Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/25

This strip is a pretty good demonstration of the fact that comic characters even within the same universe each have their own distinctive design, and, unlike actual humans, the wide variations in their head shapes means that you can’t just slap glasses on someone who doesn’t usually wear them and expect it to look not insane. But no matter how uncanny Sarge looks in this final panel, it’s all worth it to deliver this joke about wearing eyeglasses in order to disguise the fact that you’re crying, the normal and relatable thing that we all do and that would definitely work.

Blondie, 7/25/25

Hate to be churlish, but today’s Blondie doesn’t include what we in the biz call a “joke,” and while I’ve given the ennuimeisters at Hi and Lois permission to explore this discursive mode, I do not grant the same dispensation to Blondie. The last panel here should definitely have included a thought balloon in which Dagwood imagines himself winning a sandwich-eating competition in front of thousands of cheering fans, if only to distract us from his increasingly inexplicable relationship with Elmo.

Wizard of Id, 7/25/25

Oh, hey, the Wizard is still on his kick of forcing animals of different species to mate with each other, I guess. “But Josh,” you’re probably saying, “this is some kind of fantasy setting, and maybe that sort of thing is normal there.” Wrong: this random knight (?) is clearly horribly burned in the final panel, but his moral disgust at the unnatural act that produced this fire-breathing dog is so profound that he says “ew” instead of “ow.”

Pardon My Planet, 7/25/25

This lady straight-up murdered her husband! And she’s bragging about it! Right here at his funeral!

Post Content

Family Circus, 7/22/25

I frankly am not a fan of the smug looks on Jeffy and Big Daddy Keane’s faces here. Oh, you think it’s funny to contemplate how terrifying it might be to be trapped on a boat with your primary prey animals, and if you fail to keep clear of them you risk not just your death but the complete extermination of your species? I bet Noah’s family had some pretty comical encounters with wolves and grizzly bears and such, but I don’t see you laffing it up about those.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/22/25

There’s a debate to be had over whether it’s acceptable to use a joke you saw in an email forward or Facebook meme in the nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip you’re being paid to create, and whether the fact that the joke is bird-related is significant in a strip where many of the characters are themselves birds. However, we already had that debate four months ago, when Mother Goose and Grimm ran this exact same punchline. They redrew the art, which is … something, I guess?

Beetle Bailey, 7/22/25

Don’t worry, folks. If America is invaded, we’ll be quickly defended by our crack division of … bed troops? Oh dear.

Mary Worth, 7/22/25

Is Mary copping a feel in that first panel? Is Ed going in for a “soul handshake”? What on Earth is happening

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 7/13/25

It seems that the Dick Tracy time travel plot is now over … and the Dick Tracy ray gun plot has begun! This is one Dick should have a better handle on, right? Because it’s a ray gun, but it’s still a gun, which is the sort of thing Dick likes. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what the “This ain’t the county morgue” line is supposed to mean. Maybe in the wake of the corpsenapping incident earlier this year “county morgue” has become Neo-Chicago municipal employee slang for any facility that’s easy to break into by night.

Beetle Bailey, 7/13/25

Ha ha, we’re all familiar with the Beetle Bailey running gag that we never see Beetle’s eyes. But what do you suppose they look like under there? Well, it’s now strip canon that they’re an eldritch horror beyond imagination, a window into demonic madness. Sarge was either struck dead on the spot or will be gibbering and unresponsive in an insane asylum for the rest of his life.

Hi and Lois, 7/13/25

You know I like to make jokes about how the Flagstons are depressed, but that’s mostly about the parents. The twins are way too young to be this anhedonic and it’s bumming me out!