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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/14/26

I guess the point of this strip is “You never get what you want when you want it,” but for at least a brief moment I thought Snuffy looked so sad because he considers himself in his way to be a steward of the land. During deer-huntin’ season, people have killed so many deer that bears roam the countryside, near starving for lack of prey, and then in bear-huntin’ season, deer multiply out of control due to lack of predators. That’s why he had to shoot these critters out of season, sheriff! He’s helpin’ the local ecosystem!

Gil Thorp, 9/14/26

Based on the extremely visible stars in the sky, I’m guessing this is a night game played without adequate lighting. Presumably Oakwood is the home team and this gives them an advantage based on their day-glow yellow uniforms. Obviously the Mudlark QB is going to throw right to them, they’re the only ones visible on the field!

Pluggers, 9/14/26

I regret to inform you all that there are only two viable options here: that pluggers think “bedroom eyes” mean what your eyes look like when you’re sleepy, or that they think that sometimes a plugger will make eyes at you implying that they want you to come over and fuck them right there on their recliner and that this is what those eyes look like, like they’re dying.

Judge Parker, 9/14/26

Good news: Judge Parker Emeritus Senior got a job, to give his life meaning. Bad news: he apparently has to get up at 6:00 am to get to it? Maybe a meaningless life isn’t so bad after all, let’s not be hasty.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/14/26

Remember: it’s not just mandatory that nothing bad ever happen to the Morgan family. The Morgan family must be fully insulated by the narrative from ever knowing that anything bad might have potentially happened to them. And, mission accomplished! Looks like we can wrap up the week’s strips with this one and [checks calendar] aw CRAP

Mary Worth, 9/14/26

“Did he die? Is he finally dead? Because he still owes me money from when I sold him weed six years ago. I mean, it wasn’t actually weed, it was oregano, but he didn’t know that.”

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Mary Worth, 9/8/26

Wow, I’m glad to see that there are still sensible people living in Charterstone! “So what?” is exactly the appropriate response to someone telling you that two people who you vaguely know were sitting in a parked car. I don’t know how to tell you this, Nelly, but this is America, and as a person who gets around on foot and by bike more than the average American, I can tell you that this country is just littered with people sitting in parked cars. What are they doing in there? Listening to podcasts? Crying? Dicking around on their phones? Cheating on their spouses? Getting ready to pull out into traffic or open their door with no warning just as I’m trying to get past them? I don’t know and (except in that last scenario) it’s none of my business. Nelly was a safe distance away when she spotted the specific instance of car-sitting under discussion, so this is definitely a “So what?” situation if I’ve ever seen one.

Gil Thorp, 9/8/26

The Milford tryout numbers are strong this year, but Gil wants to establish that the Mudlarks will lead the Valley Conference in quality as well as quantity. You will not be able to overtake them in terms of players with names that make them sound like characters in vaudeville bits. Does Goshen have a Borys Orlov? Well, Milford has an Adrian Blatz. Of the Métis Winnipeg Blatzes. You might have heard of them.

Blondie, 9/8/26

Oh, no, Blondie! You were so close to correctly incorporating young people’s love of short-form video content into your model of how the world works! But you made the crucial mistake of using the term “vlogging,” which I’m not sure the kids say anymore, and anyway it led you down the path to today, doing a strip where Cookie is blogging, something I’m definitely sure the kids today are not saying or doing anymore. Blogging is an old man’s game now, trust me on this.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/8/26

“Oh, Josh, I think you were overstating things about that guy’s head-lump yesterday, I’m sure if we saw it from a different angle we’d–” You fool. You idiot. You ABSOLUTE SIMPLETON

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Pluggers, 9/7/26

This year, my 80-year-old stepmother fractured her hip badly enough to need a replacement, and although “hip replacement” sounds very dire, the hip is a large but simple joint and the whole procedure was remarkably easy: it’s an outpatient procedure and she was up and walking again in just a few days. A few years ago, a friend of mine in her 40s fell and hit the ground just right to cause a similar fracture, but her situation wasn’t so simple: the doctors told her that normally with that kind of injury they’d do a hip replacement, but the people who normally have that kind of injury are old, and they don’t think an artificial hip would last through the full lifetime of someone in their 40s, so my friend had to endure months of painful, immobilizing recovery instead.

Anyway, the idea that decisions about certain medical procedures have to take into account the projected lifespan of the patient is one I think about a lot. Like, yeah, it’s great that the sort of people who are most likely to need a quick and easy hip replacement are the same sort of people who don’t have to worry about whether that artificial hip will last more than a couple decades. And obviously it’s great to be told that you don’t have to go through the annoying process of doing a colonoscopy anymore! But I don’t know if I’d be quite so excited to learn that “Enh, you haven’t developed colon cancer yet, and if you start to do so at this point it almost certainly won’t be the thing that kills you.”

Marvin, 9/7/26

I really enjoy how upset everyone looks in this comic. Obviously the joke is that Marvin’s grandpa is like “Wife no cook food? Where food come from if wife no cook it?” (with the implication that in this context he is as helpless as a small pet dog), and that’s a classic sitcom-style bit. But Marvin’s grandma isn’t happy about this either! She thought writing the apartment newsletter would be a fun lark and a way for her to connect with her community, but instead it’s eating up time she’d rather spend caring for her family!

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

“They kept saying stuff like, ‘What’s that lump on your head,’ and ‘Is it supposed to be hair? Because it doesn’t look like hair’ and ‘We’re moving out because the lump on your head has bad vibes.’ Good riddance, I say, and that’s coming from both me and my head-lump.”