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Rhymes With Orange, 10/19/26

Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if a tortoise made glasses out of his own shell, and tried to sell them from a little stand at the side of the road, while he was dying, literally dying, because a tortoise’s shell isn’t just a container or an outfit, it’s a part of his skeleton and he can’t survive without it? It’s marginally funnier than if a happy beshellèd tortoise was selling the glasses and there was a pile of shucked and mangled tortoise corpses behind him, I guess.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/19/26

It’s really funny that Rex Morgan, M.D., used to be a strip where the main characters got free stuff all the time and now it’s the strip that teaches you to manage your expectations that anything might change your life for the better in a truly significant way. Like, did your book (you can’t make enough from selling books to live off of anymore,FYI) get optioned by Hollywood? Great! Almost nothing that gets optioned ever gets made, by the way. The realistic best case scenario is that every other year some low-ranking executive at whatever conglomerated streaming service inherited the option rights from its predecessor companies realizes that the option is about to lapse, and instead of trying to figure out if anyone is actually developing something based on your IP, they just renew the option and send you another four-digit check. That’s a nice little bit of change, if you’ve still got a regular job, which you hopefully do! Use it to take your girlfriend out for Thai food and stick the rest in your 401k, that’s my advice!

Judge Parker, 10/19/26

Once again there was Neddy-Charlotte-April drama arising from April’s inability to attend to parental duties after being whisked off by the CIA for interrogation, and there was a lot of hurt feelings that were papered over by apologies that were not accompanied by explanations. This could go on forever, so Charlotte is taking matters into her own hands by joining, or possibly founding, a leftist paramilitary gang. Take that, mother!

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Hi and Lois, 10/12/26

I admit that, as a non-kid-haver, I’m not fully up on the ages at which kids are allowed to be left on their own and/or put in charge of their siblings these days, and I’m given to understand that this has shifted since I was a teen, but still: Chip is old enough to watch his siblings, right? Or at least not be dragged along to the office with other kids? This question sent me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out Chip’s age and the amount of freedom his parents allow him, and I’m here to report that he’s learning how to drive, goes on unsupervised dates to the movies, and takes his little brother along on walks around the neighborhood, which you’d think would be enough evidence to make today’s antics unnecessary. On the other hand, at one point he told Dot about Studio 54, which might’ve led to her asking some questions that ultimately resulted in a lot of privileges being revoked.

Judge Parker, 10/12/26

Oh, hey, remember how April was going to pick up Charlotte and take her to school? Well, she never showed up, and the reason why is that she got scooped up off the street and taken to a CIA black site somewhere. I guess they’re calling black sites “regional offices” now, to present a more professional, more chill, less terrifying kind of branding to the outside world. That’s not how most of the US government is doing things currently, but the security services always zag when everyone else is zigging, you know?

Alice, 10/12/26

Big news about Alice’s car saga: Remember when she said that today’s cars were too expensive and didn’t need all that stuff, but then rented a car and backslid and said she could get very spoiled with all the new features, but then later declared her current 25-year-old car “perfect” because it had “no technology” and got her where she wanted to go? Well, it seems she bought a new car after all, and she likes it, but she misses the simplicity of the old car, and the old price tag too. Who could’ve predicted this? You could’ve, Alice! I’ve assembled incontrovertible evidence that you predicted every aspect of the mess in which you find yourself! You have no excuse!

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Judge Parker, 9/29/26

I haven’t really talked about it much because it’s been super boring, but April and Randy have been having marital problems of the icy silence variety since they got back to Cavelton, maybe because longtime partners sometimes grow apart over time, maybe because Randy had to stand there while April violently killed a guy who wasn’t immediately threatening them right in front of him, who can say. Anyway, due to [gestures vaguely] this whole thing, Charlotte isn’t living with April, and April as mentioned isn’t really spending much time interacting with Randy, and she doesn’t have a “job” as near as I can tell, so I do have to wonder a little bit about why she’s running late here. Maybe she ducked out in the morning just to horribly knife-murder somebody, just to feel something, and it took longer than she expected?

Blondie, 9/29/26

Faithful readers know that Blondie is the most pure uncut boomer mindset comic in the game right now, and I think the list in panel two, which lumps together “ways in which you hold kids in contempt because of their relationship to the phones or whatever” and “ways in which you think rules that kids did not create are proof that kids are wimps,” is a prime example. Also, has it ever been mentioned before that Alexander is on the school football team? I’m not an Athletics Knower necessarily but his physique makes me think that most of his organs are gonna get pulped the very first time he’s tackled, bubble wrap or no.

Mary Worth, 9/29/26

“Could it be … no! Mary would never want to go anywhere fun like Hawaii! Mary only ever wants to go to one restaurant here, in the town where she lives, and it isn’t any good!”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/29/26

Big news, everyone: Mother Goose, who has a boyfriend but is still chasing after men, is officially the first non-Archie polyamorous comic strip character! #herstory #representationmatters