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Pardon My Planet, 8/20/26

OK, here’s a sentence that I’m reasonably sure I’ve never written before, and probably nobody else has either: I’m actually enjoying the art in Pardon My Planet today. Specifically, I love how incredibly exhausted the girlfriend character (the Pardon My Planet gang may have names, but I steadfastly refuse to learn them) looks. How long has her boyfriend been nattering on with this nonsense? Hours? She doesn’t have to get ready for school either, but she does have to get up in the morning. She just wants to sleep, damn it! She just wants to sleep!

The Lockhorns, 8/20/26

Speaking of comic panel faces I’m enjoying, I’m enjoying Leroy’s boss’s face here. Specifically, I enjoy how mad he looks. He’s not one of those LinkedIn influencer execs bragging about replacing his workers with AI! No, he’s discovered that AI is slowly and silently replacing his workers one by one, right under his nose … and there’s nothing he can do about it. You can’t even test to see if someone’s a robot anymore, according to the killjoys in HR!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/20/26

No, Attila, it’s a joke! You’re a character in a comic strip, where ostensibly there’s a joke every day! I say “ostensibly” because the specific comic strip you’re in is Mother Goose and Grimm, but still, you should know this.

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Intelligent Life, 6/22/26

Everything I’ve learned about all the characters in Intelligent Life has been against my will. I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I instantly recognized this blond guy as “Barry,” the stereotypical jock used as a punching bag by the nerd characters in the strip. He likes beer and wings and is constantly unsuccessfully hitting on women, and — and now we’re at the point where I’m learning new stuff about him, which I didn’t ask for and don’t care for — he also has a terrible relationship with his father, I guess.

Pluggers, 6/22/26

Look, for as long as I’ve been reading this strip, the answer to the question “Are pluggers OK?” has been a resounding “no.” But I feel like they’re building less and less of a superstructure around this sentiment in individual panels and are now just hitting us with “Life is suffering, for pluggers. Every moment is agony. They’d be happier dead.”

Pickles, 6/22/26

Pickles, meanwhile, is a comic strip about the foibles of old people that isn’t afraid to get a little edgy sometimes, but I declare today’s strip, where the vagaries of fading memory mean that poor Opal has spent hours in an act of loving artistry, making a scarf for a member of her family only to be struck anew by grief, is a little too edgy for my tastes.

Pardon My Planet, 6/22/26

Yesterday’s Pardon My Planet was about domestic discord among wolf-people, and I thought about doing a post basically saying “Ha ha, this strip, which is mostly unpleasant marital drama among its cast of mostly interchangeable regular characters, has finally branched out into doing unpleasant marital drama with furries” but decided against it. But today, with the clown stuff? Well, I feel like you all needed to know about it. Do you think “Bobo” is a male clown name? No judgement, but it does add an extra little twist to this scenario.

Luann, 6/22/26

I saved the grimmest one for last. Brad and Toni are going to have sex in the shower, you guys. They’re going to have sex in the shower after she announced herself as “zit” and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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Archie, 4/8/26

You know, I had a riff all ready to go about how I hate it when a strip starts with character #1 parroting back something to character #2 that we’re supposed to understand character #2 just said immediately before the action started, and how Jughead in particular would never, ever use the word “proactive,” like he wouldn’t even know what it meant and if he did learn he would find it offensive to the point of blasphemy, but then I caught sight of the fact that Archie has “A.A. L. [for loves, I guess?] V.L.” on his notebook and Betty has “A.A. L. B.C.” and gurrrrrrrrrl, please, rethink some things and have some self-respect, I am begging you.

Pardon My Planet, 4/8/26

Jeez, lady, why don’t you settle down and maybe be more like your husband, who is just walking around with a featureless, blank paper coffee cup in his own home to match his featureless, numb facial expression. Unlike you, he doesn’t feel regret or wistfulness or anything at all. I guess based on the tight grip he has on a paper cup full of steaming liquid, he is feeling a great deal of pain, which at least lets him know he’s still alive, after a fashion.

Shoe, 4/8/26

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that Biz is wearing a winter cap. Is he supposed to have just put it on because, as a bird, he has to go outside to go to the bathroom? They’re already outside!