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Blondie, 12/12/25

Mr. Dithers is no doubt all too well acquainted with Dagwood’s relationship with food, so he’s no doubt well aware of how transgressive a statement he’s just made to his employee. Dagwood’s thing with food isn’t about sex — it’s much, much deeper — so fortunately for Dithers this doesn’t fall under sexual harassment regulations. Honestly, employment law doesn’t even have a name for what just happened here, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking.

Dennis the Menace, 12/12/25

“There can be no punishment greater than to no longer feel the gaze of God upon you. But if God knows that you will never transgress against His commandments, will He not inevitably look away?” is some pretty menacing theology, I have to admit.

Alice, 12/12/25

Hello, friends. Have you been looking for opinions about the new crowdfunding platforms? Well, I’ll tell you one place you shouldn’t look: the syndicated newspaper comic strip Alice. Alice doesn’t think about the new crowdfunding platforms. She doesn’t think about them at all!

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Mary Worth, 12/11/25

Sorry to be a killjoy, but I’m deeply concerned that Ian appears to own the exact same robe that Wilbur does. Yes, they’re different colors, but we all know the coloring in the daily strips is done by the syndicate and isn’t canon. At first I thought that this was simply clip art of Ian’s head put onto an existing drawing of Wilbur’s body, but I’m reasonably sure we never had the opportunity to look at a berobèd Wilbur from this angle, given that the pet he had a weird emotional relationship with floated around at eye level most of the time. Anyway, this just raises a lot of questions, like is there a standard-issue Charterstone robe that all male inhabitants are assigned upon arrival? Troubling. Still, I don’t mean to take away from the main event, which is that Toby is shrieking “Don’t be ridiculous! Birds can’t read!” and somehow she’s the voice of reason in this conversation. That part’s good.

Wizard of Id, 12/11/25

Is this really the sort of thing that works for politicians? I think of their classic move as being more along the lines of “I tell people something good will happen. Then, when it doesn’t, I say it did, actually, and moreover I’m responsible for it.” I guess I don’t live in a pseudo-medieval kingdom ruled by a hereditary monarch working in tandem with a chaotic wizard, though, so maybe I’m operating out of context here.

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Mary Worth, 12/10/25

We all know, of course, that Mary Worth takes place in a world similar to but not exactly like our own, where America’s most famous 20th century actor is the handsome Saul Lewman and Sonia Sotomayor served out her career as a Superior Court Judge in Santa Royale County. But I’m sorry, the proposal that the greatest stage actor who ever lived in this universe is someone called “Sir Richard Wellbottom” is simply too much for me to believe. This man would be haunted by the cruel nickname “Dick Goodass” and would never find the strength to perform on stage!

Crankshaft, 12/10/25

For years there was a running bit in Funky Winkerbean about a guy/monster/entity that looks like a person made out of pizza boxes who haunted Montoni’s, and as near as I can tell I never bothered commenting on it or even thinking about it all that much in my years of blogging about the strip, but post-Funky, this being has migrated to Crankshaft for some reason and I just want to be on the record as agreeing with this little girl. It isn’t right! This shouldn’t be in the newspaper! It’s dumb and weird and nobody cares!

Herb and Jamaal, 12/10/25

The full quote here is “When they study our civilization two thousand years from now, there will only be three things that Americans will be known for: the Constitution, baseball and jazz music. They’re the three most beautiful things Americans have ever created.” Why do you think this strip left out the “only”? Is it because it wants you to believe, against all evidence, that in the distant future there will be four things Americans will be known for: the Constitution, baseball, jazz music, and the comic strip Herb and Jamaal? It could happen! You never know!