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Shoe, 1/11/26

Did, uh, did you know that “naked running” means running without music? I myself did not, and I can’t find much evidence that this is a phrase particularly widely known by others; it’s the name of a company that makes belts for running, and sometimes it’s used more broadly to mean running without any kind of gadgets. But a little poking around to research this turned up this post in a UK running group on Facebook, and, uh, do you think the syndicated newspaper comic strip Shoe stole a joke from a UK running group on Facebook? Who’s to say. We should mostly focus our energy on praying that the brain trust over there never gets wind of “rawdogging.”

Mary Worth, 1/11/26

God damn it, Sunny! Ian was so close to the sweet relief of death! So close! You’ve thwarted him once again!

Pluggers, 1/11/26

Look, man, people often yell at me for being a coastal elitist because I make fun of the pluggers in Pluggers, but today’s strip is about how pluggers would rather eat fast food than exercise and they won’t even get out of their car to do it, and I didn’t write this joke. A faithful reader of the strip did, and he sent it into the syndicate, and then they drew it and put it in the newspaper! I’m not the mean one here!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/11/26

Good lord, they murdered that turkey. He was so happy to survive the carnage but then they murdered him and ate him! With big stupid grins on their faces!

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Six Chix, 1/10/26

You ever wonder why bad things happen to you? It’s probably because someone with interests different from yours prayed to God, and He said, “Enh, why not.” Sorry, I don’t make the rules! The omnipotent Creator has actually embedded the rules into the very nature of existence, of which you and I are a tiny part.

Beetle Bailey, 1/10/26

A question I’ve often had reason to contemplate: Is Cookie a soldier, or a civilian Army employee? I don’t think there’s a “right” answer, since the world of Beetle Bailey does not have an immutable reality; probably in the days when the strip launched he would’ve been an enlisted man (my grandfather cooked for hundreds of his fellow soldiers when he was stationed in Los Angeles during World War II) but today he’d work for some Halliburton subsidiary microwaving flash-frozen food for the troops. His status would be a relevant piece of information for today’s strip, as his rank vis-a-vis Sarge would determine who Beetle should obey under the UCMJ, but I think everyone’s facial expression makes clear that this is a story more about personal duty and personal fear than it is about anything so straightforward as the military chain of command.

Pluggers, 1/10/26

Pluggers want a clean sidewalk and frankly they don’t care how many children have to die to make that happen.

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Pluggers, 1/7/26

Pluggers has been doing a string of “Classic Pluggers winter fun!” panels this week, and while most of them have in fact been mildly fun, at least for the characters involved (what if we fired up the barbecue grill … when there was still snow on the ground?) I have some questions about this one. When you stare at the TV, expressionless, thinking “Hmm, things today sure are different than they were in the past, and I’m not sure how I feel about it,” is that fun? Do pluggers enjoy doing that? The fact that this is a submission from a Florida-based plugger adds an extra layer of ennui here. “Well, I guess that’s how they do things up north now. Not the choices I would make, but it’s none of my business, I suppose.”

Gil Thorp, 1/7/26

If you had asked me, I would’ve pegged Gil as the kind of guy who has a church he belongs to and occasionally attends, but he doesn’t really spend a lot of time dwelling on religious matters. But we live in a post-sectarian age, so it makes sense that when it comes to finding someone to preside over his nuptials, he turns to his most spiritual friend (“spiritual” here means “has attempted to contact the spirit of Gil’s dead mentor in a supply closet with a Ouija board“).

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/7/26

Not to sound sadistic or anything, but shouldn’t all these people be dead? Shouldn’t they have suffered horribly as their living flesh was transformed to stone? Because of Medusa? And her powers?