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Intelligent Life, 11/19/25

For my sins, I have come to be able to recognize the various recurring characters in Intelligent Life, even if I often forget their names, and I can tell you that the guy in the background in panel three is not one of them. I think it would be good if more nameless background characters showed up to roll their eyes at the terrible punchlines in this strip, though. Maybe it would inspire enough shame to grind this whole enterprise to a halt!

Mary Worth, 11/19/25

A thousand miles away, at a boozy conference dinner, a disgruntled waiter was hovering over a tableful of academics, who in turn were trying not to stare at Ian Cameron as he stood facing away from them just out of earshot. “But that card has a $10,000 limit!” he hissed. “What do you mean it’s overdrawn? We heart pets? I don’t have any pets and I definitely don’t heart them! This has to be some kind of mistake! Please, I’m going to lose face in front of the people from Oberlin! I’m begging you!”

Dick Tracy, 11/19/25

“In our case, it was the opposite. Ozob was short here by now. He did the vacation and slowly entered the same province!”

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Blondie, 8/20/25

Blondie generally has its finger on the pulse of what old people are doing on the computer, which is why I’m a little disappointed to see that they’re fobbing off AI psychosis onto the kids today. Are the kids today forming unhealthy relationships with ChatGPT and its ilk? Sure, but it turns out that old people are also getting into the “convincing myself the robot is a pretty lady and she wants to have sex with me” game, with tragic results. Anyway, Cookie’s statement that not only do she and her friends talk to chatbots but that “it also talks back to them” is aggressively uncanny, it makes me feel like someone is trying too hard to convince us about their ignorance of this subject. “Ha ha, the chatbot talks back to you? What will they think of next? Will it be a sexy anime girl AI? Uh, I mean, that’s what I heard, from other kids.”

Dennis the Menace, 8/20/25

Gotta love how depressed both Henry and his guest look here. “Huh,” Mr. Holt is thinking in panel one, “I thought Henry liked me. I thought inviting me over here was the start of us becoming real friends, but he’s shit-talking me to his kid so I guess not.” Meanwhile, Henry in panel two is wracked by self-loathing. “Why did I say that? I never meant to hurt his feelings. Now he thinks I’m a petty gossip. I’m a fool!” Menace fucking accomplished, is what I’m saying.

Intelligent Life, 8/20/25

The syndicated newspaper comic strip Intelligent Life is usually about incredibly surface-level takes on geek media and culture. But what if instead it did the most generic jokes possible about office politics and “sales” or whatever? Would that be even less interesting? “Yes,” says everyone who’s read today’s strip.

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Herb and Jamaal, 7/30/25

It seems like just yesterday that Herb stormed into Rev. Croom’s office, declaring that he was ambivalent about believing in a creator God whom he couldn’t perceive with his senses. In fact, it was 11 years ago, but I guess that’s practically yesterday in newspaper comics terms, ha ha! Anyway, in the subsequent decade, it seems Herb has resolved his doubts by means of Pascal’s wager, though I have to say that “liv[ing] in the netherworld” is a pretty tame euphemism for “experiencing eternal physical torment as a damned soul in hell,” and maybe not really as motivating as he thinks.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/25

“Speaking of which, uh, that’s not your legal name, right? Like, I figure at some point before we get married I’m going to finally get to see some ID, and I’ve really had my fingers crossed that we’ve been working with a Mud Mountain/Fergus situation here.”

Intelligent Life, 7/30/25

Actually, fellas, most of the shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery and the Walt Disney Company are institutional investors like pension and mutual funds, along with individual retail investors who are making decisions based on the companies’ financial positions rather than fandom affinity, so I’m not sure “the geek community” is the right word choice in this situation!

Pluggers, 7/30/25

Hey, buddy. You think a lot about peeing? Or pooping? When you look at a bathroom, do you think to yourself, “Do I have to pee or poop right now? Might as well give it a shot. Better safe than sorry!” Well, I’m sorry to inform you that you are, canonically, a plugger.