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Rhymes With Orange, 10/19/26

Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if a tortoise made glasses out of his own shell, and tried to sell them from a little stand at the side of the road, while he was dying, literally dying, because a tortoise’s shell isn’t just a container or an outfit, it’s a part of his skeleton and he can’t survive without it? It’s marginally funnier than if a happy beshellèd tortoise was selling the glasses and there was a pile of shucked and mangled tortoise corpses behind him, I guess.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/19/26

It’s really funny that Rex Morgan, M.D., used to be a strip where the main characters got free stuff all the time and now it’s the strip that teaches you to manage your expectations that anything might change your life for the better in a truly significant way. Like, did your book (you can’t make enough from selling books to live off of anymore,FYI) get optioned by Hollywood? Great! Almost nothing that gets optioned ever gets made, by the way. The realistic best case scenario is that every other year some low-ranking executive at whatever conglomerated streaming service inherited the option rights from its predecessor companies realizes that the option is about to lapse, and instead of trying to figure out if anyone is actually developing something based on your IP, they just renew the option and send you another four-digit check. That’s a nice little bit of change, if you’ve still got a regular job, which you hopefully do! Use it to take your girlfriend out for Thai food and stick the rest in your 401k, that’s my advice!

Judge Parker, 10/19/26

Once again there was Neddy-Charlotte-April drama arising from April’s inability to attend to parental duties after being whisked off by the CIA for interrogation, and there was a lot of hurt feelings that were papered over by apologies that were not accompanied by explanations. This could go on forever, so Charlotte is taking matters into her own hands by joining, or possibly founding, a leftist paramilitary gang. Take that, mother!

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Blondie, 10/9/26

I really kind of enjoy Dagwood’s emotional rollercoaster here. The man on the TV says that “with 3D printing, anyone can become an action figure,” which I guess is a very muddled way of saying “with 3D printing you can make an action figure that looks like anyone,” but whatever, the point is that Dagwood immediately and 100% buys into it, because a guy on TV said it! They wouldn’t let him say it on TV if it weren’t true! But then Dithers tells him that actually, not everyone can become an action figure, and Dagwood can’t in particular, which he has no choice but to believe because his boss is telling him this, and his boss wouldn’t lie to him, would he? The very idea is unthinkable.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/9/26

We’ve gotten plenty of hints that Mud used to be kind of a terror because of problems with alcohol and/or drugs, but I’d like to believe that Mae Mae is hinting at the fact that this wasn’t the first time Mud pretended to shit himself onstage.

Shoe, 10/9/26

The thing about the comic strip Shoe is that it’s basically a multidecade project to see if newspapers around the country will print a picture of a bird-man who looks profoundly unwell every single day, and quite frankly I’m proud of the success it’s found!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/7/26

Back in the day, when he was first introduced into this comic strip, Mud Mountain Murphy used to be depicted as a giant of a man who loomed over everybody and spoke in boldface at all times. He seems to have chilled out/shrunk a bit since then, but as a tall guy I’m pretty sure that he may be talking a good game about the structural changes to the film industry, where multiplexes with access to bulk concession purchases are simply more labor-efficient and profitable than traditional single-screen theaters, but he’s probably thinking about the comfy recliners all the new movie theaters have as a matter of course.

Dennis the Menace, 10/7/26

Here’s a fun little game to play. It’s called “What’s Keeping Dennis Aloft?” Clearly his feet aren’t on the ground, but [audience shouts each word] WHAT’S! KEEPING! DENNIS! ALOFT! Is he standing on that chair, despite the fact that its shading matches the house and it seems like it’s supposed to be several feet behind him? Does he have superhuman wrist strength, so that the hand that seems so casually rested on Mr. Wilson’s stomach is actually bearing the child’s entire weight? Is he just kind of floating? Does Dennis have floating powers? It would be pretty menacing if he could just float in mid-air, right?