“We are discounting the possibility that Mary’s ‘vegetables’ were just real roots of some remnant plants long dead in the gardens around her condo, and that Drew was just too polite to call her out on it. But that opens the possibility that the ‘roast lamb’ could also have been some available horrifying remnant, such as Saul’s dachshund.” –McManx

“This whole strip is a wonderful cavalcade of dopey facial expressions and gestures but for my money the best is Rex in that final panel. ‘Like ice cream?’ he says, holding up his hands like a fisherman telling a story. ‘I only know it by the shape of the box. It is incompatible with my Soylent diet…’” –pugfuggly

“This strip is very upsetting to me because I’d always thought of Joey as a character with no inner life whatsoever and no outstanding personality traits to speak of. He exists only to be a sidekick/accomplice to Dennis Mitchell. He’s a blank slate. His shirt literally has a big zero on it. Now, suddenly, Joey can’t sleep? Does this mean he has thoughts that keep him awake at night? Is he tortured by guilt over what he and Dennis have done over the decades?” –Joe Blevins

“Joey is five so if anyone asks him how old he is he says, ‘Time? I have transcended time. I swim in the infinite.’” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Leafblowers are the worst, most annoying thing to listen to, and I hate it every time my neighbors use one for simple tasks that could be accomplished by a rake or a broom. Seriously, who needs to blow the sidewalk? Anyway, these hellish devices cause so much disturbance and discomfort that I’m surprised that an established misanthrope like Crankshaft only owns one.” –Larry McAwful

“Mason has had Lisa’s body exhumed and discovered that it’s miraculously preserved! He’s already filed the paperwork with the Vatican and the lengthy process of canonisation is underway. The nominated second miracle is that time two women fought over Les.” –Truckosaurus

“Of course Jeff doesn’t understand romantic relationships. He hasn’t been in one for years.” –Inspector Gotcha

“You can’t post the same thing on all social media platforms — it must fit the style of the medium! First, you post the original video on Instagram, where it becomes a huge success. Then you remix the original video with some popular music for TikTok. Some months later, the video is uploaded to Facebook, for the joy of grandparents. Finally, it gets to Twitter, in the form of a 45-tweet thread on how videos are problematic (‘Turning entertainment into capitalistic consumption’), zoos are problematic (‘They educate children to accept carceral institutions for the sake of the inmates’), children are problematic (‘reproduction is offensive to people who don’t do sex too often’), and polar bears are problematic (‘not only are they white, but they culturally appropriated fur from brown and black bears!’)” –Ettorre

“‘Didn’t you go through something SIMILAR?’ says Mary as she sinks the needle into Drew’s neck. ‘It seems we’ll have to continue THE TREATMENTS until we can break this cycle of self-sabotage!’” –ArtOfWargames, on Twitter

“Mommy and Daddy don’t worry about keeping the kids away from the edge at the Grand Canyon. They know Dead Grandpa will be there to catch them when they fall. At least, that’s the reasoning their lawyers will present in court when arguing for an insanity verdict.” –GeoGreg

“Based on their expressions, Dennis knows this is BS and Gina knows this is BS, but still they must go through this farce for their comic overlords. ‘Are you amused?!?’ their dying souls cry out.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’m marveling at Grimm’s look of defeat and disappointment at the total lack of professionalism on the part of the veterinary staff. So intense is his feeling that’s it’s overcome the otherwise overwhelmingly horrific pain and madness of rabies itself. I mean, look at this poor dog! He knows he’s done for, he knows it’s his fault, and all he wants is the solace and comfort that is the lethal dose of barbiturates that can only be gotten from the very people fleeing him in panic.” –Effluvius Erratus

“There’s an impressive amount of patriarchy to unpack in just two panels of Beetle Bailey, but let’s start with the vacuum cleaner drawn based on a vague description by the artist’s secretary.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“Just promise me, Les. Promise me… that you won’t bury me in Ohio.” –jroggs

“Changing the aspect ratio for every shot is a bold visual choice. I hope they’re being more conservative with the audio mix, though, and optimizing it for airline headphones.” –Flipper

