Wednesday is for sex-havers and non-sex-havers alike
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Rhymes With Orange, 8/5/26
Stale legacy strips like Hagar the Horrible (start date: 1973) still find tired tropes like “Oooh, what if a human were to form an erotic attachment with a mermaid???” to be edgy. New, cutting-edge strips like Rhymes With Orange (start date: 1995), meanwhile, will tell you that everyone and everything under the sea, both natural and mythological, is fucking everyone and everything else.
Luann, 8/5/26
Look, man, I’ve tried to get my head around the question of how we’re supposed to parse the state of sexual relations in Luann for, literally, the bulk of my adult life, but mere minutes ago in strip time Luann and Phil were unpleasantly tongue kissing in front of her mom and now he’s like, “What if we were roommates, with separate bedrooms, to save on rent?” and … I am nothing. I am defeated utterly. I could live a thousand lifetimes and still not understand the mysteries this strip puts before me.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/5/26
So far all the scams we’ve seen the Scam Twins pull off have been things like “busking but only pretending to play the violin” or “lying about being from the health department so you can eat for free at the mall food court,” so yeah, you could say that kidnapping a child would represent something of a “bigger deal.” The twins aren’t exactly drawn with what I’d call expressive faces, but I’m choosing to believe that Driver’s Seat Twin’s sunglasses levitated cartoonishly in surprise at this suggestion before settling back down on her nose in panel two.
132 replies to “Wednesday is for sex-havers and non-sex-havers alike”
“‘Made in Hong Kong?’ How old is this doll, Mermaid-Mom?!”
Rhymes with Orange:
“Will you ever tell her about her real father?”
“Oh, yes, eventually. He lives in Copenhagen. I fell for him because he was statuesque!”
Luann: Every Luann character is so skinny that no-one in this strip has ever sensed a big butt.
RMMD: Casual Rex Morgan reader: “Uncle Jimmy? Who’s that?” (sees the editor’s note) “Oh, Rene Belluso! That character we all certainly know who needs no additional explanation.”
Rhymes with Orange:
“Those dolls were so expensive, they put me under water. So to speak.”
“…and I wore my finest scrubs for this, Luann! They’re a lot like all my other scrubs, the ones I wear every day, for every situation, but c’mon!
RMMD:
“Put those glasses down, Sis! — otherwise, we’re no longer in every respect weirdly identical!”
Luann:
I really don’t understand the confusion here. Living together and sleeping in same bed is a much bigger deal than just kissing your boyfriend whom you haven’t seen in weeks. If they decide the relationship isn’t going anywhere, they can remain friends and roommates.
The “AKA Rene Belluso” MAKES THIS. Think of the rest of this bunch! Or do it in reverse! Rex Morgan. “AKA Non-existent cake-lover!”
Luann: OH, COME ON! Luann gets what she wants in spite of everything she’s done to prove she can’t handle it, and now she’s the one bailing out?
CS: Whatever you do, Ed and Pam, don’t try to put out that fire. It’s the only remaining source of comedy in this entire comic strip, and you both know it.
Phantom Heloise’s tube top begins to shrink along her torso, ensuring that by the time we get to a fight scene, the artist will be able to use lingerie models for reference…
GT … and the kidnapped barstaff were never thought of again
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Lindsay Lohan returns in The Parent Trap 2: The Parent Kidnap.
RMMD: Although “Uncle Jimmy” thinks the twins are pea-brains, he encourages them to go for it, because, hey, what else does he have in the way of entertainment?
GT: It took me five minutes to realize it’s his tie, not a handless arm. In my defense, the coffee wasn’t ready yet.
RWO: That’s why they made Mermaid Barbie; so these disturbed children have a doll they can relate to.
RMMD: Maybe it’s her tribute to CSI:Miami, but she forgot the belabored pun?
“It’s our fate to abduct the Morgan kid”
::drops sunglasses down::
” ‘Kay, Sarah, Sarah”
YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
Hopefully Uncle Jimmy will explain concepts like “federal crime,” “felony,” and “the FBI Most Wanted list” to the twins.
@Blond Pardo:
Wait, they’re kidnapping Sarah, not June. I should have written The Parent Trap 2: The Child Kidnap.
Okay, in a same week, we have kidnappings in both Gil Thorp and Rex Morgan, and in both of them they’re treated like shenanigans instead of an incredibly serious felony punishable by life imprisonment. Was the Reuben dinner lately? Did they have the brown acid at it?
Apparently only Pluggers go through menopause. Say what you want about the comics, you learn science from them.
Beetle Bailey : that bee stole Killer’s mustache!
