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Hi and Lois, 10/10/26

What really makes this strip, obviously, is Lois in the second panel watching over this scene from inside anxiously, with her arms folded. She wants to make sure Chip is capable of forming appropriate emotional bonds so he doesn’t turn out a broken loser like Thirsty, and also wants to make sure the boys rake the yard properly so their house isn’t a neighborhood eyesore like Thirsty’s.

Crankshaft, 10/10/26

Do they really make pilltainers that are as long as a man’s torso? That’s not a thing, right? Maybe that’s why Crankshaft looks so put off in the last couple panels. The joke in this strip was supposed to be about this comically large pilltainer! I carried it all the way over here! Now you’re telling me the joke is about an app that electrocutes you? This is amateur hour, we gotta get our shit together!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/10/26

“The devil wears crocs, and also walks on tippy-toes, which looks really unnatural but it’s the only way to really convey to the reader that he’s wearing crocs, and we already got most of the way into putting together a strip based on this joke and don’t have time to come up with another one, so I guess we’re just going to draw him like this??!”

Mary Worth, 10/10/26

“No, it’s … not true! I mean, yes, it would be gross if it were true, but it’s not true, therefore it’s … not gross? I gotta wake up and start making a diagram here.”

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Mary Worth, 10/8/26

So, Toby has been having an “Is my husband cheating on me, with Mary Worth of all people?” anxiety dream all week, and I keep waiting for it to get really deranged and fun à la the dancing Wilburbabies, but what we’ve gotten instead is just a slightly dream-tinged version of the same breathless real-life gossip sessions we’ve been seeing for some time now. Today I had the epiphany that this is actually very revealing of Toby’s character: she isn’t imagining some sordid Mary/Ian erotic tableau because she doesn’t actually care about her husband cheating on her; what she cares about is other people knowing that she’s being cheated on and eagerly talking about it, which is devastating to her self-image.

Dustin, 10/8/26

Yes, I know the joke here is “A boy? Taking ballet??? A dance for girls???????” but, real talk, my understanding is that learning ballet is actually a pretty difficult and physically demanding process, whereas for me Little League was an experience I didn’t enjoy much but mostly consisted of standing in the outfield where nothing ever happened and occasionally getting onto base after getting hit by a wild pitch, so the latter is definitely more appealing to me as an essentially lazy person. Like, take a look at ballet dancers sometime, both the men and the women are pretty shredded, and you’re probably saying, “Josh, you can’t compare the Bolshoi to whatever kind of entry-level suburban dance studio this kid’s mom is threatening him with,” and in response I would urge you to watch a Major League Baseball game sometime. It’s a sport I enjoy but it’s also a sport where the players are allowed to be in shape but don’t necessarily have to be, if you follow me. If you’re bad at running, they’ll send someone else to run the bases for you! You think they let you do that in ballet? They do not!

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Mary Worth, 10/2/26

To me, “Toby gets some parrots and Ian melts down about it” was basically a perfect Mary Worth storyline. But for those who would demand that it be justified as serving some larger purpose, may I present today’s strip, in which one of the accursed birds introduced into this setting by that storyline mimics Ian’s adulterous sex moans while Toby is in a particularly vulnerable state.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/2/26

I had sort of forgotten that Mud Mountain Murphy wasn’t already living in Glenwood, what with him seemingly being there all the time. But, big news, he’s going to be living in Glenwood now! Exciting stuff and a real addition to the local roots country scene. You’re on the email list, right? If you’re not, don’t worry, you’re just going to run into him everywhere. It’s not really that big a town.

The Phantom, 10/2/26

Holy crap, it turns out that mysterious masked figure “Ignis Vindicta” is in fact “Ian Mollusk,” the Phantomverse’s transparent Elon Musk standin! Who could have possibly predicted this shocking development? Oh, what’s that you say, it was predicted on this very blog by me back in July and by everyone in my comments section for weeks before that? Interesting, interesting.