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Heathcliff, 5/7/25

The thing about Heathcliff is that he should be dominant in any situation in which he finds himself, either having established himself as being on top of the hierarchy or doing something that ignores other people’s dominant positions and makes them nervous. Garfield is usually dominant in his strip but sometimes this is reversed for comical effect, but I don’t think that works with Heathcliff. Heathcliff should not be “in deep” with his bookie and currying favor with him by laughing too hard at his jokes! He should be at the top of an attack parabola, ready to descend claws extended onto the face of the starting pitcher of whatever team he’s just bet against.

The Lockhorns, 5/7/25

I really respect that Leroy has absorbed just enough Harry Potter knowledge to know that witches send letters with owls but doesn’t really know or care that many witches and wizards are good guys, they aren’t the kind of comical evil crone-witches he associates with Loretta’s mother, etc. I also respect The Lockhorns for getting the U.S. Postal Service’s logo correct on this letter carrier’s bag, which is more than Blondie, a strip with a recurring mailman character, can say.

Dick Tracy, 5/7/25

The mostly empty tumbler of brown liquor on the desk in the final panel is a nice touch. “Ahh, I shan’t leave this evidence behind!” he thinks, smugly and drunkly, right before whatever electrified net contraption Sam has talked the MCU’s favorite judge into letting them use descends upon him.

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Shoe, 4/30/25

I dunno, the genuinely freaked out expression on this guy’s face, plus the fact that he’s wearing makeshift combat gear, including an outdated helmet, right here in Roz’s restaurant seems less “Ha ha, this dummy joined the ARMY and he doesn’t know what the army is even FOR” so much as “the front lines have collapsed, the enemy is pushing towards Treetops at a rapid pace, the desk-job soldiers who barely remember basic training are allowed one last meal before being rushed into a last-ditch defense with inadequate gear,” so I really wouldn’t look so smug if I were the Perfesser.

Alice, 4/30/25

Oh, sorry, I realize I haven’t been keeping you up to date on what Alice has been up to. What she’s been up to is apparently yelling at her mother’s (?) grave, which has been carved at her mother’s request to indicate that she’d rather be dead than be around listening to Alice.

Heathcliff, 4/30/25

Hmm, I endorsed it when Heathcliff began to impose his will on others by forcing them to dress in uniforms that matched his own fur patterns. But donning such a uniform himself, over his fur? That just seems weird. Not sure I approve. I guess you can’t argue with results, but still.

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Daddy Daze, 4/28/25

One of my favorite little linguistic quirks is the existence of true homonyms: when two separate words with different meanings and different origins evolve in a language until they happen to be pronounced and spelled the same way. That’s what’s going on here with the word funk, or more accurately the two words funk(s): the “be in a bad mood” word derives from a Scottish and Northern English word of uncertain but possibly Flemish origin that means “become afraid,” whereas the “music to put you in good mood” word derives in slang from the sense (still in use today) of a funk as a bad smell, which in turn comes to English via French from the Latin verb for putting off smoke, fumigare. This is the sort of information I would convey to my baby, if I lived alone with my baby and had very little contact with the outside world and it drove me to a state of madness in which I believed that my baby’s incoherent babbling noises constituted meaningful attempts to communicate that only I could understand.

Andy Capp, 4/28/25

Nice try, Andy Capp. You think you can slip this kind of blatant falsehood past us because we’re dumb Americans who don’t know any better? We may be dumb but we do have access to Wikipedia, which informs us that the parliamentary constituency of Runcorn and Helsby has been vacant for nearly six weeks now. Sadly, the by-election to fill the seat is this Thursday, so it’s too late for Andy to throw his iconic hat into the ring. The sitting MP resigned because he got caught on camera repeatedly punching a man in the street, so it sounds like the locals would’ve been open to Andy’s whole vibe, frankly.

Crankshaft, 4/28/25

Remember “the burnings,” the apocalyptic event in the near-future of the Funkyverse that wiped out most printed literature? Well, it turns out Lilian invented them, as part of her cozy mystery series. And yet we know that her building-code-violating above-the-garage store survived them, which certainly is interesting in light of this new revelation, although we can at least take solace in the fact that she’ll eventually be replaced by a robot.

Heathcliff, 4/28/25

Heathcliff is finally starting a cult! And, you know what, good for him.