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Generation gaps

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Judge Parker, 9/27/25

Look, we’re all young and hip here [laughs nervously], but the truth is that the soap opera strips are a very traditional medium and it’s fine when they rely on very traditional visual tropes. For instance, “This guy is having a hard time and we need an efficient way to convey that visually. How about we just have him pour himself a big honkin’ glass of brown liquor, in mid-conversation? We’ve got two panels and I think that’ll do it.”

Mary Worth, 9/27/25

Oh, it turns out Mary and Olive and Stanley crashed outside of cell phone range, actually, but fortunately Olive’s psychic powers aren’t constrained by physical distance. So she’s going to use them to summon Max and Greta to her aid, and, look, I fully endorse the overall Mary Worth message that dogs are good, but, like, climbing trees isn’t exactly one of their strengths, right? Shouldn’t she have befriended Estelle and Ed’s cats instead?

The Lockhorns, 9/27/25

Guys, I don’t know how much more obvious they can make it: THE LOCKHORNS. ARE. MILLENNIALS.

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Not going to try to transcribe a comical French accent, just imagine it

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Judge Parker, 9/18/25

I’m never exactly sure how old Sam and Abbey are supposed to be — yes, they’re the parents of two women who are both in their early to mid 20s, but they’re the adoptive parents of those two women and more to the point adopted them when those two women were tweens, so reproductive biology isn’t necessarily a factor and Sam and Abbey could be as young as their … early 40s, maybe? My point is that Abbey in panel two looks a lot like an elder millennial influencer with a lot of lip filler doing a front-facing camera reel about “My adopted daughter? Taking care of our friend’s granddaughter who’s been abandoned by her parents due to a series of espionage-related shenanigans? Let me stop you right there with a big ‘no’ — and that’s the tea, sis.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/18/25

Oh! How embarrassing for Yvonne! She didn’t know that roots, or possibly Americana, or maybe both of them, is/are called “Ameripolitan” now! Incredible social faux pas here, she won’t be able to show her face in public for weeks. If you want to avoid the inevitable social shunning that would follow on from such a mistake, be sure to write your newspaper and demand that they carry Rex Morgan, M.D., the only comic strip that gets into the minute gradations of various musical genres that nobody listens to and if they did listen to them they’d be like “this is all the same kind of music, why are you calling these songs different things.”

The Lockhorns, 9/18/25

I guess the joke here is that Leroy has insulted this supercilious French waiter and is now being challenged to a duel, but here is my preferred interpretation: after spending just a few minutes listening to Leroy and Loretta bicker, he returned to the table with those pistols and said, “My friends, in my country, I would suggest that you deal with your marital unhappiness with what the French call ‘an arrangement,’ but as we are in America, we shall come to an American solution. You must shoot each other, with guns.”

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This is the most unwell plugger I’ve ever seen, which is honestly saying something

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Pluggers, 9/15/25

A friend of mine in Baltimore, widely known for always looking younger than she was, when asked for her secret said, “Never make a noise when you bend over to pick something up,” something I think about all the time as I hit increasingly pluggerish ages and inevitably make noises when I bend over to pick things up. Anyway, today’s Pluggers is on this theme, but I like the way they’ve taken the suggestion and turned it into a little story about a woman who’s just trying to enjoy a football game but instead has to watch her husband drop dead as he attempts to get out of a chair.

Crock, 9/15/25

The thing about using the rule of three when you’re writing a joke is that while it’s true that the first two of the three should be similar enough to form a pattern, they shouldn’t literally be the exact same thing. Maybe my standards are too high, but I think if you’re doing a comic about how the French Foreign Legion is full of nefarious criminals, you should be aware of at least one other crime over and above jewel thievery!

Judge Parker, 9/15/25

“Anyway, just like Pilate, I’m washing my hands of him. He was the good guy in that story, right? It would’ve been more dramatic to do this right in front of Alan, obviously, but we were at a restaurant and trying to get him to go into the bathroom at the same time as me would’ve been weird.”