Post Content

Pickles, 11/28/25

“Ha ha, I sure hate my mother-in-law!” is of course a time-honored bit for hack humorists everywhere, so naturally it has repeatedly found its way into the comics over the years. I guess I have to respect Pickles for leaning into its setting (a household made up of old people) and doing a version that’s “Ha ha, I sure hated my mother-in-law! She’s dead now.”

Andy Capp, 11/28/25

I personally am a little miffed that we’re only hearing about this incident second-hand. Wouldn’t you love a strip where we see Andy wandering around the pub with a mangy old pigeon in his hands, thrusting it at various drunks demanding they give him enough for it so he can buy one more pint? I’d accept either a version where’s he’s maudlin and pathetic about it or one where he’s really belligerent. Neither scenario would be “funny” per se, but neither would be less funny than what we have here, so why not go for it.

Shoe, 11/28/25

No! No!! You can’t just start acknowledging that your characters are all bird people and then show them feasting on eggs! This is a nightmare!

Post Content

Shoe, 11/10/25

“48 years” is relevant here because that’s how long Shoe has been syndicated. Shoe, dimly aware of the contours of his universe, knows that his seemingly eternal and unaging existence is somehow intimately tied up with the time he spends at Roz’s. But going beyond the simple correlation he lays out here would require perception that’s beyond his abilities.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/25

Oh, so you think it’s funny that Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky ate the nose right off that snowman’s face? Well, what if we drop the “snow”? What if Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky bit off some guy’s nose, and that guy was running around screaming while blood geysered everywhere, and the accursèd horse, his huge teeth masticating flesh and cartilage, said “Are you kidding? I love men !!” Wouldn’t be so funny then, would it?

Curtis, 11/10/25

Greg looks truly stricken in that final panel. He knows coffee is unhealthy, and Curtis with his innocent child’s wisdom has reaffirmed that it doesn’t taste very good either. He’s left with the knowledge that he only drinks it because he relies on its stimulant properties, and what does that say about him and his life?

Pickles, 11/10/25

Hey, we haven’t checked in with the lovable old couple in Pickles lately, let’s see what they’re up to! [checks in with the old couple in Pickles in today’s strip] I, uh. I think they’re maybe going to get a divorce, guys.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/28/25

Well, I guess Truck’s not-son Cody did in fact come out ahead of beloved (?) tween neo-vaudeville novelty act “Shorty and the Beanpole,” because not only did he score an invite to Truck’s wedding but he was also allowed and/or required to perform. Obviously he was only paid in “exposure” and “the chance that he might feel the slightest amount of paternal affection for once in his life,” but now it’s all worked out … for him, anyway. Too bad about his band, but the lucrative world of younger people doing covers of country classics doesn’t have room for anything more than the one guy and one guitar that the nostalgics crave.

Mary Worth, 9/28/25

It’s only appropriate that in Mary Worth, interspecies psychic communication takes the form of a human projecting their own floating head into an animal’s mind, though I have to say that Greta and Max’s expressions look less like “We are receiving a message from our friend” and more like Olive has simply overridden their consciousness and will take control of their zombie-like bodies, for rescue purposes. Funnier to me, though, is Mary fretting “what if they forgot about us?” Like, as I age, I definitely have learned more and more that the people “in charge” in any given situation are just folks like me and often have things less in hand than I assumed all adults did as a kid, but I do sincerely believe that the people running a hot air balloon festival would in fact notice if one or more of the balloons went missing. Surely somebody involved has, like, a clipboard, right? A clipboard with a list of balloons on it?

Pickles, 9/28/25

It’s true, Grandpa Pickles walking into an oil change place and thinking it’s his optometrist’s office, which is almost certainly in an entirely different location, is not necessarily a sign that his vision is failing. He should probably take a comprehensive cognitive functions test, however.

Crankshaft, 9/28/25

This one … this one seems even more serious, to be honest. But Crankshaft is pretty sanguine about it. Let’s just take all these pills at random times and let the miracle of the human body take its course. See what happens. He’ll be behind the wheel of a schoolbus full of children when it all goes down, by the way.