Post Content

Mary Worth, 3/3/25

Big news, everybody: Wilbur’s back! Wilbur’s back, and he’s giggling coyly about the fun he’s been having on the Mayan Riviera. It’s funny, you’d think that after 20 years following this guy’s antics there wouldn’t be anything new he could say that on the surface seems largely unobjectionable but nevertheless sends me spiraling into a seething episode in which I curse the sea for rejecting him not once but twice. And yet here I am, starting my week staring “It was fun and relaxing… Hee hee!” in the face, and not liking it.

Dick Tracy, 3/3/25

Folks … big news … a third nephew has hit this Dick Tracy storyline. We are going to be treated to nephew after nephew, each more lightweight and gormless than the last, until we’re all nephew’d out.

Judge Parker, 3/3/25

Hey, remember how Sophie made Ann’s murder charge go away by hacking into drone footage and proving she didn’t do it? Well, everyone got a nice little thrill from that lovely moment, but it’s too bad that other exoneration drones weren’t following her around over her last couple decades of petty scams and whatnot because she’s definitely going to jail for that. Honestly kind of mean of the cops to let her have a big emotional moment out here on the courthouse steps just so they could arrest her and extradite her moments later.

Gil Thorp, 3/3/25

Hey, were you wondering how Marty’s drinking binge was going? Well, panel three has it all wrapped up in a nutshell: wild eyes, his hair long and greasy, his goatee subsumed into a shaggy beard, his usual polo shirts traded for some kind of vintage fur-lined coat. Honestly, he looks great. This is the coolest he’s looked in years. This is not the lesson we should be teaching our kids.

Pickles, 3/3/25

Ha ha! That’s funny, man. So, are you, uh, are you going to change the furnace filter or what.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/2/25

Oh, hey, sorry I haven’t kept you up to date on the tale of Summer and Augie and the bad date that Summer ditched to hook up with Augie. The short version is that after making a real ass of himself at the bar where Summer met Augie and getting kicked out by the bouncer, bad-date-man showed up at Summer’s workplace at the Morgan clinic and made a real ass of himself and got kicked out by the building’s security guard. As is all too typical for me, that ostensibly “interesting” stuff did not move me to comment, but today’s strip? Where Augie’s going on and on about how much he likes regional artists and educational vacations to Kansas City? Well, you know that’s gonna hook me in. I’m extremely invested in finding out if “regional artists” become the new “roots country.” Meanwhile, bad-date-man has stalked Summer to the art museum, and I guess we’ll find out this week if he’s going to make a real ass of himself and be kicked out by a museum security guard or if he decides that these people are pretty boring, actually, and he has better stuff to do.

Beetle Bailey, 3/2/25

Without the top row of throwaway panels, this strip is absolutely nothing, a boring non-joke about how the General is obsessed with golf and his soldiers don’t respect him, for that reason and also a variety of other reasons. With the throwaway panels … there’s a whisper of something funny in there. Probably they could condense all the other panels down to one or two and then it might actually elicit a sensible chuckle. Keep plugging away at it, guys, you’re gonna write a good one of these eventually!

Dennis the Menace, 3/2/25

I gotta admit, I spent most of this strip thinking, “Wow, the whole neighborhood thinks Henry’s a dipshit, huh. Can’t blame them, really. Look at how he dresses!” But then I got to the last panel and it turns out that everyone was actually mad at [record scratch] Dennis, whose menacing behavior provides this strip with its very title??? Ashamed to confess that they got me with this one, folks. They got me!

Post Content

Marvin, 3/1/25

When I was in graduate school, I was the TA for a class taught by an elderly British professor who was eccentric in ways that were variously entertaining (he took snuff in the middle of lecture, much to the students’ confusion and horror) and off-putting (the class was “Intro to Western Civ” but he built it around four or five specific and obscure topics from ancient Greece and Rome for which the students had no real context but which he found interesting). He wanted no contact with undergraduates beyond lectures, and we were expected to run interference for him. I didn’t think much of him as an educator, as you might be able to tell, but I didn’t wish any specific ill upon him. I later learned that he had, after being married his entire adult life, been recently widowed; because he no longer had anyone to cook for him, he was losing weight, but he also didn’t have anyone to pick out new clothes for him, and so one day, in the middle of lecture, his pants started to slowly fall down. There was a brief moment when my fellow TA and I looked at each other in horror — was it our job to intervene? — but he did eventually realize what was happening and pull them up, continuing to write on the chalkboard the entire time, and nobody ever said anything about it, not even the students, who generally liked to ask about his odd behavior during section in an attempt to avoid talking about the ancient world. This incident made a big impression on me, and I’ve thought a lot about what it says about what happens when you age or when your life circumstances abruptly change, and I bet a not insignificant number of older men go through something similar. So if I were the syndicated newspaper comic strip Marvin, I don’t think I’d be so cavalier about old people losing a bunch of weight and their pants falling down in public, because let me tell you, even though this strip is ostensibly about a baby and his parents, old people are reading it. Old people are all the comics have left! Don’t freak them out!

Archie, 3/1/25

When I was in high school, I was on the speech and debate team, and my senior year we organized a tournament at our school, with us students put in charge of doing a lot of the scut work for it. One of my tasks was to get the trophies, and let me tell you, discovering that you could just go to a store and buy a trophy that says you’re the best debater or whatever completely rewired how I thought about trophies and awards. They’re just things you can buy! They’re not even that expensive! Anyway, as a high school principal, I assume Mr. Weatherbee has a preferred trophy vendor and buys in bulk, and under those circumstances I have to imagine that temptation to do little bits like this would be overwhelming.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/1/25

Not sure why, but I really enjoy the choice to set this cartoon on a plane. They could’ve done the same joke in a restaurant, but this just seems more specific, which I like. I’m sure that smells great in an enclosed space!

Luann, 3/1/25

How’s Luann’s date with some guy named “Phil” or whatever going? Well, good news: she’s been told up front that she will not be getting any action at the end of it, which should really make it an enjoyable experience overall.