“The robot looks like he’s been waiting a long time to squeeze this question in. How long as he been sitting there listening to the girls spout malapropisms? Days? Weeks? Being a machine, he doesn’t need to eat or sleep, and being eldritch horrors, neither do they.” –Peanut Gallery

“I like how Tater’s costume seems to to be an actual hollowed-out potato? Makes sense: they can still eat it afterwards (if he doesn’t soil it) and there’s no sense wasting good burlap.” –pugfuggly

“I guess Granny Creeps wasn’t protein deprived as a child. Looks like witchin’ pays better than chicken stealin’ in Hootin’ Holler.” –But What Do I Know?

“If they had been driving through a different part of town at that moment Joey might’ve said ‘I want to be a lake!’ or ‘I want to be a Batteries Plus store!’ or ‘I want to be an expressway!’” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Marvin sure is a lucky kid. Robots don’t usually give you this clear an warning that they’re about to peel your skin off and remove your internal organs to run diagnostics on your power supply and other internal hardware.” –jroggs

“I appreciate the detail of Max watching in terror the body horror wreak havoc around him but not letting that stop him from getting some candy. You go, little mouse, and enjoy your tasty treats.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Jeffy is wearing his father’s old coat with the sleeves comically rolled up, whereas Billy has a perfectly tailored Superman costume. So where on this spectrum does PJ fall? I’m guessing dog costume, as in a costume meant for the dog, who refuses to wear it.” –Rex_Thrillho, on Twitter

“They ain’t laughin’ at ya on accounta yer costume, Jughaid! — they’re laughin’ at ya on accounta yer backwoods colloquialisms ‘n’ elisions!’” –Bob Tice

“He asks that as though he already knows how people guts feel. I’d keep an eye on this kid.” –Pozzo

“I love the constant reminders that Pierre is literally the best-behaved dog in history, content to pass his days gazing quietly upon his owners in quiet admiration. This was the level of responsibility that was too much for Wilbur. We all like making fun of Dawn, but honestly the fact that she’s even alive is a pretty heroic achievement.” –Dan

“Nah, Rex is more likely to go into pedantic teacher mode with them. ‘Well, Blonde-Haired Adoptive Son, that’s an interesting question. You see there are many different forms of human viscera, and each have their distinct textural properties. The intestines, for example, have a wet, slippery feel that might be comparative to the interior contents of a pumpkin, but the liver…’” –TheDiva

“I bet you that their ‘compromise’ is to simply have the wedding right there at the vet clinic, so that Ed can immediately get right to work operating on bulldogs instead of celebrating his honeymoon (‘At least someone will have a sharp tool inside them tonight,’ Estelle will sigh with resignation).” –2+2=7

“Count Thorpula has a personality. That’s how you can tell it’s a costume.” –MKay

“I prefer to think that the creators Rex Morgan cleverly dodged a lawsuit from Star Wars, Disney, Marvel, DC, Nintendo, et al. There’s no way those kids aren’t dressed as Spider Man and Wario under those coats.” –Old School Allie Cat

“I like the kid who just bought a huge, grotesque monster mask and didn’t care enough to add any other costume — he’s just wearing it with his everyday clothes. Especially since it came with huge, leering eyes, which means he can’t actually see anything as he traverses his neighborhood streets at night. In fact, Gertie thinks he’s so cool that she’s giving him extra candy from her dog-food bowl of loose M&Ms!” –BigTed

“The French Foreign Legion has a history of taking in criminals, runaways, orphans, and other pliable castoffs of society to fill the ranks and help enforce a brutal colonial regime on the indigenous population. But behind the man who wields the gun are several more doing the support work to keep the legion running and supplied, and skills like that require normal civilians. Cooks like this one cannot be blind to the mission of violence they support, so the Legion has ways of breaking them, by having them befriend sentient chickens, before having to kill them to feed the troops in the field.” –Philip

“I like to think there’s some puppy play going on in today’s Mary Worth as well. Mary is clearly the one responsible for Wilbur receiving invites to his exes’ weddings and she has to be the one making him go. I can only figure she’s doing the fabled dog-owner thing of rubbing a dog’s nose in its mess to teach it a lesson and stop it from repeating the bad behavior. How many more failed relationships will Mary have to rub Wilbur’s nose into before he finally stops tracking them into her apartment? It might look impossible to do from the outside but Mary has successfully trained Wilber to salivate after she rings a bell so she’s really hopeful this current training will stick soon.” –Lionheart

“Sorry, Beetle, regardless of what you saw on MASH or read in Catch-22, the military really doesn’t do Section 8 separation anymore. Instead, you’re looking at months with Dr. Bonkus and then an other-than-honorable discharge, which is just not going to look good to your future civilian employee. Buck up! You’ve been in the Army over 50 years; your pension is going to be great!” –Voshkod

