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The Phantom, 7/30/26

The question of how an elected civilian government can keep control of its own security services is as old as democracy itself, and you have to imagine the issue is a delicate one in Bangalla, a relatively young post-colonial republic where the main paramilitary answers to a dude who lives in a cave and has much of the country believing he’s a ghost. Still, President Luaga is doing his best, letting the Ghost Who Could Probably Do A Coup If He Wanted know that he’s very disappointed about this whole “leave a supervillain in an open-air cage for years where it would be very easy for drones to free him” situation by glowering meaningfully during a Zoom call.

Six Chix, 7/30/26

Now, I’m not a doctor, but I am a comics blogger with literally decades of experience, and I can tell you that in both these scenarios that guy has Xes for eyes, which means he’s dead. Dead! Don’t worry, doctors, you don’t need to trouble yourselves, go about your business.

Gearhead Gertie, 7/30/26

I was going to do a joke about how all this time Gertie has yearned to be part of a throuple, and that the “3” t-shirts she wears constantly aren’t just about Dale Earnhardt, but I’m sorry, my heart’s not in it. Look at her face, free of any hint of guile or eroticism. She simply has done the minimum amount of mental processing necessary to respond — “husband not happy with wife? solution: husband get new wife” — while 99% of her brainpower continues to focus on watching and thinking about NASCAR, as per usual.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/26

The scam twins have decided to avenge their Uncle Rene by scamming the Morgans, despite the fact that he specifically told them not to, and have been staking out the Morgan house in order to plan their next scam move. Mainly what they’ve learned is that the Morgans are incredibly boring, which, no shit! Have you noticed that they’re barely in their own comic anymore? That’s because they’re even less interesting than whatever Buck or Auggie or Mud Mountain Murphy are up to. Do you know how uninteresting you have to be to make that happen?

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/26

Wow, this is actually really depressing to me. I thought that Uncle (?) Rene was a mentor in scammery to his nieces — but part of being a mentor is telling hard truths to the upcoming generation so they can improve their craft! If fake busking is as dumb an idea as it seems, Jean and Jane need to hear it from someone they trust before they dedicate too much time and energy into it! You know, boomers complain about “everyone gets a trophy” culture but they were the ones handing out the trophies. Step up, Rene, for the future of scamdom!

Family Circus, 7/17/26

Even the best parents sometimes run out of patience and snap at their kids and say things they regret, and when their kids act out on the pain they feel by passing it along to their own toys in heartbreaking moments of “make-believe” that are all too real, that’s … funny? Parents find this cute, and would cut it out and hang it on the fridge, for others to look at?

Gil Thorp, 7/17/26

Ha ha, that all got kind of grim! Well, here’s some happy news: Gil Thorp’s finally getting married! Well, I guess it’s not happy if you were hoping to snag him yourself. All I can say is that you’ve had three and a half years to work on that, and it hasn’t worked out, plus he’s a character in a comic strip. Move on, already!

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Hagar the Horrible, 7/13/26

In The City of God, St. Augustine famously tells a story of a pirate who had been captured by Alexander the Great: “When that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, ‘What do you mean by seizing the whole earth? Because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.’” Now, Augustine’s point is that a king who rules without virtue is simply a brigand on a larger scale; but Hagar, whose opinions on the new religion from the south are mixed at best, takes the harder-headed view, more common among modern commentators, that recognizes the similarities between states and criminal enterprises without necessarily applying moral valence to it. The king is stronger than Hagar, so he must submit to his cruelties, but he also looks forward to passing them down the line to his own victims.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/13/26

So Lyle Ollman, the inventor of the Mirakle Method, is the grandfather of the scam twins Jean and Jane, and Rene/Jimmy is their uncle, but Lyle is also Rene’s uncle and … I don’t think that really works? I guess it works if whichever of Lyle’s children is a parent to the twins married someone whose sibling married Rene in a weird sibling/cousin double marriage situation, but Rene doesn’t seem like the marrying kind; it could also be that one of Rene’s siblings married his or her own first cousin to produce these two kids. It’s also possible that this whole family suffers from intense, multigenerational nephewism and nobody has any parents at all: it’s just uncles as far back as anyone can remember.

Andy Capp, 7/13/26

“Yeah I’m trying to lose some ugly excess weight … by which I mean my spouse, whom I hate!” is a classic and beloved joke format of course, and I suppose it was inevitable that it would get a GLP-1 spin eventually, but I don’t think anyone expected it to happen in Andy Capp first.