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Dick Tracy, 12/14/25

For a month now, we’ve all been like, “Who or what is the Ghost Cat? We’ve been told he’ll appear when needed — obviously that will be some time during this storyline but when?” Well, today we’ve got answers. What is the Ghost Cat? He’s Batman, or at least as close to Batman as you can get without infringing on the intellectual property rights of DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Netflix/Paramount Skydance [TBD by 2027]. He’s close enough to the real deal to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, anyway, so much fear that they self-censor when saying even mild swear words. Who is the Ghost Cat? Well, it seems pretty clear that he’s just Buford, the lawman who showed up in Neo-Chicago with this case yammering about the Ghost Cat in the first place, in an elaborate costume.

Honestly the part I’m most unsure about is the “when” component. Sure, sometimes the conventional law enforcement apparatus can’t deal with a specific injustice and only a costumed vigilante can restore righteous order, that’s something we understand and believe, but Dick and Buford were in hot pursuit of some suspects after an informant planted a tracker on their vehicle, and then said suspects ran out to confront them while they were just parked legally at the curb, a scenario where I’m pretty sure the police-friendly Neo-Chicago courts would give retroactive license for them to go nuts, so I’m not sure why he felt like he had to go “Ghost Cat” mode. Who am I to judge, though? If he needs a fursuit to fight crime properly, that’s his business.

Mary Worth, 12/14/25

A lot of Sunday strips just pad out what could’ve been a two- or three-panel gag and don’t take full advantage of their length. Not today’s Mary Worth, though! Today’s strip takes us on an emotional roller coaster, from the highs of “Ha ha, Sunny shat in Ian’s shoe!” to the lows of “Oh, man, the reason Toby and Ian never had kids is because Toby knows, in her heart of hearts, that Ian would beat them.”

Marvin, 12/14/25

Speaking of shitting, Marvin is, of course, primarily about shitting and pissing. But it’s also about a set of characters who actively dislike each other, and that’s why I refuse to believe that Bitsy thinks of Jeff as “dad.” He almost certainly just refers to him by name, or, if he refuses to learn his name on principle, as “that asshole.”

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Andy Capp, 12/13/25

Hartlepool is part of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, a conurbation of 700,000 people in the far northeast of England, and it’s frankly sad that brain surgeons are so thin on the ground there that this young (?) woman would call the profession “exotic.” Ditto for pilots, especially given the poor state of the British rail system! Anyway, I used to read Andy Capp as a kid and one of the strip’s running bits that puzzled and disturbed me the most was when women at the pub would flirt with Andy. How old were they supposed to be? Were we supposed to read them as attractive? Didn’t they know he’s married? These questions still haunt me today, but not as much as this woman’s unnaturally located and shaped breasts, which I think is a 21st century addition to the strip.

The Phantom, 12/13/25

Hey, kids, were you wondering what the Phantom was up to? Well, there’s a lot of plot I haven’t gotten into over the past few months, but frankly you don’t have to know about any of it to enjoy this drawing of him just firing two pistols down a hallway at nobody in particular. The Phantom: The Superhero Whose Superpower Is Guns™!

Dick Tracy, 12/13/25

Speaking of guns, were you wondering what clown-criminal Rojo Ozob was up to? Well, it seems that rather than “playing it cool” when a potential adversary is parked out front of his hideout, he instead orders his underlings to charge out with whatever weapons they have at hand, which can lead to unpleasant results if the potential adversary turns out to be the cops. I guess this guy really is a clown, ha ha! (I’m using “clown” here in the metaphorical sense, so as to highlight his incompetence.)

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Herb and Jamaal, 12/3/25

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Pluggers was insanely on the cutting edge of doing a 6-7 meme joke in the syndicated newspaper comics, the joke being that a child-plugger says “6-7” and an adult plugger says “How did you know?” and the caption says “For many pluggers, 6-7 is the year they graduated high school.” Which is, you know, fine, although it continues to center boomer pluggers and not the vibrant, rising Gen X plugger community. Anyway, I guess we should be taking bets on the order in which other comics will tackle this important cultural phenomenon and in what fashion they handle it. I’m not sure if any of us would’ve answered the first question for Herb and Jamaal with “right after Pluggers,” but for the second one many of us would’ve correctly guessed “incomprehensibly.”

Alice, 12/3/25

I’ve spent literally decades angrily telling comics artists that you can’t just have your characters look directly at the readers and make complaints that you personally have about the world with no other joke or wordplay, but you know what? It happens all the time so clearly I’m wrong and they’re right. Anyway, cars are just too expensive! The manufacturers forgot that the purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. Does every new car need all that stuff?

Dick Tracy, 12/3/25

Oh, yeah, remember how Silver Nitrate is having a hard time in prison? You might think it’s because America’s carceral system is inherently dehumanizing, but maybe it’s because he’s being kept away from his true passion: driving around town in a souped-up funny car with his barefoot sister spraying machine gun fire at random.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/3/25

It’s easy to forget when you read it every day for years, but the title of Mother Goose and Grimm reminds you that the strip was originally situated as being at least kind of a spoof of fairy tale/nursery rhyme stuff, sometimes it makes a half-hearted attempt to go back to its roots. I like how the cow knows in advance how bad this joke is going to be and clearly doesn’t want to be there. Hey, buddy, none of us want to be here, OK?

The Wizard of Id, 12/3/25

Hey, everyone, they did a My Chemical Romance joke in the Wizard of Id, right here in the year 2025! I guess we don’t have to worry about a 6-7 joke from this crew for several decades.