“After this pleasant thought, Mary immediately begins scheming to get Wilbur and Shiela together. What’s the ship name? Shilbur? Wiela?” –Navigator

“You know land lines are becoming archaic when even comic strip artists forget how you’re supposed to hold a handset when talking. Are Blondie and Dagwood trying to FaceTime each other?” –Tabby Lavalamp

“What these stupid kids don’t know about autumn leaves could fill a book. Which really doesn’t matter, because apparently none of them has ever read one.” –BigTed

“We begin with our observers paying lip service to the notions that their subject is behind the times and requires reform. This is quickly met with reluctance and denial and insistence that its content is still good, even though many related enterprises have failed. Sentimentality and sluggish inertia then causes them to push that the art is still charming and the once-positive responses still hold. Leaving no allowance for anything new, be it fresh ideas, improvement, or openness to current feedback, they smugly decide to leave things just as they are and do nothing to solve their obviously apparent problems, determined to instead wallow in fruitless nostalgia. Hmm … are we really talking about a corkboard here?” –jroggs

“I sincerely hope that today’s Mary Worth is the beginning of a new storyline where every character has nightmares about Wilbur. Even the animals. Even Wilbur himself.” –Craig!

“No, Hi and Lois aren’t looking directly at us, the readers. They’re looking directly at you, Josh. This is their response to all the times you’ve called comic strips out for still having dogs living outside and whatnot. ‘It’s a time capsule. You should leave it as it is.’ They’ve become aware of you and don’t want you to interfere. Not that this should scare you — what should scare you is the fact that Wilbur’s also become aware of you, and the way you keep putting him down is turning him on.” –likeagrapefruit

“Cheers to Zits for having the courage to tell parents it’s okay for them to have a frank talk with their kids via text about what said kids should do when they’re horny! Jeers to Zits for forgetting that the only people still reading newspaper comics are retirees whose children are in their 40s, and who have never been given their grandchildren’s cell phone numbers, possibly to avoid this exact scenario.” –Briane Pagel

“Look, the joke in Crock wouldn’t work if the shovel was colored golden from panel one. On the other hand, it doesn’t work anyway. Hm.” –matt w

“I had to rack my brains to work out who ‘The Cueball’ and ‘The Stoner’ were, but you know what? The idea that Elon Musk would teach his shitty AIs to call Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson mean names is the most plausible thing in this story so far. If anything, these names aren’t cruel enough — the real Elon Musk literally tweeted that Bill Gates looks pregnant and made him lose an erection. Ian Mollusk’s robot should be saying things so libelous that the strip gets banned by English courts.” –Schroduck

“Dagwood’s insatiable appetite makes a lot more sense when you realize he’s trying to fill the void left by his professional and personal life.” –TheDiva

“Man, I don’t know if my heart can take any more of this wild, roller-coaster ‘handshake might hurt my finger a bit’ action right on top of the already pulse-pounding ‘friends reunite and everything turns out great’ drama in Rex Morgan. Let’s dial it down a little, people! It can’t be constant thrills, all the time!” –Chance

“Coach Martinez might lack Coach Thorp’s leadership skills or natural understanding of his players, but he compensates for this by inflating his neck like a tree frog.” –Ettorre

“Mary Worth is almost there in accidentally recreating the myth of Freyja.

✓ Husband absent.
✓ Frequent weeping.
✓ Can shape-shift into a falcon (see the 5/7/1972 strip, true believers!)
✓ Slept with four dwarves for a fancy necklace (see upcoming honeymoon storyline)
X Has a sled pulled by two cats (so close! Keep trying, Mary Worth.)” –Voshkod

“Pierre is staring straight ahead in wide-eyed terror. ‘Damn, she’s still talking about this crap! I can’t handle the pressure of trying to figure out the correct moment to weigh in with woof!’” –Weaselboy

“It looks like Mud’s album is called ‘Mud in Your Eye?’ Honestly, that’s great. No irony, that rules. I hope he has a whole discography of mud pun titles, like ‘Clear as Mud’ or ‘Happy as a Pig in Mud’ or his post-cancellation album, ‘Drag My Name Through the Mud.’” –Dan

“Yes, this will render them helpless … three at a time! Surely they will all wait patiently in line for food that their compatriots will, to a man, audibly opine is terrible, and none of them will simply walk around this undefended little hut to, like, the front door! Also, are we implying that Grossie lives in the hut? That the hut is her home? Where she’s cooking the meals? For an entire army? I just hope those guys on the tower understand that the enemy isn’t taking their diarrhea home with them, is all I’m saying.” –els

“Gasoline Alley is really adamant about stating and restating Ida Noe’s central gimmick (She’s a magic doll!) despite the fact that it is easily the most memorable and straightforward bit in the entire strip. ‘Got it, talking doll, magical I assume? Great. Now remind me again which of these one hundred lumpy townies are actually from the 1930s and which ones just seem like they are based on general vibe.’” –BananaSam

