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Mary Worth, 2/2/22

No. No! No! You’re backsliding, Mary! I’m not sure what sort of brain parasite Wilbur slipped into your tea back in 2014 or so, but for a brief, shining moment your rage cleared away the mental fog and you saw him as he truly was. But now, suddenly, while Wilbur’s own daughter and a woman who has willingly had sex with him still seethe with anger, you’re nattering on about “the highs and lows of life with Wilbur!” Don’t you see, Mary? This is how it started with Barney Google! If five years from now this is strip is called Mary Worth Presents: Life With Wilbur and you haven’t made an on-panel appearance since 2024, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hi and Lois, 2/2/22

Beetle Bailey was originally a college-based strip that pivoted to the military for a change of pace, and we can all agree that that didn’t work out so great in terms of realism. But when Hi and Lois was launched as its sister strip, with a mission to capture the crushing, soulless ennui of middle-class American suburban life? Well, they really nailed it.

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Hi and Lois, 1/29/22

Man, all the facial expressions in that last panel are great: Hi and Lois, desperate to salvage whatever joy they can from their planned date night; the maître d’, furious because this is not, in fact, how reservations work; the twins, deeply suspicious of any meal that isn’t buttered noodles at room temperature, just the way they like them. But most heartbreaking of all is Trixie, who is absolutely beaming, presumably because for once her family has decided to not just leave her crawling unattended on the floor for the day but are actually including her in their activities.

Gil Thorp, 1/29/22

The non-gambling spring Gil Thorp plot involves the girl’s basketball team captain figuring out how to be a leader, and possibly it’s just by berating teammates with questions about their bodies? She recently got into the Air Force Academy, so this is going to have to do with her future as an officer, maybe? Anyway, it’s so boring that the Kellogg Company has refused to allow the Pop-Tarts® brand to be associated with it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/29/22

Look, I don’t want to just throw around terms like “incitement to genocide,” but I am saying that any flatlander communities immediately downhill from Hootin’ Holler should be wary of “Sterilizin’ Exp’dishuns” being sent out as this kind of rhetoric escalates.

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Hi and Lois, 1/22/22

You have to respect the unspoken shorthand these two best pals share. If they were mere acquaintances, Thirsty would have to do a lot more hemming and hawing about how, gosh, it really is cold out, huh, and getting a little dark, wow, maybe, uh, maybe if you’re making dinner, if it isn’t too much trouble, I mean … and so on. But no, he can jump right to “I haven’t eaten since I drunkenly fucked up in some way I no longer remember at 10 am and I can’t feel my feet, help me out, buddy, will ya?”

Beetle Bailey, 1/22/22

Look, I don’t have any secret inside knowledge about how the comics are made, or about which strips are the vision of a single creative mind and which are put out by workshops where gag writers and visual artists work in tandem. All I’m saying is that I have a hard time believing that anyone would think a strip about getting your palm read would be a good idea if they were the same person who drew hands that looked like that.