’m so old, how did I get to be so old: we are mere weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the death of Aldo Kelrast. Can contemporary Mary Worth come up with a storyline that could come close to that magic? Well, today we’re launching a new one, and I’m mildly hopeful, as it introduces two intriguing things: Mary and Ian spending time together socially and, apparently, enjoying themselves in a quite manic fashion; and some anhedonic old lady sitting in her Charterstone kitchen fuming about how nothing is as good as it used to be when she was young and had her whole life ahead of her. Not even putting oat milk on oat-based cereal (or “oatmaxxing,” as the kids call it) can bring her a frission of pleasure anymore! Looking forward to learning how she’s about to make this everybody else’s problem and nip Mary and Ian’s ha ha!ing in the bud.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/31/26

OK, fine, I guess we’re not going to get to see the scam twins try and fail to pull off a child kidnapping, but at least we’re going to be treated to a Socratic dialogue between Rene and his elaborately coiffed and mustachio’d jail buddy, in which the former attempts to explain how rating on a criminal associate entails turning them in to the authorities, usually in exchange for reducing one’s own looming criminal penalties, and is quite different from activating family networks to dissuade a loved one from a course of action that you don’t believe they’re equipped to handle.

Pluggers, 8/31/26

You could definitely have done a panel with this caption where the plugger is cheerfully strolling ahead with a measured pace, just like many older heavyset adults I see every day do. But we’re in the late Pluggers era, so instead we have to look at this, a “fun” comic in which a plugger is clearly in genuine distress.

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Dick Tracy, 8/30/26

I had kind of lost interest in this Dick Tracy computer hacker storyline, mostly because both the ways in which it got computer stuff right and the ways in which it got it wrong were fundamentally boring. But today? When one of Widescreen’s gang members tries to quit and demands to get what he’s owed, and Widescreen gives him a USB drive shaped like the Space Shuttle, which I guess we’re supposed to understand the implication is that it has crypto on it or something, so the henchman goes online via a coffee shop’s public Wi-Fi network and plugs that USB drive into his laptop like any savvy hacker would, and then the laptop explodes in such a way that henchman himself is immediately engulfed in flames and dies in agony? Well, that’s extremely not how computers work, but it’s also pretty exciting, so I’ll allow it.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/30/26

So, yes, Grimm’s liminal position between human and animal is extremely discomfiting to think about. But on the other hand, it allows him to talk to cars and know their True Names, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad?

Mary Worth, 8/30/26

Extremely sinister that the inspirational quote about self-respect and being a role model in today’s strip comes from notorious steroid abuser Barry Bonds. Are we meant to understand that Mary is, in some way, juicing? Is she using performance-enhancing drugs to improve her level of meddle? Truly disturbing.

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Andy Capp, 8/28/26

Guitar Bob is an Andy Capp ancillary character who may have been around since the strip launched in the ’50s or may have been spawned in the long zombie era of the last several decades, who can say, but I have to admit today’s strip offers a look into his life that kind of intrigues me. Clearly Andy’s constant jibes loom large in his mind, to the point that he couldn’t even enjoy his positive reception at the folk club on its own terms but instead filed it away as something he could throw in his antagonist’s face. And Andy manages to devastate him again with a throwaway quip that barely makes sense! Obviously he didn’t give the audience their money back, but you can tell that whatever feeling of accomplishment he experienced has been undone in a moment. Sad!

Crock, 8/28/26

I used to play a fun (“fun”) game where I would try to guess the date of a Crock rerun based on its ham-handed cultural references, but King Features has taken that away from me by ceasing to bother with replacing the original copyright date. So now I just get to contemplate the window into a lost world that these strips offer. For instance, remember 1998? Remember how, in the days before YouTube, we were all calling one another offering to mail VHS tapes of helpful how-to vids? I mean, I don’t remember this at all, it’s not ringing any bells, but I spent most of 1998 mired in a series of romantic and academic crises so I wasn’t really paying very close attention, I admit.

Judge Parker, 8/28/26

Hey, remember how Judge Parker Emeritus Senior has been kind of losing it, maybe because he has dementia or maybe because he’s a drunk, but it seemed like he was kind of rallying in his attempt to help Ann get a job? Well, Ann is a big-shot TV consultant now, so now he can go back to his first love, being a Judge, or a “judicial hearing officer,” which I assume is kind of like being an assistant judge and is a job you can hold if you’re kind of old and slow, and also spent time in jail. You might think that he’d be happier just hanging around his giant mansion with his granddaughter and newly returned family members, but Judge Parker Emeritus Junior over there has done a number of crimes himself that have ruined his career for good, so apparently someone around here has to start pulling in a paycheck.

Mary Worth, 8/28/26

“Yes, Mary, I should live outside of routine every once in a while! Variety is the spice of life! I’ll have” [thinks for 15 seconds, brain starts to freeze up, panic sets in] “the exact same thing you’re having.”