“Nothing says ‘I’m interested in what you’re saying’ quite like ‘Oh yeah? How’s that going?’” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“What would really have been funny in today’s Blondie is eight more panels of Dagwood mournfully scooting his chair back to his office under his own power.” –matt w

“Wilbur’s tryst was apparently with a lower crook from a Carmen Sandiego game. He’ll certainly find it memorable when he’s questioned by Interpol in connection to Belle Batsfrey’s theft of Mexico’s famous Temple of Kukulcan.” –Kevyn on Video

“Dawn and Wilbur console themselves over their recently-ended relationships with ‘Cookie Lov’ cookies, specially formulated for those who have failed to find human love and decided to settle for cookie love.” –Rita Lake

“The only megacorps in Orlando are Disney and pyramid schemes, both of which have a tendency to give out absurdly inflated job titles. ‘Sales director’ means she runs the soft pretzel stand in front of It’s A Small World, or she just bought into Amway.” –Banana Jr. 6000

“That fish is in a bowl. Why are they acting like it’s just arrived when it’s clearly been watching the whole time? We insult goldfish memory a lot, but maybe this is the upside — you immediately forget having watched your friends repeatedly shit on the carpet.” –Schroduck

“Pluggers only lower their cholesterol when it’s priced out of their reach.” –TheDiva

“Yeah, if there’s one thing that mixes with blood donations, its dancing! Maybe you could serve some cocktails as well, in a sauna!” –pugfuggly

“So that’s why we haven’t seen the chicken-headed woman in Pluggers for a while! I had no love for that wretched abomination, but she didn’t deserve to end up in the belly of the even more loathsome Shoe.” –KMD

“On the bright side, it’s easy for the Fuse staff to have impromptu planning meetings since they have no customers.” –Dr. Larry Erhardt

“Luckily, in Judge Parker two years is the same as roughly 18 hours, so she’ll be out in no time. Or forever. I forget.” –CIA Advisor to the Jungle Patrol

“I like that the doctor is TV handsome. I like to imagine he’s actually the protagonist in an early 2000s drama about a doctor who also has a blog, because that would have been high concept at the time, and the Lockhorns are the comedy-driven B-plot patients we see for like 10 minutes every other season.” –Dan

“In an attempt to recapture his pre-marriage youth, Leroy has been spending his evenings at hipster bars with very young adults. The joint pain comes from drinking way too many hard seltzers, as a high intake of carbonated beverages has been shown to reduce bone mineral density in older folks. But at least he’s been making new friends — most of whom think he’s the half-real-life, half-computer-animated Grumpy from the upcoming Snow White remake.” –BigTed

“Gertie isn’t happy unless she sees a driver on fire running out of a burning car.” –Liam

“As much fun as it would be to see a NASCAR driver run off the track, go to the parking lot, and drive back into the race in his personal 2017 Honda Civic, I’m pretty sure they only let you wreck the one car you started with, Gertie.” –Old Man Shadow

“‘Will you have to fight Mary to get it back?’ I can’t decide whether this is an incredibly poor grasp of Wilbur and Mary’s actual dynamic or an attempt to rid the world of Wilbur once and for all. ‘Go ahead and pick a fight with Mary, Dad! Anybody else who did would end up with their corpse baked into a casserole, but nothing can kill you, right? You shouldn’t even be ALIVE, but you ARE!’” –T Campbell

“I’d like to think that those background panel colors are actually happening in-universe, and that there’s a free-wheeling gaffer just off panel trying to bring the General’s story to life through the magic of gels.” –pugfuggly

“It figures that Morgantown would feature a beige-and-black art museum.” –But What Do I Know?

