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.
144 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.
Rex Morgan, MD – Summer, to Augie: “How dare you use my life and trauma as cheap entertainment!”
Summer turns to reader, breaking the 4th wall.
Marvin – Uh-oh, Tom Armstrong was told by his syndicate to try out TikTok to reach a younger audience, and he fell into a Gen-Z socialism algorithm. Mamdani’s first act as NYC Mayor will be to send a cease-and-desist for including an unauthorized version of him in a storyline.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith – Work’s to be done, and Snuffy is nowhere to be seen. All is right in Hootin’ Holler.
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.)
*************
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?
************
Heathcliff : a franchise introducing a trio of miniature versions of the main character is ALMOST ALWAYS A BAD SIGN, actually.
***********
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?
BGSS: Oh, suddenly a circular stone set up on a frame with a seat and pedal isn’t good enough for you? What’s next, Doc Pritchard ditches his head mirror for a fiber optic light?
RMMD: I can’t wait for Summer to get to the part where Autumn Rook meets her love interest, dashing college professor Octavian Sylvester.
GT — a bonfire in the woods? Doesn’t seem smart…
@BigTed: #55: re-RMMD: Jackie Gleason did contemplate suing Hanna-Barbera for ripping off “The Honeymooners” but decided that he didn’t want to be known to every kid in America as the guy who sued Fred Flintstone.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Summer: “Chapter seven, The Fifty-First Shade of Gray. Wonder what that means?”
BG&SS: You can tell that sharpening service guy isn’t from Hooting Holler simply by counting the number of patches on his truck.
Gasoline Alley: “Reckon” you two are engaged? A distinct “yes” or “no” would be nice. And maybe leave the vow writing to someone else.
Lockhorns: Since 1968, random people with no personalities or input have simply appeared in a panel to presumably listen to one line.
Put another way: Years before even Pong, this comic invented the NPC.
H&L>/b>: Created in the mid-50s, Trixie was always going to be a bottle baby.
BG&SS: If the axe sharpening guy thinks he cleans up wait until he sees the business the guy selling bullets, gunpowder, and percussion caps drums up.
Rex Morgan: I think this is just Augie’s way of telling Summer that he thinks she’d look better with brown hair.
FC That turtle looks like he’s well into his third martini.
@pugfuggly: Plus, haven’t they only been dating for like a month or so? And the book is in a bidding war? seems like it had to have been mostly done when they met. I’d be more worried that he was looking for a match for his character so he could date her for…some reason?
C’shaft: “I really saw myself in a character from Archie!” said no one born after 1960 ever.
DT: So, it’s Wednesday at we’ve already determined that the chess notation is a cipher which names the killer. They are going to have to go at sub-Rex Morgan speeds to drag this thing out until Sunday.
Dustin: Why look to the future, when you can cling to a worldview that hasn’t changed since at least the 1980s and no longer even slightly reflects the social and cultural climate of today? It’s worked so well for Parker and Kelly.
FG: Right angles and parallel sides, the classic characteristics of a “rough-hewn tunnel.”
JP: That’s just because you’re a terrible joke teller, Neddy. (Then again, kids burst into laughter over a couple numbers these days, so maybe the problem is their humor is too absurdist for older generations to grasp.)
Luann: Dash has very wisely decided he wants nothing to do with any of this.
MW: If I was sitting on a park bench and a parrot, a bird that is most definitely not native to my area, landed next to me, my first thoughts would be more along the lines of “What the HELL? Is this an escaped pet or zoo animal? Should I call animal control?” But then, thinking in general has never been Toby’s strong suit.
Phantom: Is there any reason why this transfer of extrajudicially incarcerated prisoners across international borders can’t be discussed outside normal business hours?
BG&SS C’mon now, there’s no way that rural axe-sharpening guy is driving a van. More likely, it would be late 50s Ford pickup with rust spots, mismatched doors, bumpers held on with duct tape or wire, and a big ol’ hound dog in the back, next to sharpening wheel under a faded tarp.
RMMD – “Oh, it says here than ‘any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.’ Phew!! I was worried there for a minute!”
Marvin: at least this time the dog isn’t talking about their “mistress”
bg&SS: ok, the sharpener isn’t from Hootin’ Holler and has a pristine motor vehicle. But judging from his speech, he’s either practicing the local vernacular or he’s a hillbilly from a somewhat less backwards community.
@ectojazzmage: “…Augie’s way of telling Summer that he thinks she’d look better with brown hair.”
”Autumn Rook was three feet tall, and had a flat head you could rest your beer on.”
MW: Toby overdid her regular run and ended up in Brookyln’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery.
I’d only be concerned if my Significant Other modeled their book’s antagonist after me.
Let’s not judge the Hootin’ Hollerans too hastily. They might just want this nice flatlander to hone their primitive weapons so they can continue prosecuting the endless Smif-Barlow feud.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: But did Fred Flintstone also want to sue when he saw Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin?
