“Today’s Rex Morgan is far more interesting if you read ‘CLAP!’ as not spontaneous applause, but each victim of the Mirakle Method clapping in unison. ‘CLAP!’ and the room reverberates, and then long seconds of silence, and then ‘CLAP!’ like nearing thunder, and long seconds of silence, then ‘CLAP!’ like the doors of Heaven slamming, and June and Rex sit in rising panic as ‘CLAP!’ and the crowd stands as one and begins to turn toward them, the unbelievers, the heretics, the ones who need to see a Mirakle.” –Voshkod

“One stern look and it’s floppy fries and farewell forever? Guess Brad should’ve been eating at ALL CHICKEN.” –Skedastic

“Passion for good earthy food, secret bastard daughter, making Greenpeace activists disappear … for being a Marine, Keith is really French!” –Ettorre

“When Kwamay explains his third wish, the fish starts to tear up. ‘Dude, can’t you see what’s right in front of your eyes? After all I’ve done for you… It’s because I’m a fish, isn’t it? We can make it work!’” –Peanut Gallery

“A new year, a new sound for sleeping. We should all strive to include hyphens in our snoring.” –KMD

“What’s especially funny about this scene is that, judging by the black dress and haunted look, Grandma just got back from a funeral. She was probably telling them a story about a beloved friend or relative, and these two melonheads just rolled their eyes and asked if any of this happened since 2018.” –pugfuggly

“Also in attendance tonight, we’ve got the Glenwood Terra Cotta Army of Middle-Aged Americans! Give ’em a hand, folks, but please, no touching or flash photography!” –jroggs

“Henry is embarrassed. He is the one that is supposed to be belittled in this scenario, not the blue-collar Brawny man representing the masculine virtues he as an office-dweller can never hope to achieve.” –Philip

“And don’t forget, friends, this Man-Sawed-In-Half/Exploding-Eyeball trick is brought to you by FM radio. FM: don’t miss our ‘commercial free hour’ at 9 every night!” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Dick Tracy is establishing that this woman is a crook like all stage ‘magicians,’ who aren’t magicians at all but con artists who trick people into thinking they’re seeing magic but instead it’s all an elaborate ruse. One day these charlatans will get what’s coming to them from the fists of justice! Look at the audience in panel two who have been fooled into getting PTSD from thinking they just witnessed a gruesome murder! Curse you, Criss Angel, Mind Freak! Learn to spell ‘Chris’, damn it! Curse you, David Copperfield! We know you’re not really a Dickensian character still looking so young and handsome despite being close to two centuries old! Curse you all and your lies!” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Chip is just making clear that when he takes his date back to his place for strip poker or whatever horny teens play today (strip Fortnite?), he will definitely win.” –Schroduck

“It’s not quite as subtle a warning as, say, playing football with the head of Oliver Cromwell and then displaying it on a pike, but the local bass get the message just fine.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“All this, and we still don’t know who Brad is. Sonia’s boyfriend? Kitty’s boyfriend? Sonia’s father? Kitty’s father? I’m betting he’s the sales rep from meatless ‘BLUFF’© burgers, making his commission one dysfunctional household at a time.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Marvin branches out into a new form of dumping.” –nescio

“In Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room!, ‘soylent steaks’ referred to meat substitutes made from soy and lentils — a perfectly respectable veggie burger. But the film adaptation punched it up into the titular Soylent Green, which famously is people. Then the techbro decided to name his food substitute after the best known popular representation of cannibalism, and now we’re full circle, with something that probably is soy and lentils filtered through layers of signification. Semiotics in Mary Worth isn’t just calling a guy ‘Hillend’ because his butt is the size of a natural formation!” –matt w

“Who dresses their toddler like this? Is Marvin going to see Santa or going to a wedding?” –ectojazzmage

“Whether or not an adult camel is smarter than a human boy, he’s smart enough fashion-wise to be wearing the service hat of what appears to be … a train conductor? For sanity’s sake, I’ll assume he took it off the desiccated corpse of the real conductor whose body still lies alongside a forgotten railway car half buried in the desert sand.” –Hibbleton

