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Pickles, 6/5/26

“We’re all gonna die eventually, but sometimes our ability to experience even basic pleasures dies before the rest of us” is a pretty grim thing for kids to read in the comics, so it’s a good thing that not many kids read the comics, I guess.

Heathcliff, 6/5/26

Although you know what legacy strip has a surprisingly strong zoomer fan base? Heathcliff! That’s why it can afford to play around with youth slang like this. Ha ha, the fish is “low-key” terrified, as the kids would say, if they were trapped in a bowl perched atop the head of a creature who was about to devour them.

Hi and Lois, 6/5/26

I’m not going to say that the art in Hi and Lois is “good,” exactly, but the faces are surprisingly expressive given how stylized they are. Like, with Lois today, they really nailed “Well that wasn’t an inappropriate thing to say exactly, but it also forced me to contemplate my teenage son as a sexual being, and I honestly don’t care for it.”

Crankshaft, 6/5/26

“That’s the pocket where I keep my phone. Did you know you can put pictures on your phone now? And also get copies of the pictures of your phone printed out? Truly we live in an age of wonders!”

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Heathcliff, 5/26/26

When Jewish theologians began to systematize the ideas they had inherited around the spiritual beings we call “angels,” one awkward question they had to answer was where they came from and how more of them could come into existence. While the Enochian literature interpreted the “nephilim” of Genesis 6 as the offspring that resulted from angels lusting after human women, and there was a potential memory of the Holy of Holies including a depiction of cherubim locked in erotic embrace, the rabbinic tradition ultimately rejected these interpretations, seeing the “Sons of God” who sired the Nephilim as noble humans and the art of the Ark representing the union between God and His people. They concluded that angels did not reproduce amongst themselves, but were directly and individually created by God; some of the minor angelic ranks were, based on a verse in Lamentations, believed to have been created fresh by God at the beginning of each day and extinguished at the end of it, while the cherubim and important named angels like Michael and Gabriel were permanent.

But of course, we cannot know how much of this thinking applies to Heathcliff’s cherubim, though we do know that, by some mechanism, their number is increasing. Does our boy Heathcliff create them at his whim and similarly banish them to nonexistence when he tires of them? Or are they sexual entities, like their notoriously horny creator?

Beetle Bailey, 5/26/26

So I looked it up and it turns out that modern tanks take at least three soldiers to properly operate, which leaves me wondering who’s inside that stalled out tank ready to annihilate this lady at point-blank range if she refuses to go along with the Camp Swampy gang’s demands. I’m thinking Zero would be unthinking enough to follow an order to fire and Plato would be coldly rational enough to issue one in the face of necessity. Beetle is, typically, doing the least work here, but doesn’t feel great about it.

Six Chix, 5/26/26

Hey, do you think newspaper comics are for old people? Well, Six Chix is here to prove you wrong, hiring cutting-edge millennial cartoonists to draw panels about … listening to boomer hero Bruce Springsteen’s iconic 1984 album Born In The USA? Hmm. Hmm! At least she’s weeping openly listening to it rather than jamming out, that’s … that’s innovative, right?

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Mary Worth, 5/18/26

A thing about soap opera comic strips is that it’s very difficult to understand how we’re supposed to read the passage of time. Like, Tommy’s big drug storyline happened over literally a few weeks of real-life time and seemingly even less time in-universe: he arrived at his mother’s condo unit, mentally set his intention to become a methamphetamine manufacturer, sold a kid some drugs, the kid immediately OD’d, and then Tommy got arrested. Later, he came back to Charterstone after he did his time and has been doing his thing for years ever since, mostly on the up and up except for a little detour into the prescription opioid scene.

So what’s Dawn’s problem? Admittedly, everyone has been more or less the same age for decades in this strip so you have to imagine that less time has passed for her, but still, she seems to have a real personal chip on her shoulder about Tommy’s bad behavior. Not sure if the blond kid who overdosed on Tommy’s bootleg “stuff” had been in her sights as her next romantic victim, or if he tried selling her some baking soda claiming it was “the good shit,” but either way something happened between the two of them that she has not forgiven.

Heathcliff, 5/18/26

BIG NEWS: Heathcliff has … a sister? Who looks exactly like him except she has a bow in her hair? And the two of them are doing fishcrime together? More on this story as it develops.