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Dennis the Menace, 10/5/26

Part of being a sophisticated textual critic such as myself is that you have to be able to distinguish between “something I dislike” and “something that is executed poorly.” So, for instance, you know that on principle I dislike the “Dennis insults his mother’s cooking” Dennis the Menace panels. But if you’re going to do it, having Dennis stare ahead, dead-eyed and drooling, and saying “This tastes like shit, mom, it tastes like food that’s just been lying around until it goes bad” is a pretty good execution.

Dick Tracy, 10/5/26

Big news, everyone! A new Dick Tracy storyline is starting today, and the very first strip is a guy falling down the stairs and dying! Or at least I assume? He actually looks pretty much the same in the air as he does on the ground, so maybe he’s fine and just shaped like that.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/5/26

For too long, the Baby Boomers and retro-hipster Gen Xers of Glenwood have only been able to express their toxic nostalgia through dedication to roots country music. But soon they’ll also be able to enjoy older films that have been largely forgotten by the mainstream cineaste community for presumably good reason, thanks to Mae Mae’s carefully invested movie earnings and/or Glenwood’s rock-bottom real estate prices!

Crankshaft, 10/5/26

“As a matter of fact, some prescription medications, especially generics, are manufactured in China. It’s somewhat more common, however, for the chemical raw materials to be produced in China while the drug formulation happens in India. Just another facet of our globalized era, where different countries with different prevailing labor costs and specific know-how end up specializing in different segments of the supply chain. I know that’s not a ‘punchline’ per se but I thought you might find it interesting!”

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Marvin, 10/4/26

Hey, remember the World Cup, from, like, a few months ago? And remember that caveman-lookin’ guy from Norway, Erling Haaland? Well, what if there were a baby that looked like him. And he was on a soccer team for babies. (Just assume for this scenario that soccer teams for babies exist, don’t worry about it.) And the other babies were all scared of him, because they’re babies, their memory doesn’t go back very far but the World Cup does feature pretty prominently in it. But! Here’s the twist! He’s not a good soccer player at all, he just happens to look like one very specific and memorable-looking good soccer player! Say what you will about this strip, but I have to admit, never at any point in it did I know where it was going next, which I think may also be true for whoever wrote it.

Heathcliff, 10/4/26

You could express your bemusement at the increasing popularity of pumpkin spice treats by creating a vaguely hostile and violent dream sequence. Or you could just say to yourself, “What will they think of next? Pumpkin spice gum? Ha ha, I bet a bubble you’d blow with that would look like a jack o’ lantern!” I know which option I prefer.

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Blondie, 10/3/26

I know you can’t expect dreams to make actual narrative sense, but I think it’s OK to expect dreams that someone wrote and put into a linear storytelling form like a comic strip to make at least a certain degree of narrative sense. Like, in the first panel, I assumed this was going to be a classic boomer gripe about the kids today and their pumpkin spice lattes, which our heroic police are going to put an end to once and for all. But this cop handing Blondie a giant bag of pumpkin spice profits in the second panel certainly complicates things! I also find it upsetting that the anthropomorphic muffin vanishes between these two moments. Presumably the officer took it out back, murdered it with his prominently displayed gun, and then extracted its valuable spice content to reward Blondie for snitching.

Beetle Bailey, 10/3/26

Here’s a sentence I’ve never written or even thought before: I find the facial expressions in the second panel of today’s Beetle Bailey genuinely haunting. They aren’t looking on in lurid pleasure at the sex and violence on screen as you might expect: they look somber and deeply emotionally affected by what they’re watching. Yet the warning still drew them to the TV, like moths to a flame.