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Mostly AI Sunday

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Blondie, 7/12/26

Back in early 2024, Dithers had to regretfully report that DithersCo wasn’t using AI tools to boost productivity, with his employees mostly using their computers to play dumb and possibly scammy games on Facebook. In the subsequent months, it appears that the company has adopted AI — but, sadly, primarily as an automated toady for the boss, who has become the latest CEO to succumb to AI psychosis. Ironically, Dagwood and his coworkers are immune, since they refuse to engage with their devices on any level deeper than “Renegade-Rhino-Rummy.”

Zits, 7/12/26

I hadn’t mentioned it here, but earlier this year Zits went into reruns on weekdays and is now only doing new strips on Sundays. But that doesn’t mean the strip is shying away from storylines relevant to today’s teens, including real dark ones like “Jeremy gets dumped for a computer.”

Mary Worth, 7/12/26

Man, I didn’t think you could beat “Wilbur Weston thinks I’m a druggie loser so I might as well do drugs” for sheer patheticness, but then today Mary Worth hit us with “I’m going to flush these perfectly good drugs that probably cost me a week’s worth of pay from my minimum wage job down the toilet so I can live up to the version of me that Dawn Weston believes in,” respect. It’s amazing to think about how much more embarrassing this is than if he had just put “local bald guy thinks im losser should i do drugs yes or no” into ChatGPT or Yahoo! Answers or whatever.

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Do not give the Daddy Daze daddy an axe

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Daddy Daze, 7/7/26

One of my favorite aspects of The Shining, which is one of my favorite all-time movies, is that for most of the movie’s runtime it’s not clear whether the evil hotel ghosts are real or creations of Jack Nicholson’s increasingly deranged mind, until a point towards the end when they unlock the pantry where Shelley Duvall has managed to trap him. My experience with Daddy Daze is informed by a similar narrative tension: Is the Daddy Daze baby really communicating something with his “ba”s that only the Daddy Daze daddy can understand? Or is the Daddy Daze daddy merely projecting his own thoughts and concerns onto incoherent babble, possibly knowingly and possibly delusionally? Today, the Daddy Daze baby’s whimsical antics seem to have produced a real physical object, which implies that the Daddy Daze daddy isn’t so much mad as he is living in a mad universe.

Blondie, 7/7/26

Real joshreads dot com heads know that I enjoy what Blondie has to tell us about how old people are navigating the modern age. Remember when there only used to be three TV channels, and the weather gal on every channel told you it was the same temperature? Now there’s a million channels plus apps on your phone and what not, and everyone is talking about “Real Feel,” which is different from just the regular old temperature in some way that’s hard to understand. How’s a person supposed to stay tethered to actual, physical reality in this kind of information environment? I guess you should probably just go with what your boss says, right? He must know what he’s talking about, that’s why he’s the boss.

Dennis the Menace, 7/7/26

Damn, Dennis, it seems like your notorious antisocial behavior is starting to have an impact on your personal life! I guess the person you’re menacing the most is … yourself.

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Workshopping terms for friends of Elmo. “Frelmos?”

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Blondie, 7/4/26

On this, America’s most sacred fireworks-related holiday, not one but two comics did “people making fireworks noises with their mouths in lieu of setting off actual fireworks” jokes. One of them was Crock, which I’m not even going to bother inflicting on you; I kind of enjoy this one because it ends with at least the hint that Elmo and his little friend are going to come back with actual fireworks that they’re going to set off in the Bumsteads’ living room.

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/26

At least Beetle Bailey, the strip about America’s military, takes a properly patriotic tone! Oh, wait, what’s that you say? They actually did a joke about the grim reality of the physical abuse of low-ranking enlisted men by their superiors? Hmm. Hmm!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/4/26

Rex Morgan, M.D., meanwhile, doesn’t have time to celebrate. It’s focusing its patriotism on improving America by targeting and revealing the scammers that bedevil us all. Or the one scammer who’s doing that, anyway. A lot of commenters were like “These ladies are somehow going to end up both being Rene Belluso,” and I was like “Ha ha, very funny, but that can’t be right,” and they’re not, but they almost certainly are his nieces, given that we learned a couple years ago that Jimmy was Rene’s actual name. Anyway, I gotta say that “pretending to play your violin so people give you spare change” is not anywhere near as impressive as “running a scam self-help cult that ends up actually helping people” but you gotta start somewhere, I guess!