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Beetle Bailey, 1/14/26

I feel like if you have an elderly authority figure looking startled and somewhat confused and shouting “Take some notes!” and then immediately afterwards passing out, and his subordinates are gleeful about it because it means they don’t have to do work, that’s a little less “Ha, this is a zany situation” and a little more elder abuse. It’s sadly not that unheard of for a powerful but ailing person’s staff to basically puppet them for an extended period of time, and it’s all fun and games until, in this case, the area of the United States protected by Camp Swampy is invaded by enemy forces and no competent general officer is present to coordinate defensive operations.

Mary Worth, 1/14/26

I’m not sure how old Ian is supposed to be so I guess I won’t call this “elder abuse” per se but it’s clear that his mind has been broken by Toby and Sunny. Look at his sleepy, dopey smile as Sunny cackles evilly literally inches in front of his face! This is some real “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” shit right here, only with a parrot.

Shoe, 1/14/26

To me, one of the most depressing things about the Perfesser and Skyler’s home is that there’s exactly one place to sit in their living room, which tells us volumes about the relationship between the uncle and his barely tolerated nephew/ward. Today we see that even when they eat out together, the Perfesser insists on sitting as far away from his nephew as possible.

Luann, 1/14/26

When I started commenting on Luann again, did I know things were going to end up less than a year later with Luann getting propositioned to go fuck over by the dumpsters? No, of course not. Obviously not. Different choices would’ve been made had I known, I’ll tell you that much.

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Archie, 1/13/26

Against all odds, the fact that I’ve been doing this blog for more than 20 years doesn’t usually make me feel old, mostly because I’m still substantially younger than most newspaper comics creators and readers, but occasionally I do catch a glimpse of the way my years have been piling up. For instance, these Archie strips are repeats from the early to mid ’00s, around the time I started commenting on them, and back then, teens (Archie’s ostensible target audience) would’ve read this and said, “Ha ha! The idiots who make this strip only have the vaguest idea what an iPod is and have no idea what it looks like!” before popping in their white earbuds and jamming out to Lindsay Lohan’s Speak, which they had pirated via LimeWire. Whereas today’s teens would read this rerun in the newspaper (an unlikely scenario, I admit, but stay with me here) and say “Wow, is that what iPods looked like, back when they were popular, several years before we were born? With curly wires and one (?) grey earphone and everything?”

Luann, 1/13/26

What’s worse than Brad and Toni having sex in their car in an empty amusement park parking lot late at night? Up until today you would’ve said “Nothing, obviously,” but now you know the answer actually is “Luann and Phil are desperate to have sex in their car in a nursing home parking lot in broad daylight except they’ve been foiled because it’s full of eager recyclers.”

B.C., 1/13/26

So do the deer … think the humans want to have sex with them? Is … is that the joke? Do the humans want to have sex with them? Is that the joke? Strong dislikes all around whatever the case.

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Dustin, 1/12/26

I don’t know that I’ve really commented on the “Dustin (the character)’s second-best friend is an eight-year-old child” aspect of Dustin (the comic strip), but it’s not one I particularly enjoy, mostly because the kid himself is not very interesting as a character. I guess he’s fine when he gives Dustin someone to riff off of, or as fine as any of the other Dustin nobodies, but he doesn’t merit his own individual strips where he’s the focus, and he definitely shouldn’t be doing “I hate Mondays” jokes. That is Garfield territory, Kid Whose Name I Don’t Know And Have Run Out Of Ways To Avoid Mentioning That Fact, and while Garfield’s legal team may be currently distracted, they’re not going to take this kind of thing lying down.

Gil Thorp, 1/12/26

Lest you think that Gil’s ex is motivated by anti-heterosexual sentiment, today’s strip reveals that Coach Gerards is also seething with rage over Gil’s happy relationship. This union is going to roil the Valley Conference into levels of feverish competition that haven’t been seen in decades, to the extent that I suspect that maybe Gil is doing it to boost the athletic department’s budget.

Wizard of Id, 1/12/26

With jokes like “the King has ADHD” and “hey, how about that emo music,” someone is clearly trying to drag the Wizard of Id kicking and screaming into, if not the present, then at least the ’00s. I’m not sure this is a particularly good idea, honestly, and I’d like to think that the setup line is just emerging anonymously from the left side of panel one because all the regular characters refused to deliver it.

Dennis the Menace, 1/12/26

Man, look at Margaret’s face! She does know it, she knows it’s an aspect of her personality that people find off-putting and that’s why she has a hard time making real friends, but she just can’t help it and it’s eating her up inside!