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Mary Worth, 12/16/25

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about “grade inflation” at elite universities, which I have for the most part thought is overblown, but, I dunno: if they’re giving Ian Cameron a “University Excellence Award,” maybe things really are bad.

Family Circus, 12/16/25

Honestly love Thel’s wary expression here. She specifically told Dolly not to talk to Santa like a dumbass, but she’s clearly talking to Santa like a dumbass, and Thel’s too far away to stop her. The way the composition draws your eye to her is great, and I’m imagining a Vertigo-style dolly zoom shot on her face as she listens to this nonsense unfold.

Luann, 12/16/25

Sorry I started doing Luann on this blog again after like a decade only to become fixated on shoving the “Ugh, Brand and Toni have an active erotic life and it’s disgusting” strips in your face. This one I enjoy because I’m imagining the DeGroot parents sitting forlornly around their living room thinking “When is Brad going to come over and aim the snowflake projector at our house? He said he would do it, but where is he? He better not be fucking.”

Slylock Fox, 12/16/25

What really jumps out at me in both versions of this panel is how old these pirates look. No wonder they seem so upset at this joke of a treasure! They’ve wasted the best years of their lives!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/16/25

Damn, Maybelle Pratt! Turns out Snuffy Smith straight-up does not like you. It’s a good thing you’re leaving town!

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Gil Thorp, 12/15/25

It’s often unclear to me how old anyone in a comic strip is supposed to be, and Gil Thorp in particular has historically had a quirky implementation of comic book time where the kids get older but Gil and the adults seem to stay more or less the same age, but I’ve always assumed that Gil is in his mid-to-late 40s while Beth is somewhat younger? Anyway, I get the feeling that most of my readers, like me, are or are rapidly approaching A Certain Age, so you probably won’t like being informed that the Golden Girls actresses were all in their 50s in the early seasons of the show. What I’m trying to get at is that Beth thinks what’s going on here is “cute” but in fact Gil is slurping ramen and, through a feverish haze, getting hornt up in an age-appropriate way over Rue McClanahan rather than her.

Slylock Fox, 12/15/25

Slylock faces the dilemma familiar to any more-or-less honest cop working within an authoritarian regime: you get into the game to protect small businesses from thieves or stop sideshows from defrauding innocent customers, but you do have to spend a certain amount of time humoring an absolute dictator sitting on a gold throne about their extremely specific problems, which have no real-world impact on anyone’s lives. I’m sure that Slylock figured out the answer to this riddle as soon as the situation was described to him, but I appreciate that he’s humoring Max by taking the magnifying glass from him momentarily before calling for the royal scales. What do you think happened to the thief who came up with this botched scheme, by the way? Probably being tortured to death in the palace prison, right?

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/16/25

Poor Slick Smitty. He thought he had found a way to beat Slylock at his own game by not technically lying as part of his scheme. Even Slylock had to chuckle ruefully and acknowledge that the sign said “see the signing clam,” not “hear” it! Sadly, if you flip your screen upside down, you will learn that Slylock was able to “convince” Smitty to return his customers’ money, presumably by threatening him with the full force of the Forest Kingdom’s monopoly on violence, even though he violated no law, because that’s just how the new regime rolls when it comes to humans. The clam presumably remained enslaved.

Crankshaft, 11/16/25

Look, not to get close to finding Crankshaft relatable or anything, but a thing about getting older is that you’ll think “C’mon, this aspect of culture is relatively recent,” and then you look it up and it’s actually like 10 or 15 years old, and there are plenty of people who are full-on adults now who would never remember a time it didn’t exist. Anyway, I was about to go on a quest to figure out when the whole pickleball craze took off, got as far as some suggestions that the game (which has been around since the ’60s, and was invented by the last Republican to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Washington) became popular as an outdoor activity during the COVID-19 lockdowns, then dug into my archives and discovered that these teen twins were tweens or maybe even younger in a 2021 strip and decided, you know what? I’m gonna let this one go. I’ll allow it. Ha ha, to a young person, ping pong would seem like a pickleball variant, wouldn’t it?

Dick Tracy, 11/16/25

“Oh ho ho,” quite a few of you said, last week, “I’ll bet Rojo Ozob is some kind of villainous clown, what with ‘Ozob’ being an anagram for ‘Bozo.'” Well, you were right. There he is, plain as day: a villainous clown, realistic, tough-looking, and maybe even a little sexy. I hope you’re all happy. God have mercy on your souls.