“Dude is a terrible stalker. Broad daylight, lots of witnesses — including her companion — probably tons of cameras and on-site security. I mean, hiding in plain sight, I guess, but come on man, you’re just blowing it.” –Old School Allie Cat

“That’s actually the shade of Abraham Lincoln, plotting his return to save the nation by destroying whatever insufferable town Rex Morgan takes place in so nobody has to suffer through its roots country-obsessed inanity again.” –ectojazzmage

“Marty is in need of whichever 12-step addresses Jeckyll and Hyde transformations.” –MKay

“Beth starts the ’86’ process by soaking a rag from her bottle of ether.” –Hibbleton

“30 years from now, that little boy will learn that it means ‘two weeks,’ and be devastated that grandpa lied to him, and that he’s been wrong about it his whole life.” –Ignatz

“Nobody responds with ‘In a fortnight,’ like their sole reason for being is to force wordplay in a comic strip, Grandpa Pickles. Plenty of people do die of carbon monoxide poisoning though. ” –Tabby Lavalamp

“The guy in background is a maître d’ who has fallen on hard times and taken a bagging job. He went from commanding the staff of a fine restaurant to now having to stoically listen to a Midwestern bumpkin cow shit-talk cowpies that were specifically made to appeal to sentient livestock. Cows may have joined humans in intelligence and bipedalism, but they will never truly be as sophisticated as us until they learn manners.” –Philip

“Next, Sly’s going to waltz in and inform us that the Frankenstein knockoff won’t work because the electrical connections aren’t grounded, or some shit.” –astroboy

“Noir died as a genre with the invention of the water cooler. I want to see my hard-boiled detectives knocking back bourbon in the shadowy, smoky backroom of a decaying brownstone. I do NOT want to see them sipping mineral water in an air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit open-plan office grumbling about computer systems while carefully recycling their little paper cups.” –Schroduck

“Speaking of shooting, Dick’s been shot, right? He’s tenderly embracing the water cooler, leaning on it for support, to spare Sam — and us — the trauma of seeing his bullet wound? I can’t think of any other reason the art in three separate panels would be so reluctant to admit that Dick has a torso.” –Navigator

“Happy relationships rarely make comedy happen, and these bird ladies know it. Any good male partner they ever met had to be rejected to serve the comic strip. Their audiences of aged spinsters would never forgive them their happiness.” –Philip

“Egg-laying mammals are of course some of the most primitive, with a cloaca, five sets of sex genes and a lack of connective tissue between the hemispheres of the brain. They’re a complete anachronism by millions of years, in other words, perfectly suited to the Wizard of Id.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“Coach Gerads says he’s heard folks refer to him as ‘the bad boy of Milford sports.’ I’ve never heard that, and no one I’ve ever talked to has ever said that, but that’s what he says. He also says he’s heard folks call Gil Thorp ‘the egg-sucking weasel of Milford sports,’ but again, I cannot confirm.” –Cleveland Mocks

“The latest Bland Love Interest (I’ve already forgotten his name and I’m not bothering to look it up) is conducting this date as some combination of a job interview and those painful icebreaker exercises they do at conventions, and honestly that’s a red flag as vibrant as Mary Worth’s Obviously Abusive Dirk and Rex Morgan’s Goatee McStalker ever waved.” –TheDiva

“I guess this all must’ve taken place back in, say, the nineteen-fifty-aughts, in an era when convicts wore black-and-white striped uniforms and kids wore beanies with propellers for some reason. It’s hard to remember from that long ago, but those were some tough times — heck, some folks couldn’t afford furniture in their kitchen or even doors in their house. It seems like pussycats were a bit more clever back then, though — you know, just smart enough to commit crimes, but not quite smart enough to avoid getting caught.” –BigTed

“They’re going to confront him with a particularly nihilistic piece of avant-garde art, leading to crippling existential questions.” –odinthor

“I suppose when your museum has an entire room with nothing but diplomas, you’re used to peace and quiet.” –Guts Dozier

“‘Belle’ from Florida isn’t a fling, she’s just a Disney fanatic who needed Wilbur ‘Beast’ Weston to complete the look at Cancun Cosplay 2: Beachside Boogaloo. Next year, they’ll reunite as Nemo and Dory at the Southwest Furry Convention in Needles, CA.” –Bull City

“I bet Thel didn’t figure she’d get so much trouble when she took Jeffy shopping for a… New Jersey! I hate myself.” –matt w

“For Pluggers I just assume the cast of characters are a troupe of actors from an improv group who got hired to star in a series of short vignettes sent in from readers. They are actually big city dwelling thespians with fancy art degrees and a relatively middle-class status thanks to regular work in the comics. It’s no Peanuts (in comic strip actor world, the phrase ‘working for Peanuts’ had the opposite meaning than for us), but anything that keeps you employed, and not in the political cartoons, is a win for many of them. Anyway, Claude has a wife, but she works outside the industry.” –Philip