“The whole point of nephewism is that it doesn’t come with the baggage of parenthood. When Skyler is unnecessary and inconvenient to the gag of the moment, he discreetly disappears back into nephewspace until such time as he is summoned forth again to do a gag that requires a child.” –Peanut Gallery

“Fancy yourself a menace, Dennis? Well, now you know: Mrs. Wilson ruined Mr. Wilson’s happiness long before you ever entered the picture. You’re the assistant menace, and don’t forget it.” –Peanut Gallery

“I feel sorry for people who get Dennis the Menace with the throwaway panels removed, because they’ll never get to see what it would look like if Mr. Wilson dressed as an elf and then did a lot of cocaine.” –Schroduck

“I’m getting ‘giving the hitman the go-ahead’ vibes from Les’s ‘yes.’ I guess he needs another wife to die for his next book.” –ArtOfWargames, on Twitter

“I do appreciate the surreal disconnect between the imagery and text. It reads like a serious and staid police procedural yet appears to depict a leprechaun watching a video of a stripper with giraffe horns.” –Lee Sherman

“Frankly, I’m disappointed with Cayla, too. ‘A dead Lisa party? Wowee wow wow! Sign me up! Will there be a cake in the shape of her corpse? Please say yes!’” –Joe Blevins

“Pluggers sneered at the use of ‘like’ as a filler word for decades, but now that Gen X is aging into their demographic it’s acceptable.” –TheDiva

“As an extra bit of language weirdness, Rufus says accordian t’ as a countrified version of according to, yet actually somehow misspells ‘accordion’ (mentally?) while he’s saying it. Of all the places for someone to screw up both old-timey speech and an instrument sometimes used in bluegrass music, Gasoline Alley shouldn’t be it.” –BigTed

“Can I speak to you the word of the lord Zuke? He that grows in multitudes? His vines do creep into men’s souls, so that they open their mouth for the pulpy flesh of the lord. Please, friend. Open your mouth. Take his blessing. Let his vines entwine your soul. Eat of this zucchini bread, for it too is his body. Drink of this zucchini smoothie, for it is as his blood.” –Voshkod

“This is good for Spider-Man, since he’s finally going to get a girlfriend who buys him accessories, houses, cars, etc. This is bad for Barbie, because like every other Spider-Man girlfriend she’s going to be thrown off the George Washington Bridge.” –Ettorre

“No! No! Mom! Stop! Spider-Man is supposed to be upside down, it’s an iconic scene! Did you even watch my YouTube series?!” –Dan

“I like the annoyed look on Rex’s face in that last panel. Clearly he thought that his comment about Sarah being anonymous implied that it would no longer be openly discussed, perhaps for her well-being but also because Rex is tired of talking about his child.” –pugfuggly

“I didn’t expect Shoe to go meta with a comic about comics less funny than news reporting that actually is less funny than news reporting.” –nescio

“They seemed to be very different people. Granted, I only saw Ashlee exactly one single time and didn’t speak to her at all, which isn’t really much of a data pool to draw from, but she burst into the hospital screaming and crying, and that’s something Drew only does infrequently.” –jroggs

“Today’s Shoe especially emphasizes, visually, the always-present but never-spoken fact that Shoe is the only one there unclothed (except for shoes). I guess that’s why they call him Shoe, but in these two panels that doesn’t really come off as the quaint nickname of a hard-hitting newspaper editor. It comes off as psychotic. Forget the bird-man thing for a minute. Sure, they’re birds, but they dress in clothes and work at jobs and watch TV and get haircuts and use glasses to drink and so forth. So they’re basically people, de facto. So imagine that you got a new job as an intern at your small town’s only newspaper, the Treetops Tattler or whatever it’s called. ‘This is the Perfesser,’ your coworkers say to you. You find a heavy-lidded man slumped over a pile of papers, staring at you with dead eyes. A bit much, sure, but he’s a recognizable journalistic type. You wave. Now your co-worker gestures to someone else. ‘This is our editor, Shoe.’ A man scowls at you, smoking a cigar and utterly naked except for Nike sneakers. A beat. You wait for the laughter, because this is a prank, right? They’re pranking the new guy, No one laughs. Someone clears their throat. You guess you’re supposed to say something. ‘N-nice to meet… you?’ you half-whisper. Shoe grunts and turns, giving you a full look at his bare butt as he strides away. Everyone looks at your with heavy-lidded eyes. Why weren’t you nice to the editor? Later he’ll talk to you again, naked, not remembering he’s already met you. He will never wear clothes the entire time you work there, until you decide to leave that nightmare newspaper and go work at the mortuary. At least the vulture wears a suit.” –Chance

