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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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Gearhead Gertie, 7/17/25

Oh, man, the domestic drama in the Gearhead household just gets more fraught! Gertie’s husband Harold, in a desperate attempt to introduce a new topic of conversation into his life, has dragged his wife to an art show, and you have to imagine that there was a brief moment where he really believed he had pulled it off, believed that he had managed to awaken something in Gertie’s soul when he brought her face to face with the greatest examples of human creativity. Sadly, what she actually took away from the experience was “What if we got more NASCAR shit, for people to look at, in our house?” Gertie may not know much about art, but she knows what she likes, and what she likes is having Dale Earnhardt’s death car, acquired and restored at great expense, hanging on the wall of her living room.

Pardon My Planet, 7/17/25

Man, what the hell, do you think vampires would ever in a million years wear cross necklaces? Of course not! They would burn their skin upon touching it! These are just goths! Goths with deep respect for Madonna’s iconic cone bra!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/25

I gotta say, we’re all pretty used to nothing really exciting happening in Rex Morgan these days, and so when this plot about Truck’s maybe-son started out, I don’t think any of us would’ve pegged “Truck finds out he got cucked by his own drummer” as the dramatic conclusion. I’m trying to parse out what his facial expression in the first panel is conveying … excitement? Respect? I hope we dive ever more deeply into his psychosexual landscape over the rest of the week.

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Gearhead Gertie, 7/3/25

I am if nothing mercurial, and do you know what I’ve decided? I like the Gearhead Gerties where the focus is on Gertie’s perpetually put-upon husband. I’m done feeling bad for him. He had to have known what he signed up for. His wife is Gearhead Gertie, for Pete’s sake! I like his grumpy little face in the second panel as he endures this latest NASCAR-related indignity. Ha ha, he has to watch TV sticking way up in the air, for NASCAR reasons that I don’t fully understand!

Pluggers, 7/3/25

Over the past several years, I reached an age at which some of my parents and in-laws have reached ages at which stairs, and the need to accommodate their lives minimizing the number of times they go up and down them, became an important thing we all had to think about. Stairs, man! You think you’ll be able to use them forever with ease, but I’m here to tell you: that’s probably not true. Anyway, today’s featured plugger is not yet at the stage where he can’t use the stairs, but it’s a lot harder to use them than it used to be, and he knows in his bones it won’t ever get any easier, and every time he goes up, the little pep talk he gives himself needs to go a little harder in order to do its job. In its quiet way, this is the most genuinely harrowing Pluggers panel since Rhino-man hocked his TV.

Hi and Lois, 7/3/25

You know I’m on the record as being in favor of Hi and Lois depicting “Thirsty” Thurston as a lovable drunk, but I think it’s a little too on the nose for him to just be blurting out his various disorders like this. “I’m getting addicted to online gambling!” “I let my lawn and my hair get so unkempt because I’m very depressed!” “My wife doesn’t love me and I don’t think she has for a long time!” C’mon, let us use our imagination a little here.

Mary Worth, 7/3/25

“Remember the last time they took a father-daughter vacation together, and they almost died in a cruise ship disaster? I think this one will finish them off for good.”