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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/15/26

The characters in newspaper comic strips generally keep their vocabulary squeaky clean, and the Hootin’ Holler crew doesn’t even resort to grawlices as far as I can remember. That’s why I’m pretty horrified to learn today that, while we’re not seeing him in action, Snuffy is just letting loose with a nonstop stream of obscenities, blasphemies, and slurs around the house, presumably where Jughaid and li’l Tater can hear. Grim stuff! (It’s less surprising to learn, as we do in the throwaway panels, that even the Holler’s lone semi-legitimate businessman doesn’t know the difference between deflation and disinflation, as flatlanders generally struggle with that as well.)

Pluggers, 3/15/26

BlueSky, one of several social media sites where I post daily links to my blog, has an auto-moderation feature that deemed yesterday’s Pardon My Planet demonic sideboob “adult content.” Well, sorry, I’m doubling down on the smut. Check out today’s Pluggers! Depraved furry pornography! Unspeakable filth! This is the sort of thing America wants to see in the newspaper now and we all need to come to terms with that fact!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/26

Oh, man, were you excited at the prospect of Mud Mountain Murphy and Lorna Starr/Mae Mae Clodfelter getting to know each other over several days of cafe breakfasts, and maybe feeling a spark of attraction that could eventually blossom into romance? Well, too bad. They already knew each other, it turns out. We’re skipping all of that! Better luck next time!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/26

Yeah, it is a good thing they aren’t playing for money! Imagine if the Smifs had learned that Sukey, a being that they have long treated as a beast and a possession that does manual labor at their bidding, were intelligent enough to understand the concept of the exchange value of currency — and, moreover, had somehow already acquired possession of enough of it to wager. The implications would be truly horrific.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/4/26

After some reflection, I’m OK with an entire Mother Goose and Grimm strip that consists of a glimpse into the internal monologue of a character we’ve never seen before as he dances with Mother Goose. What’s unsettling me is that he’s a human and none of said monologue includes reflection on the fact that he’s dancing with a human-sized bird. Do you think he already mentally covered that ground before we got here? Do you think he has a plan for when Ma Goose’s person-sized bird boyfriend shows up, and tries to peck him to death or swat at him with his powerful wings?

Mary Worth, 3/4/26

Ah, man, I guess it’s time to start the “blame game” for why our boy Harvey has gotten himself catfished. I think we can all agree that it’s probably a woman’s fault, and “Trixie”’s puppeteer isn’t even female, so I guess the problem is … Harvey’s daughter, for living a fun go-go single life in fast-paced Goleta and not spending her every waking moment monitoring his screen time? Enh, that’ll do.

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Heathcliff, 2/1/26

Before the heavy crown of Heathcliff stewardship descended upon Peter Gallagher from his uncle, he contributed comics panels to Weird NJ magazine, which included a character named “The Jersey Tomato.” It’s difficult to find images of The Jersey Tomato online, but her whole deal appears to be that she’s a tomato who’s a sexy lady, or possibly a sexy lady whose head is a giant tomato. Anyway, since taking over Heathcliff, Gallagher has rewritten much of its DNA, and it’s impossible not to see a bit of the Jersey Tomato in this incredible new character, “The Hot Ham,” a ham who’s a hot, sexy lady, or possibly a hot, sexy lady who’s mostly a giant ham. I’m excited for this strip’s burgeoning audience of Zoomer fans to add “aromantic (except for hams)” to the long list of sexual-emotional orientations that I as a middle-aged person do not have to worry about.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/1/26

Oh, snap, it’s not Buck at all who’s picking up Rex from his surgery, it’s June’s crazy beloved Aunt (?) Tildy! A few years ago we were teased with a “Tildy is an old drunk” storyline that immediately turned out to be a “Tildy loves soda pop and takes ‘unplanned naps’” storyline, but let’s keep our hopes up that she has some kind of impairment that makes Rex’s drive home a truly terrifying one.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/26

Somewhat counterintuitively, this strip about caricatured hillbillies with occasional cameos from a big-city sharpie from the Woodrow Wilson administration was a pioneer in making jokes about cryptocurrency. So I’m excited for them to explore the crypto-adjacent world of prediction markets, where anyone can place prop bets on just about anything and insider trading is not just legal but encouraged because it makes their predictive powers more accurate (and enriches insiders in the process).

Crock, 2/1/26

I mean, obviously. What did he think the “car going in the tunnel” thing was about?