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Mary Worth, 10/22/25

“Sure, she can predict the future and bend animals to her will, but not in a big showy way that would attract attention! Sort of like how you own a boat large and powerful enough to defeat entire navies from anytime before about 1850 but you just use it to putter around the harbor once a month or so, if the weather’s nice.”

Dustin, 10/22/25

I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen Dustin express any interest in comic books or geek culture before? Despite what I said yesterday about nerd stuff, this makes his personality more interesting than I frankly find plausible.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/22/25

Yeah, so these guys are just staring into big bowls of brown … soup? Chocolate? Dog food? I don’t know if it’s fattening, but it’s definitely not appetizing.

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Andy Capp, 10/21/25

I, a guy who has run a blog about comic strips for the better part of two decades now, am, as you might imagine, a huge nerd. Nevertheless, I have significant reservations about the way that nerd culture has more or less taken over the world, dominating the entertainment industry while fans still endlessly complain that their superhero pals don’t get the respect they deserve. That’s why I’m glad to see that there’s still one outpost in the comics willing to make fun of the nerds, and it makes sense that it’s the home of America’s favorite working-class British alcoholic. (Intelligent Life also makes nerds look ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure that’s not on purpose.)

Dustin, 10/21/25

You know, I focus a lot on this blog about how Dustin is constantly persecuted by the other members of his family, but let’s not forget that, in his absence, they’ll also turn on each other, with virtually every intrafamilial interaction landing on a spectrum somewhere between “passive aggressive” and “cruel.” They’re not nice people!

Hi and Lois, 10/21/25

Oh, I guess the Flagston family is OK with the library now, because they need a third place to go when Lois and her book club friends start getting drunk and belligerent and their home is no longer safe.

Heathcliff, 10/21/25

Oh yeah? Well, I like it better when you’re standing either inside the house or outside the house, rather than the MC Escherian simultaneously-inside-and-outside thing you’ve landed on here, but you don’t see me complaining about it.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/20/25

Look, I know what I’m about to say is gonna make me sound like a humorless nitpicker, but I promise that I do in fact know that the whole point of “cartooning” is that you draw a person in a funny, unrealistic way that works only when you don’t think about what exactly is going on with the parts you can’t see, under the clothes or under the skin. But I gotta nitpick it when they make you think about it! Like, love handles are just above your hips, and I’m sure the Mother Goose and Grimm house style is to think of the waist of their characters as being comically high, and that’s hard to read when they’re wearing flowing robes like this demon is, but … those are boobs, right? Saggy boobs? They don’t look like love handles at all, I’m sorry, and I’m so mad about it I can’t even go in depth on how the “hell spa” wordplay doesn’t quite work (yeah, I know it’s a pun, but do you think we on the mortal plane go to an “Earth spa,” demon??? c’mon).

Family Circus, 10/20/25

Normally, I would think the “parent makes a big show of teasing a kid when they do something good by implying that there’s something wrong with them” is not really the sort of thing you want to do if you’re really aiming to reinforce good behavior, but based on Jeffy’s face here, there’s no real danger of that, because that is one of the blankest expressions I’ve ever seen. No thoughts, only Jeffy. He is definitely not processing Ma Keane’s complicated little semiotic dance, which I guess is really just for her.