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Dennis the Menace, 2/3/26

OK, this is, no joke, some significant menacing here. First of all, this guy has never appeared in the strip before, so I assume Dennis is in the yard, unaccompanied by a parent or guardian, of an adult who is a total stranger to him. And check out that fence! That’s a serious fence this five-year-old kid scaled, presumably with pockets full of rocks, which he is now spookily skipping across a pool belonging to, as noted, someone he’s never met in his life. Kudos to you, Dennis, this time! You’re really freaking me out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/3/26

Man, I love Rex’s grim expression here in panel two. It’s pretty clear that “Jimmy” is a mistake for Johnny and not Michael, but it’s very important that he know for certain whether this embarrassing failure of an appendix to maintain structural integrity happened inside the torso of his biological son or his adopted son, so he can start figuring out whose genes to blame.

Herb and Jamaal, 2/3/26

Normally, actually prestigious restaurant awards are driven by their own institutional investigation and decision making processes — you don’t send in an “application” that gets “declined” or anything, you just wake up one day and find out that they gave the award to your hated rival. Still, I’d like to believe that the Michelin Guide made an exception for Herb and Jamaal and sent them a personal note in the mail telling them to eat shit.

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Mary Worth, 1/18/26

Good news, everyone! Ian didn’t become some soft-hearted sap just because a parrot saved his life or whatever. No, he recognized that this destructive bird was also intelligent, which meant that his behavior could be molded and guided by someone clever and patient enough. That’s why Ian is showing Sunny Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds: he’s planting the “seeds” (get it?) so Sunny will eventually unleash his violent impulses on an outside world that never fully appreciated Ian’s genius, and hopefully recruit his bird friends along the way.

Dennis the Menace, 1/18/26

One of my several comics pet peeves is when strips don’t make use of the full set of space allotted them on Sundays to do something interesting and special. Margaret going to town on the ivories and Dennis standing nearby saying “She puts the no in piano” would be a perfectly serviceable daily panel. But this is a punchline that does not benefit from six panels of setup, and showing Dennis doing a passive-aggressive “Let me check my schedule” bit does not in any way add to it.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/18/26

I stand with Jamaal here. You wouldn’t question Dagwood Bumstead’s sandwich consumption, would you? What is the point of being a comics character, if you cannot devour foodstuffs in comical quantities and qualities?

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Dustin, 1/15/26

Remember Dustin’s dad from the comic strip Dustin, who’s notoriously kind of an asshole? Well, it turns out he’s also an alcoholic.

Dennis the Menace, 1/15/26

Remember Dennis Mitchell from the comic strip Dennis the Menace, who’s notoriously kind of an asshole? Well, it turns out he was a little too much of an asshole and some other kid punched him in the face. (I’m positing that it’s another kid for this post’s purposes because otherwise my joke is significantly less funny. Well, I guess the strip’s joke is significantly less funny too, but that’s their problem.)

Pluggers, 1/15/26

Remember pluggers, the aging lower-middle-class man-beasts from the comic strip Pluggers, who notoriously are in less than robust health? Well, it turns out they’re falling asleep on the toilet in the middle of the night, which probably isn’t a great sign of how things are going for them.

B.C., 1/15/26

Remember the ant couple in B.C.? Probably not, there’s nothing really notorious about them. I guess you could say they were notoriously like a normal middle-class couple with kids except they were ants. Anyway, they got divorced, and then the husband was killed by an anteater immediately afterwards. RIP male half of the B.C. ant couple, 1958 (?)-2026, you taught me that it was OK to be weird.