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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/19

Oh my god, shoutout to Rex Morgan, M.D., for pulling off the first weird plot twist that I didn’t see coming a mile away in years. I’m not sure which possibility is funnier: that crude lout T.J. really is the evil half of a pair of identical twins and Rex is about to have an extremely civilized conversation with his brother on his flight home, or that T.J. was so embarrassed by his own behavior and subsequent run-in with the law that he’s made up a wildly improbable story about being someone else.

Spider-Man, 3/24/19

Whoops, you guys, I misread that article somehow and it’s actually today that’s the last day of Newspaper Spider-Man. Sorry if I made you mourn prematurely! Anyway, this is an amazing final strip, I think we can all agree. Again, there are two almost equally hilarious possibilities. One is that the ousted creative team, out of a sense of professionalism, decided to do a final strip that quickly resets the last 30+ years of continuity so that today’s strip will flow seamlessly into the coming reruns, setting aside for the moment the fact that a minute ago the Parkers were on their way to Australia. The other is that the writer and illustrator have simply come to feel as much contempt for this iteration of Spider-Man as I do, and wanted to ensure that, when the curtain closes on his universe, he’s left in a state of misery and poverty.

Mary Worth, 3/24/19

Oh my goodness, “Arthur Z” is really … beloved TV star Danny DeVito? This is quite the scandal. What will Rhea Perlman think?

Family Circus, 3/24/19

Much as I make fun of the Family Circus for blatantly rerunning cartoons, I do enjoy some of the older ones just to catch a glimpse of the ways everyday life was different 30 or 40 years ago. There are a few nuggets embedded here — that people’s dogs used to just roam freely around upscale suburban neighborhoods, for instance, or that heavy-duty wooden crates were standard moving gear. The biggest tell that this is from another age, of course, is that Dolly is sitting in this kitchen at all. “Where’s Dolly?” Thel wonders as she looks out the window. “Enh, must’ve wandered off again. She probably can’t have gotten very far — not on those stumpy little legs!”

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/24/19

I know that the inhabitants of agricultural communities are more prone to be “early to bed, early to rise” types than us city folk, but it’s a little weird that Snuffy and Loweezy are all snug in bed and it’s broad daylight outside, right?