→2026→02→16→Comic Strips→Monday Funnies
Comic Strips

Monday Funnies

Published: February 16, 2026 1 minute 8 comments

Musical Chairs

Seven weeks plus two strips equal nine creators.

Not yet 50 days into the new year and Gil Thorp has had three different artists (Rachel Merrill, Jason Margos, Louie Chin) drawing the coach’s and his family’s melodramatic story.

Over at Dick Tracy there have been three writers (Mike Curtis, Matthew K. Manning, Eric Costello) scripting the detective’s adventures during those same 50 days. At least Thorp kept to one writer (Henry Barajas), while Tracy split the drawing chores between two artists (Charles Ettinger, Howie Noel).

100 or 108?

Ripley’s Believe It or Not by Kieran Castaño

The Ripley’s Believe It or Not dailies this month started carrying a stylized “100” embedded in the panels. Which had me wondering why. The only thing I can find regarding Ripley’s from 1926 is that on August 16, 1926 it began syndication as part of Associated Newspapers.

As best as I can read the fine print below the “100” it says “Ripley’s Est. 1918.” Maybe it is a stylized “108.”

Cowboys and Spacemen

Earlier today Mike in his Comic Strip of the Day had a bit of a cowboys vs. spacemen riff. And while I wouldn’t argue against kids as cowboys (white hats v. black hats) or soldiers being the dominant play acting activities, as today’s Peanuts Begins shows spacemen vs. aliens was on the list in The Fifties.

Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz – March 18, 1953

The King of Ego

Is it my imagination or has the John Hart Studios gotten more political these last few weeks? Certainly not on the scale of Mallard Fillmore or Prickly City or Doonesbury or Rabbits Against Magic or Bottomliners or…

But

Wizard of Id by Hart, Mastrioanni, and Parker – February 16, 2026

More so Wizard of Id than B.C. or Dogs of C-Kennel. See here, here, here, here, and here.

Previous Post
The Complete Comic Strip of the Day Archives
Next Post
CSotD: The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gub

Comments 8

  1. I’m pleasantly surprised by the recent B.C. strips. The strips around holidays, like the strips for Easter and Christmas, most recently on Apr 20, 2025, and Dec 25, 2025, have usually had religious themes. I had always thought that the creators were members of the Christian right.

  2. The new B.C. is as good as the old, and it was always political–with strong support of the Civil Rights Movement. Johnny Hart was more direct than Walt Kelly or Charles M. Schulz; he made Peter a racist and did some very powerful work in the late Sixties.
    I really enjoy the direction in the new B.C. and must follow Wizard of Id again.

  3. The Believe It or Not strips have been rerun the past couple of weeks, which may explain that 100 logo. Hope Kieran Castano is okay!

    1. I hadn’t noticed those ©2019 stamps.

  4. What? “Brzaaap“? I thought space guns went “Pew! Pew! Pew!“

    1. I think pew-pew-pew came in with Star Wars, which would be well after that strip and those days.

      We never played space games. We did cowboys and Indians, and WWII, plus my friends and I played Swamp Fox, but perhaps because we lived in a for-real forest, which might also explain why our version of WWII was always being fought in the Pacific Theater.

      Interesting demographic: My contemporaries who were eldest in their families had fathers who had fought in Korea, while middle kids like me had dads who were WWII vets. But Korean War movies were all human-wave stuff, which you can’t replicate with eight or ten kids.

      And we didn’t have a lot of space stories to draw from — Flash Gordon was for the generation before us, and most sci-fi movies were like “Earth vs the Flying Saucers,” which didn’t really involve one-to-one combat.

      We played a little Zorro, but that was a good way to put your eye out!

  5. There was that Easter Sunday B.C. strip that caused some controversy; a Menorah morphing into a Cross with New Testament text. People considered it antisemitic.

    1. That was just one of several instances of questionable evangelism that Johnny Hart produced. While Mason Mastroianni may indulge in politics, my impression is that the strip has been “relatively” free of religion since he took over in 2007.

Comments are closed.

Search

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get a daily recap of the news posted each day.
^ Top