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Heathcliff, 6/11/26

It’s true that California has higher gas prices than the rest of the country, but I guarantee that every time you’ve seen a viral picture on social media of a station with shockingly high gas prices with a caption of “OMG Cali gas is crazy,” it’s one of two specific stations in Los Angeles where the prices are $2 or even $3 higher than they are everywhere else in the city for various odd reasons. One of these is in Chinatown, close to where I used to live, and once I was walking past it and saw a dark purple Bentley and there was something odd about it and I said to myself, “Wait, is that thing covered in velour?” so I went up to touch it and … reader, it was, or at least a thin layer of some vaguely fuzzy-feeling velour-like substance. No idea what the owner did when it rained, but I am 100% sure that that’s what’s going on with Heathcliff’s car.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/11/26

Look, I know that being hilariously nonspecific is one of Herb and Jamaal’s beloved running bits, but … Rev. Croom is clearly talking about hell, and all the people who are going there. He’s a Christian clergyman, he believes in hell and that’s what he’s talking about! Don’t give us this “inferno abyss” business, I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to say “hell” in the newspaper these days.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/11/26

It honestly bothers me so much that Ma Goose is delivering this extremely tepid joke to an unknown interlocutor over the phone. There are multiple named characters in this strip that she lives with that she could’ve bounced this off of! Then we could’ve seen their reaction! You know, because the comics are … a visual medium?

Crankshaft, 6/11/26

Like, for instance, it’s important that we can see Harry Dinkle’s face so we know how completely unenthusiastic he is about all this. If you just had the dialogue, you might think he was excited to go on a little adventure, rummage through his old memories, and help out his friends, but in fact he doesn’t look like he’s feeling much of anything at all. “Didn’t the strip I was in end?” he’s thinking. “Why am I in this one? Why am I here? Why can’t I die?”

Rhymes With Orange, 6/11/26

Folks, do you ever look up in the sky at clouds and wonder if they get horny? Well, they do … in the whimsical world of the comics.

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Rhymes With Orange, 4/9/26

I assume the intended joke here is that George forgot his glasses somewhere else — at his home, maybe, or maybe just in the other room — but I can’t stop imagining a truly nightmarish scenario where when you die you become a spirit cursed to haunt the world of the living but not be perceived by them, and if you had bad vision when you were alive you still do, but you can’t wear glasses because you’re a spectre without physical form and/or you don’t have a nose. Anyway, that ghost is gonna fuck that cabinet, right? That’s definitely what’s on the menu here?

Archie, 4/9/26

Jughead, sad that his conversations with his best friend aren’t as sparkling as they once were, has hired this high-tech young woman to, in his words, “Cyrano” for him, monitoring Archie’s mood on a tablet and relaying instructions into a hidden bluetooth earpiece. Unfortunately, it turns out she may have overrepresented her talents.

Hi and Lois, 4/9/26

Don’t have much to say about the Flagston twins’ specific conundrum here but I do like the expression on the bus driver’s face. That’s someone who’s extremely sick of these kids’ shit. Not sure if it’s about Dot and Ditto specifically or just children in general, but either way I’m enjoying it.

Crankshaft and Shoe, 4/9/26

Hey, uh. Um. How to put this delicately. I think if you’re involved in the process of churning out a legacy comic strip, maybe you … shouldn’t … do jokes that are like, “You know what’s better than a hack writer? AI! Ha ha!” Just, like … don’t give people ideas, you know? About your job?

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Family Circus, 3/11/26

A thing I never would’ve predicted more than two decades ago when I started doing this blog is … well, I guess the fact that I’d still be doing the blog in 2026 would be at the top of the list, but not far below would be the fact that I’d become an increasingly less grudging fan of the Family Circus. Lesser strips like Marvin do pee and poop jokes all the time and I get no pleasure from it, but this is a perfectly executed panel capturing the moment right before PJ horks directly onto Big Daddy Keane’s face. Daddy knows it, PJ knows it, it’s inevitable, but we don’t have to see it or hear it directly addressed, and I think that’s beautiful.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/26

Hey, you know how Rex Morgan, M.D., is boring, a significant majority of the time? Well, today we learn that, while we’ve been watching all these boring characters do uninteresting things, there’s at least one guy who’s been hanging out off-panel experiencing even less excitement than everyone else. Truly chilling.

Rhymes With Orange, 3/11/26

Sure, we all enjoy a stage magic act. But did you know that the only thing preventing the rabbits and the birds from having sex with each other is a corporate-style HR policy? And call me a “woke scold” or whatever but I’m in favor of it. The rabbit and the bird shouldn’t have sex! It would screw up the workplace dynamics, plus I don’t even understand how it would work, biologically!