“The cable guy’s air of contentment is about more than just the opportunity to set down his tool box, put his feet up, and sit a spell. The naysayers and gloomcasters have been telling him for so many years that nobody keeps a live-in cable repairman anymore; this isn’t the glittering, prosperous 1980s, when enthusiasm for the exciting new medium of cable television was sky high and limitlessly coke-fueled. He’s fought to hold on to the era-appropriate wisdom of Flashdance and most other movies: when you give up your dream, you die.” –Violet

“Lois strolls the Triangle d’Or en fleek in the hottest new Givenchy galoshes.” –Cleveland Mocks

“Wait, didn’t Lois put her magazine and glasses away and go to sleep? Hence the dreaming? Why is she suddenly awake and wearing glasses again in the … oh no. She’s being incepted! Wake up, Lois! None of this is real! Wake up before they make you deport yourself!” –jroggs

“I feel personally insulted by the fact that Marvin has seven panels that look completely identical, but upon close examination have clearly been completely redrawn for each one, with Megan looking slightly different even while being in the exact same pose (watch the mouth in particular). How do you create a strip that’s boring and repetitive to look at, yet still takes as much work as if you hadn’t resorted to talking heads? Own your laziness dammit!” –Morgan Wick

“I wanted to do a bit on internet searches that somehow reveal that a person is lazy and self-centered but I was too distracted by the way Megan is making eye contact with the reader. I know this is a problem for some child actors but I didn’t think child cartoons would stare at the camera.” –Victor Von

“What’s funny in this is that Dennis is delivering a pretty stock Mr Wilson punchline there. Which makes you wonder, is he destined to become his elderly neighbor in time, and get his own ‘brat noir’? [takes a drag of a cigarette] Time is a flat circle, man…” –pugfuggly

“Magical bagpipes that set the ears ablaze would explain how the king has managed to survive for as long as he has in a castle with walls so low that invaders could just lift each other over them.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’m not sure how one could visually depict a screeching noise, but a bunch of eighth notes flying around is not it.” –Flipper

“You know what? I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna say something nice about Bizarro, and that something is this: I want that art on the wall. Bigfoot job-hunting, whatever, that’s fine, I give it a C-, but upside-down hat-birdie is pretty great and I’d happily hang that in my office. Then again, if I did that, I’d be constantly thinking ‘That’s a piece of art I somehow sourced from Bizarro, of all things,’ and my life would be about 5% worse than it would be otherwise, so maybe it’s better this way. Godspeed, upside-down hat-birdie. I hope the [squints] lit stick of dynamite hanging next to you spares your upside-down life.” –els

“In the broader comics category of ‘children hear but don’t understand adult concepts’ and apply them in hilariously cute ways, Curtis has completely misunderstood the two’s compliment method for representing signed integers in digital computations.” –Hibbleton

“‘Window?’ ‘Sign?’ Do you think this idea is good to convince rational people to walk in? No, it’s too stupid! It’s for social media!” –Ettorre

“You all are making jokes, but this is the unfortunate reality for those among us who adopt the furry lifestyle.” –Tom T.

“Mr. Wilson has a Dennis-sized tumor. Menace level: Stage 4.” –taig

“Trixie will be among the first generation with early-onset ‘YouTube Face.’” –Philip

“Pluggers aren’t just romantically smiling at each other, they’re predatorial carnivores and showing their teeth is a sign of aggression.” –Rex Thrillho, on Twitter

“livedtotellaboutit.com points to an unconfigured Shopify site, which is significantly more menacing than whatever wisecrack Dennis used to break down his last three sitters. Commodify your trauma, sisters!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“You’re a plugger if smiling hurts … because everything hurts. Life is a series of endless pain and suffering now as entropy is slowly killing you and it won’t stop until you die. Now, who’s ready for romance?” –OId Man Shadow

“Given that food is like sex for the Bumsteads, what we’re seeing in panel 3 is some kind of sick exhibitionism, and Herb’s wistful ‘You’ve got a gold medal wife’ takes on a whole new meaning. Do you think they ever swing together (i.e. eat meals cooked by each other’s wives)?” –Schroduck

“Olympic Logo Eggs! Or, as they call it at down at the diner, Five Eggs!” –RoofPig

“I love that Billy and Jeffy are just staring at the Olympics crowd scenes, presumably changing the channel when the camera stops panning the stands and focuses on the boring actual sports.” –Thelonious_Nick

