The hills have eyes, and lolling tongues
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/5/25
Oh, wow, it turns out that this Rex Morgan, M.D., plot is going to involve — brace yourself — interpersonal conflict??? Specifically, it looks like Augie based the protagonist in his sought-after thriller novel on his girlfriend, whose permission he did not obtain in advance! I guess she’s currently working very hard to get her head around the concept of a fictional character who has many things in common with a real person but is not a one-for-one analogue, but trust me, once she figures that out she’ll be mad about the other thing.
Marvin, 11/5/25
Hey, this series started out cute enough but I am calling it now: it got real dark real fast. That poor overbred dog is in pain and his owner is laffing it up on the golf course! Let’s go back to the piss stuff, it’s less emotionally harrowing.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/25
I’m sorry, I refuse to believe that the isolated and impoverished residents of Hootin’ Holler would have the resources or the desire to participate in the wider service-based economy in this way. It’s more likely that they’ve lured this poor flatlander up into the hills so they can murder him with axes, steal his blade-sharpening equipment, and disassemble his van for scrap metal.
61 replies to “The hills have eyes, and lolling tongues”
A writer basing a character on SOMEONE HE KNOWS??? It’s not exactly The Sun Also Rises, Summer. Stephen King did NOT go mad in a Colorado hotel battling addiction. Please, like, book more.
Wary Morth:
As everyone by now knows, birds are dinosaurs, so this….parrot?…it looks something like a parrot… is actually a vicious Oviraptor or Citipati in disguise and will bite off Toby’s head tomorrow!
Or it’ll, I don’t know, turn out to have escaped from some handsome man who Toby will fall in love with. You choose.
BG&SS:
“Ax, an’ ye shall receive!”
Ooh, Winter is *mad*. Winter will get her
axebread knife and hack Auuuuughie to pieces!Dennis the Menace: Dennis finally descends into dementia. Since he’s like 75 years old I guess it’s overdue.
JP: “You have no idea how serious that kid is…btw, what’s a ‘chowderhead’?”
“Sure, man. Golf clubs,” thinks Bitsy. “Everywhere, pooping kid, crappy marriage, it’s all just another set of golf clubs, isn’t it?” Even the fire hydrant, a veteran observer of existential crises, averts its gaze.
BG and SS:
“They’re a little sore ’cause we haven’t serviced this area in a while, so if we take care of ’em, we can all bury the hatchet! After that, they can all enjoy a tomahawk steak and then watch Beaver Cleaver on a syndicated TV show — it all adze up!”
RMMD-Write what you know.
MW-Join us tomorrow for more thrilling two panel one sentence a panel action.
FC-“All turtles are named after artists. We shall name this one Andy Warhol.”
FC-“Now we just need to find a rat to teach it martial arts.”
Zits-“Three Burning Mans you say,” Pierce asks coyly, “Time to find some more pictures.”
RMMD I mean, it could be a character inspired by Summer, or it could be just the fact that her personal situation is not all thst unique? I’m not throwing any shade on her, I’m just saying it’s probably a very dull book.
Marvin Boy, Bitsy sure looks like he doesn’t give one solitary fuck about his friend(?)’s pain. You think at first glance that there’s no excrement in this strip, but if you look a bit closer you’ll see one giant turd.
Plus side, only six residents of Hootin’ Holler showed up, so there will be enough skin to make new faces for all!
MW: Birds are good.
RMMD: Summer keeps reading. “Whoa! If he thinks he’s King Kong Dong…. talk about poetic license.”
RMMD: Gad, that’s almost as grotesque a close-up as one of Buck’s upnostril phone conversations. You can practically smell the smoke coming from Blondie’s ears, not because she’s angry but because she’s already read her character’s description but still has to ask what ‘the DEAL!’ is with her man.
Luann: Joke’s on those yesterday who said it will be the roommates’ fault when this arrangement conceived by the resident Magic Negro to teach the white folks (plus one) a lesson falls apart. It’ll be the *dog’s* fault for running them ragged! I guess the Evansii never got the memo that ALL dogs are Good, not just Puddles*.
*Although that’s probably not because of any inherent goodness on Puddles’ part, rather just for having to suffer living under Luann’s roof.