*************
Crankshaft : what a terrible quip. An actually good quip would have been “Seriously, dad, you’ve GOT to STOP setting fire to everything”
*************
Luann : you’d think going to summer camp would have prepared Luann more for becoming roommates with someone (or so thouroughly disgusted her of sharing a room with others she could flat-out refuse Phil on that basis). But for some reason, the Evansii decided that the Camp Skye guest character who would “show Luann the ropes” would appear in, like, only two strips, and Luann would have sole responsibility of her campers without a partner to room with.
So, her reason for not being interested in rooming with Phil is because she had that idea a month ago, didn’t follow through with it, and has now lost interest in it and actively doesn’t want to do it anymore.
************
Rhymes with Orange : that mermaid’s secret dad isn’t Lucky Eddie; judging by the teeth and voracious, man-eating apetite, her father is Bruce the Shark (more commonly known as Jaws).
RMMD: How is it even possible that, even in a plot arc centered on the Morgan family, which has been going on for over a month now, Rex has only appeared in two strips? Beatty introduced twins to have a ready made excuse to recycle art. Am I supposed to believe he doesn’t have any images of the title character to reuse?
Luann: The “but” that’s coming is so big, Sir Mix-A-Lot’ll start lusting after it.
Gil Thorp: Gil’s left hand has the right idea: it left the party before it could be used by Gil in his embarrassing spotlight dance. Or Coach Gerard bit it off on his way out of the dance.
RMMD – I’ve stopped reading this one daily, I’ve been peeking every few days and if Thing 1 and Thing 2 are there I quickly move on. But these two are so bad at con jobs that they don’t even know what a confidence game is. “What’s our next con? Kidnapping? Robbing a bank? Mowing down the Morgan mob with uzis?”.
MW – I’ve also given up on this, with even less actual story or conflict than normal it may be the least essential reading of our time.
GT – Honorable mention for the “why are we even looking at this” as they go from mild “comic” drama back to badly drawn and highly cringe dancing.
Rhymes with Orange:
In many shark species, the males bite the females during mating to hold her in place. Furthermore, instead of a single penis, male sharks have a pair of penis-like intromittent organs called claspers that they use to inseminate the females. What I’m saying is that there are way more interesting angles than “child with a dorsal fin” that they could have used for a joke here if they weren’t cowards about their mermaid × shark semi-bestiality gag.
Wait I need to do that again, I thought of more weird shark reproductive biology…
Rhymes with Orange:
In many shark species, the males bite the females during mating to hold her in place. Furthermore, instead of a single penis, male sharks have a pair of penis-like intromittent organs called claspers that they use to inseminate the females. And in some species, the baby sharks within their mother’s uteruses consume their siblings for sustenance before being born. What I’m saying is that there are way more interesting angles than “child with a dorsal fin” that they could have used for a joke here if they weren’t cowards about their mermaid × shark semi-bestiality gag.
Everybody F***s Everything: A
Hägar the HorribleSix ChixRhymes With Oranges Reader@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: RMMD Yeah, this cries out for the “That escalated quickly” meme.
Luann: Over on the comment boards at GoComics, it’s common for TruFans to give the Luann characters advice, typically of the childless-cat-lady-aunt variety. I’m not necessarily endorsing the practice, but in this case, Phil, if you can hear me, KILL IT WITH FIRE JUST NAPALM THE ENTIRE PLACE AND BURN IT TO THE GROUND. And don’t forget to feed your kitties.
Rex Morgan, M.D.
If the twins do go through with their kidnapping plot, I can only assume we’ll have a “The Ransom of Red Chief” situation where they’re so annoyed by Sarah’s inane behavior that they end up paying the Morgans to take her back (Rex would insist they hold out for more money than June would be willing to settle for). However, they’re going to consult with their Uncle Jimmy/Rene before they commit to the idea, and since Rene takes a dim view of their scamming abilities he’ll presumably tell them to forget about it. The way the different players in soap opera comic strips act with clockwork precision to prevent anything interesting from happening is truly a sight to behold.
GT – Gil reaches into the void beyond the curtain and never sees his hand again. That was the hand with Beth’s favorite finger! This is all your fault Keri!
@MKay: Also in your defense…Gil Thorp art.
Oh, I cannot wait until Rex Morgan, M.D. gets back to its roots by explaining medical terms like “criminal conspiracy” and “misprision of a felony”!
Luann: Man, how much of a loser do you have to be where Luann doesn’t even want to share space with you?
RMMD: This is going to end like “The Ransom of Red Chief,” only instead of being too rambunctious Sarah will wear down her captors by being stiflingly dull.
Rw/O: Honestly, girls torturing their dolls is such a regular thing it took me a while to notice the half-shark thing.
Luann-Phil doesn’t like big buts.
RMMD-Called it.
FC-“Darn it! Missed again!”
