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Mary Worth, 9/16/25

It’s not exactly clear how much time in-strip is supposed to have elapsed between the current storyline and Olive’s original appearance in the strip; presumably it’s not the 11 years that have passed in real time, but probably like … five or six, I’m guessing? And one of the oddnesses of childhood is that five or six years wouldn’t seem so long to someone Mary’s age, but a kid in that scenario really would say “I remember” like it happened in another era. So, so far, so normal, except that Olive also says “remember” when she talks about her spooky visions of the life she and Mary lived in Ancient Egypt, so I think that adds a different valence to it. Anyway, I guess if you were a naive child, you might think that being able to talk to animals would make you a good vet, but hopefully she’ll get a chance to talk to Dr. Ed and learn that that job is just one dead pomeranian after another, and the only thing that would make it worse would be if you could hear the pomeranians speak in complete sentences.

Hi and Lois, 9/16/25

Lois is desperate to see some evidence that two people really can stay happily married to each other for any length of time, and she is not finding it today.

Family Circus, 9/16/25

Sure, Jeffy is being an idiot as usual, but don’t be so grotesquely smug about it, Billy. You didn’t arrange things so that time only flows in one direction, at the same rate for everyone in the same inertial referential frame! What if you were shot into space at relativistic speeds for an extended space voyage and Jeffy stayed on Earth and you came back and he was older? Who’d be smug then, huh, Billy? I mean, probably you, I guess, you’d be a worldwide celebrity and hero of exploration, and he’d still just be some guy, and an old guy to boot.

Garfield, 9/16/25

Wait, do you expect me to believe that notorious dog-hater Garfield is watching some kind of TV show starring a talking dog, and complimenting the talking dog character? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all. #notmygarfield #garfieldcanonicallyhasnothingbutcontemptfordogs

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Beetle Bailey, 9/2/25

Now, I’m not a big shot syndicated newspaper comics artist, but I think that if you have a joke where a general tells a subordinate officer that his uniform cravat (?) isn’t regulation, and then the officer says “And that is?” because the general is wearing a ludicrous golf outfit, the general’s outfit should be a reveal in the second panel. The element of surprise seems key to making it a “joke,” in my opinion, and you’re probably saying, “But Josh, the comics are a visual medium, how are you going to have the general’s dialogue without showing him,” and sorry, that’s not my problem! You could’ve bailed on this joke at any time once you realized this! But you persevered, and here I am criticizing it on my blog, the Comics Curmudgeon. That’s just the way of the world, I guess.

Hi and Lois, 9/2/25

Speaking of surprises, I think if your garbageman tells you that he and his partner attended an awards banquet for some kind of sanitation worker professional association, and you ask how it went, and he tells you that his partner won an award, you shouldn’t look so surprised about it. This is, to be clear, a criticism of Hi, not of the writing of the strip. I’ve already accepted and embraced the fact that Hi and Lois has rejected punchlines for the most part, so I’m fine with that aspect.

B.C., 9/2/25

Ha ha, remember pop-up ads? Remember when they were an example of a new, high-tech annoyance in the world, but now here they are, being joked about as something in the past, in a comic strip where the characters are, literally, ancient cave-dwelling hominids? Does it make you feel like an ancient cave-dwelling hominid? Discuss.

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Six Chix, 8/26/25

Look, in the Tuesday Chixiverse, people have sex with sandwiches and pizza, so I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss out of hand anything anyone suggested to me about how reproduction works there.

Hi and Lois, 8/26/25

I really love Lois’s face in the second panel here. She’s like, “Oh shit! Oh fuck! They’re right! This is why I never sell any houses!”

Dustin, 8/26/25

FINE, I’LL ADMIT IT, THEY FINALLY MADE A DUSTIN THAT I LAUGHED AT, I’M NOT MADE OF STONE