Monday is for teens
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Hi and Lois, 12/8/25
Let’s forget for a moment the incomprehensible/not funny punchline of this one and try to understand the lead-up to it. Why is Chip telling his father, who is watching exactly the same movie that he is, that there’s a parental warning on it? Shouldn’t Hi be just as capable of reading it as Chip is? Is it written in some format that only teens can read, like, uh, Minecraft font? Is there a Minecraft font? Is Minecraft still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025?
Zits, 12/8/25
Honestly, while I’m fine with the Zits parents (who were my boomer parents’ age when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but becoming Gen Xers, I’m a little unsettled by Jeremy (who was just a few years younger than me when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but being into things that contemporary teens are into, like Minecraft. I mean, Minecraft is still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025, right? “Watching” Minecraft? Surely the syndicated newspaper comic strip Zits wouldn’t steer me wrong about teens!
Gil Thorp, 12/8/25
In 1966, Gay Talese transformed the art of magazine writing with “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a profile that turned Sinatra’s refusal to give an interview into a central part of its structure. Will Gil Thorp do the same for the newspaper comics with “Gil Thorp Has A Serious Respiratory Illness Of Some Kind”? I mean, maybe? Or maybe Gil will just sweat a lot, who knows.
B.C., 12/8/25
The characters in B.C. live with a strange mix of stone age technology and modern conveniences and attitudes. This is not a criticism! I get that this is, in fact, the central joke of the strip! However, today’s installment does make me wonder if one of the modern things they have access to is the rabies vaccine. I worry!
28 replies to “Monday is for teens”
Mary Worth Mashups: A few Missing Final Panels to start your week. Which do you like best?
GT: You’re not sick, Gil. It’s just the artist.
BC: Optimistic caveman appreciates the mosquito control the bats provide, and revels that his strong immune system protects him from the symptoms of histoplasmosis.
@Baja Gaijin: Ooh, can Sunny drop an A/C unit on Ian?
BC: He’s happy because a “bat infestation” shows hope in the face of devastating white-nose syndrome which is killing off whole bat populations? Otherwise, I got nothing.
H and L:
With all that ridiculous hair completely covering his eyes, how can Chip even conceivably read a warning that’s on the screen to begin with?
GT: Hmm, ‘Gil %^&$@ Thorp! is on his Deathbed’ has a nice ring to it…
JP: Charlotte notices that one hourse looks strange, and it turns out to be one of those old-timey two-person horse costumes, with April playing the head and Randy playing the other part…
GT. The original opening dialogue was, “Sweetie, you look terrible,” but, well, you know…
Gil Thorp:
“Let me get as close to you as possible so that I can pick up whatever debilitating viral respiratory illness you have, Gil!”
FC-“Speak for yourself, Dolly. I get to inherit this comic.”
MW-“But, Ian, you were gone all those weeks at the conference and I was so lonely.”
MW-Ian devises a plan to have Wilbur watch Sunny.
CS: Whoa, slow down there, Lillian. Crankshaft’s “not feeling well”? He’s 106 years old; a minor sniffle could be fatal. Talk about burying the lede!
Luann: Ah yes, the time-honored kid’s story trope where a bunch of idiots screwed up a task horribly, but the end result was better than if they simply let competent people do it.
MW: CUT! For the last time, Toby, it has to start with “never gonna.” You’re “never gonna” appeal to the Internet-using crowd if you can’t execute a meme this basic.
Pluggers: So making your home look lazy and trashy for 11 months saves you a small amount of work in 1 month? That’s the Plugger ethos if ever I heard it.
Zits – It’s a dumbass movie, but good fun.
(and yes, it’s a film about the videogame). Walt and Connie will have more fun with it than whatever crap they couldn’t decide on.
B.C.:
“Peter Murphy from Bauhaus is here! And he brought a bunch of his friends for a singalong!”
Pooch Cafe does a pretty good crossover with Family Circus today. One small criticism, though. If you’re gonna draw Thel, she’s a good double-D/E.
H&L That’s some look on Hi’s face in the last panel. He knows he’ll surely die if he sticks around to watch this racy(?) action-packed(?) film, but he’s going to anyways. It’s like if they made The Ring for middle-aged dads.
Zits: “Also the internet it down and my phone stopped working and I broke my xbox and…”
GT: I’ve seen this before: he’s got a mild case of cubism. Better get him some medicine now or he’ll lose all perspective, and it may advance to surrealosis.
BC Some days, punchline be damned, you just feel like drawing a bat. You do you, B.C.
MW: Alas, poor Toby! Imagine having to choose between spending the rest of your life with a Scottish curmudgeon or a stray parrot! She probably imagined that just because he talks like that, he’d have no problem wearing a tricorn hat and letting it perch on his shoulder while he, ahem, boards her poop deck.
H&L – from the eyes in panel one, Chip knows Hi has had at least five shots of bourbon and can’t quite focus on the lettering
Gil Thorp:
“You wear one of those gauche, impossibly tacky undershirts again, Gil, and you and I are through!”
Zits: The Minecraft Movie is the third highest grossing film of 2025, with nearly $1bn box office and the hottest Gen Z brainrot meme of the year (“Chicken jockey!”). I regret to inform you that the teens are definitely watching Minecraft.
Pardon My Planet – Y’know, when the joke is “The uniform that prepares your kids for the future is a pison jumpsuit”, having a white dude say that to a black couple might not be the best of moves.
H&L: The parental warning is from Chip himself. He tries to prepare his dad for the scene where a teenage boy masturbates with a watermelon after Hi had a rather large slice of the same with dinner.
Zits: Boy, Jeremy really fucked up their chance to watch “Johnny English”.
Blondie – you’re absolutely right kid. You need to know more than three chords and be able to shred at the top of the fretboard. Try again when you aren’t impressed with yourself for knowing the intro to “Smoke on the Water.”
Hi and Lois: It’s funny because Chip deadpans a line designed to send his father into a tailspin of gnawing worry about his health and mortality. A+ stratagem, Chip, Ikiru has never been more fun.
B.C. is currently produced by a team consisting of Hart’s grandsons Mason and Mick Mastroianni, as well as his daughter Perri. Can they come up with a sensical punchline? No, unless you think bat guano is the funniest thing you’ve ever heard of! Do they love drawing upside-down bats? They most certainly do!
Gil Thorp: “‘I’ll handle the kids’ means dropping them off at school and then having hot and sweaty fever sex, right? Beth? Beth?!”
Zits: The Minecraft movie, a godawful cinematic experience that garnered 5.6/10 on IMDB and only 47% on Rotten Tomatoes ridiculously soft scale? Oh, Connie, oh, Walt: I’d say your crisis is only just begun.
G. *&^#@! Thorp – Reminds me of the joke about the guy who looks terrible but feels great. He tells this to the doctor, who thumbs through his diagnosis book and looks at the different combinations: “Looks great, feels terrible, no that’s not it . . . [other incorrect combinations] . . . Here it is, looks terrible, feels great. Aha! You’re a vagina.”