FC-Aim better, God. One got away.
DT: Dick Tracy’s grasp of technology and nerd culture may be dated at best, but it’s cutting edge when it comes to dealing with help line BS.
Dustin: “…And that’s the only place I can escape my horrible family!”
GT: It was nice of Gil to invite the exotic dancer from his bachelor party to the wedding reception.
MW: As if this weren’t nauseating enough, remember that Wilbur is just off-panel watching this whole exchange with a smug, self-satisfied grin.
Pluggers is doing a menopause joke. In other news, I now find Pluggers relatable, and as soon as I can find an ice floe still intact I’m going to put myself on it and set myself adrift.
“I mean, kidnapping, doesn’t that bring on the FBI?”
“Have you looked at the FBI lately?”
“Fair point. You grab her arms, I’ll get her legs.”
Are there print collections of Rex Morgan, MD? Are they considering a big, Lichtenstein-style blow-up of that second panel for the cover of a collection titled “AKA: Rene Belluso”? He’s a plagiarist/art thief, it would work!
Luann: At 79 years old Greg Evans has reached a point in his life where he regrets all the petty bullshit that stood in the way of good fucking and Luann is going to be the place where he expresses that feeling.
Aren’t those mer-girls a bit too old to be going around topless? Isn’t it time that they get fitted for their first sets of seashell bras?
Starting from the bottom, is it only cannibalism if you eat a mermaid from the waist up? I have to ponder this to keep myself from thinking about how fish reproduce and how human genitalia would fit into that.
***
“It’s not as sexy if we have our own private place to get frisky, Phil. I’m addicted to the thrill of being caught now, or at least making other people around us uncomfortable. Privacy has become a turn-off, I’m afraid.”
***
The not-very-smart twins are the best new characters the soap comics have introduced in years. All they want to do is crime, but their criming veers between “Is it even a crime at all to pretend to play the violin and make pocket change?” to “I sentence you to 40 years.” There is no half-assing anything for them. It’s either no effort at all or it’s guns a-blazin’. They wake up in the morning, flip a coin, and it’s either Eddie Murphy’s fake disabled scam at the start of Trading Places or it’s a full-on Ocean’s 2 casino heist.
Pluggers are shocked, and perhaps somewhat discomfited, to discover that even at middle age and later they are still sexually desirable, despite what the patriarchy told them about “fuckability.”
GT, the missing panel: “Okay folks, this is DJ Moon again. The police have taken away the kidnappers and the FBI will be here soon to interview all of you. So nobody can leave. So…let’s party! Here’s a favorite for the youngsters, ‘Disco Duck!’ Let’s dance!”
Eek!-“I would like your vote in November in the upcoming election.”
RwO: Here’s dad is Lucky Eddie. Best she never know, though she’ll wonder where she got her overbite.
RMMD – The Parent Trap Two -This time we’re not joking….
Luann – Phil is gay…right?
Adios Amigos, DJ.
GT: You call this an old fashioned? Damn, we should’ve not freed you two and kept Coach Gerads at the bar!
@Hibbleton:
Luann: At 79 years old Greg Evans has reached a point in his life where he regrets all the petty bullshit that stood in the way of good fucking and Luann is going to be the place where he expresses that feeling.
I feel that’s not a quite fair/correct thing to say. 50-something, post-menopausal Karen Evans also feels that way. I guess it’s why the strip is going in that direction NOW; both writer and artist now agree that a reluctance to be horny is something you’ll regret later in life.
So instead of Luann refusing to have sex, now the focus will be that no one wants to have sex with her. Got it. I guess that means she’s maturing, though in a characteristically neurotic sort of way.
Protip: When drawing a conversation between identical twins, if you have to put one in closeup, make sure she’s facing the opposite direction from the previous panel. Sure it means she dramatically snubbed her twin for no reason, but it keeps readers on their toes.
Will the part of Uncle Jimmy be played by Peter Stormare? Will there be a phone call with the ominous message “blood has been shed”? Will the twins bicker over whether to stop to procure sex workers or pancakes? The answers to all these questions, and more, will be no. We’re talking about Rex Morgan here.
BTW the twins’ opsec is so bad that the “mary worth is lit” bsky account posted this strip six days ago.
GA: That sound you hear over the “Now behalf yourself! This lost doggy is a GUEST!” diatribe is the collective facepalming of pet owners with their understanding of personal territory.
Especially the Trails.
RMMD: Tomorrow’s Strip:
“Okay, let’s go and … wait, where did these unmarked cars come from?”
“They’re climbing out and surrounding the Morgan brat. They got her! They’re driving off!”
“Damn, ICE has to steal our thunder!”
@TheDiva:
Luann: Man, how much of a loser do you have to be where Luann doesn’t even want to share space with you?
