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Slylock Fox, 8/3/26

I have no idea what the relationship is between Count Weirdly and the little purple being who’s always hanging around his workplace/castle — is it his creation? his adopted child? his [gulp] biological child? was it spawned by some unnatural process that doesn’t fall into any of those three categories cleanly but falls into all of them in part? — but clearly it views the count in a paternal light, and it’s pretty devastating that it’s so excited to show off the Count’s supposedly legitimate business enterprise to Slylock, only for the Fox Detective to immediately debunk the whole scam. Also, unrelated, but I’ve never really had much reason to contemplate whether Weirdly was wearing anything under his trademark shapeless nightgown, but the very vivid buttrack on display here implies that he probably isn’t.

Crock, 8/3/26

The past is in fact another country, as this Crock strip from 1998 demonstrates. Sure, the idea of a boy baby aggressively hitting on a girl baby and being punished for it is timeless, but why is the girl named “Cyber”? Was this the setup to a joke about computers that turned out to be too hard to execute so they fell back on the classics, or did the Crock creative team in 1998 simply say “What are they naming girl babies these days? Cyber, right? That’s a word I hear a lot but I don’t know what it means, so it’s probably a girl’s name.”

The Lockhorns, 8/3/26

I spent some time trying to parse Leroy’s facial expression here and the conclusion I came to is that it’s supposed to represent “sophisticated horny.” Like he’s thinking, “Ah, yes, women’s beach volleyball … the intellectual’s sport. You get to enjoy athletes at the top of their game demonstrating their prowess at leaping and spiking the ball, all in a beautiful seaside setting. And if one of these statuesque competitors were to engender a pleasant feeling of arousal in me while I watched? Well, I’m mostly trying to keep tabs on various stats to see how my fantasy team is doing, but that would be an added bonus.”

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Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Shoe, 7/22/26

NO MUFFY NO HE’S REACHING FOR YOUR BEAK HE THINKS IT’S A [horrible wrenching sounds, bird-agony noises].

Crock, 7/22/26

… and maybe a thesaurus?

Say, doesn’t that bird look awfully glum for somebody in the cheer-distribution business? Sure, most of your clientele in that game will be sad sacks like Figowitz here. Maybe you even bear their burdens, like a sad clown or depressed comedian. But if you’re doling out industrial packages of cheer, who’s going to complain if you skim off a little for yourself? It’s not embezzlement, it’s self-care!

Mark Trail, 7/22/26

Happy Trail ditches his evil grifter fiancée Gail at the altar to care for the gorillas suffering from her neglect. Mark can’t just stand there; he has to do something—but there’s not a single villain in punching range.

Judge Parker, 7/22/26

Sophie didn’t mean to walk that way, just like the artist probably didn’t mean to slap down that inscription without correcting the perspective—but you go with what you got, I guess.

Hey, is this when manipulative brat adorable pixie Charlotte learns Sophie’s tragic backstory? It’s time that child learned how the world works: You can’t just shoot people for money like her Mom does, you gotta go out and inherit it!

—Uncle Lumpy