“For a ‘Boy, that scheduled event sure is happening’ type of easy ‘topical’ Blondie strip, today’s offering is tremendously confused in a lot of ways. Probably the strangest part is Glasses Guy reacting with bafflement to his own score card, but the worst off here is Herb, who is going to have a miserable time describing this distracting impromptu comedy bit in court after he gets arrested for running over Elmo.” –jroggs

“Wilbur kept that fish prisoner in a small box all his life and he wants to be thanked for that. He has the mentality of a serial killer, but not the physique.” –Ettorre

“In the 1960s when artist Neal Adams first took over Batman, he would unilaterally draw all the daytime scenes as night scenes to emphasize the mysterious nature of the character and get away from the campy 60s version. By the time the writer and editor figured out what was going on, it was too late. Fans were demanding more of that version of Batman. This is my longwinded way of saying June should just take it upon herself to always draw Wilbur as a talking fish from now on.” –Where’s Rocky?

“Are we there yet? I gotta go to the bathroom? These are the mildest, most cliched ‘misbehaviors’ anyone could imagine. Show us the restaurants Dennis burned down! The landmarks he ‘accidentally’ desecrated! Is this child a menace or an… [scrambles to find a rhyme for menace] apprentice?” –Victor Von

“There have been countless gags involving Dagwood’s barber over the years, and that guy in today’s strip is definitely NOT Dagwood’s barber. Dagwood’s real barber also has a penchant for practical jokes, so presumably the gag here was that Dagwood was supposed to say ‘Hey! You’re not my barber!’ But Dagwood doesn’t care enough to even notice. That hurts. The joke’s on you this time, Dagwood’s barber.” –Peanut Gallery

“There is nothing I want less from Hi and Lois than references to real-world horrors. Vladimir Putin does not exist in the Walker-Browneverse. The Soviet Union never fell, Khrushchev is still General Secretary, and Hi grumbles about the Commies with his colleagues over a three-martini lunch, forever and ever and ever.” –Schroduck

“I love the tableau in Family Circus, but the caption is all wrong. Bil demands Jeffy play smooth jazz piano for hours while he reads newspaper after newspaper, some of them not even current. It’s just one of his quirks. The boy has momentarily stopped playing, and Bil rebukes him with blank, eyeless rage. ‘Please, father,’ Jeffy says, ‘I’m so very hungry and my fingers are bleeding onto the keys.’” –Violet

“Mentioning 2024 current events in the background of a discussion from 1968? We’ve reached peak Hi and Lois, folks.” –Rube

“Is it just me, or is Willa giving Wilbur a really patronizing look? ‘Spoke to him even? Well that’s super, meat sack. I just spoke to the water filter. It said Clean Me.’” –pugfuggly

“Why do all the fish depicted in this strip have such vapid grins on their faces? Is there a product called ‘fishnip’ which is the piscean equivalent of catnip?” –Bob Tice

“I see Dagwood’s been watching the Olympics’ newest sport, arm-extension speed ambling.” –Thelonious_Nick

“Oh sunbeam, please help me destroy these iniquitous people and all their works…” –Dennis Jimenez

“When a conversation distorts your face to the point that you could be on the Dick Tracy Nemesis List, well, that’s a bad conversation.” –MKay

“What today’s strip really tells us, once again, is that Trixie is a baby who lives on the floor. Now, in a normal household, a baby might be placed on the floor for a while, on a carpet or a nice, soft blanket, presumably surrounded by a few baby toys and with at least one adult to supervise and interact with her. But, nope, this one is just a floor baby, left to fend for herself, with no help or stimulation of any kind, and no companionship other than a natural element she’s anthropomorphized into a pretend friend (hello, ‘Sunbeam’). She has nothing to hold or play with, and nothing to do other than wallow in her own thoughts. Her most optimistic hope is that her favored older siblings might happen to drop one of their own many belongings to her level, like a dog waiting patiently waiting for table scraps. Yes, this is the reality that Trixie Flagston has been living in for almost 70 years — and if she ever does grow up, there’s gonna be hell to pay.” –BigTed

“If this guy is a lapsed Amish man who left the sect after rumspringa, it stands to reason that he would be more courteous with his use to technology during meals. It would also be interesting if, by moving to the city and being a mixture of modern tech and old school dress, values, and handcrafted wares, he wasn’t secretly the first hipster, the only one who wasn’t doing it ironically.” –Philip

“Next on Mary Worth: Stell sighs again as Dr. Ed plays his new song, ‘I’m your Wilbur Rebound’, featuring such rousing lyrics as ‘I got the dish, he got the fish.’” –DNH

