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Mary Worth, 2/23/26

Yes Yes! YES!!! We did it, we endured the parrot storyline and its aftermath and have been rewarded by a near-forgotten Mary Worth plot-shifting staple: a pool party! And this pool party features an exciting new character: a dapper widower whose year-long period of mourning is now over so it’s once again legal for him to speak to a woman. “I wonder how he’s doing,” Toby says idly. “I wonder what he thinks about parrots. I wonder if he has more money than, say, an English professor at a second-tier state university. I mean, you don’t go around wearing an ascot in public because you’re poor.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/23/26

I feel like Dennis the Menace may be spending too much time on Dennis insulting his mother’s cooking and harassing his elderly neighbor and not enough time exploring the reasons why the Mitchells are apparently bouncing from denomination to denomination. It seems like Alice in particular is on a spiritual journey and Henry is getting sick of it. “Look, I don’t care if we’re Presbyterians or Unitarian Universalists or snake-handlers or whatever,” he told her, “but I’m not coming until you settle on one.”

Pluggers, 2/23/26

There’s a lot to think about here. My initial instinct was that this plugger had to be at home — pluggers don’t work in front of a computer, they have real blue-collar jobs that involve, like, tools or something — and so this plugger has come home from a hard day’s work and is exemplifying proper life-work balance by dozing off while reading the headlines on Yahoo! News. But then I began to suspect that, in our fallen, post-industrial age, even a plugger’s professional life is dominated by the glow of a screen, and so this plugger is supposed to be “working” and after eight hours of this will head home to watch sports from his recliner, where he’ll also fall asleep. Which interpretation is correct? Sound off in the comments!

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Andy Capp, 2/21/26

I have long been curious about how old Andy Capp is supposed to be; mostly, I’ve been a little nervous that he’s supposed to be shockingly young, like 28 or something. But today’s strip, which reveals that he was around to interact with subcultures best known from a 47-year-old movie that chronicled events that happened 62 years ago, makes me worried that he’s actually some kind of eldritch, immortal being. You’d think that compound interest alone would keep such an entity supplied with enough beer money that he wouldn’t have to go around mooching!

Mary Worth, 2/21/26

Normally, when someone is out on a walk with their romantic partner and says “I hear that a full moon can bring out strong emotions in some people,” they’re looking to get smooched. But not Mary! When she contemplates “strong emotions,” she immediately thinks about injuries severe enough to require hospitalization. Thank God Dr. Jeff is so level-headed! He hasn’t had to work a full moon shift in years! He barely feels anything at all!

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Gil Thorp, 2/19/26

Oh, it turns out that Keri Thorp was one of the kids who vandalized Goshen and now they’re in jail and Gil is pissed … at the cops, who used to have a strict “no arresting teens for a little tit-for-tat spray-painting” rule, or maybe just a little “no arresting Thorps for any reason” rule, but now Coach Gerads (first name: “Mitchell,” I think this is a new addition to the lore) is insisting that the local PD “enforce the law” or whatever. Next thing you know they’ll make their deputies wear actual uniforms rather than kicky star-festooned shirts, no matter how mildly injured their legs are!

Mary Worth, 2/19/26

You’re excited that, after literal years of “pets are good” storylines in Mary Worth, Mary herself is finally going to get a pet for real this time. I’m retreating to my mind palace to imagine the moment when Dr. Jeff’s son Drew came back from the golf course with his buddy and his buddy’s cat. “Oh no!” thinks Jeff. “How can I be polite to my son’s friend but still maintain my comfort in my own home?” But then he finds out the cat is a hypoallergenic Balinese, and he realizes he’s not having any kind of allergic reaction to it, and a smile crosses his face. We are not the same.

Hi and Lois, 2/19/26

There is a sexist double standard for women in public life — politics, corporate leadership, what have you — where if they’re too nice they’re a wimp who doesn’t belong in power and if they’re not nice enough they’re a ballbuster. The shorthand for this is “likeability,” and it’s a genuinely fraught issue that puts ambitious women in a spot where they just can’t win. Dot actually is unlikeable, though, as I think this strip pretty conclusively demonstrates.