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Dick Tracy, 10/14/26

Dick Tracy has a new artist, longtime Tracy superfan Howie Noel, and I am here to report that, in this house, we are now Howie Noel superfans, as this week has reliably delivered panel after panel of real fucked-up shit, which I mean in the most complimentary possible sense. A detective with a neanderthal-level brow ridge and free-flowing beads of sweat. A weird pinheaded nurse in an archaic outfit. A tiny man the size of a ventriloquist’s dummy, or possibly just an actual ventriloquist’s dummy that the nurse is operating. The tiny man/dummy has unpleasantly long fingernails, by the way. A+ all around!

Mary Worth, 10/14/26

OK, so, Toby is still crashing out over the entirely not real Ian/Mary rumors, but let’s look on the bright side for her: artistically, she’s moved on from her “hideous grey animal-shaped blobs” period to her “mawkish painted animal figurines” period, which should be more marketable if nothing else.

Beetle Bailey, 10/14/26

Look, I know that General Halftrack’s coffee tastes can’t possibly be what anyone would call sophisticated, but I refuse to believe that even the most skilled practitioner could make anything in that circa 1975 Mr. Coffee machine that would live up to the name “barista.”

Hi and Lois, 10/14/26

Oh, so Chip isn’t competent to babysit when Hi’s just trying to get some work done at the office, but he’s perfectly capable of doing so when Lois is horny, huh? Interesting. Interesting.

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Blondie, 10/3/26

I know you can’t expect dreams to make actual narrative sense, but I think it’s OK to expect dreams that someone wrote and put into a linear storytelling form like a comic strip to make at least a certain degree of narrative sense. Like, in the first panel, I assumed this was going to be a classic boomer gripe about the kids today and their pumpkin spice lattes, which our heroic police are going to put an end to once and for all. But this cop handing Blondie a giant bag of pumpkin spice profits in the second panel certainly complicates things! I also find it upsetting that the anthropomorphic muffin vanishes between these two moments. Presumably the officer took it out back, murdered it with his prominently displayed gun, and then extracted its valuable spice content to reward Blondie for snitching.

Beetle Bailey, 10/3/26

Here’s a sentence I’ve never written or even thought before: I find the facial expressions in the second panel of today’s Beetle Bailey genuinely haunting. They aren’t looking on in lurid pleasure at the sex and violence on screen as you might expect: they look somber and deeply emotionally affected by what they’re watching. Yet the warning still drew them to the TV, like moths to a flame.

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Alice, 9/23/26

Faithful readers know that one of my favorite bits of Alice is the little … caption? extra text? … at the bottom, and its role in the narrative of each strip. Like today, you’re probably wondering: does it mean that Alice’s boyfriend is going to be doing all the driving again? Maybe she can take the bus or an Uber sometimes! Well, no: it turns out that it does mean that. The caption has spoken!

The Lockhorns, 9/23/26

The smile I can accept, but I’m really concerned with whatever Leroy is doing with the non-face parts of his body here. He’s … strutting? Dancing? It’s off-putting. Borderline grotesque. Knock it off, Leroy.

Beetle Bailey, 9/23/26

“What, the kids today can’t get horny from a drawing of a stacked blonde in a little black dress anymore? Huh? What is it that they want? Foot stuff? They like feet? Sexy lady feet, is that what they like? Fine, I guess we’ll give ’em feet.” –The Beetle Bailey division of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, apparently unaware that the way they draw fingers and toes is actually quite repellent