Post Content

Archie, 4/8/26

You know, I had a riff all ready to go about how I hate it when a strip starts with character #1 parroting back something to character #2 that we’re supposed to understand character #2 just said immediately before the action started, and how Jughead in particular would never, ever use the word “proactive,” like he wouldn’t even know what it meant and if he did learn he would find it offensive to the point of blasphemy, but then I caught sight of the fact that Archie has “A.A. L. [for loves, I guess?] V.L.” on his notebook and Betty has “A.A. L. B.C.” and gurrrrrrrrrl, please, rethink some things and have some self-respect, I am begging you.

Pardon My Planet, 4/8/26

Jeez, lady, why don’t you settle down and maybe be more like your husband, who is just walking around with a featureless, blank paper coffee cup in his own home to match his featureless, numb facial expression. Unlike you, he doesn’t feel regret or wistfulness or anything at all. I guess based on the tight grip he has on a paper cup full of steaming liquid, he is feeling a great deal of pain, which at least lets him know he’s still alive, after a fashion.

Shoe, 4/8/26

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that Biz is wearing a winter cap. Is he supposed to have just put it on because, as a bird, he has to go outside to go to the bathroom? They’re already outside!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 3/8/26

Five years ago, Mary tried to broach the question of whether Estelle was being grifted rather gingerly. With Harvey, she’s being somewhat more direct, and it immediately blew up in her face, though maybe that’s just his masculine pride kicking in and driving him to comically storm out of the room. It’s just like beloved [note to self: look up what kind of job “B.C. Forbes” has held or what sort of person they are before publishing this post and insert description here] “B.C. Forbes” says: if you don’t have your life savings drained every few years or so by a Cambodian-based criminal syndicate, you were leaving legitimate opportunities to have sex with hot babes much younger than you on the table!

Shoe, 3/8/26

I know, I know this is a perennial gripe of mine, but: You absolutely cannot do whimsical jokes about birds in a comic strip where everyone is a bird. This is a joke about a number of these characters’ peers committing violent, awful suicide! It’s pretty believable that they’d do it, since all the bird-people in this strip are very depressed, and with good reason, since they live in a world dominated by sapient birds where nevertheless KFC is a viable business.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/8/26

Now, this strip? Where Slylock Fox, a sapient animal cop in a world dominated by sapient animals, is providing enhanced security to a wealthy and influential sapient animal who is fairly obviously wearing a fur coat? That doesn’t make me mad at all. That’s just how the world works. That’s a mystery that kids need to learn how to solve a lot more than anything about gloves and how people won’t pick up just one lying there by itself no matter how lovely it is.

Post Content

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!