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Hi and Lois, 9/10/26

Now, look, I more or less enjoyed Forrest Gump as a college-aged moviegoer in 1994, but I wouldn’t say that it had much of a lasting cultural footprint, you know? Certainly not to the extent little kids would be going around quoting it. Just for comparison, an eight-year-old in 2026 quoting Forrest Gump would be like me as an eight-year-old in 1982 quoting … actually, I looked this up, and the Forrest Gump equivalent from 1960 (hit winner of multiple Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director) is Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, one of the greatest movies ever made. I also saw The Apartment for the first time in 1994, but if I had seen it as a child, I’m pretty sure I would’ve loved it then too. A lot of it would’ve gone over my head but the dialogue is pretty accessible, I think. “That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise!” I would’ve said, if I had found myself in a situation like Ditto has in today’s strip. It would’ve still been appropriate, and my mother would’ve been charmed by my precocious taste in film instead of vaguely annoyed like Lois is here.

The Lockhorns, 9/10/26

Very longtime and very faithful readers of this blog know that today is my wedding anniversary, and, on the I think justified assumption that Leroy is a last-minute gift shopper, it appears to be the Lockhorns’ anniversary as well. This is even more disturbing than the fact that they’re millennials. This one’s personal.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/9/26

“Why do they mention the King’s Horses in ‘Humpty Dumpty?’” is an extremely hoary bit at this point, but I have to say I like the art here. Humpty’s shell has shattered, creating a jagged mouth for what we must assume is the first time. The very event that has caused him such agony also provided him with the means to scream! It’s a neat little trick.

Mary Worth, 9/9/26

Alma … no! You need to follow your first instincts and remain aloof from gossip and speculation here. Look at Nelly’s crazed expression in panel two! She says your guess is as good as hers … but she’s clearly been guessing in vivid, erotic detail for hours now. Let her be a cautionary example for you!

Shoe, 9/9/26

The saving grace of Shoe is that no matter how much you hate reading these jokes, the characters’ facial expressions make it clear that they hate saying them much, much more.

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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