Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/17/25

I am really enjoying the quiet desperation of Yvonne’s facial expression as she tries to convey to Rex and June how crazy-making her Hanks-Harwood-dominated living situation is. “He’s always saying crap like this. ‘I’m planning a Ritz Brothers marathon!’ I don’t know if those are the cracker guys or a vaudeville act that somehow has a YouTube. Maybe they aren’t even real, but even if that were the case, it could be that he’s doing a bit or it could be that he has advanced dementia and we can’t even tell because all of his cultural references are so baffling. And he’ll be asleep when we get back! I won’t even be able to ask him about it! And tomorrow it’ll be some other bullshit!”

Shoe, 9/17/25

I like that they’ve given the Perfesser a little bit of business to do here, knotting his tie as they talk — the implication being that he’s putting himself back together after getting naked for an exam, and in so doing is beginning to feel dignified enough again to push back on this advice. “Oh, is that your diagnosis, doctor? Are you saying that the good product designers at the Frigidaire Appliance Company would lead me down the wrong path?”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/17/25

You all know Grimm, the lovable dog who’s one of the title characters of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm. But what if I told you that he was about to go to jail, possibly for years, as a punishment for his various crimes?

Post Content

Mary Worth, 9/16/25

It’s not exactly clear how much time in-strip is supposed to have elapsed between the current storyline and Olive’s original appearance in the strip; presumably it’s not the 11 years that have passed in real time, but probably like … five or six, I’m guessing? And one of the oddnesses of childhood is that five or six years wouldn’t seem so long to someone Mary’s age, but a kid in that scenario really would say “I remember” like it happened in another era. So, so far, so normal, except that Olive also says “remember” when she talks about her spooky visions of the life she and Mary lived in Ancient Egypt, so I think that adds a different valence to it. Anyway, I guess if you were a naive child, you might think that being able to talk to animals would make you a good vet, but hopefully she’ll get a chance to talk to Dr. Ed and learn that that job is just one dead pomeranian after another, and the only thing that would make it worse would be if you could hear the pomeranians speak in complete sentences.

Hi and Lois, 9/16/25

Lois is desperate to see some evidence that two people really can stay happily married to each other for any length of time, and she is not finding it today.

Family Circus, 9/16/25

Sure, Jeffy is being an idiot as usual, but don’t be so grotesquely smug about it, Billy. You didn’t arrange things so that time only flows in one direction, at the same rate for everyone in the same inertial referential frame! What if you were shot into space at relativistic speeds for an extended space voyage and Jeffy stayed on Earth and you came back and he was older? Who’d be smug then, huh, Billy? I mean, probably you, I guess, you’d be a worldwide celebrity and hero of exploration, and he’d still just be some guy, and an old guy to boot.

Garfield, 9/16/25

Wait, do you expect me to believe that notorious dog-hater Garfield is watching some kind of TV show starring a talking dog, and complimenting the talking dog character? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all. #notmygarfield #garfieldcanonicallyhasnothingbutcontemptfordogs

Post Content

Pluggers, 9/15/25

A friend of mine in Baltimore, widely known for always looking younger than she was, when asked for her secret said, “Never make a noise when you bend over to pick something up,” something I think about all the time as I hit increasingly pluggerish ages and inevitably make noises when I bend over to pick things up. Anyway, today’s Pluggers is on this theme, but I like the way they’ve taken the suggestion and turned it into a little story about a woman who’s just trying to enjoy a football game but instead has to watch her husband drop dead as he attempts to get out of a chair.

Crock, 9/15/25

The thing about using the rule of three when you’re writing a joke is that while it’s true that the first two of the three should be similar enough to form a pattern, they shouldn’t literally be the exact same thing. Maybe my standards are too high, but I think if you’re doing a comic about how the French Foreign Legion is full of nefarious criminals, you should be aware of at least one other crime over and above jewel thievery!

Judge Parker, 9/15/25

“Anyway, just like Pilate, I’m washing my hands of him. He was the good guy in that story, right? It would’ve been more dramatic to do this right in front of Alan, obviously, but we were at a restaurant and trying to get him to go into the bathroom at the same time as me would’ve been weird.”