“Well, Dennis, I actually have a CDL and a private pilot license issued by the FAA — that covers the US, of course. Now, for the EU, I have separate licensing for both activities but, since Brexit, they’re not valid in the UK, so that required additional bureaucracy. Now Russia, well, Santa had to pay out a pretty penny to get the right people to sign the right paperwork, and then I had to get the sleigh’s IFF transponder cleared by both Russian and Ukrainian forces … [thirty minutes later] … and finally, I got a Civil Aviation Safety Authority certificate in Australia! Does that answer your question?” –Voshkod

“Have you every considered that what you thought of as a normal and functional part of your anatomy was actually a swollen, puss-filled cyst? Merry Christmas, and body horror to all!” –Stuart F

“Billy’s previous two letters read ‘Santa, pay attention to my third letter but not to this one’ and ‘Santa, pay attention to any letter that does not ask you to pay attention to it’. He’s hoping he can cause Santa to experience a logical paradox and go down in history as the boy who ruined Christmas for everyone.” –Schroduck

“Shoe is simply telling Roz that as long as she serves bird meat to her costumers, the charges of cannibalism will not stick, because the evidence is digested. Freezing the meals will only produce long-lasting incriminating evidence.” –Ettorre

“Poor Shoe. He was just trying to not tell Roz that she’s stupid if she thinks she could start a small business that could even begin to compete for shelf space already dominated by multi-national conglomerates but isn’t bright enough himself to do it in any way other than insulting her cooking. Roz, you’re already in a losing battle against chain restaurants. Looks at all those empty stools.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Rene is the sort to have news alerts with his name (and various aliases) delivered to his smartphone. Relying on broadcast news isn’t how he got this far ahead.” –Philip

“Dick Tracy took this job for two reasons: to shoot people with impunity, and to be smug in his moral superiority over others. And if he can’t have the former, by GOD will he indulge in the latter.” –TheDiva

“The next time I’m interrogated by the police, I’ll make sure to wear a sweet Criterion Channel branded polo shirt. Cops can’t lock you up if they see your devotion to Cinema.” –lorne

“He didn’t skip out on you, Mud. He calmly walked to an Uber with dignity, a suitcase of money, and whatever wasn’t nailed down, then rode to the airport.” –Old Man Shadow

“If a plugger slips and falls on the ice and no one is around to hear, will he make a sound? Yes, he’ll make a sound about the fall with his friends at the diner for the next decade or until full dementia kicks in.” –Baja Gaijin

“‘Cloudy, not bright’ is a phrase that seemed familiar to me but I couldn’t place it, so I googled it. Turns out that the top hits were all clues from holiday crosswords. Anyhow, just loving the idea of Gregg Walker sipping tea by a fire, looking over a newspaper, when it suddenly dawns on him that he was supposed draw a comic. He quickly scans the clues until he falls on that one, and writes ‘+ SARGE VIOLENCE’ on it in blue ink, takes another sip of tea, and turns over to the sports section.” –pugfuggly

“Looks like the Hi and Lois visual content assembly team didn’t have a baby stroller in their clip-art file. Instead, they had assets for a handtruck and a high chair, and only five minutes before they had to leave for their league bowling match.” –jroggs

“Remember, the plugger himself is there to hear the gunshot-like sound of his femur breaking.” –lynn

“About damn time that we saw a woman who wanted Santa to satisfy her burning womanly needs. Normally we just see flirting with the ulterior motive of getting sables and convertibles.” –Tonio

“When Brad finally does lose the hat, the extent of his male pattern baldness will shock us all. Say what you will about Keith’s politics, but his red-blooded all-American crew cut will stand proud and strong forever!” –BigTed

“At her age, her likes and dislikes change at the drop of a hat. Yes, all Sonia really needs is to replace Brad with a nice, sensible young man whose interests and attitudes she’ll adopt as her own in a totally appropriate, mentally healthy way! Let’s see who the available male options are in Mary Worth-land. Well, there’s Tommy. Um, let’s move on. And isn’t Dr. Drew taken nowadays? Sorry Sonia, looks like it’s Wilbur for you!” –Thelonious_Nick

