Wednesday quickies
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Hi and Lois, 7/16/25
Hmm, if you have to apply, it isn’t really Trixie’s pre-school yet, is it, Hi? Really makes you think (about how modern child-rearing is an agonizing treadmill of chasing status that starts at birth and has no end in sight).
Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/25
“Whoever he is, tell him to meet me at the crossroads and I’ll beat him in a guitar-pickin’ contest! Then I’ll be your dad!”
Pluggers, 7/16/25
Ha ha, you can’t fool me, Pluggers! “Go home” implies that pluggers are going someplace else in the first place and you know I don’t buy that.
98 replies to “Wednesday quickies”
RMMD:
“If it’s any consolation, ‘son,’ your mother used to lie to me all the time, too!”
RMMD:
Truck appears to be reaching across the fourth wall for suggestions from us on who the real dad might be. So I’ll start: Mud Mountain Murphy.
Rex Morgan Mashups: Missing final panels. The answer to the question, “who’s the father?” is revealed.
Family Circus Mashup: You knew this was coming.
RMMD: Rex! Rex is his dad! Plot twist!
Indeed, Rex is his dad! Just look at his face! He looks exactly like Rex Morgan with sideburns!
RMMD: Worst reboot of “Mamma Mia!” ever.
“That’s not what I expected, Truck”. That’s because you did not read “What to expect when you are expecting (male edition) your paternity test result”
RMMD- Haven’t really been following this story line but I have questions. So there’s a LIST? How many names on THE LIST? (Not really familiar with how these DNA reports work). Who’s on the top of THE LIST? What’s their probability? So many questions. Oh, and BTW Truck, stop eyeballing me, you’re creeping me out, okay?
Crankshaft: I’ve actually been to that HoJo’s!
Gasoline Alley: Heed the warning, as we’re located in a state where anyone can call themselves an automotive engineer.
That Plugger doesn’t look excited. He looks panicky, as if he’s sitting on a toilet bomb like the one Danny Glover sat on in Lethal Weapon 3. And since he’s a Plugger, he’s definitely too old for this shit.
MW: “What an AGE that is! I got my first period when I was 14!”
RMMD: One thing we’ve learned. Cody’s mother has a type.
H&L: In a cover-your-ass moment, Lois realizes that Trixie might be better off in pre-school rather than left alone in an empty house for hours at a time.
@Baja Gaijin:
Oh, it’s Mud Mountain, that’s for sure. At least if logic applies.
Trixie may be filled with the same malaise as the rest of her family, a malaise so deep that not even magenta carpet can cheer them up, but she’s already mastered the art of the convincing fake smile. She might just be OK.
RMMD: Not only does Cody look like Rex with sideburns but he’s got the pissyface down pat.
MW: Half a glass of wine is all it takes for Mary and Jeff to start fantasizing about banging each other back when they were teenagers.
@Bob Tice: Well to be fair, Truck use to lie in his mother and….
I’ll see myself out now.
H&L: This strip is too real. Dial back the parental malaise a bit, please.
Pluggers: My favourite Pluggers are the ones where the Plugger is side-eying the camera, as if we’ve just snuck into their backyard to spy on their precious nothing-doing time.
Considering Trixie has been a preverbal infant for decades, I’m pretty sure it’s always too early to apply for her preschool, actually.
MW: No, Jeff. The proper response when Mary is praising herself is to join in on the lavishing of praise on her. Indicating that you, as well, posess maturity and knowledge is NOT what Mary wants to hear, and it’s not gonna get you a closed-mouthed peck on the lips tonight.
JP: April proceeds to pummel all the guests in the cafe. She gets to Sophie and says; “Hey! I know you. Your sister wrote that horrible TV show.” Punches her in the face.
RMMD: So, which will be the bigger Root Country hit; “Even Though I Beat Her, She Shouldna Been a Cheater” or “Mama Lied and Then She Died, Who’s My Daddy Now?”
