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Mary Worth, 2/23/26

Yes Yes! YES!!! We did it, we endured the parrot storyline and its aftermath and have been rewarded by a near-forgotten Mary Worth plot-shifting staple: a pool party! And this pool party features an exciting new character: a dapper widower whose year-long period of mourning is now over so it’s once again legal for him to speak to a woman. “I wonder how he’s doing,” Toby says idly. “I wonder what he thinks about parrots. I wonder if he has more money than, say, an English professor at a second-tier state university. I mean, you don’t go around wearing an ascot in public because you’re poor.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/23/26

I feel like Dennis the Menace may be spending too much time on Dennis insulting his mother’s cooking and harassing his elderly neighbor and not enough time exploring the reasons why the Mitchells are apparently bouncing from denomination to denomination. It seems like Alice in particular is on a spiritual journey and Henry is getting sick of it. “Look, I don’t care if we’re Presbyterians or Unitarian Universalists or snake-handlers or whatever,” he told her, “but I’m not coming until you settle on one.”

Pluggers, 2/23/26

There’s a lot to think about here. My initial instinct was that this plugger had to be at home — pluggers don’t work in front of a computer, they have real blue-collar jobs that involve, like, tools or something — and so this plugger has come home from a hard day’s work and is exemplifying proper life-work balance by dozing off while reading the headlines on Yahoo! News. But then I began to suspect that, in our fallen, post-industrial age, even a plugger’s professional life is dominated by the glow of a screen, and so this plugger is supposed to be “working” and after eight hours of this will head home to watch sports from his recliner, where he’ll also fall asleep. Which interpretation is correct? Sound off in the comments!

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Shoe, 2/22/26

One of the ways that doing this blog over two decades has turned me into an actual insane person is that I feel obligated to speak up for strip lore that the strip’s creators and/or hired-hand continuators have forgotten. For instance, the way the Shoeniverse traditionally worked is that the bird characters ate lunch at Roz’s, which is an open air diner on a tree branch, and complained about the cooking, and in the evenings got drunk at a fern bar, which is a building with a roof on it, and tried to have sex with one another. Lately, though, it seems like the locations are getting conflated and there are more and more strips where the characters are getting drunk at Roz’s, and I don’t care for it. I’ve been consoling myself with the idea that these are still daytime strips and the bird characters are just so depressed these days that they’re openly getting blotto at lunch, but the dialogue here establishes this as an evening recreational drinking binge, so my concerns are clearly justified.

Judge Parker, 2/22/26

Oh, man, remember how April disappeared and then Randy went off to rescue her and also disappeared? Well, now it looks like she is gonna end up rescuing him, ha ha! Boy, he’s never going to hear the end of this, or maybe, due to his proximity to this massive explosion, he’s never going to hear anything ever again.

Pluggers, 2/22/26

YOU, AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST: Ahh, even cranky old pluggers can still enjoy moments of childlike whimsy.

ME, AT AGE 51 BECOMING MORE AND MORE AN ACTUAL PLUGGER BY THE DAY: Oh god, look at how they’re lying on that uneven ground without any cushions or anything. Look at how she’s propping herself up awkwardly on her elbow. They’re going to be in pain for days! They’re not even going to be able to walk back to their car!

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Six Chix, 2/14/26

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Are you experiencing romantic love? I hope so, because if you aren’t, aliens are going to vaporize you, just straight-up transform you into a pile of smoldering ash with an energy weapon of unimaginable power.

Family Circus, 2/14/26

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, and I found the Family Circus kids annoying. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways, and realized that the Family Circus kids are supposed to be annoying and that’s like 90% of the joke of every panel. I really like Ma Keane’s facial expression in this one: “Oh, you’re putting it … uh … there? Where we can all step on it? And you’re definitely going to have a meltdown if I try to move it? Huh. Great. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.”

Pluggers, 2/14/26

Look, Chicken-Lady, your husband has always had a sexual fantasy about doing it with a mime, and he wants your help fulfilling it, and if you can’t see that, you’ve got more problems than failing eyesight.

Pickles, 2/14/26

Hey, were you wondering what the Pickles family was up to? Well, the Pickles daughter is worried about her parents, and she should be. They got disoriented and ran their car off the road. They should not be driving! They’re a danger to themselves and others!

Marvin, 2/14/26

Ha ha, it’s funny because as an infant Marvin was left unsupervised by his parents and ate dog food!