Enough of a loser to want her to share space with you in the first place.
Luann – Everyone I know has a big but.
RWO: “Let’s bite their legs off.”
“Uh, no, Caitlyn. I like to take care of the things I’m given, so let’s not bite their legs off.”
Luann: I personally don’t care where or with whom Luann lives. All I want to know is, does she have teeth?
RMMD: Oh, please, let the Scam Twins kidnap Sarah Morgan and have it turn into a Ransom of Red Chief situation. America deserves this.
Rex Morgan: The Morgans are well-off, but they’re not exactly rich, right? At least not wealthy enough to make it worth a kidnapping plot that could result in many years in prison if things go wrong, as they inevitably will. Do the sisters really think that once Rex and June liquidate their Roth IRAs and sell off their stock in big pharma companies, they’ll have enough for some multi-million-dollar ransom? I mean, I get that they’re the main characters, but somewhere the children of unassuming tech moguls must be walking around, ripe for the picking!
Rhymes With Orange: I’d like to know more about this undersea world, where plants can grow in pots and paper books don’t get soggy. Then you can tell me about the mermaids who are taught to devour human flesh from an early age.
Luann: “Am I sensing a ‘but’?” “If we have separate bedrooms, you won’t be ‘sensing’ anything!”
@Vulpes:
An important point is that O Henry’s Ransom of Red Chief (1907) came out decades before the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (1932), so the bemusement of the story vanished like dry ice at the bottom of Death Valley.
I guess RMMD and GT are trying to make kidnapping fun again or MKFA.
RMMD – So, this is the first time the Mobbsey Twins have discussed this possibility. They spent several days staking out the Morgans’ house for no particular reason, just to see if a feeling would come over them. And that feeling turned out to be… kidnapping! I wonder if this is how Yo-Yo Ma got into playing the cello.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Mimosa… Fetch my newspaper”
“No, no, Mimosa! All he has is USA Today”
From the headline, I was expecting to hear about the guy who’s with a new girl every strip telling his younger siblings about where babies come from.
Serendipity that my comment appeared below Don Abundio, the only comic strip character who gets more action than Chip Flagston.
GT: I’m still shocked that Gil consumed that Old Fashioned. Even if the whiskey had been dick-free, you know Gerads was keeping the lemon up his bunghole.
BB: Screw the peck on the arm, Killer thinks. A bee sting earns an upgrade to blowjob.
DT: So this uber hacker can snarl up international game company for presumably millions in ransom, is trying to scam some schmuck in a game room out of a few thousand?
GT: Hi, Gil tell the twins over at RMMD that “fun kidnapping” was done on your strip first.
JP: Neddy has a wonderful “uh oh” look when she explains that she doesn’t actually know where Charlotte is … Now if it turns out she has been kidnapped, then we have a three of a kind – three kidnapping plots on three strips.
Arlo & Janis is rerunning an arc from 2000 about a relationship between a simple fisherman and a mermaid. It’s pretty funny, avoids most of the usual tropes and bit poignant.
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2026/07/27
GT: Gil’s doing The Frankenstein.
RMMD: Excellent plan, ladies, go directly to jail and tell an inmate that you’re conspiring to kidnap a child. I’m sure the guards will be excited to hear it.
But really, can these twins please watch Catch Me If You Can or something to get a sense of what sort of scams might be profitable? Or interesting to watch? Because “let’s go hassle a random 12-year-old on a public street with no money at stake” sounds like an express ticket to snoresville. Especially when the mark has already knows you by sight, so the drama is likely to unfold as follows: 1. Twins attempt to persuade Sarah to enter their car using a plausible story. 2. Sarah responds, “I know who you are! You’re those girls who faked playing the violin! Why are you so DISHONEST??” 3. Random neighbor or passerby intervenes: “Sarah, are those women bothering you? Never get into a stranger’s car!” 4. Twins drive away and confess their failure to Rene.
I do really wonder how the twins pay rent, since they seem to sink all their time into things that don’t net much cash.
@treetown: Reminds me of an episode of J.A.G where a guy developing a training simulator videogame for the Navy, leaves the Navy to branch out on making “real” videogames. Because it’s more lucrative.
Lawyers Rabb and Mac are trying to bust this guy for mis-use of military technology (as he based his videogames off of the training simulator)
But then it turns out, that literally everyone is fine with this.
The Navy itself doesn’t seem to care, nor do his current employers.
@Vulpes:
My thoughts exactly!
