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Marvin, 2/12/26

A thing about Marvin is that over the years it has strayed further and further from the one thing that made it unique — a comic strip? about a baby? — and made Marvin more of a generic child of indeterminate age who goes to school and speaks in complete sentences. In order to “get back to its roots,” the strip is doing a flashback sequence to show us what Marvin was like when he was really a baby, like a really tiny young baby, and it turns out what he was like was infested by vermin.

Dennis the Menace, 2/12/26

You guys know I am not a fan of the “Dennis insults his mother’s cooking” Dennis the Menaces, but I gotta say I kind of enjoy this one, because (1) Dennis’s insult is fairly silly and actually the sort of thing a small child might say, and (2) we get a reaction panel showing us that Dennis is realizing how extremely sick of his shit his parents are.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/26

Hey, I have been behind on reporting on this news, but, just as both Rex and little Johnny are recovering from surgery in-strip, Rex Morgan, M.D., writer/artist Terry Beatty has been recovering from heart surgery in real life! His wife has been posting updates on his Facebook page and he seems to be on the road to recovery, but let’s keep him in our thoughts. I assume that, given long lead times, these real and fictional surgeries were not intended to coincide, just like the “Truck has to self-quarantine because he’s come down with a serious respiratory illness” storyline from the spring of 2020 was not intended to be about COVID. Does Beatty have an extremely non-fun version of the Gift of Prophecy?

Meanwhile, speaking of predictions, I’m glad to see I was sort of right when I said June would get Buck to come pick up Rex at the hospital. It’s just that he was busy! Oh, wait, I guess technically she doesn’t say he was busy, just that he was “unavailable.” Can you imagine giving Buck the opportunity to spend time with you and he brushes you off? I would be rethinking some things about my life, I tell you what.

Shoe, 2/7/26

Granted, everyone in Shoe looks extremely depressed, all the time, but that is not someone who is belting out this song in the exuberant manner of the original Bob Seger System recording. That’s a guy who’s basically whispering it to himself, perhaps in a minor key. He doesn’t need the Perfesser cracking wise at him about how bad the food is at this restaurant. He needs some time alone with himself, to ramble and gamble about in his own inner life.

Marvin, 2/7/26

This is probably a joke about how Bitsy has been neutered, but I prefer to think that he’s at long last admitting to himself that, like most characters in this strip, he’s fundamentally unlovable.

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Beetle Bailey, 2/4/26

Hey! Miss Buxley Wednesday is an honorable tradition, and it was specifically created so that elderly pervert comic strip fans could regularly get hornt up about a crude drawing of a sexy lady in a little black dress! It’s not for insulting Miss Buxley as a bad worker, and then not even showing her in the strip so people can get horny over her. This is disrespectful to Miss Buxley. I mean, doing it the other way is too, I suppose, but this way is disrespectful to the perverts too, and like it or not they keep the comics in business.

Mary Worth, 2/4/26

It’s hard to imagine a meal getting funnier after one of the participants says “Toby, I’m glad Ian finally found peace with your bird,” but then — wham! The waiter shows up with a huge salad and a big slice of pie, apparently to be eaten by two different people at the same time.

Marvin, 2/4/26

Ha ha, it’s funny because soon all of Marvin’s body parts will freeze in the bitter cold, and then eventually his unpleasant parents, who are nowhere to be seen, will be charged with criminal negligence. That’s what we in the Marvin-hating community call a “win-win”!