Comic Strips

The Many Loves of Monday Comics

There is a certain joy when the Monday comic strips come around. Monday is when changes (art and stories) usually happen, though there are outliers (Tauhid Bondia seems to ignore this tradition).

So Monday comes around and we have so many questions springing to mind:

Will Rachel Merrill return as the Gil Thorp artist? (she does)

Will there be a brand new MUTTS? (no, but stay tuned for later in the week)

Olga? (not today)

Will the pantomime Lio be truly pantomime? (yes)

Is Gary Hallgren still drawing Hagar the Horrible? (he is, as evidenced by his initialing the strip)

Will Danae and Lucy show up in Non Sequitur? (not since it went three new strips a week a month ago)

Will Mark Trail have an animal in the foreground? (yes, the tradition continues)

And many more.

Anyway…

Free Range by Bill Whitehead – August 3, 2026

Some of our readers may think we at The Daily Cartoonist communicate with each other about our posts, but we aren’t that organized around here. Any real collusion happens once in a blue moon. So when I was reading Mike’s Comic Strip of the Day column today about the shape of things as they are now, I kept expecting the Arctic Circle and Free Range comics, that I had marked for synchronicity, to appear. And was happy that it turned out I could still use them, though they can still be used as a preface to Mike’s CSotD.

As Mike noted there are those who insist climate is a natural phenomenon and nothing mankind does can affect it one way or the other. And then there are those like Willy who take a laissez faire attitude.

More Synchronicity

Macanudo by Liniers – August 3, 2026
Mallard Fillmore by Loren Fishman – August 3, 2026

As anyone reading Mike’s column knows there has been a plethora of Trojan Horse cartoons of late and now the comic strips, which are usually created four to six weeks before publication, are catching up with the editorial cartoonists. Only the comic strips may be referencing that Qatar jet rather than the current Odyssey movie. As Mallard Fillmore notes our President, like Brewster Rockit, will accept any free gift.

Does anyone else notice the tide is turning as far as MAGA ‘Mericans blindly following their Dear Leader?

Miscellanea

As Bill Griffith has undertaken an autobiographical comic as his next graphic memoir it seems his past life is becoming an increasing topic of his Zippy strips. That’s a good thing, in my humble opinion (at least I understand the references).

Not that Griffith was ever shy about going down that lane.

I guess Stephan Pastis has broken the “ass” barrier with his Wise Ass on the Hill and now the word is free for all newspaper comic strips. Being a newspaper comic reader for longer than most Americans have been alive it still startles me. Which is not to say I take offense.

I don’t know if it was my Laugh of the Day, but today’s Close to Home was my Favorite of the Day.

Though Greg Evans makes it touch and go with his barely discernible “infinity art” in Luann:

Luann by Evans – 20260803 closeup

Speaking of Hell and circling back to the state of the planet.

I live in The Big Valley and the MUTTS comic’s digital wallpaper for August describes what it feels like now.

Steve Brower
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Steven Brower – RIP

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