RMMD: There’s a principle in defamation law called the small penis rule, where supposedly you can avoid libel claims if you give your defamatory character a small penis, since then the injured party would have to claim the small-penised character is them. In reality, this provides very little legal protection, but it’s still more effective than the “this blonde is really a brunette!” defence.
Mary Worth narration box yesterday: “As Toby snacks on sunflower seeds…”
Rex Morgan narration box today: “Summer continues reading Augie’s manuscript.”
Judge Parker narration box tomorrow: “Paint dries.”
RMMD:
“Then the protagonist of the story goes to a local restaurant named after the feisty owner-chef who plies her culinary wares there — the Tigress. He treats himself to a traditional salad named after him, the ‘Caesar Augustus.’ While seated there, he’s asked by a nearby patron to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of parchment — recycled; filter; tracing; inkjet — so he has to grade papers.
“Nah. This isn’t a thinly-veiled allusion to the two of us at all!”
MARVIN: Nor is the bulldog’s owner willing to spend the money for the therapy needed to help his bulldog accept being a bulldog.
MW: Why does Toby sound like she and the bird are in a bad porn film? (in a good porn film, the bird would lead in with a bawdy pick-up line)
RMMD: Have a heart, Summer! The man has zero imagination and The Stalker Incident was the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to him.
RMMD: Nope, the fictional stalking of Autumn Rook has nothing at all to do with the real-life stalking of Summer Knight. Even so, Summer would do well to jump ahead to the last part of the book, where Autumn’s boyfriend reveals that he is gay.
RMMD: Just wait until she gets to the part about Autumn Rook’s nipples.
FC: And when you start jacking off, Jeffy, you will have to pull his head outdoors.
I feel bad. Yesterday I meant to praise Marvin for publishing a strip with no members of the Marvin family, but I didn’t, and now they’ve relapsed.
Marvin: Hey! I just paid $1700 to fix my dogs’ teeth. Looks like it’s old clubs and public courses for me.
Marvin:
“Considering how exercised we are when we congregate here, I guess you could say that we’re ‘hot” dogs. Apropos of which, here’s a joke to lighten the mood a little: what did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor?”
“I give up, Bitsy.”
” ‘Make me one with everything’ !”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio has crowds of fashionable young women flocking to him!”
“Why? He’s a grotesque boorish gnome”
“Yeah, I know”
“But he offers free parking validation!”
MW – Either Toby is in South America or this guy just escaped from a pet store.
MW: Oh hell yeah, Toby! Let that bird eat directly from your bag o’ seeds! Surely Ian won’t think less of you for contracting chlamydia from a parrot rather than the normal, sexy way. (That’s because it’s not possible for Ian to think any less of you. If he thinks of you at all.)
Marvin: Let’s see: you got your dogs-at-a-fire-hydrant joke, you got your golf joke and your watercooler joke. There’s only one thing missing from a Lazy Cartoonist’s F***fecta, and that’s Garfield.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: I love, absolutely love love love that close-up of Summer’s disgust, consternation and rising anger. Stay mad, Summer! I have had this much fun with Rex Morgan, M.D. since Rene Belluso wandered off!
MW: The attendant opened the small screened window in the heavy door, then stepped back respectfully to allow the chief psychiatrist to peer into the padded cell.
“Has she been taking her medicines?” The doctor asked, frowning as he observed the patient.
The attendant checked his clipboard. “She had been refusing it until we put her pills in a small bag and told her they were sunflower seeds. Since then, she’s been taking them by the handful. We mixed in a few placebos to be sure she didn’t overdose.”
“Ah,” the doctor replied knowingly. “That would set us back, of course.”
“She is still having delusions,” the attendant asserted. “Right now, she seems to be in a conversation with a parrot.”
“Hmmmm.” The doctor took the clipboard from the attendant, perused it for a moment, then scrawled some instructions before initialing the page and brusquely handing it back. “Give her two extra bags of ‘sunflower seeds’ and put a flock of real parrots in there with her. And add some pigeons and two cats. Perhaps we can shock her back to reality.” The doctor moved into the hallway and then had an afterthought. “Better have the cleaning crew stand by.”
Back in the 30’s, when Snuffy Smith was first taking over Barney Google’s strip, they would have axe-murdered the sharpener guy, then fed his corpse to the pigs. It’s hard to feel like we haven’t lost something in comic strips these days. Other than the pigs, I mean.