“I was sure that the answer was going to be something like ‘Reeky Rat, as the name suggests, is a filthy rodent who would never voluntarily bathe or shower, except maybe to cover up a crime.’ But yeah, window condensation too, I guess.” –pugfuggly

“What’s that in Rex’s carefully-held-offscreen glass? Prune juice, of course, the better to keep you regular and on a schedule unlike certain mountainous roots-country stars we could mention.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“Love Slylock’s expression here. He genuinely CANNOT believe that someone thought they could invoke basic civil rights in his presence. Reeky will learn otherwise when Slylock drowns him in his own bathtub and writes it off as a heart attack on his report.” –ectojazzmage

“Jimmy and I never lived out our dreams to travel the world because his heart gave out due to job stress. That’s not how it was meant to be! He was supposed to have a heart attack next to me while we climbed a monument in South-East Asia!” –Ettorre

“Having thought it over, Stell realized that literally anyone who isn’t Wilbur is worth marrying.” –Craig!

“Yes, Mary, I miss the rush of my Obsessive-Compulsion Disorder in making wedding plans. Now I see the light! The light at the end of the tunnel/hallway I’ll go down to Ed’s animal operating room and say our vows as he euthanizes someone’s (hopefully a guest) dear pet!” –SabeHombre

“Copy/pasting the same image of Snuffy into both panels had some unintended consequences. Not only is Snuffy fishing in Silas’ store but I genuinely couldn’t parse what Snuffy’s can of worms was in this new context. A smashed trophy? A repulsive flesh-colored hat? An idol of some monstrous three-headed hillbilly god?” –Victor Von

“Mary and Stell froze. The dog had just said ‘woof.’ Not barked, but clearly enunciated the word ‘woof.’ Both women started to slowly back away as, half a mile away, Wilbur cursed himself. Half a million dollars on that dog bot, and I blew it by saying ‘woof,’ he thought in despair.” –Voshkod

“Culture has been frozen in time for the last 15-20 years or so, which is pretty helpful for the blissfully out-of-touch old men who make up most of the comic strip industry. Momma was referencing Taylor Swift a decade ago, Apartment 3-G did Beyoncé in 2010, and yet somehow these are two reasonable celebrities for tweens in 2024 to reference. For reference, this is like if Gasoline Alley in 2004 had some little kids think the biggest stars were Cyndi Lauper and Whitney Houston.” –Schroduck

“Oh man, I can’t wait for the new TikTok viral fad, inevitably called The Wilson Sit: Right arm tucked behind your back, left hand resting on your hips, ankles crossed. I urge you to try it yourself, Curmudgeonites! I’m doing it right now (while dictating this comment, obviously), and it’s … weird!” –els

“I like to think they’re just reading an ordinary book and Dennis is making this observation out of the blue.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“‘Our teacher wants us to write about the planets an’ stars.’ ‘Stars like Gloria Swanson and Josephine Baker?’ ‘Oh, right, you were born in 1918, just like this comic strip.’ ‘Yes, which is why I also believe that the Milky Way galaxy encompasses the entire universe, because we didn’t have any scientific method of observing space any farther away!’ ‘Oh, I get it — you’re not dumb, you’re just really old!’ ‘Good job … you’ve finally figured out the true meaning of Gasoline Alley!’” –TD

“‘I’m a magic doll! I can do anything!’ ‘Can you fix our eyes so the villagers stop calling us hideous monsters and forming hunting parties to kill us?’ ‘…I can do almost anything!’” –jroggs

“I think these kids’ next magic school assignment needs to be ‘learn where the library is.’” –Banana Jr. 6000

“There’s a reason his name isn’t ‘Supportive Guy Tracy.’” –picoxorsepulveda, on Bluesky

“A confused Joey thinks, ‘Wait. Is taking a selfish another phrase for going number 2? There’s so much to learn.’” –Hibbleton

“How fiendishly clever is that? Strap a mirror to your face and anyone who wants to shoot you or arrest is, at most extreme, ‘All right, come peacefully, me — I mean you — wait a minute…’ and at the very least they’ll hesitate for an uncomfortable ‘I can’t shoot this guy, there’s something I like about him’ moment.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“I feel like Margaret should be correct in an insufferable way, like ‘reminding the teacher they forgot to assign homework,’ not correct in a wholly relatable way, like ‘knowing that nobody wants to see a photo of Joey.’” –Dan

“Wa! Since I live on the floor and no one is watching me, that huge, heavy cookie jar at the edge of the counter could easily fall on my head! Which probably means the cabinet under the sink here with all the cleaning supplies doesn’t have a childproof lock, so at least I’ll get to taste something today!” –BigTed

“The bar floozy is sporting the rarely documented Viking Mullet. Pillaging in the front, party in the back!” –astroboy