“Say what you want about Wilbur, at least he didn’t have Estelle doing actual paper filing in the year of our Worth 2024.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Well, that’s a common misconception about the Amish, that we’re anti-technology as a block. Most Amish communities have at least one phone, and many barns have electrical power because it’s safer. It’s really about over-reliance on technology, using technology to make life easy, as opposed to some blanket ban on anything older then the wheel. Anyway, none of that matters, because I said ‘Amway,’ not ‘Amish,’ and you look like someone who wants to be their own boss.” –Voshkod

“Cerebral … atherosclerosis … rule out senile dementia with signs of delusion… Tell me more about this ‘pain in the neck,’ Mr. Wilson?” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“Dagwood may be Lou’s only customer, but you know who’s making bank right now? Larry the sign guy. It’s your time to shine, buddy!” –OId Man Shadow

“Doc faces a classic conundrum: lump-sum one-time payment (by doing expensive surgery that’ll probably kill Snuffy) or stream of payments (milk the Smiths for many more years to come)? Ultimately, a wise investor decides based on interest rates: the higher the interest rate, the better money today is. Given that Hootin’ Holler has no financial infrastructure, Doc with his liquid legal tender can probably get double digit or even triple digit interest rates on predatory lending in the area, so RIP Snuffy.” –Sprobert

“I enjoy how the women are dressed normally but the male cops look like Sesame Street meets The Punisher” –S.M. Allard, on Bluesky

“By ‘do our part,’ Rex means ‘get his real name.’ ‘Randy the Bully’ isn’t getting that insurance claim processed for payment.” –Where’s Rocky?

“I can’t imagine ever hurting my kids. Sure, I neglect the fuck out of them, but I don’t hurt them.” –taig

“Snuffy speaks a dialect where he pronounces all the phonemes in ‘environmental,’ but not ‘the.’” –Anonymous

“The anagram of ‘Star Lounge’ is ‘Lungs Orate.’ Coincidence? I think not.” –Bob Tice

“Topping the list of ‘painful experiences’: These two dorks butchering a great David Bowie song.” –erdmann

“Coach Hernandez is so opposed to nerdiness that he refuses to learn a proper golf swing, or even which direction the club head is supposed to face when swinging. ‘It’s like baseball but on the ground, right? Easy. Anyway, my son is a dweeb in the most mainstream way possible.’” –Faren22

“I refuse to accept Dithers doing a fourth-wall-breaking mug to the audience. Whole concept is wrong. Just gonna nudge you back on into the frame there, mister totally-unrelatable-on-every-level, you can go back to berating your employee for eating without making me an accomplice, thanks.” –Dan

“Haha, it’s funny because a theater is showing a romantic comedy in July, meaning this strip was actually written back in the 1990s.” –Flonatin of Bologna

“I have to give Mr. Dithers props for the wide range of garbage cans in his office.” –KMD

“Yeah, I said it. Look, you don’t let me wear my signature red overalls, you pay the price, lady.” –Weaselboy

“Dustin neighbor boy went to a specialized 2005 Camp, designed to help kids better bond with their Millennial parents. He was taken into the woods and issued a Nokia 3310 with $10 credit and two ringtones, a DVD box set of Scrubs, a box of artisanal cupcakes and a pair of Harry Potter themed Converse. No more Snapchat and Facetime for him — he hd 2 lrn 2 txt or die tryn.” –Schroduck

“America’s discomfort with sex is often chalked up to British/German/Swiss Puritanism, but perhaps we should wonder if Scandinavian morals also come into play? Hagar and Eddie are definitely painting over the blood of their fallen crew and enemies with no issue, but Hamlet looks destroyed by even the tame euphemism of reproduction.” –Philip

“Five children. She had put five children in the bath, Jughaid, Tater, Susie Q, Mash, and Siobhán. I had five children. Slowly she slumped to the floor. Granny Creeps. She’d cut in front of her at the General Store, and the crone’s eyes seemed to flash with fire when she spat and cursed. Her power, her power is real. Loweezy’s hands moved slowly to cross herself as the frogs hopped away, croaking like an old woman’s bitter laughs.” –Voshkod

“Notice how Hamlet is in the foreground here. He’s the real protagonist of this exchange. It’s all this lying and dissembling that’ll make it so hard for him to make up his mind and avenge Hagar when his evil uncle breaks out the ear poison.” –Navigator

“If I were Sarge I would not smile so smugly as my officemate raves at the hallucination he sees floating in the white void. He has access to weaponry!” –matt w

“Fish heaven implies a fish god, fish angels (as opposed to angelfish, who are very much corporeal), and a fish Jesus with all that entails. Thanks a lot, Mary Worth, now I’m trying to picture a fish crucifixion. A crucifishion if you will.” –Tabby Lavalamp