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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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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/10/26

You know, maybe I’m sheltered, but I think that interpersonal violence happens a lot more often in stories than it does in real life, because some fisticuffs are fun to read about and/or watch but most people don’t actually want to engage in them, no matter how mad they are. I think it’s more common that confrontations sort of peter out, like with one guy being like “Uh, yeah, uh, I’m gonna go now” and the other guy glowering and being like “Going? You’re going? That’s good! That’s what you should do!” and then nothing else comes of it. I’m not saying Rex Morgan, M.D. is realistic — there are obviously way more roots country enjoyers per capita in Glenwood than any normal town could support, or endure — but this bit makes sense.

Daddy Daze, 6/10/26

Look, man, if you spend your whole day at home with a pre-verbal infant, and maintain your sanity by projecting semantic meaning onto his babble and stringing together whole made-up conversations out of it, I’m certainly not going to judge you. I do the same thing with my cats! It’s fine and normal. What’s not fine and normal is getting into scat stuff about your boss as you riff. It’s a good thing this kid can’t understand anything yet or this would be pretty scarring!

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Wizard of Id, 6/1/26

The Met Gala was exactly four weeks ago today, in case you were curious as to what the Wizard of Id publication lead time is! You might think that, having come up with the hilarious joke, the creative team would’ve kept it in the chamber to be published on the actual date of next year’s Met Gala, but hey, these are uncertain times. Will the Met Gala even happen in 2027? Will newspaper comics still be published? Will any of us be alive? Why wait?

Judge Parker, 6/1/26

Look, I know it’s been a long time since Alan “Judge Parker Senior Emeritus” Parker has been the main guy in the strip that bears his name, but … look at that last panel. Eyes closed, mouth hanging dully open as he begins taking another big bite of the sandwich he got to-go from the diner where he made everyone emotionally uncomfortable. The artist didn’t have to do him like this. He could’ve been left with a shred of dignity!

Daddy Daze, 6/1/26

The Daddy Daze daddy has some generic email job that isn’t at an educational institution and the Daddy Daze baby is a baby. It doesn’t matter if your headcanon for this strip is that the Daddy Daze baby’s series of “ba”s carry real semantic meaning or if the Daddy Daze daddy merely projects his own insane ruminations onto them, there is zero reason for them to have a conversation about the school calendar, a concept of no importance to either of them.

Mary Worth, 6/1/26

“I mean, at least you won’t have too many student loans! I’ve been in college since at least 2007 and I’m no closer to a degree than I’ve ever been!”

The Lockhorns, 6/1/26

“Blood … there was so much blood. And the sex stuff … look, I don’t want to talk about it.”