H&L: Trixie in pre-school? Fine, go ahead and play fast and loose with the space/time continuum. It’s not like she’s 71 or something.
DT: tomorrow and the day after we’ll gradually get the details – what the attacker looked like, and that crazy fluidic electrogun.
MW: Are we hinting towards a New York Freaky Friday Adventure! Please make it so! Mary and Olivia while walking enter a curio shop and while they are admiring an ancient relic – both of them remark how they wish they could be a different age. Bam, one CGI sequence later, Mary is now in the body of the 14 year old, and Olivia is stick inside Mary’s old husk. Hilarity ensues! Mary is full of hormonal surges and Olivia realizes Mary has working credit cards. Mary prank calls Jeff, Wilbur and all of the other denizens of the condo. Olivia uses the cards to rack up tickets to Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Elish, and Chappelle Roan.
RMMD: Truck: I was right, she was running around on me!
Flash gordon: Fast work! The unique bite marks of Mane.
REX MORGAN M.D.: “Well then, who the heck is?”
Um…whoever was sleeping with Cody’s mother around the same time you were. That’s how that works dude. Duh!
RMMD: Your mama was cheatin’ on me? Tell me who he is, boy. TELL ME WHO HE IS! Why, I’m gonna find that no-good critter and beat the livin’ shi…ah, who’m I kiddin’, I’m too old for that crap. Go get your not-daddy a beer and lets do some git-tar pickin’.
TIL that I’m a Plugger.
So they dragged out the revelation of the paternity tests for weeks, only for…nothing to happen? Oh, this is good Rex Morgan, M.D., it is the best Rex Morgan, M.D.
Also Rex Morgan, M.D.: Mud Mountain! Rex Morgan!! Mystery hobo who turned into a one-night stand! I feel like we’re sleeping on Rene Belluso’s role in this. Has anyone checked that kid for a gap in his front teeth?
Trixie is deluding herself. The Flagstons are not in the “apply early for pre-school because only the best babies get into this one” demographic, they are in the “apply early for pre-school because there’s one pre-school with twelve slots in the entire county” demographic.
When and where was there a Hojo’s in NY? Unless they’re talking about upstate somewhere but I don’t think it is where this storyline is taking place. You’d have better luck finding a Dominos
Sex Organ V.D.: ….and the Dad is …..Maury Povich!
RMMD: If they’re not related, why do they look exactly alike?
@Nobody: Shea Stadium, 1985-1993
Also also Rex Morgan, M.D.: Fun fact: as a legal matter, paternity is an assumptive role, that is, if you act like a child’s father, you are the father, even if paternity tests later show no genetic relationship. Truck will no doubt rejoice at his newly acquired son Cody, until he learns it means he’s on the hook to Varla’s estate for hundreds of thousands in back child support payments.
@matt w: Does that count? There was a Subway there too so….
RMMD! YES! CALLED IT!
This is the biggest middle finger from a creator to his audience since Monty Python And The Holy Grail‘s ending. It literally just wasted two months of its’ audience’s time, on a story that wouldn’t even matter if it were true. And now it’s false. Guess we can expect the strip to drone on about roots country for the next three months! It’s been “medical” for long enough, time for some self-indulgence!
This is the entire comics page telling us we suck. They’re not trying to entertain anyone, not genuinely and not as snark bait. 90% of comic strips exist solely for the author to prattle on about whatever autistic shit they’ve latched onto. And I feel like I’m the sucker for trying to have any fun with it.
This has really made me rethink my newspaper comics fandom. Newspaper comics are not an art form, and are not trying to be. They’re not worthy of the attention I pay them, even to poke fun at them. They’re a vestigial organ of a vestigial news source, both of which will die soon enough.
MARY WORTH: “I’d love to be a teen again…but with the maturity and knowledge I have now.”
Geez, Mary if you want to run off and have another face-lift just say so! I know, back in your day women didn’t discuss such things openly and just rambled on vaguely about lost youth as a cover, but things are different now.
