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Hi and Lois, 12/8/25

Let’s forget for a moment the incomprehensible/not funny punchline of this one and try to understand the lead-up to it. Why is Chip telling his father, who is watching exactly the same movie that he is, that there’s a parental warning on it? Shouldn’t Hi be just as capable of reading it as Chip is? Is it written in some format that only teens can read, like, uh, Minecraft font? Is there a Minecraft font? Is Minecraft still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025?

Zits, 12/8/25

Honestly, while I’m fine with the Zits parents (who were my boomer parents’ age when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but becoming Gen Xers, I’m a little unsettled by Jeremy (who was just a few years younger than me when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but being into things that contemporary teens are into, like Minecraft. I mean, Minecraft is still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025, right? “Watching” Minecraft? Surely the syndicated newspaper comic strip Zits wouldn’t steer me wrong about teens!

Gil Thorp, 12/8/25

In 1966, Gay Talese transformed the art of magazine writing with “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a profile that turned Sinatra’s refusal to give an interview into a central part of its structure. Will Gil Thorp do the same for the newspaper comics with “Gil Thorp Has A Serious Respiratory Illness Of Some Kind”? I mean, maybe? Or maybe Gil will just sweat a lot, who knows.

B.C., 12/8/25

The characters in B.C. live with a strange mix of stone age technology and modern conveniences and attitudes. This is not a criticism! I get that this is, in fact, the central joke of the strip! However, today’s installment does make me wonder if one of the modern things they have access to is the rabies vaccine. I worry!

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Blondie, 11/1/25

The thing about Dagwood is that he’s a dullard. He’s not stupid, though he’s also clearly not a genius, but mostly he just lacks any kind of imagination, which is driven home by the fact that we get to see his reveries and learn that they’re just the most on-the-nose stuff imaginable. “Wow, chefs racing through kitchens on zip lines? I think that would go … a little … like this!” [imagines a bunch of chefs racing through a kitchen on a zip line, adding zero additional information or details]

Gil Thorp, 11/1/25

The current Gil Thorp storyline is a flashback to the ’80s, when Milford dabbled in having a girls’ football team, with Emily “Mimi” Clover, the future Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp and subsequent Coach Ex-Mrs. Coach Thorp, being one of the students most excited about the prospect, and Coach Gil Thorp being the team’s … coach? A student coach, maybe? I hope??? Because he married Mimi later????? Anyway, we learned earlier that the whole scenario ended badly for unspecified reasons, which is why Mimi doesn’t like to talk about it, but I think after today’s panel three we’re going to learn that the school district shut the team down because it was getting “too sexy.”

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B.C., 8/27/25

A fun thing that happened in B.C. about halfway through the decade or so when I was ignoring it is that the Cute Chick and the Fat Broad got renamed “Grace” and “Jane,” respectively. So, congrats to both of them! I bring this up because the setup to this strip seems to be that Jane went out onto this boat with Curls and her cat, and she told him something about “catfishing” that he didn’t really understand, but he didn’t ask her any follow-up questions for whatever reason. Would he have been so deferential if she was still known only as “the Fat Broad?” Doubtful!

Gil Thorp, 8/27/25

Football season is underway in the Valley Conference! Glad to see in panel one that the refs don’t let a little light-to-medium face-masking interfere with everyone having a good time. Sure, a few necks will be broken, but the surviving players will be even tougher, and within a few generations we’ll have a whole community full of supernecked athletes! Let’s take the long view here.

Alice, 8/27/25

Panels like this are classics of the “A cartoonist experiences something incredibly mundane in their daily life and decides it would make a good comic for some reason” genre, but when Alice does that, it really makes me worry about the origins of the strips with the aliens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/27/25

Oh, I’m sorry, did you not want to explore your newly discovered familial connection to Cody? Well get ready to be struck dead by an angry God, buddy!!!