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Gil Thorp, 1/9/26

Oh, you thought Gil got engaged because he was “in love” or “haunted by the specter of his mortality and eager to recapture a fleeting taste of youth” or whatever? Wrong! Like all great coaches, Gil is intensely competitive, and since his ex-wife is now a rival Valley Conference coach, he’s competing with her at all levels and at all times. Now, a less enlightened man would see getting engaged as a way to defeat his ex because she can no longer have him; but to Gil, getting married while Mimi strings along her current girlfriend would be the sweetest victory of all because it proves he’s better than her at getting married. In your face, Mimi! Who’s extremely divorced now?

Blondie, 1/9/26

Do you think that the Blondie writing staff gets burned out from churning out weird food verbiage like “holiday eating season” and “eating it forward” week after week? Or do they love it, constantly pushing the envelope with off-putting phrases like “one fat patty at a time,” because their relationship with food is profoundly disordered, just like the beloved comic strip character Dagwood Bumstead?

Intelligent Life, 1/9/26

I gotta disagree here; if my choices are seeing the unpleasant nerds of Intelligent Life discuss franchise movie box office numbers or watching them being hunted for sport, I will take the latter choice every day of the week.

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Pluggers, 1/7/26

Pluggers has been doing a string of “Classic Pluggers winter fun!” panels this week, and while most of them have in fact been mildly fun, at least for the characters involved (what if we fired up the barbecue grill … when there was still snow on the ground?) I have some questions about this one. When you stare at the TV, expressionless, thinking “Hmm, things today sure are different than they were in the past, and I’m not sure how I feel about it,” is that fun? Do pluggers enjoy doing that? The fact that this is a submission from a Florida-based plugger adds an extra layer of ennui here. “Well, I guess that’s how they do things up north now. Not the choices I would make, but it’s none of my business, I suppose.”

Gil Thorp, 1/7/26

If you had asked me, I would’ve pegged Gil as the kind of guy who has a church he belongs to and occasionally attends, but he doesn’t really spend a lot of time dwelling on religious matters. But we live in a post-sectarian age, so it makes sense that when it comes to finding someone to preside over his nuptials, he turns to his most spiritual friend (“spiritual” here means “has attempted to contact the spirit of Gil’s dead mentor in a supply closet with a Ouija board“).

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/7/26

Not to sound sadistic or anything, but shouldn’t all these people be dead? Shouldn’t they have suffered horribly as their living flesh was transformed to stone? Because of Medusa? And her powers?

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Mary Worth, 12/25/25

Why hello, faithful readers! Did you have an enjoyable holiday? Did you spend Christmas Day with your “friends,” or exactly one friend, your ostensible “boyfriend,” and the two of you took the time to contemplate the glory and majesty of your Christmas tree while simultaneously side-hugging each other?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/26/25

Or did you spend it like Rex, eagerly awaiting the moment (12:01 a.m., December 26th) when you could definitively put all the decorative holiday crap directly into the trash and get things back to normal?

Dick Tracy, 12/27/25

Anyway, lots of fun stuff happened in the comics over the past week and a half! Like, remember Ghost Cat, the cat with the powers of a ghost, or possibly the ghost with the powers of a cat? Well, he can shoot a flashlight beam out of his chest, which is definitely not a cat ability but I’m also pretty sure not a ghost ability, so I guess it’s a secret third thing.

Gil Thorp, 12/27/25

In other news, Gil Thorp got engaged! Congrats to Gil on going from “extremely divorced” to “engaged to his significantly younger rebound girlfriend,” which, between you and me, is just another more specific kind of extremely divorced.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/29/25

Oh, also, Rex Morgan is going blind or whatever. This is what happens when you take down the Christmas decorations too early! Santa takes away your eyesight! They don’t have any little Christmas carols about that one specifically, but it’s true, that’s one of his powers, he will make you blind, so you better watch out.

Mark Trail, 12/30/25

Mark Trail is wearing a union suit dealing with some Texas flooding (ripped from the headlines of six months ago) while accompanying an expedition of ladies hunting feral hogs (ripped from a 2019 viral tweet). This gives one of the ladies the opportunity to say “Oh no! All our hogs washed away!” which I think is funny! I just think it’s a fun thing to say!

Gil Thorp, 1/2/26

“I have several, father … any plans to have more children?” is also a fun one! I guess my only problem with it is that it really is just one more question, though maybe Jami is waiting for the hubbub he’s unleashed to die down before moving on to the next subject.

Mary Worth, 12/30/25 and 1/4/26

Meanwhile, over in the wildly dysfunctional Cameron household, Ian decided to deploy a neighbor’s cat … for evil! But unlike Mary, who managed to use a cat to successfully keep Jeff out of her apartment for weeks, Ian was foiled in his evil plotting, discovering that both these creatures have been infected by the woke mind virus of domestication and have decided to become best friends rather than trying to kill one another. Look forward to more of this action in the coming days, unless Ian dies abruptly of a rage-stroke!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/4/26

In other medical news, Rex has cataracts, it turns out, and he has to go under someone else’s knife in order to be rid of them. He’s just going to have to let go and trust his surgeon — but should he, really? Are ophthalmologists even real doctors? Should he do it himself, maybe? Could he pull it off, because of what a great doctor he is?

You’ll find out the answers to all these questions and more in 2026! It’s a new year but the same Comics Curmudgeon, which is to say the world’s great internet blog, bringing you comics jokes every day. Thank you as ever for your readership, which you are required by law and prevailing honor codes to maintain. Happy New Year, everybody!