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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.

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Six Chix, 11/29/25

Big news, everybody: By the year 2045, frenchies and dachshunds will have been somehow bred to be more than six feet long, and capable of bipedalism and matchmaking to boot. What has driven mankind to take these steps, and what will the societal effects of these giant and apparently intelligent dogs walking among us be? Please, Six Chix, tell us now, I need to prepare myself for this terrifying future while I can!

Dick Tracy, 11/29/25

“Yeah, so, for the criminal guy, can you use some pics of Jason Lee from the mid ’90s as reference? Just pick whatever name you think makes sense for him.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/29/25

Ah, man, looks like Grimm’s dead? Rest In Power Grimm, 1984-2015, you were one of the title characters of this strip so they’re probably going to have to change the name, assuming they keep running it.

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Dick Tracy, 11/25/25

Ah, man, remember the Dick Tracy vampire car storyline from 2016? It was a fun one, and I personally would follow the principle of “don’t stop in the middle of your not-so-interesting storyline to remind your readers of a more interesting one,” but I’m not in charge of Dick Tracy. I do appreciate that advances in solid state storage have allowed Dick to keep a 3D image of a cool vampire car on his watch, for him to amuse himself with whenever the conversation about clown crime gets tedious.

Mary Worth, 11/25/25

It appears that Mary Worth takes place in a universe very much like our own, with the crucial difference that television never invented the concept of a studio audience or a laugh track; instead, the characters themselves laugh in an aggressive, artificial way to let the audience know that a joke has just happened.

Blondie, 11/25/25

When Dagwood says “Are you ready to take Thanksgiving to another level?”, it should come as no surprise that it’s a sex thing. The hat stays on, ladies.