RMMD:
” ‘Son,’ why don’t you and I console ourselves by writin’ a whimsical song about how you supposedly sired groundbreakin’ 19th-century educational reformer Horace, and callin’ it ‘The Child Is Father of the Mann‘ ?”
“Well, we’ll certainly get our words’ worth if we write something like that, ‘Pops’ !”
@matt w: Oh shit…I should have clicked it first…good one!
Pluggers are so happy to be home! From the hospital, the assisted living facility where the kids put them, the geri-psych unit…
RMMD: Let’s not waste the moment we’ve all been waiting for as Truck yells. “You’re not my son. You’re a son of a bitch.”
JP: Moustache guy just wanted a blue berry muffin and small mocha. Instead April delivers a knuckle sandwich. Another odd tradecraft choice – in general not good to hit someone’s hard jaw with your brittle fragile metacarpals. Sheesh, April, didn’t you pay attention at the training camp.
You’re a Plugger if your desire for inaction and absence of external stimuli is indicative of your subconscious longing for death and extinction of consciousness
Hi and Lois: “If by ‘applying for Trixie’s preschool’ you mean ‘searching for houses in a better school district than the monstrosity that produced Chip, Ditto and the other one,’ then yes, yes I am.”
I hope to have Rex’s intervention: “I put little trust on those paternity tests, they are not reliable. For example, the test results for my children should say that just one of them is not my biological child, but instead, it says that about all three”
love is… starting them out with their own Junior Meth Lab.
Yay, Trixie is going to school, where she can spread her Sunbeam Cult to the other kids.
RMMD-You guessed it. Frank Stallone.
MW-The closet to being a teenager again is the teenage patients Jeff “treats” at his clinic.
MW-Karen Moy’s “Lolita”
FC-Don’t be too sure about that, Dolly. I don’t think your mother could love that face.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: I’m really uncomfortable with the way Truck is breaking the fourth wall here. “Are you this guy’s father? You, the reader? Well, if I remember my Roland Barthes then, yes, indeed, you could be described as a metaphorical parent to both of us…”
JP: So April’s been taking Mark Trail Punching Lessons and couldn’t hold back when the metamorphosing Bad Guy facial hair finally settled into a mustache? The coloration does make her opponent look like someone else, but it’s just the brown fleeing Barista’s hair in fear of the fight and hopping onto Bad Guy, right?
Between the ever-morphing Bad Guy hair and the “which blonde” in a cafe full of brunettes, who knew Judge Parker could compete with Gil Thorp for the Most Confusing Art title!
@Astroboy: RMMD- Reminds me of the old country song “Your Wife’s Been Cheatin’ On Us Again”
JP: This is going off the rails fast. Why is April now pummeling a random mustachioed black guy we’ve never seen before? What happened to the middle aged woman who was sitting directly behind goatee guy when he toppled over? Why is the cowardly barista’s first instinct to run away as fast as possible? I guess he knows from experience what happens when unarmed 30-something blonde women lose their shit in a coffee house?
Credit where credit is due – there is more action taking place in today’s panels alone than in 1 year of Mary Worth.
Don’t worry Hi, Trixie isn’t making it to preschool. Not because of comic book time, but because you leave her on the floor in direct sunlight all day.
@Powers: Oh that’s just because everyone in the Rexverse is required to have hangdog expressions and stupid hair.
The Familliar Mucus: How will Baja use today’s “Constipated Jeffy” in the mash-ups?
PLUGGERS: “Excitement” is a feeling that withered away and died in Pluggers long ago. Because that’s not a look of “excitement” on that dog-man’s face. That’s a look of apprehension, as if this Plugger here is extremely wary that his new zebra neighbors (he never trusted their kind anyway) are going to come in a take away his sitting spot the moment he gets up.
@3 Baja Gaijin:
Rex – I’d go with Weirdly. It makes the most sense.
FC – That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw that comic. Thanks for beating me to it.
@56 GarrisonSkunk:
Check out #3 comment.
