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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/28/25

Imagine: You’ve just finished putting together the script for a perfectly serviceable Barney Google and Snuffy Smith strip, which hinges on wordplay around the phrase “Mr. Right.” But then you remember: in Hootin’ Holler patois, they never say “mister”; they say “mistopher.” Does this make the joke clunkier and weirder, and leave the reader wondering if “mistopher” itself is part of the punchline? Well, yes. But it doesn’t matter. You are the keeper of the sacred trust that is Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. You must scrupulously adhere to the lore, or else what’s the point? Would you jettison decades of tradition for a single day’s laugh? You wouldn’t dare.

Pluggers, 8/28/25

The joke here is whatever, but I’m very unsettled by the look on this plugger’s face as he approaches the bathroom. He looks like he knows he has a journey of awful discovery in store for him in there, and it is not reading-media-related. It’s something much darker and more visceral; he knows something awful is about to begin, but he can’t guess when or how it will end.

Heathcliff, 8/28/25

The robot’s smooth, featureless crotch is a reminder that cybernetic organisms are ghastly parodies of humanity, lacking the natural urges and drives that, troublesome as they may be, make us people. Grandma Nutmeg’s right to demand it be hidden from sight!

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B.C., 8/27/25

A fun thing that happened in B.C. about halfway through the decade or so when I was ignoring it is that the Cute Chick and the Fat Broad got renamed “Grace” and “Jane,” respectively. So, congrats to both of them! I bring this up because the setup to this strip seems to be that Jane went out onto this boat with Curls and her cat, and she told him something about “catfishing” that he didn’t really understand, but he didn’t ask her any follow-up questions for whatever reason. Would he have been so deferential if she was still known only as “the Fat Broad?” Doubtful!

Gil Thorp, 8/27/25

Football season is underway in the Valley Conference! Glad to see in panel one that the refs don’t let a little light-to-medium face-masking interfere with everyone having a good time. Sure, a few necks will be broken, but the surviving players will be even tougher, and within a few generations we’ll have a whole community full of supernecked athletes! Let’s take the long view here.

Alice, 8/27/25

Panels like this are classics of the “A cartoonist experiences something incredibly mundane in their daily life and decides it would make a good comic for some reason” genre, but when Alice does that, it really makes me worry about the origins of the strips with the aliens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/27/25

Oh, I’m sorry, did you not want to explore your newly discovered familial connection to Cody? Well get ready to be struck dead by an angry God, buddy!!!

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Six Chix, 8/26/25

Look, in the Tuesday Chixiverse, people have sex with sandwiches and pizza, so I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss out of hand anything anyone suggested to me about how reproduction works there.

Hi and Lois, 8/26/25

I really love Lois’s face in the second panel here. She’s like, “Oh shit! Oh fuck! They’re right! This is why I never sell any houses!”

Dustin, 8/26/25

FINE, I’LL ADMIT IT, THEY FINALLY MADE A DUSTIN THAT I LAUGHED AT, I’M NOT MADE OF STONE