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Crankshaft, 3/25/26

I like the combination of Crankshaft’s dopey smile and Keesterman’s look of genuine concern in the final panel. Consistently misspeaking like this isn’t normal and it isn’t funny, and I guess someone should tell the latter to Andrews McMeel Syndication, which sells this strip to newspapers all over the country.

Hi and Lois, 3/25/26

Wow, Hi’s face in that last panel is a lot less “Ha ha, the mayor wasn’t even able to get that ball over the plate!” and a lot more “Oh my god … the mayor somehow killed six and injured dozens more with an errant throw. This is awful. This is the darkest opening day in the history of Major League Baseball.”

Mary Worth, 3/25/26

I feel like logically we must assume that there’s an unseen third panel, where someone is fretting that Mary hasn’t reached out for a bit. Is it Wilbur? Probably Wilbur. He’s hit some new emotional low in a comical fashion and Mary is the last person he knows who won’t laugh directly in his face about it. Obviously there’s no unseen fourth panel, because nobody is worried that Wilbur hasn’t gotten in touch lately.

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Lockhorns, 3/16/26

Every once in a while the Lockhorns will deviate from their usual laser focus on Leroy and Loretta’s mutual antagonism and just do a “Ha ha, Leroy is a doofus” panel, and honestly I don’t care for it. At least this one includes Loretta looking at her husband with an expression of absolute despair, as she reflects upon exactly what type of man she chose to spend the balance of her adult life with.

Archie, 3/16/26

I was a pretty obsessive Archie Comics reader as a kid, but nevertheless there are bits of Archieverse lore that I’ve learned from the twentysomething-year-old newspaper strips currently in reruns. I don’t think I knew that Reggie was the editor of the student newspaper, for instance, nor that he was that classic type of late ’90s/early ’00s tech guy who had the skills to create an interactive website in the Web 1.0 era but was also obsessive about online privacy.

Crankshaft, 3/16/26

“Anyway, the one week I did it on the computer was last week, and it turns out computers are amazing. I’m definitely selling this drawing board, for a lot of money!”

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Crankshaft, 3/6/26

It’s been more than three years since Funky Winkerbean ended, but, just as a dying star occasionally fires off occasional bursts of radiation, its sister strip Crankshaft still sometimes serves up new bits of Funkyverse lore. Like, did you know that Pam and Jeff’s son and his partner weren’t married, but now, like several years after having a child, their accountant noticed that they could squeeze out a little bit of extra tax savings for their dying movie theater if they “put a ring on it”? I’m pretty dubious that the numbers on this make that much sense, but as always in Crankshaft, the point is just to set up a truly execrable bit of wordplay, so, mission accomplished, I guess.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/6/26

Oh, man, remember when Truck and Mud were briefly rivals for Wanda’s affections, a rivalry that ended in total victory for Truck? Well, now it looks like Mud, who earlier this week was grousing that the Glenwood Motel’s waitstaff shortage would relegate him to eating alone in his room, is going to have his own small-town waitress to successfully woo … and this one’s an ex-Hollywood starlet to boot! In your face, Truck!