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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.

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Daddy Daze, 4/28/25

One of my favorite little linguistic quirks is the existence of true homonyms: when two separate words with different meanings and different origins evolve in a language until they happen to be pronounced and spelled the same way. That’s what’s going on here with the word funk, or more accurately the two words funk(s): the “be in a bad mood” word derives from a Scottish and Northern English word of uncertain but possibly Flemish origin that means “become afraid,” whereas the “music to put you in good mood” word derives in slang from the sense (still in use today) of a funk as a bad smell, which in turn comes to English via French from the Latin verb for putting off smoke, fumigare. This is the sort of information I would convey to my baby, if I lived alone with my baby and had very little contact with the outside world and it drove me to a state of madness in which I believed that my baby’s incoherent babbling noises constituted meaningful attempts to communicate that only I could understand.

Andy Capp, 4/28/25

Nice try, Andy Capp. You think you can slip this kind of blatant falsehood past us because we’re dumb Americans who don’t know any better? We may be dumb but we do have access to Wikipedia, which informs us that the parliamentary constituency of Runcorn and Helsby has been vacant for nearly six weeks now. Sadly, the by-election to fill the seat is this Thursday, so it’s too late for Andy to throw his iconic hat into the ring. The sitting MP resigned because he got caught on camera repeatedly punching a man in the street, so it sounds like the locals would’ve been open to Andy’s whole vibe, frankly.

Crankshaft, 4/28/25

Remember “the burnings,” the apocalyptic event in the near-future of the Funkyverse that wiped out most printed literature? Well, it turns out Lilian invented them, as part of her cozy mystery series. And yet we know that her building-code-violating above-the-garage store survived them, which certainly is interesting in light of this new revelation, although we can at least take solace in the fact that she’ll eventually be replaced by a robot.

Heathcliff, 4/28/25

Heathcliff is finally starting a cult! And, you know what, good for him.

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Marvin, 3/25/25

“Wow,” many of my longtime readers have no doubt concluded, “So Josh makes money by flying into a rage whenever the comic strip Marvin does jokes about shitting? Nice work if you can get it.” And that’s fair, but it isn’t all fun and games. For instance, part of my job also entails dispassionately and meticulously keeping track of the timeline of Marvin’s parents’ lives and relationships. We already knew that Jeff is 35, which means that he put “Who Let The Dogs Out” on a mix CD in college ironically, rather than sincerely. Today we learn that that he and Jenny have been married for seven years, since he was 28, another interesting data point. It is, of course, difficult to get a handle on how old Marvin is exactly, what with him walking around and talking in complete sentences but also not being potty trained, but he’s definitely several years younger than seven, which means there was a fairly extended Marvin-free period in Jeff and Jenny’s marriage. Now, the question this raises is: did they originally love one another, and the introduction of the awful Marvin in their lives lead them to the Lockhorns-like state of enmity we see in the strip? Or did they always hold each other in blistering contempt, and that anger made Marvin the hell-infant that we all know and loathe?

Andy Capp, 3/25/25

Speaking of comics character ages, it occurred to me the other day that, what with all the cultural signifiers in Andy Capp being ossified in a milieu quite foreign to me (working-class northern England sometime in the late 1950s), I had no idea how old Andy is supposed to be; any number between his mid-50s and, like, 28 seemed potentially realistic. Fortunately, today the strip introduces (?) a respectful zoomer character, “Young Tommy,” who “do[es] internet dating” so Andy can remark on it. I met my wife on the internet in the very early days of doing internet dating, which means that Andy is probably a few years older than me, which you can imagine comes as a great relief.

Luann, 3/25/25

Ha ha, remember back in the day, when Brad and Toni’s relationship was alive with a level of over-the-top ribaldry that they seemed to enjoy even though right-thinking readers all found it deeply distasteful? Well, they’re married now, and the passion is long gone, and now all that they have to look forward to is the grim, relentless cycle of sex for the purposes of reproduction. Right-thinking readers also find this deeply distasteful, but can at least take solace in the fact that Brad and Toni don’t like it either.

B.C., 3/25/25

Ha ha, remember back in the day in 2001, when you had to worry about whether B.C.’s Easter strips were maybe anti-semitic? Well, now it’s 2025, and you have to worry about whether B.C. is encouraging children to do whip-its. Life comes at you … well, not fast, exactly, but it does come at you. I know you’re all thinking “This isn’t a problem because no children actually read B.C.,” but I do think they’re marginally more likely to read B.C. than Judge Parker, so we’re slipping into dangerous territory here.

Shoe, 3/25/25

Being a syndicated newspaper comics artist doesn’t carry the rewards it used to, in terms of money or cultural impact. But there are few better ways, outside of a moderately successful Twitter or Instagram account, to share with hundreds or maybe even thousands of strangers your annoyance at a minor inconvenience you encountered in your daily life.