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Facial expression theater

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Dustin, 6/26/25

I really love the fact that Ed looks utterly joyless as he prepares to shove that forbidden donut down his donut hole. He doesn’t even want it, really; he’s just eating it to make some kind of point in his long-running battle with his wife that she’s never even going to find out about.

Pluggers, 6/26/25

This plugger, on the other hand, is gazing upon that expired can of beans with a keen expression of mingled trepidation and desire that borders on the erotic. Surely there are some risks worth taking, he thinks. Is botulism really such a terrible way to go out?

Hi and Lois, 6/26/25

Obviously Dot and Ditto did not enjoy Hi’s bedtime story, so I have to assume that the big smiles on their faces indicate that, in the moment just before they slipped off into unconsciousness, they realized that finally they weren’t going to have to listen to any more blather about fucking golf.

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Dads, but no grads

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Blondie, 6/15/25

The Blondie deep lore is that back in the ’20s, Blondie was a flapper girl and Dagwood was the dissolute son of a millionaire, and he was disinherited for marrying her, and that’s all of course long forgotten now and they’re just normal suburbanites, but it is a little weird that Dagwood’s boss looks suspiciously like his long-vanished father. It’s weird, right? I think it’s kind of weird. Anyway, it’s even weirder that this strip is drawing attention to it, though I’m not sure if the implication is that Dagwood sought out this abusive boss in particular to work out his daddy issues or if something much more complex and dark is going on here, a scenario in which Dagwood’s father has taken on a whole new identity that can never be acknowledged just so the two of them can spend time together.

Dustin, 6/15/25

Obviously, Ed was never going to spend Father’s Day with Dustin, whom he profoundly dislikes. But I appreciate that today’s strip reminds us that really his entire family is just a nonstop source of multilayered shame for him.

Hi and Lois, 6/15/25

Why are you subjecting Thirsty to all this, Hi? This is exactly the kind of thing he opted out of fatherhood to avoid!

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Young love and/or kerchiefs

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Dustin, 5/9/25

It’s a little weird writing a blog about the relatively small world of the syndicated newspaper comics, because I know for sure that many of comics creators read my little posts but it’s not always clear which ones do, so when a strip makes a change that could be interpreted as being in response to my criticism my first reaction is to become slightly drunk with power. Like for instance, I’ve complained for years that the Dustin strips about the dating life of its Millennial Zoomer characters all take place in fern bars and don’t involve dating apps at all; today’s strip, I’d like to imagine, is the result of the Dustin team finally saying “FINE, we’ll do a dating strip that involves the apps, that’ll shut him up. The kids don’t put their pictures on dating apps, do they? That would be insane.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/9/25

So it turns out that Kelly did not break up with Niki before starting to date a tall boy she met at college, and once she figured out her mother was no longer in mortal danger she went over to the garage where Niki works to break the news to him, and his reaction was pretty chill, all things considered. Today we learn why: seems like he’s got a new gal himself, with a kerchief! Is “Big Sandy” one of Glenwood’s wholly disproportionate number of retro musical acts? Are these two young people dabbling in the exciting rockabilly lifestyle? Is god-damned Buck involved, somehow? Reload joshreads dot com non-stop for further developments!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/9/25

Jesus Christ, what is this lady standing on? Is it her face? Is it more feet? None of the potential answers are good!