Rex Morgan: Your “Uncle Jimmy” literally told you just a few days ago to not go anywhere near the Morgans, do you seriously think he’s gonna change his mind for KIDNAPPING one of them? What the fuck are the Twins even intending to accomplish with this kidnapping? They’re not really going to get revenge on the Morgans for the family, since Rene clearly doesn’t want any part of it and the entire point of kidnapping is you GIVE THE PERSON BACK after getting what you want. And if they’re expecting some sort of emotional turmoil or ransom money, clearly they know nothing about the comic they’re in; Rex barely seemed to care when Sarah was in her brain-damaging car crash, let alone any other time she or his other kids were in trouble, reacting to it with the same bland irritation he does to everything else. There is literally no ending to this that is good for the Twins.
It says something very bad that RMMD has finally managed to create truly hateable villains with the Twins instead of his usual “hapless losers that annoy Rex mildly”, but the hateability is not due to them really being evil or dangerous, but just how fucking outrageously stupid and unduly smug they are even by RMMD’s standards, all while the comic seems to act like they’re criminal masterminds. Beatty’s weird rage-boner over the very idea of “scammers” was embarrassing enough when it was just Rene being a cartoon character, it’s even worse when he’s having them be constantly pompously smirking and ranting about they’re such evil, naughty scheming scammers who commit crime for kicks and are totally gonna get ya!
@Powers:
#7 LUANN: Precisely, no big deal in real life. In college and beginning work I’ve had numerous platonic male housemates, often two other women and two men, none of whom were paired.
But here, Phil and Lu already have a romance. Plus, the strip is about making it and having families
@Lord Flatulence: I was going to say Gil is doing the Robot, but yours is better.
Speaking of which, little help needed with the current story in Questionable Content. At first I thought Momo was Roko, who is the same color robot but is an ex-cop, is sexually attracted to breadstuffs, and in turn is the subject of a crush by super-robot Yay Newfriend. Turns out Momo is a completely different robot, buxom nerd Marigold’s pet AI. Does Momo have any characteristics or backstory other than her crush on Sven (human ladykiller, ex-lover of blue robot Mae, and composer of shitty yet lucrative country music)?
(Roko & Momo: bad robot names especially if they’re not, say, red and blue robots. Bubbles & Beepatrice: good robot names because they are distinctive and they DON’T SOUND ALIKE)
@Tabby Lavalamp:
#37 RMMD: they discuss the planned kidnapping with Uncle Jimmy in the prisons visiting room, where conversations are taped. Uncle Jimmy gets 10 more years for conspiracy
@The Rambling Otter: I remember watching that, it was a hilarious conclusion to that plot and a great subversion of expectations. So many legal dramas or cop shows would train you to expect some kind of big drama or puffed up, hypocritical Hollywood moralizing about a “in the news” issue, but instead the most realistic possible resolution – that nobody actually gives a shit nor is anybody being hurt, so there’s no point to the whole courtroom battle – is what happens. Almost like the show is reminding you of how, no, television is not a real portrayal of what the law is like, and if it were, you’d be wading through seas of mundane bullshit like the video game guy or petty misdemanors to get a rare instance of actually serious, dramatic crimes like murder and such.
@Peanut Gallery: Yeah, that dawned on me too. Like, if they weren’t already planning a kidnapping, why the fuck were they just sitting there for days on end staring at the Morgans’ house? What, was it their version of watching fish at the aquarium?
@Nekrotzar: Sara Morgan will be played by Steve Buscemi, though.
@Lord Flatulence:
Let’s all take a moment to imagine Gil and Keri rocking out to this number.
@ectojazzmage: “…the entire point of kidnapping is you GIVE THE PERSON BACK…”
Back in the Good Ol’ Days, it was considered cheaper and easier to just murder the victim after collecting ransom, especially since federal kidnap law had not yet been established. The horrific Marion Parker kidnap-homicide in Los Angeles, 1927, started the legislative ball rolling. The Lindbergh case in 1932 caused to entire roof to crash down, and felony level kidnapping charges were swiftly written into the lawbooks.
REX MORGAN M.D.: People, the attempted kidnapping isn’t really that big deal (as a reminder, their “uncle Jimmy” did try to murder someone after all, and even that wasn’t as bad as trying to prevent someone from playing their one novelty hit, the asshole!) Let’s focus on the real arrestable offense here: the comic’s relentless desire to underestimate our intelligence.
Why is that “aka Rene Belluso” there?! I mean obviously the dum-dum audience would have forgotten a piece of info that the strip spent just last week reiterating. (Actually, no they wouldn’t have because on the Comics Kingdom website, you can literally scroll back to the actual meeting with Rene and the post-meeting wrap-up where they once again mention who their uncle is.) I guess Terry Beatty knows he’s “peaked” with this one irrelevant plot twist he create and is insistent on rehashing his glory days to us in relentless “four touchdowns in one game” litany.
