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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/2/24

My faithful readers are all familiar with Rex Morgan, M.D., the soap opera comic strip where nothing ever happens. But what if nothing happening was a sign that … something was happening? Specifically, what if the Count not getting out his chair was a sign that Rex had misdiagnosed something much more serious as a mere ankle sprain? Sounds like an exciting malpractice lawsuit is in the cards! (We regret to inform you that lawsuits, no matter how exciting, are another situation where something happens in the form of nothing happening for long periods of time.)

Gasoline Alley, 3/2/24

Wow, this is, uh, a choice for something to say to the person you pay to live with and care for your father full-time, who is the primary person we ever see talking and listening to him. “Oh, ha ha, I didn’t mean you, Gertie, obviously. Obviously! Say, why don’t you go cook something?”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/26/24

Every once in a while, the Rex Morgan, M.D., creative team remembers the “M.D.” part of the strip title and realizes they’re supposed to be doing medical or medical-adjacent storylines. Unfortunately, they hate that, so they make them as boring as possible to ensure that we don’t demand more of them. Healing is mostly sitting around and not doing anything, if you think about it, and is that what you want to read about in a comics strip? When you could be getting more juicy gossip about what sort of drama goes on within the roots country community? I think not.

Marvin, 2/26/24

Every once in a while, the Marvin creative team remembers that they do a daily strip where the primary joke is that the main character, a baby with adult-level cognition, pisses and shits himself constantly, and enjoys it, and worry that they might be put in jail for their many crimes, so they have to do an even more off-putting strip so that a few days later, when newspapers print a strip where a Marvin grins smugly after voiding his bowels into his diaper and everyone around him recoils in disgust, the average reader thinks, “Well, at least this one isn’t about a dog contemplating a human’s genitals” rather than picking up the phone and dialing 911.

Mary Worth, 2/26/24

“It seems he’s a bachelor no more … so amazing that he’s managed to have a 20-year-old daughter in a just a few weeks!” Toby is just 100% zooted to the gills.

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Family Circus, 2/24/24

The Family Circus was originally drawn by Bil Keane, with the characters all being thinly veiled versions of him and his real family, and the Bil analogue character in the strip also worked as a cartoonist; the narrative layers only got more tangled when real-life Jeffy took over, making the occasional guest stints by “Billy, age 7” a true semiotic swamp: originally these panels were Bil pretending to be his son pretending to be him, and now they’re Jeff pretending to be his brother pretending to be their father. Anyway, here’s today panel, which features said father vividly writhing on the floor in agony!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/24/24

I guess it’s probably good that soap opera comics, a form of entertainment primarily enjoyed by the elderly and infirm, are increasingly targeting those readers with PSA-style messages about how they need to have a plan for the inevitable upcoming incident when they will have fallen and won’t be able get up, but in their shoes I personally would find it a little insulting. Dagnabbit, these older folks get plenty of bad news in the rest of the paper! When they turn to Rex Morgan, M.D., they want to see our heroes get a fat check or prance around in their underwear for a bit. They very much do not want to stare into the wizened face of their own mortality, in the form of Aunt Tildy and the “Count” here.

Mary Worth, 2/24/24

God I love this strip. Recent events have sent Keith into turmoil, but Mary? Mary is doing great. Thriving, even. Walking alone around the Charterstone grounds, serenely meditating on some of her favorite zero-content aphorisms. Truly living her best life.