You’re a plugger when you freak out the neighbours by sitting in a lawn chair without a drink or a book or anything else and just staring at nothing.
***
Well, Truck, it could be INLknsisojdvls.
sdvkm
Sorry. The indifference hit me so hard I fell asleep there.
The Familliar Mucus: “I told you not to eat that salmon square,Jeffy!”
FC: “Okay, I’ll give you the looks thing but even mom gags when she smells ya.”
@Twinkles the Elf: Y’all are so close-minded! That’s clearly just June in her “drag king” persona (she doesn’t even need to change her hair for it! Very easy-maintenance performance.)
RMMD – Disappointing. I had hoped these two would make a go of it. Oh well. What are Sarah and the doofuses up to this summer? Other than holding out for wedding cake.
RMMD So this is the same story as in Mary Worth, except the kid is not obnoxious and the (non)father is upfront and ethical? Did Moy and Beatty have a bet or something?
By extension, Plugger vampires spend all night in their coffins. “Hey, Renfield. Bring me a beer!”
MW: Oh to be a teen again….no. NO. NONONO. This is gonna turn into a freaky GD friday thing isn’t it???? And then everyone will learn lessons and….NO!
@Treetown: MW, August: “Gee Jeff, let’s eat somewhere else today, I want to stop thinking about that gross Wilbur man and I’m tired of that fish place. I’ll check Yelp.”
“Hubba hubba!”
Pluggers: “Just go home and do nothing” means “die,” right? I mean, isn’t every “Pluggers” about that longing for the sweet release from all earthly burdens?
@Rube: “Mary Worth plots, but dull and countryfied” has been the literary aesthetic of this book for years now.”
Hi and Lois – While regular kids are learning their letters, Trixie will be getting her first lessons in getting letters of recommendation so she can get into an elite kindergarten.
Rex Morgan, MD – This paternity plot is just an excuse for the writer to world-build on the extensive, hyper-mobile world of roots country musicians. Cody and Truck will now take over the strip, as they go on a multi-year saga, meeting the many faces and visiting the many places that make up the hidden social and physical infrastructure of the country music industry outside of the elite institutions in Nashville.
Pluggers – “Excited to go home and do nothing” has been the official meme of social decay for around 15 years, but now it’s finally filtered to the Pluggers after the last of the Minion memes dried up.
WrecksMD: So Cody and Truck begin searching for Cody’s *real* father by demanding DNA samples from every male on the planet…
@Treetown: @LTJpezcore1: The last storyline with Olive established her pretty clearly as Mary’s protege. Olive pretty much acted like an old biddy in a young girl’s skinsuit anyway, so the “switch” wouldn’t really make difference in any case (except for “Olive” murmuring in more explicit disapproval when her parents sneak off for “tee-hee time.”)
H&L: At this point, the nonverbal child already has more brain cells than the other family members.
MW: I don’t know if I’m more unnerved by the lie of wanting to be fourteen again or that Moy should be on a watchlist for how she’s having her title character talk about teenage girls.
WrecksMD: Anyone here starting a betting pool on Cody’s biological dad? I’ll place my bet on Rene Belluso.
FC: Jeffy’s “Dorian Gray” moment is revealed.
Well, the Devil went down to Georgia
He was lookin’ for a son to steal
He had all the time ’cause you see
‘Cause He knew Rex Morgan, M.D.
When he came across this young man
Looking for a Dad and findin’ one not
And the Devil walked into the comic strip
And said “Boy, let me give you a tip”
“You probably didn’t even know it, but time has stopped for you
In Morgan’s world it takes a month for even a cow to moo.”
Rex Morgan: PLEASE BE MUD MURPHY PLEASE BE MUD MURPHY PLEASE BE MUD MURPHY IT WOULD BE SO FUNNY
Archie-Wow! According to the Post Office website this stamp came out in 2010.
Pluggers – Life expectancy…very low. Of course I’m referring to the aluminum lawn chair….
