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Herb and Jamaal, 12/3/25

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Pluggers was insanely on the cutting edge of doing a 6-7 meme joke in the syndicated newspaper comics, the joke being that a child-plugger says “6-7” and an adult plugger says “How did you know?” and the caption says “For many pluggers, 6-7 is the year they graduated high school.” Which is, you know, fine, although it continues to center boomer pluggers and not the vibrant, rising Gen X plugger community. Anyway, I guess we should be taking bets on the order in which other comics will tackle this important cultural phenomenon and in what fashion they handle it. I’m not sure if any of us would’ve answered the first question for Herb and Jamaal with “right after Pluggers,” but for the second one many of us would’ve correctly guessed “incomprehensibly.”

Alice, 12/3/25

I’ve spent literally decades angrily telling comics artists that you can’t just have your characters look directly at the readers and make complaints that you personally have about the world with no other joke or wordplay, but you know what? It happens all the time so clearly I’m wrong and they’re right. Anyway, cars are just too expensive! The manufacturers forgot that the purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. Does every new car need all that stuff?

Dick Tracy, 12/3/25

Oh, yeah, remember how Silver Nitrate is having a hard time in prison? You might think it’s because America’s carceral system is inherently dehumanizing, but maybe it’s because he’s being kept away from his true passion: driving around town in a souped-up funny car with his barefoot sister spraying machine gun fire at random.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/3/25

It’s easy to forget when you read it every day for years, but the title of Mother Goose and Grimm reminds you that the strip was originally situated as being at least kind of a spoof of fairy tale/nursery rhyme stuff, sometimes it makes a half-hearted attempt to go back to its roots. I like how the cow knows in advance how bad this joke is going to be and clearly doesn’t want to be there. Hey, buddy, none of us want to be here, OK?

The Wizard of Id, 12/3/25

Hey, everyone, they did a My Chemical Romance joke in the Wizard of Id, right here in the year 2025! I guess we don’t have to worry about a 6-7 joke from this crew for several decades.

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Dick Tracy, 11/12/25

New Dick Tracy storyline, everybody! This one involves (a) a guy named “Rojo Ozob,” and (b) a sheriff who accidentally drove over a cliff. OR WAS IT AN ACCIDENT? Well, Dick Tracy seems to think so, based on this news story he’s looking at on his phone (?). Honestly, Dick is a big city cop, he doesn’t have time to worry about sheriffs out in the sticks, where there are cliffs everywhere you can just drive off of, like there aren’t even any proper guardrails. Get your shit together, country folk, Dick has got urban crimes to keep track of.

The Lockhorns, 11/12/25

Ah, an extremely rare Lockhorns where both Leroy and Loretta are smiling! Truly the one thing that brings these two together is some petty gripe about the world that they express through an elaborate act-out.

Alice, 11/12/25

Yeah, Alice, don’t lie to the kid! When you turn off the TV the people inside die. They die and their souls are immediately transported to hell. The only way to save them from eternal torment is by always watching your favorite shows!

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Alice, 11/3/25

Today’s Alice will I think be particularly inscrutable to non-Alice regulars, but in my late blog era I have myself become an Alice regular and am here to read Alice so you don’t have to! [scans through comic again] OK, fine, actually, this one is inscrutable to me too. I guess the little scene in the inset panel is supposed to be taking place simultaneous to the main action, but it’s not clear to me why it looks like a painting or maybe a window in the room where Alice and her boyfriend are sitting, why the alien guy is being debriefed by a human, or whether it’s supposed to be ironic somehow that the alien says humans are “too emotional” when Alice and her boyfriend are just staring off blankly into the middle distance together. At least one thing’s settled, though: Spock was a fictional half human/half Vulcan character from the Star Trek series in the 1960s.

Mary Worth, 11/3/25

At last, the saga of Olive the dog psychic has reached a triumphant conclusion sort of petered out, and now we’re getting … a Toby story? Oh, hell yeah. Toby, abandoned once again by her elderly husband (getting drunk at some academic conference) and her middle-aged best friend (nattering on to her not-boyfriend about a tween psychic), leaving her to ramble internally about her bag of sunflower seeds? Hell yeah. “It’s just me, myself, and my snack!” thinks a woman who probably once thought of herself as a “trophy wife” for an older high-prestige man and is now the saddest person alive. This week’s gonna be great.

Zits, 11/3/25

Definitely one of my pet peeves is when comics artists get older but their characters stay the same age, and yet also maintain the same set of cultural touchstones, and one thing I’ve always respected about Zits is that it leans into comic strip time, shifting the middle-aged parent of its teen main character from Boomer to Gen Xer over the decades. Not sure if I’m comfortable with “Walt got naked at Burning Man” now becoming part of the lore, but I admire the strip’s dedication and consistency.

Judge Parker, 11/3/25

“Anyway, the horses didn’t have anywhere to live so they just kind of … wandered off, I guess? I’m sure they’re fine.”