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Daddy Daze, 1/30/26

To me, the jury is still out on whether the Daddy Daze baby is actually expressing meaningful language in the form of a series of “ba”s that only the Daddy Daze daddy can understand, or if the Daddy Daze daddy simply maps his current obsessions onto his son’s meaningless babbling. Today’s strip is about one of them morbidly fixating on the idea of staring down an elephant and being trampled to death by it, and frankly I don’t think it really matters which one. These guys are really going through it! Or maybe just one of them is! But either way!

Shoe, 1/30/26

Speaking of guys who are really going through it, I know that Shoe and the Perfesser have worked together so long that they bicker like an old married couple, but “You underestimate me, but my time is coming!” is the sort of thing said between spouses in an old couple whose long marriage is abruptly ended by murder-suicide.

Heathcliff, 1/30/26

Let’s, ahhh, let’s get a little more upbeat, shall we? Look at these fellas, just sitting at the kitchen table with feedbags strapped to their faces, quietly snarfing whatever kibble’s in there. This right here is the cure to the male loneliness epidemic. Not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the Feedbag Friday moment.

Judge Parker, 1/30/26

Thank you Ann, this is what everyone who reads this strip has been trying to say for months

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Heathcliff, 1/29/26

Grandpa Nutmeg typically gets mad at Heathcliff for failing to deal with his house’s endemic mouse problem, but I actually think his anger is out of place here. The mice are already outside! I don’t think it’s fair to say that mice aren’t allowed to be on your property. The fact that they’re building a majestic snow sculpture that will come to be a widely admired tourist attraction and, eventually, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is neither here nor there. Let the mice be, Grandpa Nutmeg!

Gearhead Gertie, 1/29/26

Gertie, I don’t mean to step out of bounds here, but if you are unable to experience pleasure or joy knowing that your special interest is out of season, have you considered that you might benefit from therapy? Just like NASCAR heroes Cody Ware and William Byron have? Admitting you need help isn’t an expression of weakness — and you don’t want mental health issues “slowing you down,” if I may speak your language for a moment!

Mary Worth, 1/29/26

“Toby, a longtime resident of Southern California, is inspired to learn Spanish by her new parrot” is a truly amazing place for this storyline to land. We have, I believe, achieved a new level of Peak Toby, and we should all celebrate it.

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Blondie, 1/28/26

Oh, man, I was all ready to go on a riff about how this is clearly a joke about the idea of a celebrity “hall pass,” e.g., the idea that a monogamous couple would give permission to each other to sleep with specific celebrity crushes, safe in the knowledge that it’s never going to actually happen, but then got sanitized down to the idea of “dining” with a celebrity, even though “dining” is transparently not what this is about, but then I got to the last panel and discovered that the Blondie brain trust is aware of the existence of Sydney Sweeney, and I’m sorry, that’s way too contemporary a reference. Nobody in Blondie should know about anything that’s happened after, oh, let’s say, 2013. “Is Emily Ratajkowski on their list?” is a punchline I’ll allow for this one. Anyone newer than that? No thanks.

Mark Trail, 1/28/26

Speaking of things that are and are not new, what about nature? Pretty old, right? Old and boring? It’s existed for billions of years? Well what about phones though? What if there were a nature crisis … about kids and phones, and kids stealing each other’s nature photography, via phones? That’d be pretty cutting edge, right? The perfect mix of the old and the new? A falcon, right there on your phone? Mark Trail is going to have to punch file metadata by the end of this somehow?