@Daisy: Interesting twist – his portrait is turning into a turd….
Home again, my favorite chair, my back yard, maybe a beer, yes . . . do do do dee . . . yep . . . just peace and quiet since Martha left me . . . yup yup . . . hmmm hmmm heee . . . right, I’m bored, time to start a militia.
Pluggers don’t have anything worthwhile in their lives, and they’ve fooled themselves into thinking they like it that way.
RMMD: Honestly I’m not surprised. They spent so much time building up Truck and Codry’s hopes of being related that it was inevitable they wouldn’t be. Even when Rex Morgan is trying to be dramatic it’s boring and predictable.
HnL: I hope they get Trixie some interview-appropriate clothes, because that outfit isn’t going to cut it.
RMMD: I hope this is just an opening for the Rex Morgan team to introduce a new bland character.
Pluggers: I hope that lawn chair doesn’t give out soon, even though it looks like it will imminently. Pluggers are fat, you see.
C’shaft: Only Tom Batiuk would think “I sought out a chain restaurant in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world because anything unfamiliar and unusual scares me” is a heartwarming story.
Dustin: Pot to kettle, Meg, pot to kettle.
JP: Sure, they rag on America for all the gun deaths, but what Norwegians don’t tell you is that their country leads the world in clandestine spy encounters going horribly wrong.
Luann: Man, how badly do you need to fail to have Luann look down on you?
MT: Mark is a bit slow on the uptake, even for them.
MW: Mary, shouldn’t you be leaving for the airport? You want to arrive at least two days ahead of your flight…
Phantom: Keep talking, O Ghost Who Waxes Poetic, you probably haven’t alerted every militia member in the vicinity with your gabbing yet…
MW: That maturity and knowledge won’t save you from being bullied in school, Mary.
FC: Dolly, have you no compassion for your brother?!? He’s obviously suffering from severe constipation. Get him some Imodium or something!
Dustin: It looks like Meg could only hold off making fun of Dustin for three panels.
Pluggers: So you’re a plugger if you “go home” at the end of the day to a suburban house with a spacious yard and a fence and a view of old-growth trees, during an extended period of rapidly rising real-estate prices — even in smaller communities across the country — that puts home ownership well out of reach for many younger people and families. It’s time to re-evaluate the socioeconomic definition of “plugger,” is what I’m saying. They’re still lazy as $%!#, though.
Cody’s dad is the 1989 Denver Broncos. You can take that one to the bank.
Luann: Just in case you didn’t think this “Pad and Penrod” comic was a weird sex thing derived from the deep repression present in this strip…
CS: I’m not sure which is sadder: this story, or the fact that Skip hasn’t terminated the interview.
9CL: I’m not sure which is sadder: Brooke recycling art into this car salesman homonculus, or the innuendo that wouldn’t make the cut in a Luann strip.
@Nobody: There was at least one Howard Johnson hotel in NYC, at 8th Avenue and 51st Street. It’s now the Romer Hell’s Kitchen Hotel.
@Baja Gaijin: Meta Mashup: Jeffy in the third panel of the Rex Morgan strip.
@Joshua K.: OK.
Maybe to give the Minnesotian tourists a sense of home. Anyway, I stand corrected
Pluggers: Hey now, sitting and judging the neighborhood kids isn’t nothing.
Pluggers – You’re a plugger when you start following a stranger down the street, wagging your tail, and they stop and point back the way you came and say, “Go home! Go home, boy!” but you just give them this weird uncomprehending side-eye.
Don Abundio, translated:
“What are you doing, Don Abundio?”
“Carrying you across the threshold”
“Can’t you pretend we’ve just gotten married?”
“Yeah, sure…”
“If I also pretend that all the other rich guys had suddenly dropped dead!”
Sex Organ V.D.: ….and the Dad is …..Mud Mountain Maury Povich!
@Nobody: Why…are there 10,000 lakes there?
@Dennis Jimenez: Minnesota is home to America’s National Lake Monster Reserve.