“Oh, this one’s super-easy, and the kids will get it in a snap. Slylock opts for the lesser-priced wand because he’s heeded the words of veteran investor David Roche, who predicts a bear market in 2025 on account of smaller-than-expected interest rate cuts, a slowing economy and an AI bubble. So Slylock wants to save his investment dollars.” –Bob Tice

“Batiuk advances the radical eugenic proposition that if you are not tall enough to reach the high shelves you should not be allowed to own a shop.” –Ettorre

“I love Standard Sal’s name and facial expression. Yup, that’s me, I’m just a regular ol’ pig, down here at the market, selling my three common bubble wands so I can take my four fifty back home to my wife, Conventional Connie, and my kids, Common, Normal, Meh and Standard, Jr. in good ol’ suburban Typical Town.” –astroboy

“I appreciate that the bird refers to his fiancée as ‘the Widow Palmer’ instead of ‘Betty-Lou’ or whatever her first name is and I hope this continues throughout their marriage because I can’t think of anything funnier to cry out in orgasmic joy.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“‘How’s your vegan ice cream?’ is so menacing that Dennis has lost his raison d’être.” –Drew, on Bluesky

“It’s not your memory, Lois, it’s the fact that you live in some kind of constantly changing hellscape that makes reality itself impossible to grasp onto. Look: the walls changed colors and your teacup shrunk between those two panels! What even is ‘memory’ in that kind of a space?” –pugfuggly

“You need a brain cloud. It involves trepanation, a blender, and a diffuser. When it’s done, your brain will be floating around the room as a fine mist. You’ll feel much better. I have a drill if you want to get started.” –Voshkod

“Studies have shown that frequent web use actually does reduce our working memories, because we just assume we can find information right away by Googling — so in that sense, the internet really does become our ‘brain cloud.’ That’s something Dot would know if she spent more time on her phone like a normal kid, and less time conversing with her stupid parents!” –BigTed

“Hm I haven’t checked in on Gil Thorp in a while, I wonder what kind of sports-based fun they’re up to (in a featureless void, an unfamiliar figure beckons closer and whispers, ‘Don’t be afraid. Horses are prey.’)” –Dan

“‘Pluggers don’t smoke cigarettes’? Not feeling it. How about ‘Plugger edibles’ (a table full of food)?” –matt w

“‘Silver? Now THAT is a horse of a different color.’ — Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of Brown Blaze” –Only Here For The Ads

“Okay, new pitch for a Dick Tracy spinoff comic: Those two sucky nephews trying and failing endlessly to open a jar of pickles, wrestling with it, themselves, and each other, often in bizarre and contorted positions. They could travel from place to place, entering and exiting stories and situations we never fully see, because our attention is focused rightly on their attempts to open this fucking jar like a goddamn pickle-based Sisyphus. Sometimes they affect those situations or are affected by them, and sometimes they just drift through them without anything changing, like leaves on the wind.” –Craig!

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. The owls are not making life easier for Atazhoon tonight.” –Doctor Moreau

“Jughead chokes on his drink. ‘Not paying attention!? That’s so unfair! Don’t these girls know you have shit for brains!?’” –Hibbleton

“List five people you’ve haunted in the past week or you’re fired. Amazing how few ghosts can pass this simple pulse test. Worthless work from home slackers, scamming the ancient of days. I wouldn’t want to be in your sheet…” –Dennis Jimenez

“Looks more like a vast expanse of desert than a beach. Where’s the ocean? Are they spies, posing as confused tourists, sent by the US to monitor aboveground nuclear tests somewhere in Central Asia? With the prospect of capture and imprisonment, you’d think they’d set aside money for long-term dogsitting.” –A. Mulyak

“It must gall Mary to know that she can fill in for the perennial loser Wilbur, distribute her pearls of wisdom to the masses (via print?) and that as far we know no can tell the difference. By the way, is she doing this for free? If so, I have some advice for her.” –Kirkout

“Mary can’t be bothered with all the tedious Ask Wendy letters (‘I caught my boyfriend cheating.’ Zzzzzzz.) So she throws them away and is now just using the column as an opinion piece to spread her platitudes to the public at large. She’s never felt more alive!” –Cleveland Mocks