“You know if the creators needed a ‘medical issue’ for Rex to explore, they could have an arc where he examines the Schlubification Virus that’s apparently going around. Mud/Fergus seems to be it’s latest victim. He used be be a big boisterous bear of a man, and now look at him: slumped shoulders, weak chin, a hangdog expression and a partially damaged brain. Remember when Mud would have the cleverness to create outrageous schemes instead of shamelessly falling for them like a chump? Look at what the ravages of disease reduced him to!” –2+2=7

“Never mind the check, I wanna know what’s up with this grocery store where people line up perpendicular to the cash lanes. That is some freaky stuff.” –pugfuggly

“Hmm, Helen is the one being annoying and holding up the line, so how do I make it clear that the young person is actually the bad one? This is a five piercing minimum job.” –Schroduck

“Hahaha, Henry sure is mad at [squints] former Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key.” –Truckosaurus

“To anyone inclined to complain that there’s no menacing in this strip: What Dennis is pointedly sipping from that glass is the contents of Mr. Mitchell’s formerly mint condition 1992 bottle of Crystal Pepsi. Dennis is just waiting for his dad to finally take his eyes off the news long enough to notice.” –Peanut Gallery

“So is Rodney Rat Reeky’s more well-to-do brother? I’m guessing his success is relatively recent, because his dental work indicates he once shared Reeky’s meth habit.” –Pozzo

“I think was can all agree that in addition to being propaganda for the animal regime, Slylock Fox & Comics for Kids also serves as propaganda for our own Educational State. This is a sad attempt to sell children on the practicality of learning algebra as a useful skill, when they have a phone in their pocket many times more powerful than the computers that landed men on the moon.” –Philip

“‘I wonder whatever happened to Falcon Crest.’ ‘I dunno. And we’re birds. So you’d think we’d know.’” –Just John

“I never thought I’d find myself staring in slack-jawed wonder at someone holding a phone in a believable manner, but here we are. Agape. Gazing at a man-mountain as he gets snitty about his ex’s dinner party planning. Keith, you’re kind of a drip, but you’ve made a believer out of me.” –els

“The soda and burger are actually for the guy in the car; Beetle has a very skewed idea of what first aid entails.” –ectojazzmage

“Listen Keith, you missed twenty years of Thanksgivings full of awkwardness and political quarreling, so I am trying my best to cram all of them in as few sessions as possible.” –Ettorre

“This might be a Me Thing, but I always get a little unnerved when they actually draw Beetle Bailey wielding a rifle. I think it’s sort of a reminder that he’s spent the last 80 years being trained to kill.” –Dan McDermott, on Facebook

“As far as retirement plans go, telling bloodthirsty raiders about your hidden gold reserves is probably not in the top 10.” –jroggs

“And it gets worse … the old geezer says back in the 70s his boots were really muddy.” –Flipper

“Being part of the same Walker-Browne syndicate, I’m guessing that Hi & Lois, Beetle Bailey and Hagar all share the same interchangeable sound stages, sets, and back lots. Efficient? Sure! Imaginative? Nope!” –Daisy

“It’s too late! Prince Albert suffocated decades ago! PLUGGERS KILLED PRINCE ALBERT!!!” –nescio

“The fortune teller has a star and crescent on her tent, both classic symbols of Islam. Brave of Crock to wade into the question of whether divination is haram under Islam. While many do support the position of al-Ghazali that attempting to see the future interferes in the domain of Allah, we must not forget that other respected scholars view it as almost medicinal. Stay tuned to Crock for other deep dives into Islamic theory, colonialism, and bad art.” –Voshkod

“I’d say this particular installment is uncharacteristically bleak for Hi and Lois, which touches upon the grim occasionally but generally favors the corny. That the late Mrs. Wavering appears to be hopped up off her hatstand on goofballs adds a welcome note of levity, in my opinion.” –Violet

“[Ring!] ‘Walker Comics Inc.’ ‘This is Smedly and Smedly, attorneys. We represent the Keane Family. Our clients believe that you infringed on their copyrighted sappy dead grandparent meme today!’ ‘Not at all! You’ll note the absence of a dead spirit or angel, which protects us from legal violations.’ ‘Nonetheless you’re treading on thin ice. Make sure that Ditto walks straight home if you know what’s good for you. Good day.’” –Little Blue Bicycle