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Blondie, 3/26/26

Every once in a while, you get a hint that Alexander is recapitulating many of his father’s most distinctive traits. This makes sense, as the two are obviously genetically identical, and I assume Alexander was created by some sort of asexual budding process. Still, how does Dagwood feel about all this? Well, not great, if his facial expression in the last panel is any indication.

Wizard of Id, 3/26/26

Imagine if you were a second-generation comics creator, gifted with one of the shrinking number of viable newspaper comics out there, but feeling increasingly uninspired and desperate to find some way out of your situation. I’m not saying I know that’s what’s happening with the Wizard of Id, but I am saying that if you were trying to do the comics version of suicide by cop, then inviting a lawsuit from JK Rowling would be a good way to go about it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/26/26

“I’m sick and tired of all this roots country bullshit!” you’re probably saying. “I want to get this strip’s focus back to its roots: contemporary medical issues!” Well, OK, buckle up for “Rex has pivoted his clinic to mostly writing GLP-1 scrips for anyone who asks and then directing them to a dodgy grey-market compounding pharmacy that he gets kickbacks from.”

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Crankshaft, 3/25/26

I like the combination of Crankshaft’s dopey smile and Keesterman’s look of genuine concern in the final panel. Consistently misspeaking like this isn’t normal and it isn’t funny, and I guess someone should tell the latter to Andrews McMeel Syndication, which sells this strip to newspapers all over the country.

Hi and Lois, 3/25/26

Wow, Hi’s face in that last panel is a lot less “Ha ha, the mayor wasn’t even able to get that ball over the plate!” and a lot more “Oh my god … the mayor somehow killed six and injured dozens more with an errant throw. This is awful. This is the darkest opening day in the history of Major League Baseball.”

Mary Worth, 3/25/26

I feel like logically we must assume that there’s an unseen third panel, where someone is fretting that Mary hasn’t reached out for a bit. Is it Wilbur? Probably Wilbur. He’s hit some new emotional low in a comical fashion and Mary is the last person he knows who won’t laugh directly in his face about it. Obviously there’s no unseen fourth panel, because nobody is worried that Wilbur hasn’t gotten in touch lately.

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Hagar the Horrible, 3/24/26

I make a lot of jokes on this blog parsing various anachronistic clues trying to figure out where Hagar and his crew are plundering and pillaging at any given time, but … it’s generally France, right? Like, that’s where Norse raiders mostly went in real life, descending on a civilization on the Continent that was wealthier and more advanced than theirs but that had begun to politically unravel as the heirs of Charlemagne fought each other for territory. Today we see a surprising result of this type of cultural contact: one of Hagar’s men, who apparently was getting off on what he thought was an act of sexual dominance over the regional nobility to match his warband’s military success, is clearly devastated to learn that he’s become entangled in what the locals refer to as “an arrangement.”

Beetle Bailey, 3/24/26

This strip actually got me to look up what the experience of a limb “falling asleep” actually is, and I thought it had to do with blood flow but apparently it primarily arises from nerve compression that just cuts off sensation from the affected area altogether. And Beetle is like, wouldn’t it be great if my whole body was cut off from my brain completely? If I were nothing but a pure mind, untethered to physical existence? Killer’s facial expression is appropriate: he is not buying this and neither am I.