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Archive: Intelligent Life

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I personally would not give Garfield access to a phone. Nothing good could come of it

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Slylock Fox, 1/21/26

One of the things that truly sets people apart from animals is that our enormous brains are too large when fully formed to pass through a human birth canal, which means that much of that brain formation happens after birth and we’re basically helpless for the first few years of life, unlike newborns of most species. A baby chicken would indeed “instinctively step upwards as the sand rises,” whereas a baby human would simply cry pathetically as the sand buried them. This may have been a particular advantage to the non-humans in their great rise during the Animalpocalypse, as even their very young could participate in their war of extermination against H. sapiens. The mechanism by which they gained sapience despite their tiny skulls is still unknown, and Count Weirdly should probably be putting his scientific acumen towards answering that question rather than trying to sell fake honey-making machines or whatever.

Intelligent Life, 1/21/26

Say what you will about Intelligent Life, the strip where a character will say in all seriousness that “2026 is going to be huge for movies,” and then use as a data point the upcoming release of the most bottom-dwelling “who on Earth is this for” garbage you can imagine, but at least it got me to research a little and learn that Skeletor will be played by box-office poison Jared Leto, which I have to say brightened my day a little.

Garfield, 1/21/26

Garfield’s contempt for Jon, Odie, and indeed most other characters in the Garfiverse is an integral part of his whole vibe. But is his contempt justified? That’s a whole different question. Today we learn that, within his own reality, an objective third-party source (an app, clearly the best determinant of truth) confirms his opinions on his superiority over others. Will this reinforcement of his beliefs unleash a wave of “cattitude” the likes of which the funny pages have never seen, to the delight of eight-year-olds everywhere?

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A marriage plot

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Gil Thorp, 1/9/26

Oh, you thought Gil got engaged because he was “in love” or “haunted by the specter of his mortality and eager to recapture a fleeting taste of youth” or whatever? Wrong! Like all great coaches, Gil is intensely competitive, and since his ex-wife is now a rival Valley Conference coach, he’s competing with her at all levels and at all times. Now, a less enlightened man would see getting engaged as a way to defeat his ex because she can no longer have him; but to Gil, getting married while Mimi strings along her current girlfriend would be the sweetest victory of all because it proves he’s better than her at getting married. In your face, Mimi! Who’s extremely divorced now?

Blondie, 1/9/26

Do you think that the Blondie writing staff gets burned out from churning out weird food verbiage like “holiday eating season” and “eating it forward” week after week? Or do they love it, constantly pushing the envelope with off-putting phrases like “one fat patty at a time,” because their relationship with food is profoundly disordered, just like the beloved comic strip character Dagwood Bumstead?

Intelligent Life, 1/9/26

I gotta disagree here; if my choices are seeing the unpleasant nerds of Intelligent Life discuss franchise movie box office numbers or watching them being hunted for sport, I will take the latter choice every day of the week.

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Mmm … quality pellet food

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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!”