LuAnn- This would’ve been a lot better if the dog’s name was “Scooter” and he proceeded to show them why.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: which, in this universe, means a spontaneous roots country concert (all the ladies are getting “moist” just thinking about it!)
@Bob Tice: #17- “But there were books to write, and papers to grade. .no wonder why Auggie never got laid”….(sorry, Harry Chapin)
MARY WORTH: Knowing Toby, she.probably thinks this colorful bird is going to lead her to a bowl of Fruit Loops.
Bizarro: How ’bout those Anteaters, folks? Oops, I shoulda said NSF Emmet Pismire, my bad! But Emmet’s got a good sense of humor…. I think. And I’m sure these fine thespians would show Emmet professional courtesy, should their paths cross…
Yes, it’s rare to get such a desirable gig for our Anteater clients. Professional setting, speaking role, they don’t even have to show any tongue, just implied with the X-long tongue blade. Class act all the way.
Rm- have they slept together yet? Maybe casting her as a brunette is being a bit too truthful.
RMMD: as I recall– questions of yore answered.
Summer (as in season) Knight (as in chess piece) is introduced as mother of Kelly, gf of Rex’s protege. When Summer needs job, she gets one in Rex’s clinic.
Lonely after Kelly goes to college, Summer is told to go social. She connects with loser, tactlessly walks out on date, and orders a soda at nearby bar. Augie (short for ____?) comes over, he’s Kelly’s former hs teacher. Jilted Stalker appears.
Summer wisely checks out Stalker, finds he’s done this before, to someone who then killed herself. The dead woman’s father is about to die so first he kills Stalker. Leaving Augie his pickup. Summer has been traumatized by Stalker. Augie begins new ms.
@Anonymous: 75: re-BG&SS: His van says he’s from Piney Creek. Most likely a nearby town that’s fortunate enough to have a freeway exit, guaranteeing it a steady flow of commerce to support a business like his.
RMMD: I will take back every negative thought and comment about Rex Morgan, M.D. if Summer gets to the end and sees a date on the manuscript showing it was written *before* the stalking incident happened.
MW: I look forward to the parrot insulting Mary.
Crankshaft: “To be honest, I really identify with Cole Sprouse’s portrayal of Jughead on the CW’s Riverdale. Comic strips are lame, old man!” [Departs with a flourish of his Bat-cape.]
“Augie, how could you put me in your story!”
“I didn’t! Your life and profile is so boring and generic that you see yourself in a minor character in a novel with only a cursory characterisation!”
“WHAT?!”
“I mean, I drew inspiration from real life! Is this better?”
Lio: How to tame a wild Wilbur.
BROKE: If the owner cared about the happiness of his purebred dog, he would pay to fix its teeth!
WOKE: If the owner cared about the happiness of his purebred dog, he would pay to euthanise it!
Hottin Holler is the only place where if you mention “grinder”, people think of blades and not casual gay sex — causal gay sex is behind the old mill
Rex Morgan – “Oh, wait – brunette Autumn doesn’t wear a ponytail pulled so tight that it gives her a facelift. I guess she isn’t me.”
FC – This is undoubtedly from the 1970s, so that’s Carl the Turtle in his younger years.
Frazz – Add first semester college freshmen to the list of people this insufferable pair are superior to.
Gasoline Alley – Hooray! I can’t wait for the repulsive, tacky wedding of the century.
Mary Worth – Most people would pour out a few sunflower seeds on the ground instead of letting the parrot slobber all over the bag.
Sherman’s Lagoon – Gaah! Now I have an earworm of the Jardiance jingle.
If you read normal writing, you only see one exclamation mark used or maybe three (!!!) if you want to comically emphasise. The comics page is the only place where they use two (!!). But Rex Morgan MD thinks they are too good for tradition! Well, you are not!
Jack Nicholson slapping Summer:
“It is not me”
SLAP
“It is me”
SLAP
“It is not me”
SLAP
“It is me”
SLAP
“It is me and it is not me”
Marvin: Why else did he need new golf clubs?
Are you telling me people are willing to pay to read Augie’s novel with Rex Morgan MD characters?! I get fiction with Rex Morgan MD characters for free and I don’t want to read it!
Tomorrow in Mary Worth…
We learn that parrots do not have normal speech balloons.
@Rare Commenter: Augie wrote his book in Comics Time according to Comics Rules. Judge Parker churned out a best selling book in a weekend. Loathsome Lillian McKenzie sits down and starts typing her manuscript with no planning of characters or story arc.
Based on the comics, writing a book which is snapped up by a publisher and becomes an immediate best seller takes no time and is the easiest thing in the world.
