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Hagar the Horrible, 6/11/25

I find this strip genuinely funny, and particularly love the expressions on Hagar and Eddie’s faces in the second panel. Obviously they consider themselves to have landed in a suboptimal situation, babysitting-wise. But could they have prevented this? Maybe, but they’re damned if they can figure out how.

Mary Worth, 6/11/25

To be fair, Dawn, Wilbur didn’t “believe” Willa so much as “walked in on Belle trying to eat her.” I’m sure that if he had actually seen her trying to poison you he … probably would’ve done something about it? Right? Probably? Anyway, I like how they’re both vaguely smiling here. They can joke about all this, now that it’s over, Belle has been safely taken home by her brother, and the two of them are driving away from Charterstone and never coming back because explaining what happened to anyone they know is far too embarrassing a prospect to even consider. Better to make a clean break and start over in a new state with all new identities.

Garfield, 6/11/25

Today, in a very special Garfield, Odie fully grasps the concept of death for the first time. He’s not a fan!

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Pluggers, 6/10/25

Pluggers already did a version of this bit in 2007, only back then the joke was “When a plugger gives you directions, all the landmarks he uses will be stores that long ago went out of business, because his mental map of the world stopped changing at some point as he aged.” Now it’s “Wouldn’t it be cool if your phone, possibly using some kind of advanced AI, gave you directions using long-closed stores as landmarks so as to better match your mental map of the world, which stopped changing at some point as you aged?” This is, I think you’ll agree, significantly more depressing.

Blondie, 6/10/25

Speaking of old people and technology, I appreciate Blondie’s ongoing mission of educating us on how old people use technology. You ever log into a website with two-factor authentication turned on, and it asks you if you want to receive your access code as a text or a phone call, and you think to yourself, “A text, obviously, who on earth would ever choose phone call, that sounds terrible”? Well, it turns out that the ones choosing “phone call” are the writers and, presumably, the readers of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie.

Mary Worth, 6/10/25

I guess it’s only Tuesday so there’s probably a bit more to come but I do love that Wilbur and Dawn are just speed-running their way to pretending the Belle Episode never happened and pushing all the associated emotions they might have about it deep down inside. Are we going to unpack what “someone like Belle” means in this context? Nope! Are we gonna acknowledge that Belle’s brother was just Tall Wilbur? Absolutely not! La la la everything is fine just fine in Westonworld, just as it always has been, aside for a few minor bumps we don’t think about, ever!

Herb and Jamaal, 6/10/25

“That’s an interesting philosophical take, Herb, and I appreciate it! So, uh, are you going to help me … operate this restaurant that we both own, or are you just going to spend the rest of the day doing this conceptual art project or whatever it is?”

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Luann, 6/9/25

Back when I was last reading Luann regularly, a decade ago, the whole deal with Toni’s niece Shannon was that she was a hellion but that was mostly because her dad, Toni’s brother, was a flaky, neglectful actor who was always dumping his daughter with his sister with little or no notice so he could do cool actor stuff. Well, Shannon’s still a hellion, but now apparently her dad isn’t neglectful at all, but is rather a dedicated dad who knows his daughter is the most important thing in his life, and also his acting career is going nowhere so honestly why not pay attention to his daughter, I guess. Not sure what Shannon’s excuse is for her irritating behavior anymore!

Crock, 6/9/25

Nobody seems to have ever produced a detailed timeline of Crock’s characters and lore, and I must confess that, despite my authority within the world of newspaper comics, I don’t have all the details either. I’m not sure when Grossie and Maggot’s beloved (?) son Otis made his debut in the strip; was this installment, which apparently ran in 1997 according to the copyright date, the one that heralded his coming, or is this some other kid, who they (as the dialogue heavily implies) ate?

Slylock Fox, 6/9/25

We humans read the hints in Slylock Fox about the great Uprising that heralded the animalpocalypse and shudder at thoughts of the bloodbath, with the suddenly uplifted animals dishing out brutal revenge for a thousand centuries of abuse at the hands of H. sapiens. Less explored, but certainly germane, is the animal-on-animal battle that must’ve ensued in the aftermath as the beasts fought with one another for access to the humans’ stuff. Perhaps the first rudimentary animal legal codes were developed on the fly to resolve such conflicts peaceably, with Slylock and Max still occasionally tasked with enforcing the Rule of Finders Keepers, the oldest law the animals respect.