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Dustin, 1/15/26

Remember Dustin’s dad from the comic strip Dustin, who’s notoriously kind of an asshole? Well, it turns out he’s also an alcoholic.

Dennis the Menace, 1/15/26

Remember Dennis Mitchell from the comic strip Dennis the Menace, who’s notoriously kind of an asshole? Well, it turns out he was a little too much of an asshole and some other kid punched him in the face. (I’m positing that it’s another kid for this post’s purposes because otherwise my joke is significantly less funny. Well, I guess the strip’s joke is significantly less funny too, but that’s their problem.)

Pluggers, 1/15/26

Remember pluggers, the aging lower-middle-class man-beasts from the comic strip Pluggers, who notoriously are in less than robust health? Well, it turns out they’re falling asleep on the toilet in the middle of the night, which probably isn’t a great sign of how things are going for them.

B.C., 1/15/26

Remember the ant couple in B.C.? Probably not, there’s nothing really notorious about them. I guess you could say they were notoriously like a normal middle-class couple with kids except they were ants. Anyway, they got divorced, and then the husband was killed by an anteater immediately afterwards. RIP male half of the B.C. ant couple, 1958 (?)-2026, you taught me that it was OK to be weird.

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Archie, 1/13/26

Against all odds, the fact that I’ve been doing this blog for more than 20 years doesn’t usually make me feel old, mostly because I’m still substantially younger than most newspaper comics creators and readers, but occasionally I do catch a glimpse of the way my years have been piling up. For instance, these Archie strips are repeats from the early to mid ’00s, around the time I started commenting on them, and back then, teens (Archie’s ostensible target audience) would’ve read this and said, “Ha ha! The idiots who make this strip only have the vaguest idea what an iPod is and have no idea what it looks like!” before popping in their white earbuds and jamming out to Lindsay Lohan’s Speak, which they had pirated via LimeWire. Whereas today’s teens would read this rerun in the newspaper (an unlikely scenario, I admit, but stay with me here) and say “Wow, is that what iPods looked like, back when they were popular, several years before we were born? With curly wires and one (?) grey earphone and everything?”

Luann, 1/13/26

What’s worse than Brad and Toni having sex in their car in an empty amusement park parking lot late at night? Up until today you would’ve said “Nothing, obviously,” but now you know the answer actually is “Luann and Phil are desperate to have sex in their car in a nursing home parking lot in broad daylight except they’ve been foiled because it’s full of eager recyclers.”

B.C., 1/13/26

So do the deer … think the humans want to have sex with them? Is … is that the joke? Do the humans want to have sex with them? Is that the joke? Strong dislikes all around whatever the case.

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Hi and Lois, 12/8/25

Let’s forget for a moment the incomprehensible/not funny punchline of this one and try to understand the lead-up to it. Why is Chip telling his father, who is watching exactly the same movie that he is, that there’s a parental warning on it? Shouldn’t Hi be just as capable of reading it as Chip is? Is it written in some format that only teens can read, like, uh, Minecraft font? Is there a Minecraft font? Is Minecraft still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025?

Zits, 12/8/25

Honestly, while I’m fine with the Zits parents (who were my boomer parents’ age when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but becoming Gen Xers, I’m a little unsettled by Jeremy (who was just a few years younger than me when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but being into things that contemporary teens are into, like Minecraft. I mean, Minecraft is still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025, right? “Watching” Minecraft? Surely the syndicated newspaper comic strip Zits wouldn’t steer me wrong about teens!

Gil Thorp, 12/8/25

In 1966, Gay Talese transformed the art of magazine writing with “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a profile that turned Sinatra’s refusal to give an interview into a central part of its structure. Will Gil Thorp do the same for the newspaper comics with “Gil Thorp Has A Serious Respiratory Illness Of Some Kind”? I mean, maybe? Or maybe Gil will just sweat a lot, who knows.

B.C., 12/8/25

The characters in B.C. live with a strange mix of stone age technology and modern conveniences and attitudes. This is not a criticism! I get that this is, in fact, the central joke of the strip! However, today’s installment does make me wonder if one of the modern things they have access to is the rabies vaccine. I worry!