A Giant Squid Walks Into A Bar (2025)

By Trent McGee • September 29, 2025

Jim Toomey’s long-running comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon hits a major milestone with A Giant Squid Walks Into a Bar, and not because the cartoonist is announcing some major scientific discovery as squids don’t usually walk (they mostly undulate). It marks the 30th collection of daily and Sunday strips starring the man-eating (and sprinkled donuts-eating) shark and comic namesake Sherman, his reality-show loving wife Megan, uber-nerd fish Ernest, the hapless book-loving sea turtle Fillmore, and Hawthorne, the lagoon’s openly corrupt crab and mayor. 

Together, they’ll make their way through the modern world as only anthropomorphic cartoon fish and other assorted species can. That’s something you’d never find in Garfield collections.

Sherman’s Lagoon collections usually include nods to what’s been happening in the world that’s of special environmental interest to its creator, and on the menu this go-around are a few worth mentioning. Sherman and Marina the octopus travel to the coast of California to see thousands of her fellow species (note: it’s octupuses, not octopi) nesting inside an underground volcano. Did you know all octopuses are venomous? That’s something you’ll learn reading this collection, so be sure to explain this to your teacher if they catch you reading this in class. 

Sherman and Fillmore head to the South Pole to visit with a colony of Adelie penguins who relocated after their iceberg home melted. Adelie rhymes with smelly, which is appropriate given these birds really stink. That’s something else you’ll learn reading this collection, which is way more educational than most college textbooks. You’ll also learn that Grunion fish can be especially randy, but don’t get too excited; this isn’t Playboy.

The rest of the strips are business as usual for Sherman’s Lagoon, meaning short series about modern life and the struggles we all face. These are still man-eaters, however, and it’s kill or be killed in the underwater food chain, especially when your flavor can be enhanced with a little ranch sauce. Gags and moments that stood out here include celebrity watching, pickleball, decommissioned NASA space stations, artificial intelligence (and more important, artificial stupidity), flea markets, and even mocha-loving extraterrestrial invaders. Where else are you going to find an entire series about brain-enhancing smoothies?

If you’ve already bought the previous 29 collections of Sherman’s Lagoon comics, chances are good you’re the ideal consumer for A Giant Squid Walks Into A Bar, the strip’s landmark 30th boxy collection in its 34+ years of syndication. That’s an impressive run by any measure, and few have been able to stretch a concept as wild as anthropomorphic undersea man-eating sharks and friends as long and still feel fresh as Jim Toomey. The world around them may have changed, but there’s always room for a good newspaper gag.