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Dick Tracy, 12/18/25

There was a certain amount of chatter in the comments on the day of Ghost Cat’s big reveal, with some people claiming that cat-themed superheroes are not what you’d call traditionally “masculine.” But the Ghost Cat is trying to disabuse everyone of those notions in the course of this car chase: grinning maniacally as his fellow lawman begs him to slow down, muttering something inscrutable about “driv[ing] the tail of the dragon,” that sort of thing. Very butch.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/18/25

Did you guys hear that they trademarked the word “Christmas?” They said it was to stop stores from using it for promoting their sales but now Santa can’t even say it! What a world we live in!

Dustin, 12/18/25

Nice try, syndicated newspaper comic strip Dustin! You’re not going to make me feel bad for Dustin’s dad! He sucks and his self-loathing only makes me stronger!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/18/25

I dunno, Michelle, the two of you have been having this excruciatingly boring conversation since Monday and there’s no end in sight, so at the moment I’m actually thinking that time isn’t flying by anywhere near fast enough.

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Dennis the Menace, 12/7/25

I feel like Henry’s “He’s gone too far this time!” line actually explains a lot about this strip. Like there’s some kind of beef going on between him and Mr. Wilson that dates back years, before Dennis was even born. “That’s right,” Henry thinks, every time Dennis heads over to the neighbors. “You menace that asshole, kid. You menace him good.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/7/25

I think one of the reasons that jokes about fire hydrants in comic strips with sapient dogs bug me so much is that much of the schtick of a talking-dog strip is playing around with the question of “what are the human equivalents to these objects or experiences in a dog’s everyday life?” but for whatever reason the ones that deal with fire hydrants always seem to rapidly lose their grip on whatever metaphor they’re trying to establish. But kudos to Mother Goose and Grimm for going beyond the hydrant into other realms of doggie existence, where the metaphors also don’t work. Take alcohol, for instance. Is toilet water like alcohol, for a dog? Well, no, not really. How about the kind of vaccines a dog would typically get at the vet? Are those like alcohol? No, that’s not right either, but keep at it, you’ll get there one of these days.

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Herb and Jamaal, 12/3/25

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Pluggers was insanely on the cutting edge of doing a 6-7 meme joke in the syndicated newspaper comics, the joke being that a child-plugger says “6-7” and an adult plugger says “How did you know?” and the caption says “For many pluggers, 6-7 is the year they graduated high school.” Which is, you know, fine, although it continues to center boomer pluggers and not the vibrant, rising Gen X plugger community. Anyway, I guess we should be taking bets on the order in which other comics will tackle this important cultural phenomenon and in what fashion they handle it. I’m not sure if any of us would’ve answered the first question for Herb and Jamaal with “right after Pluggers,” but for the second one many of us would’ve correctly guessed “incomprehensibly.”

Alice, 12/3/25

I’ve spent literally decades angrily telling comics artists that you can’t just have your characters look directly at the readers and make complaints that you personally have about the world with no other joke or wordplay, but you know what? It happens all the time so clearly I’m wrong and they’re right. Anyway, cars are just too expensive! The manufacturers forgot that the purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. Does every new car need all that stuff?

Dick Tracy, 12/3/25

Oh, yeah, remember how Silver Nitrate is having a hard time in prison? You might think it’s because America’s carceral system is inherently dehumanizing, but maybe it’s because he’s being kept away from his true passion: driving around town in a souped-up funny car with his barefoot sister spraying machine gun fire at random.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/3/25

It’s easy to forget when you read it every day for years, but the title of Mother Goose and Grimm reminds you that the strip was originally situated as being at least kind of a spoof of fairy tale/nursery rhyme stuff, sometimes it makes a half-hearted attempt to go back to its roots. I like how the cow knows in advance how bad this joke is going to be and clearly doesn’t want to be there. Hey, buddy, none of us want to be here, OK?

The Wizard of Id, 12/3/25

Hey, everyone, they did a My Chemical Romance joke in the Wizard of Id, right here in the year 2025! I guess we don’t have to worry about a 6-7 joke from this crew for several decades.