Bypassing GoComics’ paywall
Some two weeks ago, I noticed that GoComics.com introduced a paywall, something like this: you display like 14 comics, then you’re asked to pay. For fuck’s sake, that’s preposterous!
So I looked for and found two workarounds, but each one needed adjustments.
UPDATE (mid-July 2026): After the latest site updates, the previous workarounds do not work anymore! 😿 The fix is to use my app linked to below 👇😉
UPDATE (April 2026): ComicStripBrowser now runs on Windows and supports Comics Kingdom too!
What I usually read on GoComics
Life is too short, so I don’t visit more than these strips but I visit many more comics than listed below:
- Calvin and Hobbes — of course they are reruns, but this is the best comic strip in the known universe!
- Peanuts and Peanuts Begins — another classic, and the second-best comic strip, although it seems to be the most famous American classic strip, from Japan to Italy.
- Garfield — unavoidable.
- Wizard of Id and Wizard of Id Classics — can you see a pattern here? The classics are the “true” ones.
- Pearls before Swine — too bad the crocs are not present more often!
- Shoe — because I always loved it.
- B.C. and Back to B.C. — from the maker of the Wizard of Id. Again, “Back to” is the original. Mastroianni is not that good.
- Pickles — I’m not that old, but I can feel the pain!
- WuMo — a bit too modern sometimes.
A couple of tips now.
● The pictures on GoComics are grainier in recent times than they used to be. Right-click, Open Image in New Tab, and you’ll see why: the URL is something like this:
Well, just remove the crap at the end:
https://featureassets.gocomics.com/assets/d94d7b20f07e013d992c005056a9545d
● There are some sites with search engines for comic strips:
- Search in Calvin and Hobbes — not perfect, though. Some unexpected errors can be frustrating. Also, reruns won’t be mentioned.
- Search in Peanuts — almost perfect, but, obviously, it only shows one of the occurrences of a specific strip, not all of its reruns; also, not the alternances monochrome/color or horizontal/vertical.
- Search in Pearls Before Swine — not without errors, unfortunately.
- For Garfield: this one can be used for searching, and this one for displaying in bulk.
How about Comics Kingdom?
Not everything American is on GoComics. There is much more on Comics Kingdom, such as:
- A strip a day style: Beetle Bailey, Bizarro, Blondie, The Brilliant Mind Of Edison Lee, Dennis The Menace, The Family Circus, Pluggers; and Shoe can also be read here.
- Long stories serialized in daily pieces: Dick Tracy, Judge Parker, Mandrake the Magician, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan M.D.
💡 Joshua Fruhlinger is a fan of such comics, and you’ll find selections with sometimes sarcastic comments on The Comics Curmudgeon.
I do have a small tip here, too. There’s a way someone could write a script to programmatically navigate and download strips from this site.
Say you go to https://comicskingdom.com/brilliant-mind-of-edison-lee/2016-02-28 with Firefox. Ctrl+U to view the source. Ctrl+F and search for either of og:image or twitter:image. You’ll then find as content the URL of the image; in this case, https://wp.comicskingdom.com/comicskingdom-redesign-uploads-production/2016/02/The-Brilliant-Mind-Of-Edison-Lee.ENG_.2016-02-28.jpeg
The rule used to form such URLs is obvious, so a script to mass download the archives of one’s preferred strip should be easy to design.
Unfortunately, this only works for older strips. Newer strips have random image names. Say you go to https://comicskingdom.com/brilliant-mind-of-edison-lee/2025-04-18 — you’ll find that the actual comic strip is https://wp.comicskingdom.com/comicskingdom-redesign-uploads-production/2025/04/Y2tUaGUgQnJpbGxpYW50IE1pbmQgT2YgRWRpc29uIExlZS1FTkctNDk3NTQ1Mg.jpg, so a visit to a page’s source is required. But this could be scripted too!
There’s an important mention to be made regarding GoComics, because SOMETIMES the site does not redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.
Say you’re using a search in Calvin and Hobbes and you want to open a result, say this one.
IF and only if you get an Azure error, make sure the URL starts with https, like so.
Asking Copilot why isn’t there any Calvin and Hobbes® 2026 Day-to-Day Calendar: copilot.microsoft.com/shares/g3ec4eDzMgbSKfeiTaoF1.
From the answer, I very much appreciated this snippet:
And I found this quite informative:
I just wanted to add that my nieces and nephews who are around 10 years old, they’re deep into screens, tablets, video games, Netflix, YouTube, etc., as you would expect. Harry Potter movies, video games, trivia games, mugs, clothes, etc. Ditto for Frozen, all the usual suspects. But.
They LOVE Calvin and Hobbes. Even though there is no show or movie to watch, no video game to play, no stuffed animals to buy. They LOVE Calvin and Hobbes and have read the books over and over. The younger brother used to wait at the door for the older brother to get home from school, so he could throw a stuffed tiger at him right when he walked in the door.
It’s incredible to me how timeless the strip is. And still booming today without any of that extra crap. Just his original drawings and nothing else.
Indeed, I hate how they diluted so many strips through animations, games, paraphernalia, anything that can be exploited via franchising. This applies not only to Peanuts but, e.g., to Garfield, which is still drawn by Jim Davis as daily strips. But the longer stories are fake. Franchise.
As I am multilingual, I was also saddened to learn that they made animation movies and even real films for Boule et Bill (Billy and Buddy in English), and Gaston Lagaffe (Gomer Goof in English). Atrocious.
Your nieces and nephews are smart kids. I’m happy for them and for you!
Continuing my previous quest on comic strips, I questioned Grok this time, only to find out that it’s stupid and useless. It refused to acknowledge that Andrews McMeel Publishing’s Day-to-Day Calendars are based on sequential block selections from previous years. Sometimes, one’s own hand is a better fix, so I investigated and found that, not counting for small changes due to the position of weekends, leap years, and small skips (possibly due to political correctness), these are the patterns used:
● For Pearls Before Swine, the 2026 calendar is the 2024 contiguous set of daily strips. Hence, “year minus 2.”
● For Garfield, the 2026 calendar is the 2022 contiguous set of daily strips. Hence, “year minus 4.”
● For Peanuts, the 2026 calendar is the 1976 contiguous set of daily strips. Hence, “year minus 50.”
NOTE: Dilbert is now a moot topic because of politics (the calendar is independently published, and previous strips are no longer freely available online). Calvin and Hobbes NEVER had a Day-to-Day Calendar.
Grok had no choice but to accept my findings: grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk%3D_0a1e9817-9d33-444a-82ec-092d0c1f4821
You are a hero. Thank you!
I’ve been using the uBlockOrigin solution without problem for a while but it’s stopped working. I just tried the Tampermonkey one and it results in errors and the comics don’t load at all.
The reason I have used these is because I can’t even become a member of Go Comics since I live outside the US.
Indeed, it doesn’t work anymore; I should update the post.
Thanks :^) I’ll try that and keep an eye on this page as well!
I updated the 1st fix, and now it works again to bypass GoComics’ paywall! It also works in Firefox for Android.
💥 Michael Yingling’s Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine is no more.
😻 Michael Yingling’s Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine is working again!