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Shoe, 8/24/25

You of course all know that one of my favorite things to grapple with in every Shoe strip that’s even vaguely bird-related is “Did the Shoe creative team remember that all their characters are birds when they wrote this joke?” Many of the regular bird characters have bird-related names — P. Martin Shoemaker, Cosmo Fishhawk, Loon, Roz Specklehen, Muffy Hollandaise … uh, well, not her, but you get the point — so for this one, I’m concluding that all these celebrities are not the ones we know and love but are their aviamorphic counterparts in the Shoeniverse. “Steven Seagull” was the tipoff. Anyway, no idea what The Birds was about in this reality, but I’m assuming it portrayed birds in a much more positive light than Hitchcock did in his frankly offensive anti-bird polemic.

Luann, 8/24/25

Years ago, the whole point of Tiffany within the larger narrative of Luann was that she was a hot, vapid, scheming cheerleader who bullied and belittled our heroine, Luann, and who got made fun of in turn behind her back. After a while they decided that maybe it was kind of grim to have one of the strip’s main characters be that kind of caricature, so they gave her depth and positive qualities and such, and then I sort of checked out of reading Luann for like a decade, but now I’m back and … I guess we have a new one of those? And she’s Tiffany’s college roommate? Interesting that this is a comic strip ecological niche that simply must be filled. More on this story, such as whether I bother to learn this person’s name, as it develops.

Hi and Lois, 8/24/25

Honestly I think the thing that actually works here is that instead of just texting each other, they’ve snuck off from their respective homes to the secluded woods where they can presumably fool around; the handwritten letter is I’m sure nice but probably isn’t the most important factor. Anyway, Chip, maybe don’t talk about your mom too much right now.

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Luann, 8/22/25

In the current Luann plot, Tiffany has dragged Les to a spa to get a mani-pedi and other treatments, and has been annoyed that he still wants to talk about video games, only to discover that [record scratch] the spa attendant is a gamer as well????? I was wondering if Leviathan was a real game, but the only game by that name I could find links to online is “a multiplayer extraction shooter set in a sci-fi universe where humanity has been abducted by a gargantuan, interstellar beast and changed over the course of several millennia. The abducted were ultimately discarded onto foreign planets. To survive, they have been forced to evolve into three factions of biologically and ideologically distinct lifeforms. Recently, a second wave of abductions have occurred. Fate has brought them together to the surface of the bountiful world of Domusalus; where only ONE FACTION can establish dominance for their survival.” So I guess Luann’s long-term goal is to woo gentle and impressionable young people attracted by the idea of a sea life simulator into a nightmarish world of violent mutants. Fun! Just the sort of thing that would send a hard-core gamer like Les into a state of orgasmic joy, which he appears to have achieved in panel three here.

Mark Trail, 8/22/25

Last week Uncle Lumpy declared gator-travel-assistance to be “not quite Fists of Justice™ territory, but at least macho-heroics-adjacent,” which Mark apparently took as a personal challenge! Today’s punch is less about putting a stop to imminent danger and more about putting a stop to a fight that some golf course developer jerk started, but I do enjoy the POV angle we get on the punching in panel three. Usually Mark is a “chin music” guy rather than a “nose bopping” guy, but this dude doesn’t have much of a chin, so you gotta do what you gotta do!

Heathcliff, 8/22/25

As the theme song to the mid-80s Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats cartoon so wisely put it: “Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no one should terrify their neighborhood. But Heathcliff just won’t be undone, playing pranks on everyone.” So why does the Nutmeg family tolerate his presence? Well, as today’s panel demonstrates, a pet who refuses to acknowledge the bounds of polite conventions can be a real asset. Look how happy they are to be relieved of their social obligations! Heathcliff says (via signs, flags, and so on) the truths that others won’t!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/22/25

Boy, Ma Goose sure takes a lot of pills! That’s … the joke, I guess? That’s a joke, I guess? They wouldn’t print it in the paper if it weren’t a joke, right?

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Phantom, 8/10/25

One of Phantom‘s many charms is its meticulous attention to aviation history. That doomed B-17F Flying Fortress is the Miss Nonalee II, captured and looted by the Luftwaffe at at the end of 1943, then repainted with German markings for clandestine operations. Phantom’s raceplane is F-ANPY, one of two de Havilland DH.88 Comets sold to the French and last seen in poor condition at Étampes, France, on 16 June 1940, the day the Germans invaded. So these particular aircraft could plausibly have wound up in this Phantom timeline.

But I’m worried about the Walkers’ marriage. Look at the guy, fully suited up at breakfast, pecking at his miserable egg and millet with his mind clearly on work, no eye contact (no eyes!), cryptic communications, keeping secrets until there’s no turning back yikes. And “Remove the …? !!–the canopy!?” sounds to me like Phantom will indeed be flying with Diana tonight, but she’ll be landing all alone.

Next: New Adventure—Savarna Comforts the Ghost-Who-Grieves

Crankshaft, 8/10/25

Plenty of local detail here to justify a sweet tax deduction for the author’s “research” trip to Winnipeg: mascot Boomer there, Coach O’Shea’s beard, and #86 wide receiver Kennans Clercius. The embedded joke is that this is an actual stunt play that could work to shake off tight coverage: the slot back moves before the snap to misdirect defenders; QB hands the ball off to the slot back, who hands to Clercius, who flips to the running back, who throws to the QB. The curl “sluggo” (slant-and-go) route is a misdirect by the split end to open a seam for the QB to run through after the catch. It works in Canadian football because pre-snap motion (the “waggle”) is permitted and the field is wider, so there’s time and space to spread out the defenders.

But the funny part is seeing the Crankshaft frog-marched off to prison, just like the author will be once the IRS learns that Boomer’s #00 jersey is gold, not blue. Hey, it would work in Slylock Fox and Dick Tracy, why not here?

Luann, 8/10/25

Ha, ha, the DA pushed for “intent to defraud” and Brad didn’t plead out. Saved seventy-eight cents; got five years. So I ask: is a year of Brad’s life really worth sixteen cents? Let’s have a reader poll!

Dustin, 8/10/25

“Paparazzi, Fitch? What about that guy in the corner with the sketch pad and colored pencils? He thinks I don’t see him, but I do … always. My life is not my own. You think it’s the camera that makes paparazzi intrusive?”

—Uncle Lumpy