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Hi and Lois and Alice, 9/28/26

Artificial intelligence! It’s the future, or maybe the present, and it’s going to change the world, possibly by killing us all, and it’s definitely the driving force behind most financial activity over the past couple years in some hard-to-understand way! So how should we think about it? Should we use it as an opportunity to “do bits” in a way that will cause our long-suffering spouses to roll their eyes hard enough to injure themselves? Or should we just stare ahead with a neutral expression and ask questions about it, just for information, as calmly as possible, lest we enrage it? Well, I have my finger on the pulse of public opinion (i.e., I read the newspaper comics), and I’m here to report that opinions differ.

Mary Worth, 9/28/26

Toby Cameron doesn’t have time to worry about any of this AI nonsense, though. She’s got important snooping to do, learning stuff like the fact that UC Santa Royale is paying for a trip to the famous Maui Luxury House Resort for one of its mid-tier English professors! Is this a good use of increasingly restricted university funding for the humanities? Looks like the California Assembly Committee on Higher Education is about to get a very juicy whistleblower report.

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Hi and Lois, 9/27/26

My first impression reading this was that Hi seems so youthful in the first panel in the second row that he must be imagining himself as a Little Leaguer; but the mustache on the outfielder means that’s not right, and I realized that, of course, he’s imagining himself as a Major League Baseball player, and MLB players are on average men in their mid to late 20s, younger than Hi and certainly much younger than me, but not children by any means. It’s a lot to think about! And I honestly would prefer to think about this, to muse melancholy on middle age, and not think at all about the throwaway panel that includes what I guess is supposed to be Hi dozing off thinking happy thoughts but it looks like a portrait of JFK zooted out of his mind on all the off-label drugs they were giving him for his back pain plus whatever sex pills he was taking. I have to admit, not thinking about that is getting more and more difficult.

Family Circus, 9/27/26

We criticize Marvin a lot for all the piss and shit jokes it does, but honestly its worst sin is just to be so in your face about it. Like, here’s a Family Circus about a carpet remembering all the good times it’s had with the Keane Kids over the years as it’s being driven to the landfill, and only one of the seven little vignettes it’s visualizing involves being peed on. That’s how you elicit a healthy chuckle from the piss joke appreciating community while still getting grandparents to faithfully cut your comic and hang it on the fridge.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 9/27/26

You ever notice that we never see Leroy’s mother? I feel like Loretta gets mad at moments like this not just for the obvious reasons, but because Leroy’s mother’s presumably early death — or perhaps her decision to go no-contact with her son for reasons we could easily guess at — have denied Loretta ammunition in the constant marital battle that is the focus of her every waking thought.

Crankshaft, 9/27/26

Hey, I don’t want to overstep here, but … do you ever get the feeling that, just maybe, everyone involved in the creation of the Funkyverse strips has a terrible inability to feel pleasure, like in a pathological way? Just putting that out there.

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Blondie, 9/26/26

I very much accidentally read Blondie’s dialogue in panel one as “that restaurant we swore we’d never go back to” and, you know what: Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion would absolutely be on a list of restaurants to never go back to. Honestly it feels like it should be at the top of a list of restaurants never to go to in the first place. They took “cowabunga,” first coined as a fake Native American word for the Howdy Doody show, and turned it into a fake Italian word, in a move that could get groups that usually fight with each other about recognizing Columbus Day to unite against a common enemy, which I honestly think is kind of beautiful, but I wouldn’t eat there.

Mary Worth, 9/26/26

I know it would never happen, but the absolute funniest denouement of this storyline would be if after weeks of gossip Toby was like “Ian and Mary? I don’t think so” and it’s just never addressed again and there’s a new plot on Monday. Are they or aren’t they? None of our business, frankly! Toby doesn’t think so and that’s good enough for me!