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): Given what I said above, I don’t think this is as big an escalation as some people believe it to be. Since no unforgivable crime is being contemplated here (the twins are not monsters trying to rid the world of Roots Country after all), and these two idiots are destined to defuse any tension in the situation by tripping over their own feet in “Belluso-esque” tradition, Sarah and Marti will quickly get over the trauma of their attempted kidnapping (meanwhile June will be on week 4 of her filibuster over deceptive busking practices. See, the Morgan’s know where their priorities should lie!)
@Anonymous: It is pretty amazing, I’ll confess, to see Luann as a series at least TRY to push a little out of it’s neo-puritan attitudes. At the very least, if they commit to it (they probably won’t, and definitely haven’t worked through even a fraction of hangups), it would mean there’s one less reason to find Luann to be the most pathetic loser in the world.
@Tabby Lavalamp: I’m half-expecting a storyline where the Twins are introduced doing the “pretend to be hit by a car” scam, then randomly smirk at each other and decide to “scam” Mud Mountain Murphy by shooting him in the face with a revolver. Followed by staring at his corpse and wondering when they get the money.
@TheDiva: I once saw one of my nieces doing what I can only describe as a recreation of ancient Aztec blood sacrifices to a Barbie doll with her bare hands. Little girls are terrifying.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: TruFans sound very evocative of Mary Worth, which is totally unsurprising.
GT: Running a Charlie Brown Christmas through ChatGPT does not exactly produce Martha Graham level stuff.
RWO: Is there some mermaid lore that I’m unaware of? Do they bite the legs off their mates, like a Praying Mantis?
RMMD: Personally I think all asterisks in comic strips should lead to “For Ghost Who Walks,” except for the ones that lead to “Latest Fad.”
@Pee-Wee Herman: Watch out for Andy. He’s looking for you!
@ectojazzmage:
I want to agree that more detective/courtroom shows should include a joke episode where the punchline is the victim going “Wait a minute. No one’s going to jail over this, because I’m not pressing charges for this”. Like, 1 episode out of 65, roughly?
@Jym Dyer:
RMMD: Personally I think all asterisks in comic strips should lead to “For Ghost Who Walks,” except for the ones that lead to “Latest Fad.”
What about “In the Bandar tongue”, indicating the text preceding the asterisk was spoken in an obscure african(?) dialect?
Luann: “You want me to live with you?” “FUCK YEAH!”
RMMD: “Are we ready to pull off a kidnapping?” “FUCK YEAH!”
RWO: “Will you ever tell her about her real father?” “FUCK NO!”
From yesterday:
Liam
August 4th, 2026 at 9:21 am Reply
Gil Thorp-For revenge he is going to steal Gil’s bicycle.
This reminds me of the joke with the punchline, “Riding MY bicycle.”
GT: Keri is so fashion forward. She took the star worn by an arresting officer yesterday and made it into a memorable earring for the daddy daughter dance.
JP: nope, not April driving. But there’ll be no kiddnapping as Ned never warned Soph a kidnapper was already on the move. Maybe Char is enjoying time with her former preschool buddy. So the new kids dnapper wannabe will work with Ned to free Char.
S4th: aaaaah. And Ronan likes the fact her family is as wacko as his.
@word doctor: Now I’ve got “Linus & Lucy” stuck in my head. Which is not a bad thing!
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Your RMMD comment sooo deserves a float ride.
LUANN: “You’ve wanted to move out for so long….” Um…since when? When was that discussed as his lifetime goal? Again I must remind people (since the Evans don’t seem keen on remembering) that Phil only went to an open house because he was too cheap to take his lady out on a real date. Before that (a storyline that took place just before this summer, fyi) we had no idea what this guy’s living situation was much less that he had a desire to change it. Too be far, though, we never got a chance to know what Phil’s lifetime goals were because Luann has spent the entire relationship talking about herself and Phil entire personality throughout that time has been “scrub-wearing nag.”
LUANN (2): Also I’m surprised people aren’t picking up on the symbolism here (particularly since it’s been as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face) Luann didn’t want to move in with Phil as much as she wanted to persue THE DREAM (get it?) this amazing and pricey apartment complex and Phil was just a adjunct to that.. At the time, Phil quickly puts a kibbosh on THE DREAM because he finds it unattainable and pointless. As a result of sub-Archie style miscommunication “wackiness”, Phil thinks Luann’s DREAM is to move in with him (it’s not Phil’s DREAM, because he’s a wooden marionette still trying to be a real boy, and therefore doesn’t have “dreams”, silly) and tries to adapt it as his own until fate and plot contrivance intervene and Luann is lead in a different direction over the summer. But now that’s she’s become the most popular girl in second-grade, Luann now has a different direction (in that she has one). Meanwhile Phil has given up on THE DREAM and is trying for THE SETTLER (get it?), something not really too fancy or nice, just something he can kinda tolerate (much like their relationship! See how it’s all coming together?) But uh-oh, inspired by being queen of the 7 year-olds, Luann has a new DREAM, and is not willing to be a SETTLER.
