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Andy Capp, 2/21/25

Among the strips I’m starting to revisit is Andy Capp (never forget: ANDY CAPP!), and of course, there’s an important question one asks when starting to read this beloved British comics institution after the better part of a decade: is Andy Capp still a drunk? He’s a drunk, right? That’s his whole thing? Today’s strip, in which we learn that Andy would rather die horribly than spend his precious beer money on professional services of any kind, affirms this timeless truth.

Dennis the Menace and Bizarro, 2/21/25

One of my comics pet peeves is characters saying stuff they would never actually say (or having it implied that they said it moments before the in-strip action) just to set up a punchline. Take today’s Dennis the Menace, for instance: Surely a mail carrier would be much more likely to ask “Is he friendly?” or “Does he bite?” in a scenario where he’s encountering an unfamiliar and unleashed dog, as that would be relevant to his professional interests. Why on earth would he care about the dog’s peeing/pooping situation? I was planning on going on a whole diatribe about how cartoonists are simply obsessed with peeing and pooping, but then I read today’s Bizarro and immediately thought “Wait, is the implication here that Jesus drinks water and pisses out wine? Because that’s what the ‘In’/’Out’ labels pretty heavily imply to me,” so you know what, maybe I’m part of the problem.

Archie, 2/21/25

Reggie Mantle generally gets a bad rap, as he primarily exists in the Archieverse as an antagonist for our pals, but you know what? He’s absolutely in the right here. Is the student newspaper a joke to you, Jughead? Some of us are trying to learn about the practice of good journalism here!

Judge Parker, 2/21/25

Being best college buds with Sophie seems like fun — like, you get invited to bumpin’ party weekends out in the Hamptons. There are downsides, of course — like, said party weekends involve discovering corpses — but you have to take the good with the bad. Still, I don’t think it’s right that Sophie made Reena watch dronecam snuff footage without any warning or even anything fun as a lead-in (having to hang out with Randy Parker does not count as fun).

Daddy Daze, 2/21/25

Oh, Daddy Daze daddy, you and I both know that none of that ever happened! Why would you lie to your son about this?

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Dick Tracy, 2/20/25

Dick Tracy is a comic strip that operates in an exaggerated storytelling mode, entertaining us with outlandish plots about corpse theft and so forth. But it can also touch on very real, down-to-earth issues, like the problem of inadequate nephews. Are your nephews good-for-nothings who don’t even have the skills and/or gumption to properly steal a dead body? Dick Tracy sees you, and hears you, and knows you are valid.

Pickles, 2/20/25

Another comic I’ve added recently to my rotation is Pickles, a low-key strip about old people. I appreciate today’s installment because it avoids the cliche of making an adorable little moppet the resident computer genius and instead identifies the “generation [that’s] pretty handy with modern technology” as the children of old people, who are, let’s be extremely real, getting pretty old themselves. Sure, assigning tech support to a 52-year-old with bad knees may not get your strip cut out and hung on refrigerators, but you have to respect the commitment to verisimilitude.

The Lockhorns, 2/20/25

“Why doesn’t this person use the opportunity given to him to inflict violence on the one who has wronged him?” is Loretta’s takeaway from what she’s learning about soccer, and that should be concerning to Leroy, probably.

Dennis the Menace, 2/20/25

Mr. Wilson, they’re going to try to cancel you for this, but you’re right. Dennis Mitchell is a five-year-old child and just in general should not be spending extended periods of time at other people’s homes outside a formal arrangement; today he’s banging on a pot like a drum in a very irritating manner and you shouldn’t have to put up with it. I support you in your quest for a common sense resolution of the Dennis issue!

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Gil Thorp, 2/19/25

Gil Thorp of course always deals with teen issues both of-the-moment and timeless, and there’s one of the latter type that I don’t think we’ve seen before, which is the phenomenon of the Horse Girl. We’ve actually been in the middle of a wrestling-themed story for the past few days so I’m not sure if this is a classic Thorp-style abrupt transition to the spring B-plot, which will involve the intensely competitive and hitherto undocumented Valley Conference equestrian tournament, or if Valley Conference wrestling follows WWE rules and allows unorthodox techniques like riding a horse into the ring. Either way, I’m looking forward to learning more about this young athlete who loves Silver in a way that the Lone Ranger never could.

Heathcliff, 2/19/25

It’s very true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. There really are people out there who appear to be ordinary, solid citizens — collared shirts, flattop haircuts, the whole nine yards — and yet behind closed doors full-on bathe in meat, like absolute freaks. Only animals with powerful noses can identify these sickos!

Dick Tracy, 2/19/25

Today’s Dick Tracy really has a lot to say about contemporary journalism. Sam reacts with irritation and impatience to Dick’s attempt to explain the corpsenapping background to him: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, thrusting a broadsheet into Dick’s face. “I know all that, I read about it in our constitutionally protected free press, ever heard of it?” But in the final panel, a local citizen refers to “tottering Tribune towers,” a reference to the fact that Chicago’s largest newspaper was forced into bankruptcy by vulture capitalists and is now part of a hedge-fund-owned chain that’s increasingly starved of resources. (The tower in this case is metaphorical, as the real one was sold and converted to condos in 2018.)

The Lockhorns, 2/19/25

Cases in divorce court almost never involve jury trials, of course, which means that Leroy lied to Loretta about having jury duty and convinced her to accompany him to the courthouse just so he could do this bit. Ironically, this just shows that he’s willing to put in the work to keep their dysfunctional marriage fresh and interesting.