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Mary Worth, 3/3/25

Big news, everybody: Wilbur’s back! Wilbur’s back, and he’s giggling coyly about the fun he’s been having on the Mayan Riviera. It’s funny, you’d think that after 20 years following this guy’s antics there wouldn’t be anything new he could say that on the surface seems largely unobjectionable but nevertheless sends me spiraling into a seething episode in which I curse the sea for rejecting him not once but twice. And yet here I am, starting my week staring “It was fun and relaxing… Hee hee!” in the face, and not liking it.

Dick Tracy, 3/3/25

Folks … big news … a third nephew has hit this Dick Tracy storyline. We are going to be treated to nephew after nephew, each more lightweight and gormless than the last, until we’re all nephew’d out.

Judge Parker, 3/3/25

Hey, remember how Sophie made Ann’s murder charge go away by hacking into drone footage and proving she didn’t do it? Well, everyone got a nice little thrill from that lovely moment, but it’s too bad that other exoneration drones weren’t following her around over her last couple decades of petty scams and whatnot because she’s definitely going to jail for that. Honestly kind of mean of the cops to let her have a big emotional moment out here on the courthouse steps just so they could arrest her and extradite her moments later.

Gil Thorp, 3/3/25

Hey, were you wondering how Marty’s drinking binge was going? Well, panel three has it all wrapped up in a nutshell: wild eyes, his hair long and greasy, his goatee subsumed into a shaggy beard, his usual polo shirts traded for some kind of vintage fur-lined coat. Honestly, he looks great. This is the coolest he’s looked in years. This is not the lesson we should be teaching our kids.

Pickles, 3/3/25

Ha ha! That’s funny, man. So, are you, uh, are you going to change the furnace filter or what.

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Pluggers, 2/26/25

I’ve been reading and making fun of Pluggers for nearly 20 years now, and over that time I have against my will acquired a certain amount of information about the individual beast-people who make up the cast. For my sins, I know that the cat-man plugger’s name is Claude, and somewhere in the back of my mind I have it that he’s supposed to be the intellectual of this bunch, although I can’t really find evidence to that effect in my archives; instead there’s just the usual stuff about how he has more prescriptions than friends and his underpants are constantly on the verge of falling off. But what I’m definitely sure of is that he doesn’t have a wife. There are only a few she-pluggers in this strip — the chicken-lady, the kangaroo-lady, and I think a dog-lady? — and none of them are with Claude. Reading the horoscopes in order to find out whether your pretend wife is going to be in a bad mood is a pretty baroque little fantasy, I have to admit. Maybe I was right about him being an intellectual, or at least profoundly neurotic, which is kind of the same thing if you think about it.

Six Chix, 2/26/25

I guess the joke is that this guy is the husband/partner/babydaddy of the pregnant woman, but honestly I think it’s even funnier if you assume he’s just wandering through this medical facility hoping to horn in on someone else’s sonogram session. “Hey, lady, since you got that thing lubed up already, d’you mind checking out my digestive situation? I need to know when I’m gonna have to shit, I’m trying to plan the rest of my afternoon.” (Anyway, sorry about all that, I know it was gross, but it’s not even close to the grossest sonogram-themed Six Chix I’ve discussed on this blog.)

Dick Tracy, 2/26/25

For too long Dick Tracy has focused on hideous mutant criminals and their violent interactions with law enforcement. I’m excited that this storyline is going in a different direction. What if there were two nephews who sucked? Just terrible, incompetent nephews? Nobody in the history of literature has dared to ask this question … until now.

Gil Thorp, 2/26/25

Hey, remember when they suspended Marty Moon for being drunk all the time? Well, I don’t care how sober the person they replaced him with is, they need to stop saying “tonight” at the end of every sentence. And they should be talking more about owls! Poor Leo Atazhoon has been on the receiving end of a vicious owl attack! We don’t have time for Rodney’s ongoing drama, the birds are finally rising up against us!

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Dick Tracy, 2/20/25

Dick Tracy is a comic strip that operates in an exaggerated storytelling mode, entertaining us with outlandish plots about corpse theft and so forth. But it can also touch on very real, down-to-earth issues, like the problem of inadequate nephews. Are your nephews good-for-nothings who don’t even have the skills and/or gumption to properly steal a dead body? Dick Tracy sees you, and hears you, and knows you are valid.

Pickles, 2/20/25

Another comic I’ve added recently to my rotation is Pickles, a low-key strip about old people. I appreciate today’s installment because it avoids the cliche of making an adorable little moppet the resident computer genius and instead identifies the “generation [that’s] pretty handy with modern technology” as the children of old people, who are, let’s be extremely real, getting pretty old themselves. Sure, assigning tech support to a 52-year-old with bad knees may not get your strip cut out and hung on refrigerators, but you have to respect the commitment to verisimilitude.

The Lockhorns, 2/20/25

“Why doesn’t this person use the opportunity given to him to inflict violence on the one who has wronged him?” is Loretta’s takeaway from what she’s learning about soccer, and that should be concerning to Leroy, probably.

Dennis the Menace, 2/20/25

Mr. Wilson, they’re going to try to cancel you for this, but you’re right. Dennis Mitchell is a five-year-old child and just in general should not be spending extended periods of time at other people’s homes outside a formal arrangement; today he’s banging on a pot like a drum in a very irritating manner and you shouldn’t have to put up with it. I support you in your quest for a common sense resolution of the Dennis issue!