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Alice, 11/3/25

Today’s Alice will I think be particularly inscrutable to non-Alice regulars, but in my late blog era I have myself become an Alice regular and am here to read Alice so you don’t have to! [scans through comic again] OK, fine, actually, this one is inscrutable to me too. I guess the little scene in the inset panel is supposed to be taking place simultaneous to the main action, but it’s not clear to me why it looks like a painting or maybe a window in the room where Alice and her boyfriend are sitting, why the alien guy is being debriefed by a human, or whether it’s supposed to be ironic somehow that the alien says humans are “too emotional” when Alice and her boyfriend are just staring off blankly into the middle distance together. At least one thing’s settled, though: Spock was a fictional half human/half Vulcan character from the Star Trek series in the 1960s.

Mary Worth, 11/3/25

At last, the saga of Olive the dog psychic has reached a triumphant conclusion sort of petered out, and now we’re getting … a Toby story? Oh, hell yeah. Toby, abandoned once again by her elderly husband (getting drunk at some academic conference) and her middle-aged best friend (nattering on to her not-boyfriend about a tween psychic), leaving her to ramble internally about her bag of sunflower seeds? Hell yeah. “It’s just me, myself, and my snack!” thinks a woman who probably once thought of herself as a “trophy wife” for an older high-prestige man and is now the saddest person alive. This week’s gonna be great.

Zits, 11/3/25

Definitely one of my pet peeves is when comics artists get older but their characters stay the same age, and yet also maintain the same set of cultural touchstones, and one thing I’ve always respected about Zits is that it leans into comic strip time, shifting the middle-aged parent of its teen main character from Boomer to Gen Xer over the decades. Not sure if I’m comfortable with “Walt got naked at Burning Man” now becoming part of the lore, but I admire the strip’s dedication and consistency.

Judge Parker, 11/3/25

“Anyway, the horses didn’t have anywhere to live so they just kind of … wandered off, I guess? I’m sure they’re fine.”

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Pluggers, 10/25/25

Pluggers are exhibiting signs of senile dementia, and it’s beginning to have a negative impact on their day-to-day life. Look at this guy, he’s staring at the side of his watch as if that’ll tell him what’s going on. It’s very sad!

Judge Parker, 10/25/25

Speaking of forgetting things, I breezily posted “Pet squirrel? Before my time” in response to Neddy telling Charlotte that she and Sophie once had a pet squirrel, sort of, only to have many faithful readers point out to me that, in fact, this storyline was from late 2014 and early 2015, which was very much during my time, as it happens! The short version is that the Spencer-Drivers got an RV but squirrels attacked the engine, and Sophie adopted one that she called “the Dude,” and it got lost but then later found. Now, none of that is very likely to happen in real life, but I have to say it’s infinitely less likely that a child Charlotte’s age would only pretend to go into paroxysms of glee over getting a pet squirrel, then later say with an eerily calm demeanor that her little meltdown had simply been a test to see if the adult caring for her was honest and forthright. I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that happens at all, if I’m being honest.

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Judge Parker, 10/23/25

I don’t know if I’ve actually spelled out the current Judge Parker situation, but it goes like this: April vanished after her Norwegian spy encounter and Randy vanished after going off in search of her, leaving their daughter Charlotte in the care of her increasingly drunk and depressed grandparents and, once they got too drunk and depressed, Neddy. Charlotte has been rather shy and withdrawn under her semi-competent care, until she got wind that Neddy and Sophie had a pet squirrel at one point in their youth (possibly in their foundling days before Sam and Abbey took them in, this is deep lore from before my time) and went absolutely berserk. You never know what’s going to trigger a child who’s experienced significant emotional trauma, but that face in panel two is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in the comics. I assume that Neddy is holding onto her temple because Charlotte’s shrieks are growing so intense that she’s afraid her skull is going to shatter like an eggshell.

Mary Worth, 10/23/25

Speaking of terrifying children and their mental powers, I am dying at Jeff’s dialogue here. You have to imagine that “Did that really happen, Mary?” was put in a painfully neutral tone, and then, when he had to come back with “I agree with you. I’ve been around enough to have seen things in life that cannot easily be explained!” he took it to the next level of neutrality, because he knows he needs to be very careful if he wants to get back to shore alive.

Dick Tracy, 10/23/25

Hey, remember Silver Nitrate, who last we saw a year and change ago was having a hard time in prison? Well, he’s still having a hard time, and now he’s got to decide if he trusts the prison infirmary to dispense psychopharmaceuticals that will actually soothe his mind instead of potentially making things worse. It’s a real downer! I think this strip should go back to violent gangsters with weird shaped heads shooting tommy guns at people, personally!