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Alice, 7/10/26

This is honestly a perfect Alice strip. The actual joke, while not groundbreaking or anything, definitely made me laugh, mostly because of the phrasing and specific number given. But then you have a jaunty “No soup for you!” caption, because … you ate too many pretzels and aren’t hungry, I guess? And then below that you have an even smaller label letting you know that this is a reference to a 31-year-old Seinfeld episode. 31 years old! Did you know that “The Soup Nazi” is as far from us in time today as the Dick Van Dyke Show was from Seinfeld? I didn’t until just now, when I did that math. Thanks a lot, Alice, I hope you liked your pretzels.

Dennis the Menace, 7/10/26

Martha’s facial expression here is honestly kind of upsetting. Can’t she just have one moment of peace to give thanks to the Lord without her husband going off on some furious diatribe about the neighbor kid? Just one little moment, just for one day?

Heathcliff, 7/10/26

I honestly can’t believe that Blondie, which never seems to have met a widely shared cultural moment it doesn’t like, hasn’t been doing a series of dumb on-the-nose bits about the World Cup. Like, sure, soccer is for Godless communists, but so are the Olympics, and Blondie absolutely loves doing dumb on-the-nose bits about that. I guess Heathcliff has to pick up the slack, but Heathcliff being Heathcliff, it’s doing a bit that’s whatever the opposite of on the nose is. A bit that’s missing the face entirely? Anyway, I like it.

Mary Worth, 7/10/26

I like how absolutely furious Tommy looks as he’s compelled to buy drugs to prove a point of some kind to Wilbur. Wilbur! Nobody ever has to prove anything to Wilbur! I’m beginning to think that Tommy may not be very bright.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/9/26

As predicted, the scam twins (who are named Jean and Jane, I don’t think anyone predicted that) are indeed the nieces of notorious non-twin scam artist/Rex Morgan, M.D., antagonist Rene Belluso, who I guess really is just going by “Jimmy” now. Remember how he got extremely hit by a car and super-duper injured, back in January of 2024? Well, he’s still walking with canes today, in July of 2026, probably at least in part because of the substandard medical care he’s been receiving in prison. Anyway, this got kind of dark pretty fast so let’s move on to the next strip, shall we?

Mary Worth, 7/9/26

Speaking of beloved characters from the past, you might think that this is Tommy’s beloved old crackhead pal Vin, but apparently it’s some similarly stubble-headed guy named “Reno.” You can tell the difference because Vin was outgoing, effusive, and eager to share his drugs with his good friend, whereas Reno is aloof, standoffish, and makes you do the work of coming to him and asking respectfully if he has any drugs to sell. Anyway, you can always make jokes about Tommy’s drug problems! It’s never too dark!

Pluggers, 7/9/26

Speaking of drugs, I used to make jokes about pluggers getting high when talking about the Pluggers panels that revolve around prescription meds, but then someone admonished me about this and pointed out that most prescription meds aren’t mood-altering or addictive and many people need to take them and you shouldn’t conflate them with recreational drugs. Which is fair! But check out the pinpoint pupils on this she-plugger today. Most pluggers are only taking the prescription drugs they need to keep their failing bodies alive, but this plugger in particular is definitely packing a bunch of fun pills on her vacation. She’s extremely zooted right now, before she’s even left!

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Mary Worth, 7/5/26

For years, one action item has popped up repeatedly in Charterstone condo association meetings: replacing the doors on the apartments, because they’re cheap and thin and easy to hear through. “Anyone walking by can snoop on your conversations!” residents complain. “Well, we’re going to have the improvements subcommittee look into that,” Association President Mary Worth says. “We’ll need to research new doors that can offer more privacy, but won’t cost too much — after all, a big expenditure like this could cause your association fees to skyrocket! And then we need to find a reliable contractor, of course.” In reality, there is no “improvements subcommittee,” and Mary has no intention of taking away one of her prime tools for assessing when her meddling intervention might be required. And now poor Tommy is paying the price, hearing something that nobody should ever have to hear: Wilbur Weston, of all people, shit-talking him.

Crankshaft, 7/5/26

I referred to the Starlight Ballroom (in Chippewa Lake Park) as “bombed out” the other day, and was mostly joking, but, uh. This panel pretty much makes it look like a bit of loredumping background detail in a post-apocalyptic movie, a monument to a dead but once-great civilization (ours) tagged with some of the most depressing lyrics penned by the Kinks (people living in post-apocalyptic ages love doing pointed, arch graffiti that caters to Boomer cultural knowledge, this is just science).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/26

Boy, wow, Rex and June both seem real intense about the twins’ extremely low-level “scam,” huh? Almost like they’ve been fleeced by more ambitious scams before and are very bitter about it. Well, have they considered that if they provided goods and services worthy of repeat business, they wouldn’t have been grifted in the first place? The twins are happy to hand over hard-earned (via scamming) money to Jordan in exchange for his delicious food, so maybe the Morgans just aren’t operating at a don’t-get-scammed level.

Dick Tracy, 7/5/26

So the mysterious hacker gang members are named “Wallhack,” “Lootbox,” and “Widescreen”? Come on. Come on. I’m a 51-year-old man and the last video game I was fixated on was Civilization II and even I can immediately tell how incredibly cringe this all is. And Widescreen should have a big wide flat head, to match his name. Come on! This is Dick Tracy, have some self-respect.