MW: I guess Olive had a hankering for some sunflower seeds.
Marvin: Bitsy always stares ahead wistfully when the word “fixed” comes up in conversation.
MW Summer should feel less concerned that Augie wrote a novel based on her experience than that it’s subtitled an Autumn Rook mystery. This indicates he’s got a *series* planned and since he apparently can’t write anything other than thinly-veiled versions of what’s happened around him, he’s planning to get Summer into dangerous, dramatic situations he can write about. Repeatedly.
@Bob Tice:
And I heard he paid for the hot dog with a $10, but the vendor didn’t give him any bills back. When he inquired about his change, the vendor said: “Change must come from within.”
@Charterstone: Dune: The Norwegian Blue prefers to eat right from the bag.
MW Given that Augie can only write what he’s experienced, (1) I expect his students leave class more confused about the definition of “fiction” than when they started and (2) the rejected manuscripts must have been “December Smith Goes to the Grocery Store” parts 1-5
Rex Morgan, MD: I can’t wait for the inevitable revelation that “Autumn Rook” in Augie’s book is Bizarro Summer! Summer’s blond and nearsighted, so Autumn is brunette and farsighted. Autumn’s glasses are square, of course. And… Autumn has freeze vision instead of heat vision and, instead of relying on the goodwill of strangers, Autumn kills her own stalkers, thank you very much!
MW: Toby has a sudden thought. “I wonder if you’d like a GOLDFISH…?” she asks the parrot, recalling that Wilbur has asked her to feed Willa.
When the Hunter’s moon is full and a deep chill has settled on the bones of the Holler, the Ax-Man shall arrive from the flatlands. Beware his temptations. Sharpen your dull axes upon his bones. Render him back into the soil and he shall return in the new year at the Hunter’s moon, and blessings shall fall upon you and yours. – Book of Snakes and Axes, 14:31-35 (Ozark Apocrypha, Index Librorum Prohibitorum).
MW: Hey! The bird’s head is one of those things you can see right side up or upside down. Or facing right or facing left. Like The Topsy-Turvies.
Brigman musta lost a bet.
Luann – Still no sign of morcock69. Anyone have him in the Deadpool? But here is a gem from the Trufans:
Count-Olaaf
3 hours ago
At least his name isn’t Whizz, boy howdy,
Gil Thorp: Why is John Oates in panel 2?
GA: They’ve been fucking in the meat cooler, I know it.
RMMD: Now here’s something you’ll never see in Funky Winkerbean: characters getting angry that their local self-deluded writer is using their lives as props.
Dustin Not only does this kid’s mom probably have a tattoo, his grandmother probably has a tattoo. The creators of this crap honestly can’t imagine anyone not being a bitter old man, can they?
You’re a Plugger if you think that “women take a long time to get dressed” is original and specific to Pluggers, rather than something that was tired when it appeared in an Esquire cartoon about Manhattan socialites in 1935.
I try not to stereotype people but if I came across a group of hillbillies just standing there in the woods holding axes and staring at me, smiling… they’re all smiling… why are they smiling? I would learn just how fast and how well I could drive in reverse.
***
Authors will take traits from actual folks they know and use them in characters they’re writing because it helps flesh them out into feeling like real people, Summer. I would take umbrage though with how lazy it is to just change “Summer” to “Autumn.” The guy’s a hack, dump him.
Blondie: Dagwood’s neuropathy and peripheral arterial disease caused by type 2 diabetes from years of unhealthy eating should be good for about a year’s worth of strips of him comically trying out his new, artificial legs.
RMMD —
To Autumn
Where are the tales of Summer? Ay, where are they
Think not of them, thou hast thy pablum too.
While trite cliches mar the soft-dying day,
And touch thy blonde tress with rosy hue.
Then a wailful choir of pissy faces moan
Alone in Stalkertown, borne aloft
Or sinking as interest lives, or dies;
And loud regrets issue from thy painted lips.
No dates for him, you say, and search
Your purse for the lawyer’s card.
And vow to seek restraint in the morn.
–with apologies to John Keats
RMMD: Augie has been presented as the ultimate nice guy–so nice he would rather grade papers than jump her bones but refused to mention his amateur sleuth was based on Summer? Really?
