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Andy Capp, 8/7/25

You would think that Andy sustaining an injury at “punk rock night” would send me down my usual rabbit-hole of “in what year does Andy Capp take place?”, but in fact I’m honestly more interested in “at what time of day does this specific Andy Capp strip take place?”, given that Andy is returning home from “punk rock night” when it’s broad daylight outside. This sent me down a new, exciting rabbit-hole, and I learned that Andy is canonically from the northern English city of Hartlepool (they even have a statue of him!), and, England being further north than most Americans realize and Hartlepool as mentioned being at the north end of the country, sunsets in June there can be as late as 9:45 pm. So, yes, if Andy were to get injured at punk rock night and then come home afterwards when it’s still sunny, the punk rock part might be anachronistic, but the sunlight part would not necessarily be.

Dustin, 8/7/25

I genuinely love the big smiles on everyone’s face in the conference room in the final panel. “That’s Ed Kudlick, the firm dipshit, coming in and saying utter nonsense again!” they’re thinking. “He’s a terrible lawyer, but we keep him around because he’s usually pretty funny — not on purpose funny, obviously.” The fact that the coworkers we see are all women is a nice touch.

Gearhead Gertie, 8/7/25

I’m sorry, man, if you know Gertie well enough to engage her in conversation about NASCAR, you should know that you’ve just crossed a line that can never be uncrossed, so don’t look so shocked. Do look horrified, though, because today is your last day alive on Earth.

Pluggers, 8/7/25

Pluggers has run for 32 years, and the question on all our minds for all that time has been: “Do pluggers know that they’re hideous man-animals, nightmarish freaks of forbidden science who shouldn’t exist?” Well, they didn’t before. But it looks like they finally figured it out.

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Andy Capp, 7/14/25

The question of “When does Andy Capp take place” is increasingly fascinating to me — characters are on modern dating apps but also they dress … like that? … which seems pretty old-timey to me. Today’s strip in particular feels like it belongs to an age before the UK Parliament passed the Licensing Act 1988, back when alcohol could only be served at pubs from 11:30 am to 3 pm and 6:30 pm to 11 pm. This explains the reference to Andy’s “afternoon nap”; presumably he routinely stumbles home at 3 o’clock pretty soused and passes out on the couch for hours. Normally he’d be up and around to go back for the evening session, but I guess he overslept today and has missed out on hours of the precious “aimless drunkenness in the presence of non-wife people who he likes or at least whose names he knows” time that makes his life worthwhile bearable.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/14/25

Ha ha, that got a little dark! Anyway, speaking of placing comics in context, you know I’ve long been fascinated by when exactly Hagar the Horrible takes place over the evolution of Viking culture and society, but the where matters as well. I’m reasonably sure it’s been made explicit in-strip that Hagar lives in Norway, which means that his world faces out to the North Atlantic. His Swedish cousins have established extensive trading routes through the Russian river systems with the Byzantines and Abbasids, so they have access to the delicious spices of the east, but Hagar’s Norse compatriots haven’t gone far enough south of Greenland to discover genus Capsicum, which means that in his mind “hot wings” are just wings that are currently or recently on fire. Sad!

Hi and Lois, 7/14/25

When Hi referred to “your honey-do list,” I briefly thought that we were turning a traditional sexist cliché on its head here, but nope! It’s just a joke about Hi feeling wounded and unappreciated — or in other words, “classic late-era Hi and Lois,” which around here we do respect.

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Mary Worth, 6/2/25

Did you know that the psychological “fight or flight” response is more accurately called “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”? I think it comes as no surprise to those of us who (sadly) know them all too well that the Westons, having belatedly realized that they are in the presence of an apex predator, have gone the “freeze” route, hoping that if they sit very still and offer the most weaksauce and unrealistic excuses for not eating mushrooms imaginable, she’ll lose interest and wander off. The really sad thing is that the extremely on the nose Fatal Attraction reference is lost on Wilbur and Dawn, since they’re both philistines whose media diets consist of watching old Evander Holyfield fights on YouTube and “clean eating” influencer content on TikTok that comes right up to the edge of promoting anorexia without violating the terms of service, respectively.

Intelligent Life, 6/2/25

Speaking of philistines with terrible media diets, this strip would’ve been a good opportunity to name some of the movies, comics, conventions, or cartoons that are coming out in 2025, but instead Intelligent Life decided to simply … not? I guess what’s giving Mike life is not the movies or comics themselves, but just the reassurance that this particular form of cultural and economic production will continue at least through the end of the year.

Andy Capp, 6/2/25

Was it Cappverse canon before this point that Andy has a big juicy booty? If not, it is now, and I for one am not complaining.