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Blondie, 10/9/26

I really kind of enjoy Dagwood’s emotional rollercoaster here. The man on the TV says that “with 3D printing, anyone can become an action figure,” which I guess is a very muddled way of saying “with 3D printing you can make an action figure that looks like anyone,” but whatever, the point is that Dagwood immediately and 100% buys into it, because a guy on TV said it! They wouldn’t let him say it on TV if it weren’t true! But then Dithers tells him that actually, not everyone can become an action figure, and Dagwood can’t in particular, which he has no choice but to believe because his boss is telling him this, and his boss wouldn’t lie to him, would he? The very idea is unthinkable.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/9/26

We’ve gotten plenty of hints that Mud used to be kind of a terror because of problems with alcohol and/or drugs, but I’d like to believe that Mae Mae is hinting at the fact that this wasn’t the first time Mud pretended to shit himself onstage.

Shoe, 10/9/26

The thing about the comic strip Shoe is that it’s basically a multidecade project to see if newspapers around the country will print a picture of a bird-man who looks profoundly unwell every single day, and quite frankly I’m proud of the success it’s found!

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Marvin, 9/20/26

Now, if you were a normal person, by which I mean someone who has no idea what Marvin’s whole deal was beyond “Isn’t that a comic about, like, a baby?”, you would probably be taken aback by this strip, which seems to be a pretty harsh indictment of modern millennial parents, sucked into social media and checked out from what the wondrous moments of their kid’s toddlerhood, precious memories they’ll never get back. But Marvin realheads like you and me know that Marvin, the character, is the worst baby around, and deserves his father’s neglect. Who cares what he’s wearing? He sucks!

Shoe, 9/20/26

Given that the uncle-nephew bond is apparently the closest intergenerational relationship the bird-men of Shoe can experience, it’s too bad for the Perfesser that his uncles keep dying. Anyway, I think they should wait to make sure Uncle Walter’s coffin successfully lands in the grave before carving anything into marble.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/20/26

OK, yes, he should’ve been smart enough to take the cap off the pen. But the legal status of this monster — is he a sapient animal and therefore a citizen of the Forest Kingdom who needs liberation? a creation of an unclean human and therefore a lesser beast? a dangerous criminal who is competent to be tried and must be jailed? — should send the newly established animal political establishment into a frenzy, and you have to admire the good Count for his gumption in creating it.

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Shoe, 9/16/26

More than 20 years ago, I had the idea that it would be fun to start a blog sharing my opinions about Wilbur Weston’s sex life with the world, and mostly it’s been OK, but I have to say that I also have from the get go felt compelled to share the news that the characters in Shoe are birds, which has led me to explain a surprising number of times that a bird is outfitted with a cloaca rather than an anal sphincter, and thus just kind of poops whenever its bowels fill up enough and doesn’t have control over the process like me or (hopefully) you. The Perfesser is a fishhawk and thus an obligate carnivore, but his compatriots of vegan species must be doing truly horrifying things to their digestive system if this is the sort of thing he’s writing about in his column.

Mary Worth, 9/16/26

Speaking of the sex lives of the Weston family, how’s Dawn, who has been established as secretly pining for Tommy, doing with that whole situation? Well, she’s reached whatever the stage of secret pining is where you go bowling with your love object and his girlfriend. Look, she’s even wearing a bowling shirt! She’s really into this! Anyway, her reward for this is to learn from Tommy that Mary Worth and Ian Cameron have successfully initiated the sort of secret cheating affair that she yearns for but can’t have, which has to hurt. Note that Tommy is whispering in panel two: Obviously he wouldn’t tell Brandy this, she’s way too good for this kind of gossip.

Dick Tracy, 9/16/26

It’s no “eaten alive by rats,” but “bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the neck while your wraparound sunglasses display a BSOD” is pretty hardcore, not gonna lie. I certainly hope Widescreen custom-programmed the embedded processor in those glasses himself to keep track of his vital signs in order to deliver a final bit he would never see; if these are just some off-the-shelf smart glasses from Meta or something, I will lose respect for him as a hacker.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/16/26

Sorry, there’ll be no crime or kidnapping fun in Rex Morgan, M.D., this week, but there will be drama, in the form of Rex finally being unable to escape the conclusion that his sons are pretty stupid. Remember, one of these kids is Rex and June’s biological child and the other is adopted, so we’re really gonna settle some nature vs. nurture questions here in ways that will not reflect well on our protagonist.