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Dennis the Menace, 10/1/25

I was thinking the other day about how Dagwood Bumstead and Hi Flagston have extremely generic jobs. Technically Dagwood is an “office manager” and Hi is the “head of the eastern sales team,” but we literally never see them doing anything at work that might match up with those descriptions; instead, we just get “office” hijinks that could involve anyone in any white collar professional setting. Lois and Blondie, meanwhile, who got jobs in the ’80s and ’90s, respectively, got the much more specific (and female-coded) jobs of realtor and caterer, respectively, and while I wouldn’t say the strips about them are exactly gold mines of laffs, I do in general think specific settings are funnier than bland and generic ones.

Some comics dads do get pretty specific jobs, mind you: Calvin’s dad was, like Bill Watterson’s, a patent attorney, Walt in Zits is an orthodontist, and Henry Mitchell, at least in some character iterations, has been an aerospace engineer. I’m not sure if this version of Henry is still in that line of work, but if so he should be absolutely embarrassed about trying to program his smart TV, a task that any idiot could tell you is achieved by use of the remote control and on-screen menus, with a wrench. He should also be embarrassed by even joking about putting Dennis to work on this, as his son is notoriously pretty stupid.

Mary Worth, 10/1/25

I wasn’t sure how exactly Olive’s psychic summoning was going to work, but I don’t think I ever would have guessed that the answer would be “the dogs will run along the side of the road while Saul and Eve fail to overtake them in their puce Buick.” I think it’s very funny that Mary and the gang are in a remote enough area that their phones don’t work but close enough to civilization that two dogs could run to them without dropping dead from exhaustion.

The Phantom, 10/1/25

The Phantom is in the midst of a storyline where our hero is breaking up a forced labor camp in Ivory Lana that’s been perfectly serviceable if not interesting enough to comment on here. But today’s panel put the phrase “SHADOW CROTCH — STRIPEY ASS” into my brain on repeat and if I have to think about it, now you do too!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/28/25

Well, I guess Truck’s not-son Cody did in fact come out ahead of beloved (?) tween neo-vaudeville novelty act “Shorty and the Beanpole,” because not only did he score an invite to Truck’s wedding but he was also allowed and/or required to perform. Obviously he was only paid in “exposure” and “the chance that he might feel the slightest amount of paternal affection for once in his life,” but now it’s all worked out … for him, anyway. Too bad about his band, but the lucrative world of younger people doing covers of country classics doesn’t have room for anything more than the one guy and one guitar that the nostalgics crave.

Mary Worth, 9/28/25

It’s only appropriate that in Mary Worth, interspecies psychic communication takes the form of a human projecting their own floating head into an animal’s mind, though I have to say that Greta and Max’s expressions look less like “We are receiving a message from our friend” and more like Olive has simply overridden their consciousness and will take control of their zombie-like bodies, for rescue purposes. Funnier to me, though, is Mary fretting “what if they forgot about us?” Like, as I age, I definitely have learned more and more that the people “in charge” in any given situation are just folks like me and often have things less in hand than I assumed all adults did as a kid, but I do sincerely believe that the people running a hot air balloon festival would in fact notice if one or more of the balloons went missing. Surely somebody involved has, like, a clipboard, right? A clipboard with a list of balloons on it?

Pickles, 9/28/25

It’s true, Grandpa Pickles walking into an oil change place and thinking it’s his optometrist’s office, which is almost certainly in an entirely different location, is not necessarily a sign that his vision is failing. He should probably take a comprehensive cognitive functions test, however.

Crankshaft, 9/28/25

This one … this one seems even more serious, to be honest. But Crankshaft is pretty sanguine about it. Let’s just take all these pills at random times and let the miracle of the human body take its course. See what happens. He’ll be behind the wheel of a schoolbus full of children when it all goes down, by the way.

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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.