Do you guys get it? GET IT? You better, because Greg and Karen have no problem whacking anyone over the head with the theme mallet again if they don’t!
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: It’s new to me and I love it.
JP: Ces, if I wanted to read a strip in which the possibility of interpersonal conflict is briefly raised but immediately resolved, I wouldn’t have quit Rex Morgan.
S4th: Ronan implies he was spontaneously inspired to propose by their ridiculous time travel adventure. What does Slylock Forth notice that makes her doubt this story?
@MKay:
#12 TwO: I think the joke would have been more effective if a rabbit with a Hillary Forth face had said it about the too-long legs.
@Ukulele Ike: Mojo’s backstory is that she’s very “proper”, she works or worked at the college library, she’s Mae’s opposites-attract friend, and she’s had this crush on Sven for a while, getting quite upset with Mae (who hadn’t realised it was the same dude because he changed his hairstyle.) That’s about it, I think. Oh, and she was the first robot in the strip to start off Pintsize size and then get a human sized body.
Roko’s name is slightly better (or at least cleverer) when you learn her surname is Basilisk.
FG: So much action! Shall we parse it?
Galo: “Hey, boss! I failed again, but I got Prince Vultan as a hostage!”
Ming: “Mwah ha ha! Hear that, Queen Fria and Flash Gordon? Prince Vultan is our hostage!”
Queen Fria and Flash Gordon: “Deposed Prince Vultan? That loud-talker short-fingered surgeon-fucking vulgarian with the dead dad?? Good luck, and feed him when you can.”
Ming: “Attention, Galo, you’re back on the milk-delivery circuit. Leave your keys up front.”
@Ukulele Ike: It does kind of seem like bringing King Kong back to New York. Yeah, you captured him, but now what? He seems pretty capable of fighting his way back out.
@Rita Lake: I do really wonder how the twins pay rent, since they seem to sink all their time into things that don’t net much cash.
Ah, that’s why they’ve got their sights on the biggest scam of all! They’ve noticed that Uncle Jimmy, Super Genius, has managed to get all his living expenses paid by the state, and they want in on that!
Wait, do mermaids have to live under a dome? I mean, that’s what’s happening here, right?
Luann teases us with some very, very, very tiny amount of adult content, but pulls it back just before delivering. I mean both Luann the character and Luann the comics
So leg genes are recessive. Good to know. I mean, for someone must be good to know!
Rene should tell them: “Lesson 1 of kidnapping: never kidnap a child whose parents would never pay to get her back. There’s even the risk they will not want her returned for free!”
I know the art isn’t exactly clear, but in Rex Morgan, panel 2 is of the twin in the passenger seat, and the “camera position” has moved from in front of them to the driver’s side twin’s perspective.
Wizard of Id: His body looks so unreal I can’t see how his contorted, spasming, slipped disc back is any different.
H&L: “What, Ditto? That Trixie was found in that safe baby drop-off our church has, just li–
I’ve said too much.”
RMMD: C’mon, Ransom of Red Chief!
@2+2=7: I never thought of it that way, but you’re probably right.
Late Thread Cuisine: Guess what the mystery ingredient is? Hint: It’s not carrots.
Mutt & Jeff – Mutt is hardcore. I’m pretty sure Leroy Lockhorn never risked a head-on collision just to score a passive-aggressive point.
@Baja Gaijin: Well, it’s either mould or Robert Carrier.
Pluggers – You’re a plugger if “mesquite” makes you think of barbecue, even if you live in Mesquite, Texas!
@Peanut Gallery: Is Mesquite, Texas, named for its mosquitoes, or for Musketeers? Or Mouseketeers?
Luann: Move out of where? I have no idea of what his situation is. To be honest, I barely remember his name is “Phil” and only know he’s a nurse because he never takes those moldy scrubs off.
RMMD: Well he was calling himself Rene Belluso. I suspect he’s going to turn to newer and wackier aliases in order to convince everyone he doesn’t know these two nitwits.
C-Shaft: Whatever happened to smirking? One might reasonably wonder.
Dustin: Sounds like enough of a project to beat back the laziness accusations for a day or so, at least.
GT: Now that they’ve got the inevitable dire threat part of the evening over with they can relax and party.
HtH: Hagar, an underrated leader on the seas and the battlefield, motivates his men to survive and conquer so that they can return home in victory and slay any rivals for their women. As an illiterate, Hagar hasn’t actually read Homer’s Odyssey, but Lucky Eddie summarized the key points for him.
