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Mary Worth, 7/8/25

“God damn it,” you’ve probably said to yourself, repeatedly over the past few months, “Are we going to get a non-Weston recurring character in Mary Worth at some point, or are we trapped in some kind of No Exit-style hell with Wilbur and Dawn specifically?” Well, good news: Olive is back, everybody! Johnnys-[gender neutral]-come-lately may not remember that Olive was a little girl who lived at Charterstone, who had psychic powers and maybe talked to angels, though that could’ve all been a side effect of her “tummy brain.” She was largely neglected by her parents because they were so horny, though they did try to have her special powers removed by a doctor, but he later turned out to be a junkie, so they ended up not doing that after all. Then they moved to New York, and usually when people leave Charterstone and/or Mary’s immediate field of vision they’re dead to her, but she actually visited Olive in the Big Apple and bought her a watch, and also checked in with a guy she had previously sexually rejected in the context of high-stakes cake-baking competition, but that’s not really related to Olive so we’ll forget that for now. Anyway, Mary’s going back to New York City, baby! What psychic adventures will she and Olive get up to? Will she meet up with another former beau, possibly handsome Broadwaysman Ken Kensington, who she flirted with on a different trip to New York while Jeff was busy saving lives in Vietnam or whatever and only didn’t hook up with because New York’s traffic was simply too scary for her. I am excited, obviously! Very excited! Wilbur better not fuck this one up, somehow!

Dennis the Menace, 7/8/25

I’m not sure if Henry’s facial expression here is meant to indicate “Jesus Christ, George, what exactly are you doing with my son that’s causing a repetitive motion injury” or “Jesus Christ, George, I’m leaving at this hour of the morning specifically so I don’t have to talk to anybody, why are you talking to me about Dennis, who I very much do not want to think or talk about”

Bizarro, 7/8/25

Wait, so human skeletons are also the grim reapers for reptiles and insects? That’s not right. I object both on philosophical grounds and because seeing a drawing of a mayfly skeleton in a cloak would’ve been much funnier.

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Luann, 7/7/25

Hey kids, we all love Wilbur, the sad loser who has an off-putting relationship with his fish. But did you know there’s another such person in the comics — and she’s a lady? That’s right, it’s Bernice, Luann’s friend from Luann! Unlike Wilbur, who named his fish after himself and his ex, Bernice has given hers the whimsical name “Mr. Monstro.” Also unlike Wilbur, Bernice is capable of introspection, as the final panel makes clear, not that it’s really doing her any good.

Marvin, 7/7/25

Marvin is usually a light-hearted strip about a baby who won’t stop shitting himself and the parents and classmates who hate him, but real heads remember that there was a plotline in 2008 when Jenny’s parents lost their retirement savings in the Great Financial Crisis and had to move in with the Millers to escape destitution. I guess they ultimately got back on their feet again, though the fact that Marvin’s grandfather is excited to be hired for what I assume is a fairly low-paying and thankless job where you’re pretty much always on call in your own home tells me their finances never fully recovered. Obviously going back to their daughter’s house is not an option, though, not least because their son-in-law still won’t let them forget the last time they had to do it.

Wizard of Id, 7/7/25

I’m sorry, man, it’d be one thing if the Wiz were using his mystical powers to create chimeric combinations of natural beasts. But throw the word “breeding” in there and there’s really no other way to interpret this as “the Wizard of Id is somehow getting a whole bunch of different kinds of animals to have sex with horses.” There may not even be any magic involved.

Alice, 7/7/25

Big news, everybody: Alice is finally gonna get laid! And good for her.

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Crock, 7/6/25

I like the fact that Crock reruns are keeping their publication year in the strip now because you can tell exactly the era that created the dated and terrible joke you’re reading. Like, I guess in [squints] 1997, if you were 67-year-old cartoonist, the valence of “computer virus” would be “a thing that might happen to a nerd, which I take to be meaningless as a setback (since nothing that happens on a computer is real) and therefore proof of how soft these dorks are and how ludicrous the thought of one of them joining the Legion would be.” Today, of course, having your PC or phone infected with malware could result in major financial damage or identity theft on the sort of life-ruining level that would make joining the Legion seem like your only option, so this strip definitely hits different today.

Pluggers, 7/6/25

I assume that all of you faithful readers have different long-ago bits of Deep Lore about joshreads dot com ready for quick recall; personally, one of my favorites is how in the summer of 2006 four comics did jokes about how WILD it was that people would PAY EXTRA for jeans that were ALREADY TORN??? Anyway, one of those comics was Pluggers, obviously, and it was a defiant, contemptuous panel of a plugger throwing a pair of torn-up jeans in the garbage to show what he thought of the kids today and their depraved values. Today’s panel instead shows a plugger being humiliated by his own thrift and/or giant ass, with the fact that young people like the torn jeans look mentioned in a value-neutral way, as a comparison by which pluggers frankly suffer. Perhaps it makes me a plugger to feel slightly sad that it’s come to this!

Shoe, 7/6/25

Not thrilled about how Roz seems to be openly leering in the first panel here. It’s not just me, right? That’s the face of a woman who hopes to be treated to a story about how this lady and the Shoe had sex at the opera, in front of God and the tenor and everybody?

Blondie, 7/6/25

You know that I rely on Blondie to keep me up to date on what the old people are up to these days, and today’s strip confirms what I’m hearing from other sources: what the old people are into these days is pickleball.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/6/25

The Lockhorns aren’t into pickleball, though! Just more proof that they are, in fact, millennials.