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Judge Parker, 10/23/25

I don’t know if I’ve actually spelled out the current Judge Parker situation, but it goes like this: April vanished after her Norwegian spy encounter and Randy vanished after going off in search of her, leaving their daughter Charlotte in the care of her increasingly drunk and depressed grandparents and, once they got too drunk and depressed, Neddy. Charlotte has been rather shy and withdrawn under her semi-competent care, until she got wind that Neddy and Sophie had a pet squirrel at one point in their youth (possibly in their foundling days before Sam and Abbey took them in, this is deep lore from before my time) and went absolutely berserk. You never know what’s going to trigger a child who’s experienced significant emotional trauma, but that face in panel two is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in the comics. I assume that Neddy is holding onto her temple because Charlotte’s shrieks are growing so intense that she’s afraid her skull is going to shatter like an eggshell.

Mary Worth, 10/23/25

Speaking of terrifying children and their mental powers, I am dying at Jeff’s dialogue here. You have to imagine that “Did that really happen, Mary?” was put in a painfully neutral tone, and then, when he had to come back with “I agree with you. I’ve been around enough to have seen things in life that cannot easily be explained!” he took it to the next level of neutrality, because he knows he needs to be very careful if he wants to get back to shore alive.

Dick Tracy, 10/23/25

Hey, remember Silver Nitrate, who last we saw a year and change ago was having a hard time in prison? Well, he’s still having a hard time, and now he’s got to decide if he trusts the prison infirmary to dispense psychopharmaceuticals that will actually soothe his mind instead of potentially making things worse. It’s a real downer! I think this strip should go back to violent gangsters with weird shaped heads shooting tommy guns at people, personally!

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Mary Worth, 10/22/25

“Sure, she can predict the future and bend animals to her will, but not in a big showy way that would attract attention! Sort of like how you own a boat large and powerful enough to defeat entire navies from anytime before about 1850 but you just use it to putter around the harbor once a month or so, if the weather’s nice.”

Dustin, 10/22/25

I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen Dustin express any interest in comic books or geek culture before? Despite what I said yesterday about nerd stuff, this makes his personality more interesting than I frankly find plausible.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/22/25

Yeah, so these guys are just staring into big bowls of brown … soup? Chocolate? Dog food? I don’t know if it’s fattening, but it’s definitely not appetizing.

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Andy Capp, 10/21/25

I, a guy who has run a blog about comic strips for the better part of two decades now, am, as you might imagine, a huge nerd. Nevertheless, I have significant reservations about the way that nerd culture has more or less taken over the world, dominating the entertainment industry while fans still endlessly complain that their superhero pals don’t get the respect they deserve. That’s why I’m glad to see that there’s still one outpost in the comics willing to make fun of the nerds, and it makes sense that it’s the home of America’s favorite working-class British alcoholic. (Intelligent Life also makes nerds look ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure that’s not on purpose.)

Dustin, 10/21/25

You know, I focus a lot on this blog about how Dustin is constantly persecuted by the other members of his family, but let’s not forget that, in his absence, they’ll also turn on each other, with virtually every intrafamilial interaction landing on a spectrum somewhere between “passive aggressive” and “cruel.” They’re not nice people!

Hi and Lois, 10/21/25

Oh, I guess the Flagston family is OK with the library now, because they need a third place to go when Lois and her book club friends start getting drunk and belligerent and their home is no longer safe.

Heathcliff, 10/21/25

Oh yeah? Well, I like it better when you’re standing either inside the house or outside the house, rather than the MC Escherian simultaneously-inside-and-outside thing you’ve landed on here, but you don’t see me complaining about it.