JP: As it turns out, the next dramatic turn is not April’s voice being spoofed but rather April driving across some guy’s lawn.
MW: “Life’s rough, but together, we can do so much! As an example, let me direct your attention to page 143 of the Kama Sutra…”
Phantom: When Ian Mollusk bribed his way into custody of Eric Sahara, I doubt he wanted the world and his wife to know about it. He might have to rethink his spending.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “Humphrey Ploughjogger.” An alias so old, it’s new again!
I got it from today’s Two Party Opera. Carroll might have made up all those pseudonyms, but I like to think of Ol’ John Adams signing his latest muckraking piece “Novanglus,” with a saucy flourish.
@Vulpes:
So they are like Klingons? Who have two of almost every vital organ, for reasons only known to the writers. It’s canon, too, as seen in Star Fleet: Academy. Which shows one Klingon male peeing against a wall, with two streams coming out of him. Makes me wonder how his human boyfriend handles that situation? (But does tell me why females of other species like Klingons so much).
“AKA Rene Belluso” *
.
*World famous master of disguise, currently under cover as a
failed con artist in Sex Organ General Hospital.
@Ukulele Ike: Ukulele Ike
I got it from today’s Two Party Opera.
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“When obnoxious and disliked alot, I find Poplicola hits the spot!”
@Chris Trey:
Wait, the new Star Trek tv show implied that “Klingons have duplicate redundant organs” also applies to their PENISES!? I thought it was just that they had an extra heart, extra lungs, maybe an extra liver and a couple other INTERNAL organs? I mean, they visibly don’t have four arms and four legs!
@Ukulele Ike: I had never looked at Two Party Opera before, but that’s a nice zinger they gave Abigail.
FC: This is another repeat (sort of). I recall seeing something similar in a Family Circus paperback book from 1973. Am I the ONLY one who thinks that AI would do a better job of creating Family Circus cartoons than Jeff Keane?
@Artist formerly known as Ben: It was amazing for several years. Little dash of history larnin’ in there with your morning funny papers. Then I guess Carroll burned out and went quiet for quite a long time. Now he seems to be back with new MWF strips and it’s the first thing that’s made me this happy in months.
Also, now I want cornmeal pudding.
Luann: Is anyone else seeing Phil as the male Bernice, with all the wacky hijinks that entails?
@104 Peanut Gallery: Surprisingly, this recipe is both mould and Robert Carrier-free. It’s also flour-free. How can that bready-looking thing not have flour?
@118 teenchy: I noticed a few days go. All he needs to do is sit in Luann’s filthy bedroom on Sunday’s sniping at her.
@Baja Gaijin:
#102. Not carrot? DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING! Lock em up in the corn palace or sweet potato world.
@121 Activist: Carrot isn’t a mystery ingredient because it’s right there in the recipe title: “Carrot Ring Mould with Peas and Onions.” Not much of a mystery unless you’re named Luann deGroot.
@matt w: One thing I learned in Cartoons.
If you have a villainous female character, and she wears earrings…
If you do a plot where she has a clone/alternate universe good counterpart, who doesn’t wear earrings.
So the viewers can tell them apart.
I mean, it worked in “Gargoyles” and a few other shows not really worth mentioning.
@Ukulele Ike: Isn’t “Cornmeal Pudding” just Grits?
@Chris Trey: I learn so much, here on CC.
@Baja Gaijin: I’ll bet it has a lot of eggs, to hold it together.
@The Rambling Otter:
Kinda.
Just another of the panoply of corn-based foods that sustained the brave (white) settlers of the wild North American continent. Of course the natives taught them how to eat it. “Not RAW out of the barrel, you pasty idiot! Mix it with eggs and milk and stuff and cook it!”
@126 Peanut Gallery: You judge: Two eggs for 3 pounds of carrots and other assorted ingredients. Is that a lot of eggs? PS: The Morgans can’t make this recipe–the boys keep taking the eggs out of the refrigerator.
@Bob Tice: RMMD:
“Put those glasses down, Sis! — otherwise, we’re no longer in every respect weirdly identical!”
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However,ironically, they ARE indeed weirder than Slylick Fox’s Weirdly Twins.
@Baja Gaijin: “Carrot Ring Mould with Peas and Onions.”
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ePaHG6g7uFw
@130 GarrisonSkunk: The video’s creative team “secret” ingredient in their onion and cheese is LSD. Right? That is one freaky film.
@GarrisonSkunk:
Steve Martin said it best on one of his stand-up comedy albums: “Irony can be pretty ironic.” I was never quite sure exactly what that meant, but it seems to fit here, doesn’t it?