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Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/21/26

OK, I guess I respect the Mother Goose and Grimm entries where the strip remembers that part of its remit is doing riffs on fairytales, and I guess I count the public domain monsters that Universal Studios has been intermittently trying to turn into a “Dark Universe” franchise for more than a decade as being in the same ballpark as fairytale characters, but nothing about this works. Like having Dracula (I mean that could be any vampire, I guess, but you get it) ask this question makes sense superficially but honestly I feel like it raises more questions than it answers. Is he mad about this or is that just his face? Why are they hanging out together in the first place? And his question is legitimate! And it doesn’t get a good answer! And is that just a regular human lady waitress, like does she work at a lunch counter specifically for monsters or does she just have blood on tap for the regulars? And why isn’t Frankenstein’s monster doing the “Me take cup blood!”-type diction? And why does Dracula say “why” when he clearly should be saying “vhy?”

Crankshaft, 5/21/26

Sorry I got so worked up there, but since I’m already worked up, I might as well break my silence on the fact that Crankshaft has descended into endless interviews with transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas.” Normally I’d let this indulgence slide without comment but now they’re showing “Batton’s” characters from his “Three O’Clock High” strip like Harry Dinkle, who has already migrated to the current iteration of Crankshaft! We’re in danger of tearing through the walls of the Funkyverse, and I think the time-travelling janitor who arranged for Summer Moore to save humanity needs to pop through a portal here and execute everyone involved Terminator-style before it’s too late.

The Phantom, 5/21/26

Hey, remember Chatu, the infamous Python, the Phantom’s other big antagonist, the one who isn’t Eric Sahara, the infamous Nomad? Well, Chatu has just been kind of chilling in this cage since 2009 or so but, like the Nomad, it seems like he’s about to re-enter the story. Maybe we’ll get a Nomad/Python teamup that will be strong enough to defeat the Phantom once and for all! Or maybe they’ll just realize that the Ghost Who Walks takes up way too much of their mental energy and they’ll simply go do some low-level crimes that won’t attract his attention and leave him be.

Curtis, 5/21/26

A thing that I really love about Curtis is that it’s a strip that’s not afraid to get a little weird with it. The kids gave their teacher a cake for the last day of school, but whoops, the box is full of rats! Lots and lots of rats! What an amusingly odd scenario.

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Gil Thorp, 5/12/26

The Vegas sportsbooks have had a rough last few years. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association that states could set up their own regimes of regulated sports betting, and many did, leading to a flurry of betting apps available on every phone; then in early 2025, Kalshi, a “prediction market” that let users bet on any upcoming events and that claimed to be a futures market and thus regulated by the federal government, decided that betting on sporting events was just another kind of predicting and because they were under federal jurisdiction, they could offer sports betting everywhere, even in states that banned it. Still, I don’t know if “betting on high school golf” is what’s going to bail Vegas out on this one, though maybe they signed some kind of deal with the Valley Conference back when they were doing prison football, which you have to admit is more exciting.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/12/26

I’m not a big fan of the way that mermaids in Mother Goose and Grimm are depicted as just kind of floating around even when they’re not in the water. I’m also not a big fan of the really numb facial expression on this undersea king’s face; like, he’s not outraged or horrified, he just spent a minute looking at an old acquaintance — not a friend, really, but someone he knew enough to talk to, knew about his family — all dead and fried and sitting in a cardboard box and eventually he thought, you know what, I can’t bring myself to eat this one. But that’s a lot grimmer to think about, so I’m going to mostly complain about the floating thing instead. Are we expected to believe this is some sort of underwater fast food restaurant, despite the presence of a normal human guy behind the counter? C’mon.

Curtis, 5/12/26

Hmm, I don’t know, Curtis, I actually think that learning how to recognize when your boss is using company resources to indulge his own obsessions to the detriment of the health and safety of the organization and its employees is a pretty useful skill in the professional world! But then, so is gaslighting, so I do honestly see both sides here.

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Family Circus, 1/27/26

Look, we’re pretty mean to Jeffy on this website, and for obvious reasons: he’s pretty stupid, he’s very annoying, etc. Sometimes, though, we lose sight of the fact that he’s three years old, and those are in fact qualities that most three-year-olds share, so maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on him. On the other hand, he’s extremely smug. Look at that face! What have you got to be so proud of, kid? The finger thing? It doesn’t even make sense. It’s just not something you should feel good about saying. We definitely don’t feel good about hearing it.

Mary Worth, 1/27/26

Oh wow. That “go on” says volumes. This whole parrot business has been an excuse to force Ian into a struggle session about his many shortcomings. Additional parrots will be introduced into the situation until Ian’s mind is completely shattered and Toby can begin the long process of building him back up as someone who’s vaguely bearable to live with.

Blondie, 1/27/26

“I routinely suffer physical abuse that no worker should be forced to bear in a free society! Don’t you read this strip?”

Curtis, 1/27/26

That’s right, Curtis! You’ve killed your beloved! Now you must live with the guilt and shame … forever.