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Andy Capp, 8/7/25

You would think that Andy sustaining an injury at “punk rock night” would send me down my usual rabbit-hole of “in what year does Andy Capp take place?”, but in fact I’m honestly more interested in “at what time of day does this specific Andy Capp strip take place?”, given that Andy is returning home from “punk rock night” when it’s broad daylight outside. This sent me down a new, exciting rabbit-hole, and I learned that Andy is canonically from the northern English city of Hartlepool (they even have a statue of him!), and, England being further north than most Americans realize and Hartlepool as mentioned being at the north end of the country, sunsets in June there can be as late as 9:45 pm. So, yes, if Andy were to get injured at punk rock night and then come home afterwards when it’s still sunny, the punk rock part might be anachronistic, but the sunlight part would not necessarily be.

Dustin, 8/7/25

I genuinely love the big smiles on everyone’s face in the conference room in the final panel. “That’s Ed Kudlick, the firm dipshit, coming in and saying utter nonsense again!” they’re thinking. “He’s a terrible lawyer, but we keep him around because he’s usually pretty funny — not on purpose funny, obviously.” The fact that the coworkers we see are all women is a nice touch.

Gearhead Gertie, 8/7/25

I’m sorry, man, if you know Gertie well enough to engage her in conversation about NASCAR, you should know that you’ve just crossed a line that can never be uncrossed, so don’t look so shocked. Do look horrified, though, because today is your last day alive on Earth.

Pluggers, 8/7/25

Pluggers has run for 32 years, and the question on all our minds for all that time has been: “Do pluggers know that they’re hideous man-animals, nightmarish freaks of forbidden science who shouldn’t exist?” Well, they didn’t before. But it looks like they finally figured it out.

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The Lockhorns, 7/26/25

The random, silent bystanders who show up in The Lockhorns represent one of the strip’s great mysteries. Like, who is this lady, who we’ve never seen before and never will again, but who apparently thought she might get some quality time in with Loretta, only to discover that she was about to take her unconscious husband to a matinee showing of the latest superhero movie? Honestly, I enjoy speculating, but I’m also glad we’ll never find out. Anyway, this, and not some geek-savvy discourse, is the only way I want to think about the box office performance of franchise films. Are Superman’s ticket numbers being artificially inflated by women physically carrying their comatose husbands into the theater, an action that represents the latest aggression in a long-running conflict in a way that even they can’t explain? I’d be happy to read 2,000 words in Variety on the subject.

The Phantom, 7/26/25

Speaking of superhero franchises, The Phantom has been running for 89 years now, and I’m pleased to see that it’s taking the steps necessary to stay up to date. “Don’t share too much personal information online, or you might end up enslaved by warlords in a mine in Africa” is a timely message that today’s comics readers need to hear.

Dustin, 7/26/25

Ha ha, look at Dustin’s expression in that last panel! He’s definitely going to leave his father to die in that hammock, and you know what? Good for him.

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Heathcliff, 7/20/25

I’m a little obsessed with the tiny fish saying “Welcome to the club!” to Jaws. (Side note: Do we agree that the shark from Jaws is named “Jaws”? I hadn’t really thought about it until I started writing this post but now I feel very strongly about it.) I guess the fish is the representative of the entire Heathcliff universe, which itself turned 50 a couple years ago, and is acknowledging on behalf of his mostly land-based comrades that a fellow aquatic character has hit the same milestone. That said, it feels a little off because the Heathcliff characters are perpetually alive and keeping up their wacky antics and you can imagine them knowing at some level that they’ve existed for 50 years, whereas Jaws dies at the end of Jaws (sorry for the spoiler, but as noted this movie is 50 years old now, c’mon). I know there are more Jaws movies but those have different sharks in them. Are those sharks also named “Jaws”? I gotta think about that one, I’ll get back to you on it.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/20/25

Some really harrowing throwaway panels here: they transform a simple strip about Hagar inventing the movie theater freestyle machine so he can get super blotto into one that informs us that (a) somehow beat generation genius/weirdo William S. Burroughs had his strangest novel adapted into a play more than 1,000 years before he wrote it and (b) the canonically illiterate Hagar can’t parse out the word “naked”, but he can read “lunch.”

Pardon My Planet, 7/20/25

Gotta say that I’m impressed that this panel carefully avoided showing us whether or not Adam and Eve had navels, thus avoiding theological controversy, but dared to ask the question “What would Adam’s whole body hair situation have been?” and came up with an answer that’s more fucked up than any of us could’ve dreamed of.

Dustin, 7/20/25

Ha ha, just a couple of Gen Z dudes talking about mailing physical letters, a process they know a lot about from long experience! This strip, which is literally about the differences between young people and old people, demonstrates once again that it has its finger on the pulse of what young people know and do.