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The Lockhorns, 4/20/26

A fun subtle running bit in The Lockhorns is that Leroy’s coworkers hold him in as much contempt as his wife does, but with a subtle difference in tone: Loretta is furious that she’s shackled to this loser forever, while his coworkers seem to enjoy him as the office clown, the lovable loser whose antics they presumably talk about at length when he’s out of earshot or maybe even when he’s just within it. Look at the big smile on the receptionist’s face as she delivers this zinger! Anyway, this kind of interaction is probably marginally less corrosive to Leroy’s soul than the ones he has with Loretta, so you can see why he puts up with the low pay, and also why they don’t pay him very much.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/20/26

“Oh man,” you probably woke up thinking, “it’s 4/20, the marijuana holiday! Now that recreational cannabis is more or less legal in most of the United States, have any of the syndicated newspaper strips chosen to ‘blaze it’ with a weed-themed joke?” Turns out the answer to your question is “Yes, exactly one, and it’s Mother Goose and Grimm,” which I admit isn’t what I expected.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/20/26

Oops, it looks like Hagar and Eddie and the crew have died at sea. And, frankly, that’s a good thing: we’ve grown affectionate towards them over the years, but they’re fundamentally a gang of thieves and murderers who leave a trail of misery and death in their wake. Rest in piss, fellas!

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Hi and Lois, 4/19/26

I get that “cartoon dad must escape from his nagging family” is a time-honored trope, but I think the specific gripes of the Flagston clan are just way too dark for the way he nopes out of there to be comical. Lois is at the end of her rope, spending all day showing beautiful homes to her clients and then coming home to a collapsing hovel; Chip has suffered some otherwise undocumented heartbreak and is still devastated; the twins, who should be each other’s best friends within the family, have become implacable nemeses; and Trixie, like all addicts, can no longer get satisfaction from the sun as it is and demands a hotter and brighter star no matter what destructive effects that might have on our planet’s ecosystem. Based on Hi’s huge grin and rosy cheeks in the final panel, I assume that he’s “getting what he needs” thanks in part to a bottle of bourbon he keeps stashed in the glove compartment.

Blondie, 4/19/26

Look, I’m not a pickleball guy, but … the whole point of pickleball is that it’s basically ping pong scaled up to be played on a tennis court, right? Like … why aren’t the DithersCo layabouts just playing ping pong. They already have a ping pong table in the breakroom, I guarantee they have the paddles and balls somewhere. And if Dithers allows the ping pong table in the breakroom, why is he so mad about people using it? I enjoy the little illustration he made, which may be part of a whole wider collection of plausibly deniable Dagwood furry art, but I still think he’s in the wrong here.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/19/26

You know the whole thing in vampire lore where if you throw rice in front of a vampire, they have to stop chasing you to count the grains? Well, apparently this deli-owning dog thinks if you give Slylock a math word problem to solve, he’ll turn his ratiocination to figuring it out and won’t notice that you’ve enslaved and dismembered your fellow sapient animals to stock your shop. It didn’t work, though, and he’s going to jail, along with all of his customers.

Beetle Bailey, 4/19/26

Oh, Beetle, you’ve really done it this time! You remembered the Sabbath day, but you forgot to keep it holy! Can’t even imagine how much KP you’ll be doing for this, in hell.

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Marvin, 4/18/26

OK, I kind of … well, like is a strong word, but I appreciate what Marvin is going for here. At first you’re like, “Ha ha, of course you can’t turn on the TV! You’re a dog!” But then you find out that the actual reason is that he could use the remote to turn the TV on or off, but he doesn’t know where it is because [comical BOI-OI-OING noise] he hid it. Both the using and (to an admittedly lesser extent) the hiding of this object are not particularly dog-like, so the twist is … well, funny is a strong word, but at least it’s mildly interesting. I guess it’s best if we don’t get into the antagonistic relationship he has with the humans in the house that would’ve led to him hiding it in the first place.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/18/26

French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously came up with the thought experiment that we call “Pascal’s wager,” which is basically that you might as well believe in God because if you do but he doesn’t exist, you suffer no harm from your belief, but if he does exist and you don’t believe in him, you won’t make it into heaven. This really wowed the rubes in the 17th century but it’s absolutely baby brain stuff today, where you can open the comics pages and see some guy talking about how he literally believes in the concept of heaven as understood by most contemporary Christians, but he doesn’t go to church, possibly because his irreligiosity combined with his good deeds makes him even more likely to get into paradise, in his opinion. Wild stuff! And he’s telling this to a clergyman who definitely has some opinions about faith and works and their respective relationship to salvation! Can’t decide if Rev. Croom’s big grin is because he’s about to open up a can of theological whoop-ass or because he’s like “This is great, can’t wait to tell the fellas in the PastorChat Discord about this one.”