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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/30/24

Oh yeah, so it turns out that Lyle “Old Man” Ollman is actually Rene/”Jimmy”‘s uncle! I admit I made fun of Lyle for not having the skill or charisma to get a self-help cult going in the 1970s, but today, as he declares that Rene rebranding the Ollman Technique as “Professor Mirakle™ Presents: Rene Belluso’s Mirakle Method (an Ollman Technique® Production) Featuring Fergus ‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy” to be the “one good thing” his wayward nephew has done, he reveals that he at least has the ego for it. He hasn’t spoke to Rene in years! He could have done all sorts of good things! I mean, he definitely hasn’t, but he could have!

Family Circus, 1/30/24

Is Dolly promoting a pantheistic view of the universe and assigning divinity to a pagan nature goddess? Or is she humbly avoiding conflating herself with the one creator God of the Trinity while still boasting of her artistic prowess? The Keane Council on Heresy (PJ and Barfy) are going to have a hard time with this one.

Pluggers, 1/30/24

Sure, only pluggers remember payphone-derived idioms and aphorisms. But also, only pluggers still think a dime is actually worthwhile to hold on to rather than something annoying in your pocket, so I’m afraid I don’t buy that our bear-man friend here would actually use one to act out his dramatic little response.

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Gasoline Alley, 1/20/24

Longtime faithful readers know that in most of the strips I comment on here, there’s at least one character upon whom I wish every ill. In Gasoline Alley that’s obviously Slim, but I can at least take comfort in the knowledge that the strip’s creators also love to torment him. Why else would his plan to murder teenagers with a meteorite go awry and his house get haunted by inane ghosts? Anyway, you may remember the time he got an erotic concussion, and now we’re back to another unsettling tale of his place in our collective sexual dreamscape. His wife found a mysterious love note in his pocket that he doesn’t remember getting; could it be that Saint Agnes, who famously was to be married against her will and then punished for her Christianity by being sent to a brothel but God protected her by making her hair grow over her body and striking her would-be rapists dead, is telling Slim that his own chastity is in danger? Will his ordeal finally be ended with a knife to the throat, with eager believers soaking up his blood with handkerchiefs in memory of his martyrdom? I have frankly never wished for anything more in regards to this strip.

Pluggers, 1/20/24

Because I’m a hip young person with the cutting edge job of “blogger,” my calendar is on my computer and backed up to the cloud, but somehow I had never really thought to use the calendar’s search function before, and the other day while looking for something I discovered to my surprise — and, frankly, delight — that everything I’ve ever put in there, going back to 2003, has been retained! I can see all my quotidian appointments for the last two decades! Only today, in seeing this panel, did I realize that I have become truly one of the most unsettling beings of all: the cyber-plugger.

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Hagar the Horrible, 1/5/24

Many medieval Scandinavians communities relied on herding for meat and milk, so controlling wolves and other canines was a task entrusted to only the most skillful hundafangari, or “dog-catchers.” This role would be assigned by a vote in the thing, the traditional Norse assembly that represented one of the earliest democratic bodies in northern Europe. Truly, Hagar’s schoolmate has brought honor to his clan by achieving this exalted position, and he wields his ritual net of honor, woven from the finest thread, with great and justified pride!

Pluggers, 1/5/24

Speaking of dogs, or bears, or what have you, today’s Pluggers is obviously about how if you’re a fisherman, you’d have a mailbox shaped like a fish (I guess? I mean, would you? Would you really?) but because the plugger in the panel is himself shaped like a bear, I can’t help imagining that in the Pluggers world of apparently all mammalian human-animal hybrids, the equivalent of a furry would be someone who likes to dress up as a reptile or fish, and so Andy Bear here (YES THEY HAVE OFFICIAL NAMES AND YES, FOR MY SINS, I KNOW THEM) is letting the whole neighborhood know that he’s a “scaly” and proud of it.

Hi and Lois, 1/5/24

I mean … yes? You would count that? It’s one of the layers you’re wearing? That’s how layers work???? Chip, why are you saying any of this, do you think this is flirting, do you think not counting your t-shirt as one of the layers of clothing you have on is what “game” is, what the hell