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Intelligent Life, 6/22/26

Everything I’ve learned about all the characters in Intelligent Life has been against my will. I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I instantly recognized this blond guy as “Barry,” the stereotypical jock used as a punching bag by the nerd characters in the strip. He likes beer and wings and is constantly unsuccessfully hitting on women, and — and now we’re at the point where I’m learning new stuff about him, which I didn’t ask for and don’t care for — he also has a terrible relationship with his father, I guess.

Pluggers, 6/22/26

Look, for as long as I’ve been reading this strip, the answer to the question “Are pluggers OK?” has been a resounding “no.” But I feel like they’re building less and less of a superstructure around this sentiment in individual panels and are now just hitting us with “Life is suffering, for pluggers. Every moment is agony. They’d be happier dead.”

Pickles, 6/22/26

Pickles, meanwhile, is a comic strip about the foibles of old people that isn’t afraid to get a little edgy sometimes, but I declare today’s strip, where the vagaries of fading memory mean that poor Opal has spent hours in an act of loving artistry, making a scarf for a member of her family only to be struck anew by grief, is a little too edgy for my tastes.

Pardon My Planet, 6/22/26

Yesterday’s Pardon My Planet was about domestic discord among wolf-people, and I thought about doing a post basically saying “Ha ha, this strip, which is mostly unpleasant marital drama among its cast of mostly interchangeable regular characters, has finally branched out into doing unpleasant marital drama with furries” but decided against it. But today, with the clown stuff? Well, I feel like you all needed to know about it. Do you think “Bobo” is a male clown name? No judgement, but it does add an extra little twist to this scenario.

Luann, 6/22/26

I saved the grimmest one for last. Brad and Toni are going to have sex in the shower, you guys. They’re going to have sex in the shower after she announced herself as “zit” and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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Pickles, 6/5/26

“We’re all gonna die eventually, but sometimes our ability to experience even basic pleasures dies before the rest of us” is a pretty grim thing for kids to read in the comics, so it’s a good thing that not many kids read the comics, I guess.

Heathcliff, 6/5/26

Although you know what legacy strip has a surprisingly strong zoomer fan base? Heathcliff! That’s why it can afford to play around with youth slang like this. Ha ha, the fish is “low-key” terrified, as the kids would say, if they were trapped in a bowl perched atop the head of a creature who was about to devour them.

Hi and Lois, 6/5/26

I’m not going to say that the art in Hi and Lois is “good,” exactly, but the faces are surprisingly expressive given how stylized they are. Like, with Lois today, they really nailed “Well that wasn’t an inappropriate thing to say exactly, but it also forced me to contemplate my teenage son as a sexual being, and I honestly don’t care for it.”

Crankshaft, 6/5/26

“That’s the pocket where I keep my phone. Did you know you can put pictures on your phone now? And also get copies of the pictures of your phone printed out? Truly we live in an age of wonders!”

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Andy Capp, 6/2/26

Look, I don’t pretend to know everything about what life is like in working-class, industrial neighborhoods in Northern English cities. Do people go door-to-door selling prints of the 19th century Romantic artist who revolutionized landscape painting and inspired the Barbizon school? I mean, maybe they do. Who’s to say the yobs and louts who populate this strip don’t appreciate a lovely, bucolic landscape? I’m sitting my ass down and learning.

Crankshaft, 6/2/26

There was some kind of long-ago love triangle involving Lillian and this guy and her now-dead sister that was introduced at some point when I wasn’t reading the strip and frankly I’ve never really caught up on it, but I know a lot of my readers have very strong and negative feelings about the whole thing, so if you fall into that category, I just wanted to bring you the latest update on this gentleman: they’re putting him in a home, or possibly in prison.

Pickles, 6/2/26

“Also, they don’t really enjoy spending time with me!”