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Hi and Lois, 12/8/25

Let’s forget for a moment the incomprehensible/not funny punchline of this one and try to understand the lead-up to it. Why is Chip telling his father, who is watching exactly the same movie that he is, that there’s a parental warning on it? Shouldn’t Hi be just as capable of reading it as Chip is? Is it written in some format that only teens can read, like, uh, Minecraft font? Is there a Minecraft font? Is Minecraft still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025?

Zits, 12/8/25

Honestly, while I’m fine with the Zits parents (who were my boomer parents’ age when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but becoming Gen Xers, I’m a little unsettled by Jeremy (who was just a few years younger than me when the strip debuted in the ’90s) staying the same age but being into things that contemporary teens are into, like Minecraft. I mean, Minecraft is still a thing that teens like, in the year 2025, right? “Watching” Minecraft? Surely the syndicated newspaper comic strip Zits wouldn’t steer me wrong about teens!

Gil Thorp, 12/8/25

In 1966, Gay Talese transformed the art of magazine writing with “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a profile that turned Sinatra’s refusal to give an interview into a central part of its structure. Will Gil Thorp do the same for the newspaper comics with “Gil Thorp Has A Serious Respiratory Illness Of Some Kind”? I mean, maybe? Or maybe Gil will just sweat a lot, who knows.

B.C., 12/8/25

The characters in B.C. live with a strange mix of stone age technology and modern conveniences and attitudes. This is not a criticism! I get that this is, in fact, the central joke of the strip! However, today’s installment does make me wonder if one of the modern things they have access to is the rabies vaccine. I worry!

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Alice, 11/3/25

Today’s Alice will I think be particularly inscrutable to non-Alice regulars, but in my late blog era I have myself become an Alice regular and am here to read Alice so you don’t have to! [scans through comic again] OK, fine, actually, this one is inscrutable to me too. I guess the little scene in the inset panel is supposed to be taking place simultaneous to the main action, but it’s not clear to me why it looks like a painting or maybe a window in the room where Alice and her boyfriend are sitting, why the alien guy is being debriefed by a human, or whether it’s supposed to be ironic somehow that the alien says humans are “too emotional” when Alice and her boyfriend are just staring off blankly into the middle distance together. At least one thing’s settled, though: Spock was a fictional half human/half Vulcan character from the Star Trek series in the 1960s.

Mary Worth, 11/3/25

At last, the saga of Olive the dog psychic has reached a triumphant conclusion sort of petered out, and now we’re getting … a Toby story? Oh, hell yeah. Toby, abandoned once again by her elderly husband (getting drunk at some academic conference) and her middle-aged best friend (nattering on to her not-boyfriend about a tween psychic), leaving her to ramble internally about her bag of sunflower seeds? Hell yeah. “It’s just me, myself, and my snack!” thinks a woman who probably once thought of herself as a “trophy wife” for an older high-prestige man and is now the saddest person alive. This week’s gonna be great.

Zits, 11/3/25

Definitely one of my pet peeves is when comics artists get older but their characters stay the same age, and yet also maintain the same set of cultural touchstones, and one thing I’ve always respected about Zits is that it leans into comic strip time, shifting the middle-aged parent of its teen main character from Boomer to Gen Xer over the decades. Not sure if I’m comfortable with “Walt got naked at Burning Man” now becoming part of the lore, but I admire the strip’s dedication and consistency.

Judge Parker, 11/3/25

“Anyway, the horses didn’t have anywhere to live so they just kind of … wandered off, I guess? I’m sure they’re fine.”

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Pluggers, 9/19/25

Look, you know I can be a little spicy when it comes to pluggers and their culture and values, but I’m not made of stone. I don’t wish ill upon them, really, and the fact that so many recent Pluggers panels have been “jokes” about how pluggers are constantly suffering in physical pain and are almost certainly about to die has been fairly depressing to me. That’s why I really enjoy today’s panel, which reminds us about the “fun” aspects of pluggerdom, like walking around in public wearing clothes that are covered with filth of various types. That’s something we can all enjoy in good conscience!

Zits, 9/19/25

Hey, uh, do the Duncans (in-universe) and the Zits creative team (in real life) know how laptops work. Like, do they know that they come with a power cable that you can plug into the wall, and then the laptop will operate even if you’ve drained the battery. Have these people been using laptops until their batteries died, then throwing the laptops in the garbage, then buying new laptops, for years now. I feel like someone should tell them????