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The Lockhorns, 10/24/25

Loretta has, presumably, been jogging for some time with her friend acquaintance who we are definitely never going to see again, and is only now passing by her husband, who has been sitting on that bench staring contemplatively into space for who knows how long. Because absolutely nothing the Lockhorns do is left to chance, especially when it comes to attempting to passive-aggressively destroy one another emotionally, we must assume that she carefully planned both her route and her conversational cadence so that this little bon mot would drop just as she was getting close enough for Leroy to hear it.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/24/25

I’m a normal person, so I do almost all my shopping either online or in a store, but some people do it over the phone, I guess? Maybe they’re all old and increasingly senile and the person on the other end has to say “Shopping…” every once in a while, just to remind them what they’re doing.

Pluggers, 10/24/25

Gah, pathetic, there’s no joke or wordplay or anything here, it’s literally just “Pluggers continue to engage in a traditional cultural/aesthetic practice, unlike most people, who have abandoned it or never knew about it in the first place.” They didn’t even put a plugger in the cartoon! I’d like to think they all refused to participate in such a half-assed non-gag.

Crankshaft, 10/24/25

I love how depressed this guy looks in the final panel. He doesn’t want to say this shit any more than you want to listen to it!

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Blondie, 10/18/25

God, I love how genuinely sad Dagwood looks in panel two. Sure, he loves his wife more than anything, but he also made some big promises and sweeping declarations to that sandwich when they were alone together. He’s sorry it had to hear this now, in its last moments before it slides unchewed down his gullet. He hopes it will still remember the good times they’ve had together, and the genuine affection in which he’s always held it.

Mary Worth, 10/18/25

I know that Mary and Olive billed this visit as a “mini-vacation” but I have to say “all I had time to do on my cross-country trip is briefly meet some dogs in a condo parking lot and then almost die in a hot air balloon mishap” is truly mini indeed. I guess it’s possible that Olive’s parents heard about the accident on the news, or, given that this is the year 2025, saw a clip of it in a “CRAZY HOT AIR BALLOON MISHAPS” YouTube compilation, and decided that was a little much even by their notoriously lax parenting standards, so they summoned her home early because “we think she has to start going to school or whatever soon.”

Pluggers, 10/18/25

I know pluggers are tired of being told they could learn a thing or two from young people today, but: hey, pluggers! The young people today aren’t answering their phones at all, at any time of day! You too could be that free!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/14/25

Back in the days when Woody Wilson was writing Judge Parker and Rex Morgan, M.D., one of the running bits was that the characters would reap significant financial rewards and social prestige extremely easily, like when Alan Parker’s unreadable potboiler The Chambers Affair became an international best-seller beloved worldwide, even by murderous black-market arms merchants. But in the post-Wilson world of both strips things have been, uh, different, and now Auggie is shopping around a novel and his hopes have maxed out at getting an advance large enough to afford one (1) nice dinner for him and his girlfriend. I’m not gonna read way too much into some soap opera comic strips and say this trajectory nicely summarizes the collapse of the economic possibilities of creative work over the past decade, but … oh, who am I kidding, reading way too much into some soap opera comic strips is basically the whole shtick on this blog, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Mary Worth, 10/14/25

I know that trying to derive meaning from the bolded words in Mary Worth strips is a fool’s errand, but it is intriguing that she’s leaning on accident here. You know, Olive, the balloon accident, the event that was definitely unplanned and not at all arranged in advance as a means to test your powers to see if they could be exploited by the CIA. What have we learned from it? Uh, I mean, you, what have you learned about it, ha ha! Forget that little slip of the tongue!

Pluggers, 10/14/25

The degree to which pluggers are sedentary can honestly not be overstated.