REX MORGAN M.D.: “So this isn’t me…but it is me?” Oh good. Summer is already going to be rationalizing her own anger away and gaslighting herself, which is going to save all sorts of time for Augie when he inevitably does this while “explaining himself.”
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): Augie (during the inevitable confrontation): “Well ‘the deal’ is that I have to change just enough details not to pay you and….”
REX MORGAN M.D. (3): I guess after this, poor Augie is going to be spending a lot of time locked in his bathroom “grading papers.”
@The Quiet Man:
Luann: Joke’s on those yesterday who said it will be the roommates’ fault when this arrangement conceived by the resident Magic Negro to teach the white folks (plus one) a lesson falls apart. It’ll be the *dog’s* fault for running them ragged!
Yeah, I gotta eat crow on that one. Is it too much to hope for that the lesson’ll turn out to be “don’t rush into doing charity, especially if you don’t really know/understand what you’ll be doing, and are not ready for it”. (It *IS* too much to hope for that the strip will be teaching the lesson to the character who NEEDS to learn it, Dez.)
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Snuffy Smith : Sure, a bunch of deformed bumpkins approaching you wielding axes is like something out of
Resident Evil 4a horror movie, but notice the main proof that this group isn’t intending violence; Snuffy’s not there(and if he was, the proof would be that he came without his gun)************
Crankshaft : Yeah, I believe that Bat
iukTON Thomas has to deal with people at conventions approaching him, realising they’ve never heard of his stuff, and walking away disappointed.************
Hagar the Horrible : wait, wasn’t that guy famously a CROSSBOW guy?
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Heathcliff : a franchise introducing a trio of miniature versions of the main character is ALMOST ALWAYS A BAD SIGN, actually.
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Marvin : “Of course, he wouldn’t need to buy new golf clubs if I wasn’t always messing up my teeth chewin’ on ’em, but still-!”
***********
Moose & Molly : …this is a Crankshaft gag.
At least it went quickly. The Jeff&Pam would have spent, like, four days telling each other that Crankshaft has a helicopter now before running this payoff on saturday, and probably off-panel, to boot!@Charterstoned: re MW: Now waitaminute! Willa is still on hiatus! She’s nowhere near the Wilbur-apartment set! Intern, are we still payin’ for round the clock security for her? Tell her not to answer any taps on her glass…
RMMD: In order to temper any conflict, Beatty has Summer completely trivialize the situation “Hey! The chess piece rook is also called an ‘elephant’. Are you saying I’m fat!?”
DUSTIN: If Dustin trains vigorously in Failure to Read the Room or Being Hopelessly Out-of-Touch with the Sociopolitical Climate, he’ll in high demand to be a comic strip creator, apparently.
Marvin: As usual, the fire hydrant placement in this strip makes no sense. Even if we assume that blue void represents a street, a real hydrant would be installed in the grass right next to the curb, not in the middle of the sidewalk. We have to assume this one is a fake from a novelty shop, which some local pre-teen placed there so dogs would piddle on the concrete and other people would have to walk through the ick. This will all end in disaster if there’s an actual fire, but pranksters gotta prank.
Rex Morgan: “So — this isn’t me — but it is me!?! What’s the deal, Hannah-Barbera?” said Jackie Gleason, the first time he saw Fred Flintstone.
@Charterstone: Dune:
Ian: I wish to complain about this trophy wife what I left not three weeks ago in this very condominium complex.
Mary: Oh yes, the, uh, the California Airhead…What’s, uh…What’s wrong with it?
Ian: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it! She’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!
Mary: No no she’s not dead, she’s, she’s resting! Remarkable bimbo, the California Airhead, idn’it, ay? Beautiful cleavage!
RMMD: When do we get to the part where she reads the gratuitous sex scene?
“This isn’t me – but it is me? Am I me or am I Autumn Rook? Am I real or am I a weak character in a thinly plotted book? What’s real anymore?”
Apparently creating a existential crisis is easy when your target is stupid.
RMMD – …who draws on her eyebrows with a MEDIUM SHARPIE….
Marvin – The parallel is uncanny. Like how humans piss all over the water cooler at work….
BG&SS – Wif wood…wifout…notwifstanding….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
To be fair, some of those characters don’t really have much to say about it for various reasons….
@Charterstone: Dune: Mean to reply to @But What Do I Know?