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Wizard of Id, 10/3/25

It absolutely makes sense that people hear “New York” and think of New York City — the city is a world cultural capital, is the economic engine of the state and indeed much of the country, and a majority of the state population lives either in the city itself or its immediately adjacent suburbs. Still, when you grow up (like I did) in a very different kind of city that happens to be at the complete opposite end of the state, you get a little whiplash when you hear about things happening in “New York.” For instance, when New York legalized marijuana for recreational use, I was already living in Los Angeles, another megacity that was ahead of the curve on that one, so the idea of people in Brooklyn or Manhattan being able to buy weed at some high-end hipster dispensary absolutely made sense. But legalization was a state decision, not a city one, and going home to the Buffalo area and seeing janky stores in suburban strip malls near where my parents live named things like “The Devil’s Lettuce” was significantly weirder. Anyway, that’s kind of how I feel about newspaper comics doing weed legalization jokes. This topic belongs in alternative comics on the seedy internet! Not in the newspaper in front of God and everybody!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/25

I was trying to imagine what hedonistic and shocking activity the assembled Ameripolitans would be engaged in when Rex and June turn around and sneak back to the wedding as it gets later and wilder to see if they can make off with enough wedding cake to satiate their greedy children. Honestly doesn’t seem like an orgy crowd, but maybe … cocaine? Hard rocking country musicians, many of whom are older guys who probably came of age in the ’80s … they’ve moved on from booze to coke at this point, right? Never mind what I said up above about the Wizard of Id, I’m a blogger on the seedy internet and I’m allowed to make these jokes.

Mary Worth, 10/3/25

Damn, Mary, can’t you just be pleased and satisfied that these dogs Incredible Journeyed it here to see you? Do you need their drippy human owners to show up too? Why is nothing anyone does ever good enough for you?

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Gearhead Gertie, 10/2/25

I was actually visiting a friend in Durham on the day Dale Earnhardt died, a date that I will always think of as “North Carolina’s 9/11,” so I know the strong feelings that his life and death elicit, and hopefully I’m not about to step out of line in this post, but: Dale Earnhardt died in a car crash during the Daytona 500? Because he ran into a wall at 160 miles an hour? And had previously complained about some rules that NASCAR had changed that slowed down races, and so NASCAR tweaked the rules again for the “aerodynamic package” allowed for cars, in order to (in the words of the remarkably detailed Wikipedia article on the subject) “keep cars bunched up close together and to allow more frequent passing at high speed”? Anyway, Gearhead Gertie has been a lot of business about her petty gripes with her husband lately, so I’m pretty excited that today’s panel is about Dale Earnhardt’s ghost or soul or whatever, which has been trapped in a photo on Gertie’s end table, saying, “Learn no lessons from my death. Go faster. Ever faster. Never slower. If they tell you to slow down, tell ’em to go to hell and leave them in your dust.”

Mary Worth, 10/2/25

Santa Royale is a bucolic California seaside college town, a fairly transparent stand-in for Santa Barbara, so it’s very funny that we suddenly have introduced into canon the idea that it’s immediately adjacent to a vast, dense forest, with no cell reception. I assume that Saul is terrified because he knows it’s full of … brigands? Wolves? Fae folk? Looking forward to finding out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/2/25

Look, I’ve talked a lot of shit about the roots country Americana Ameripolitan scene on this blog, but I’m not such a hater that I won’t admit that a wedding full of musicians who are all playing for one another would be extremely fun and interesting! Not Rex and June, though. They need to go home and go to bed. They’re very boring people!

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Dennis the Menace, 10/1/25

I was thinking the other day about how Dagwood Bumstead and Hi Flagston have extremely generic jobs. Technically Dagwood is an “office manager” and Hi is the “head of the eastern sales team,” but we literally never see them doing anything at work that might match up with those descriptions; instead, we just get “office” hijinks that could involve anyone in any white collar professional setting. Lois and Blondie, meanwhile, who got jobs in the ’80s and ’90s, respectively, got the much more specific (and female-coded) jobs of realtor and caterer, respectively, and while I wouldn’t say the strips about them are exactly gold mines of laffs, I do in general think specific settings are funnier than bland and generic ones.

Some comics dads do get pretty specific jobs, mind you: Calvin’s dad was, like Bill Watterson’s, a patent attorney, Walt in Zits is an orthodontist, and Henry Mitchell, at least in some character iterations, has been an aerospace engineer. I’m not sure if this version of Henry is still in that line of work, but if so he should be absolutely embarrassed about trying to program his smart TV, a task that any idiot could tell you is achieved by use of the remote control and on-screen menus, with a wrench. He should also be embarrassed by even joking about putting Dennis to work on this, as his son is notoriously pretty stupid.

Mary Worth, 10/1/25

I wasn’t sure how exactly Olive’s psychic summoning was going to work, but I don’t think I ever would have guessed that the answer would be “the dogs will run along the side of the road while Saul and Eve fail to overtake them in their puce Buick.” I think it’s very funny that Mary and the gang are in a remote enough area that their phones don’t work but close enough to civilization that two dogs could run to them without dropping dead from exhaustion.

The Phantom, 10/1/25

The Phantom is in the midst of a storyline where our hero is breaking up a forced labor camp in Ivory Lana that’s been perfectly serviceable if not interesting enough to comment on here. But today’s panel put the phrase “SHADOW CROTCH — STRIPEY ASS” into my brain on repeat and if I have to think about it, now you do too!