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Archie, 2/13/25

Of course, you’ve seen a bunch of comics and cartoons and know that spiciness represented by literal flames and smoke emerging from a person’s gullet is a common visual trope. But the characters in today’s Archie rerun? Well, they apparently have not. “Wow, look at all that smoke,” says Archie, alarmingly calm. “I guess I really underestimated what was going on in Jughead’s digestive tract.”

Herb and Jamaal, 2/13/25

When I returned to the Herb and Jamaal well after many years, I of course wondered: does this strip still “got it,” with “it” being a perverse tendency to eschew proper nouns and make things as generic as possible, even when it’s clearly writing about something specific and indeed torn from the headlines? Well, I’m here to report that, by referring to a “bird illness” today, in the midst of the worsening H5N1 bird flu outbreak, the strip demonstrates that it very much does got it. Maybe this strip was written last week, maybe it was written during several other intermittent avian influenza pandemics that have occurred over the past several decades, and maybe it will be used again and again as new and exciting disease forms ravage our egg supply chain, and I for one think that’s beautiful.

Daddy Daze, 2/13/25

Oh, hey, have you wondered what the Daddy Daze daddy is up to? Well, it seems he yearns for death. It’s not great!

Gearhead Gertie, 2/13/25

Remember, folks, if you go over to your friend’s house to watch NASCAR, and they own a dog but their living room isn’t covered in shit and piss, they’re loser fake fans and you should leave in a huff

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Mary Worth, 1/12/25

This Mary Worth storyline is sadly all too realistic in its depiction of emotional abuse and manipulation. But it’s extremely unrealistic in its depiction of someone who isn’t wearing her usual corrective lenses. I’m sorry, if Dawn’s vision is so bad that she’s just squirting ketchup all over the table in a vague attempt to season her fries, I refuse to believe she has any ability to see anything other than vague colors or shapes, or has any idea where she is or who she’s even talking to. I was also going to say that the transition that got us to “Duckgirl” isn’t realistic either, but I guess I need to keep in mind that Dirk is extremely stupid, so I’ll allow it for now.

Daddy Daze, 1/12/25

I swear that I am usually capable of processing a deliberate incongruity in the fictional world of a comic strip as a “joke,” but my least favorite instance of this is when an animal or some other entity that shouldn’t be able to read or write at all can, but is bad at it (probably the canonical version is the Far Side “CAT FUD” panel). That’s why I kind of approve of this strip, in which the Daddy Daze baby, who we are meant to understand is capable of advanced cognition that he communicates in a series of “ba”s, appears to have produced a professional-quality pamphlet, and hasn’t just handed over a piece of paper with squiggles all over it. Of course, you all know my theory that the baby is just a baby and the Daddy Daze daddy is insane, but nothing we see here precludes the possibility that the daddy produced the pamphlet himself in some kind of fugue state.

Hi and Lois, 1/12/25

Do you ever feel envious of Trixie, who lives outside the world of adult responsibilities and even childhood fears and enjoys a simple existence with her best friend, the light of the Sun itself? Well, it turns out that actually she perceives all sources of light and heat as separate conscious and jealous entities, and is constantly caught in their complex web of social relations as they jockey for status. Sounds real stressful, honestly, so maybe we should rethink our attitudes about her life.

Shoe, 1/12/25

I was about to make fun of Shoe for saying you can’t make money on the Internet, but then I remembered that he’s a newspaper editor, so he probably knows from pretty hard experience about not making money on the Internet.

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Mary Worth, 12/8/24

Hello, fellow young people! Like me (a young person), you have no doubt been using the word “cringe” in its relatively new slang sense, as either an adjective meaning something embarrassing or awkward, or as a noun to denote something that inspires the feeling described by the adjective. This is a use of the word that we young people like to deploy on social media sites such as TikTok and [what are the other ones? Is TikTok still what young people like? double-check this].

Sadly, however, we’re all going to have to stop using the word that way, because Wilbur Weston just did, in the comic strip Mary Worth! Ironically, this act itself is incredibly cringe. That’s the last time I’ll use that word in that way; now, as a young person, I will be moving on to new forms of slang that are inscrutable to the many, many people who are older than me.

Pardon My Planet, 12/8/24

Hello, fellow young people! Are you familiar with the hot new musical film Wicked? Fun fact: it’s actually a prequel to another film, The Wizard of Oz, and this syndicated newspaper cartoon is a joke about the characters from that older movie! You’d think it’d be more direct to just do a joke about Wicked, the movie that’s currently popular, but that would require some research to determine what exactly its characters look like, and that sort of effort simply isn’t part of the Pardon My Planet game plan.

Daddy Daze, 12/8/24

Good news, everyone! The Daddy Daze daddy is dead. The Daddy Daze baby captured and killed him. Now, does this mean the Daddy Daze baby will soon himself die, from neglect? Unclear. He’s a baby, so normally I’d say yes, but he managed to capture and kill his father, so he has powers and capabilities beyond those of ordinary babies.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/8/24

Hey guys, if you’re so scared, why don’t you attack the castle during the day? Idiots.