“You’re telling THIS guy he needs to come up with a name? Based on his history, he’ll be on the phone to Sarah in about twenty minutes.” –Weaselboy

“Jesus, can you imagine after your own death finding out that not only are you a ghost but you have to haunt your old elementary school? ‘Sorry, but you’ve been assigned to Dunning Primary as part of a package deal with the graduating class of 1922. The thinking was that if any kids come by the old place and ask open-ended questions about the former students that you’ll be there to do a brief demo, assuming that they can see you. Anyhow, you can expect a tour to come by every couple of years, have a happy eternity.’” –pugfuggly

“I love that Ashlee is giving Drew a five-grand shakedown as they stroll through the waiting room. The adult patients are thinking ‘I waited six weeks for an appointment to see this dummy?’ while the little girl thinks ‘This guy looks like an easy mark.’” –Arabella

“Here’s hoping Ashlee is seeing her current Instagram stardom goals as shallow and materialistic, and is inspired to go into nursing, where she can do choreographed TikTok dance routines extolling her own heroism instead.” –bad wolf

“Eleven years ago, terrified by predictions of overpopulation and Malthusian catastrophe, a CIA psyop team began a monstrous secret project: to cut the birth rate by rendering the entire population impotent through subliminal psychological attacks that would make the very idea of sex repulsive. Over the next decade, they worked to create the most perfectly hateful, grotesque human imaginable — a person so foul that any right thinking person would recoil from the slightest association from him, even just sharing the basest human instincts — and hid him in plain sight in newspapers across the country. Today, Operation Dustin’s Dad advanced to Phase Two. May God have mercy on us all.” –Schroduck

“I find it entirely unbelievable that a bunch of obsessed nerds didn’t bother to verify his death, or even look for the website of whatever funeral home was handling the arrangements to offer their eCondolances. Anyway, kudos to Batiuk who made a plot device character about how women creators overwhelmingly get ignored and then ignoring her during the story line where she gets inducted into a comics hall of fame.” –BeeKey

“[several minutes of increasingly improbable misunderstandings later] Yes, I too am pregnant with ideas for future stories, I don’t see why you need to make it a competition.” –Dan

“Tragedy strikes when Kyle discovers his arms are permanently stuck in an ‘it was this big’ position, making it impossible for him to ever work again.” –made of wince

“Well, one thing is settled: there is no level of density for plugger body hair I am comfortable with.” –Frissen Frassen Russen Mussen

“Another old fashioned thing: wearing dress shoes for black ops. Don’t slip!” –Jerp+Jump

“I have gotten used to the creators of Beetle Bailey having no idea how the military works, but you might think they would know how movie ratings work.” –Rube

“Even the lovers on the poster are three feet apart.” –Tom T.

“Dennis’ dad, rather than appreciating the dad joke, is upset at the goatee he’s seeing on TV. They have beatniks on TV? What’s next?” –DAS, Dad Joke-maker Extraordinaire

“The dark canine demimonde of gray-market resales, where literal fleas run the market, Chuck Wagon is the reigning currency, and nobody asks questions about the provenance of your birthday presents, is deeply weird.” –pastordan

“Blonde girlfriend seems to be wearing a very nice dress. She probably won’t enjoy whatever activity Chip has planned with his sweaty cut-offs and the $10 he’s getting for mowing the lawn. Pretty sure she’ll be texting Bruce before the date is over.” –lorne

“I can’t tell if that hand is Mr. Paley’s as he describes the trajectory of the ball or pro John Jawor’s as he karate chops Mr. Paley in the face. The only information pro John Jawor wants from Thorp is if Paley is the type of schmuck who sues after a stupid little thing like being karate chopped in the face.” –Tabby Lavalamp