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Herb and Jamaal, 2/25/26

I assumed those plewds were supposed to be sweat, but then Herb mentions “crying” in the last panel and that sets up a much funnier possibility, which is that they’re tears and he’s fully dissociated from himself, his body weeping openly due to stress and unexpected exertion but his mind managing to hold a coherent conversation for at least a few minutes, before he presumably shuts down entirely.

Judge Parker, 2/25/26

Not satisfied with all the people she killed in the massive explosion that heralded her arrival, April is now straight-up gutting a dude like a fish, right in front of her beloved, soft-handed husband. Weird how the awful last sound the guy will ever make is exactly the same one that Charlie Brown makes when he tries and fails to kick a football that Lucy is holding, honestly!

Luann, 2/25/26

This one could have been drawn to make it clear that Frank is chuckling ruefully over his unrealistic youthful fantasies and obviously realizes now that being a faithful husband and father is more rewarding than some burnout musician lifestyle. But that is not his facial expression at all. He still 100% wishes he was in a band and resents every single person in this room for holding him back.

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The Phantom, 2/20/26

Many years ago, the Jungle Patrol was all-male, until early 2008 when it got gender-integrated by a plucky lady cop/waitress duo. How’s that working out? Well, this young female officer is busy kicking a would-be warlord in the face, so that’s good, and the Patrol’s Unknown Commander is just kind of sitting there watching with a little smile on his face, which is a little unsettling. Is this sexual, for him? Is it even possible to understand what “sexual” means for a guy who’s the product of a 22-generation eugenic breeding program and who lives in Africa and wears a skintight spandex suit constantly?

Luann, 2/20/26

Speaking of sexual bits that newspaper comics have been doing since George W. Bush was president, Luann is doing a tale of ribaldry about Tiffany and Ox (he’s a new-ish character and his thing is he’s a gentle giant, don’t worry about it) washing Ox’s rescue puppy and getting deliciously wet in the process and I can’t believe I just typed that, gross. Anyway, I’m mostly posting this because I think the panel where Ox is sticking the hair dryer up his shirt is pretty funny. It’s just a weird angle! He’s warming his belly button specifically! Is this sexual, for him? Is it even possible to understand what “sexual” means for a guy who is a character in Luann, a realm beyond the sexuality event horizon where horniness is distorted by extreme levels of gravity into formations that scientists can’t even begin to describe?

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/15/26

You’d think I’d be happy to see a strip that eschews “someone wants to defy the laws of nature and have sex with a half-fish being” for “someone wants to obey the laws of nature and eat a half-fish being,” but sorry, I just don’t find it likely. Why would Atilla become fish-mad in the (literal) face of a being who is, in terms of the bits you usually interact with, mostly human, and yet ignore Ma Goose, who is 100% bird, albeit an anthropomorphized one? And sure, in real life a cat is far too small and a goose far too ornery for that conflict to go well for the cat, but these characters are roughly the same size so the power dynamic is different. You can make your silly fantasy comic setting increasingly convoluted and I will fight it every step of the way!

Luann, 2/15/26

Meanwhile, in Luann, everyone is fully human, yet nobody is acting like a normal human being. “I’m going to give my husband a gift card to a lingerie shop for Valentine’s Day, in the expectation that he will immediately become horny, rush off to purchase some erotic underwear for me, and then come back so I can put it on and then we can have sex. The ideal time to initiate this process? When our college-age daughter is standing inches away from us. She’ll be impressed!”

Dustin, 2/15/26

The thing about Dustin’s mom is that she exists in a reality where the comic strip Dustin is not in the newspaper. Unlike her, we unfortunately will read through the day’s news, feeling terror, anger, jealousy, and encroaching old age in turn, only to get to the comics section, encounter Dustin, and feel mingled contempt and disgust.