I’m reminded of this classic song that tells the story of a cheerful cutter-grinder servicing all sides in the conflicts of history, sharpening every kind of bladed weapon. “The Inquisition kept me busy every moment, Madame Guillotine is one of my best customers” and so on. “Everyone has an axe to grind” indeed! I wonder what edifying comment about the bloody generational feuds between the hillspeople this strip had to make before editorial made it a joke about firewood.
@NotImportant:
Dude. How to become my favorite comic strip, INSTANTLY.
BGSS: “I love this place!! Obviously I only come here during the daytime and have to keep a loaded rifle in the aptly named shotgun seat at all times, but I love it!!”
RMMD: Well, Summer is halfway through the manuscript already, which is provisional good news for Augie. Just provisional because most prospective readers probably won’t have reason to believe that Augie has raided their life stories.
Blondie: In the midst of lolling in front of the TV, Dagwood notices that everything below the waist is dead. This is not new information for Blondie.
C-Shaft: Batton Thomas did put in a bid to take over the Archie syndicated strip but it seems the world wasn’t ready for his Betty Cooper cancer arc.
DT: “His first words are ‘Be sure to drink your Ovaltine’ but after that…”
Dustin: Yes I spend a lot of unsupervised time with an apparently friendless neighbor child, but it’s cool because he’s my career counselor.
JP: Hold the phone, you mean that’s not the way that everybody responds to Neddy’s attempts at humor?
Luann: Ah, a dog that the reader can never see. Terry Beatty has wrung so many laughs out of that one over at Rex Morgan, MD that I guess it was inevitable that the Evansii would give it a try.
MW: The parrot can’t resist Eye of Sauron sunflower seeds. No one can.
@A Grave Mind: Especially when the police find Augie has a whole secret closet filled with unsold manuscripts, all titled ‘Stalked!’ and dedicated to different girls. “Trophies,” one will nod knowingly, as the jackhammer starts to open up the basement floor.
MW: This storyline is about how Toby catches Psittacosis and then has to explain it to Ian.
Crank: Okay, to distract myself from “even at a comic convention the philistines don’t appreciate my genius” badly masquerading as self-deprecation, I’m going to talk about Grandpa Wrinklie. I think it’s a pretty good illustration, both as managing to look “comic strip-y” within a comic strip (the various comics-within-a-comic in Dick Tracy are also good at this) and as suggesting Ed without being obviously based on him (J. Straightedge Trustworthy is an in-universe parody of Tracy, but Batton only met Ed recently.) Good job, Davis! Shame Batty is pretending you don’t exist!
DT:I hate that I keep staring at the note in Sunday’s strip, trying to figure this out, even though I strongly suspect it just doesn’t make sense. Like, okay, Brit Tracy has
deducedspontaneously decided that the numbers of the moves with question marks against them represent the letters A-E. Okay. And a bit of googling suggests that these numbers form a sequence (although I’m sufficiently clueless at maths that I couldn’t even begin to tell you what that sequence means) which I guess possibly gives you the rest of the alphabet?So … where’s the message? I’m sure it’s possible to conceal both a ciphered message and the cipher key in the same text, but I don’t see how that’s the case here. It can’t be the row number the pieces move to, because there’s almost immediately a 3, and the cipher starts at 4. Maybe I’ve got the wrong sequence and it actually goes backwards after E? I considered the possibility that the rest of the alphabet gets the remaining numbers up to 26 (which is a pretty weak cipher, IMO) and that didn’t get me anywhere. Maybe I’m missing something.
Or maybe I’m working too hard at solving a clue set by a writer who once wrote a Minit Misery that hinged on the mythical “assassin’s teapot” working the exact opposite way to how it would in reality.
HtH: Never mind that William Tell lived in the 14th century, long after the Viking age (and also in Switzerland, which is quite hard to get to by longship), he was famously armed with a crossbow.
MW: Listen, you might think you’ve found a new friend, but I’m afraid that once the sunflower seeds are gone, your “friend” will be distracted by a shiny thing, flutter off, and you’ll never enter their tiny brain again. Sorry, parrot, but that’s just how it is.
S4th: It’s never occured to me before, but when you think about it, the whole metaphor about “following a trail of breadcrumbs” is fatally flawed, isn’t it? In the fairy tale, the whole point is they can’t follow the breadcrumbs, because birds ate them. And so I think Laura is smart enough that she’d have left a trail of pebbles, like Gretel did the first time, actually, Elderly Mob Lady #2!
@Ken: There you go again, presuming something interesting might happen in Rex Morgan.
@The Quiet Man: Re: RMMD: What cracks me up is that
AutumnSummer is more upset about this fictionalized account of her ordeal then she was when she was actually experiencing it, which was treated with typical Rex Morgan M.D. mild annoyance at the time. Meanwhile, unauthorized journaling of the stalking is treated with a Mud-Mountain-is-NOT-playing-Muddy-Boots level of righteous indignation.@Horace Broon: re: HTH: Easy! Sail up the Balearic Sea, put in at Genoa, make the crew carry the longboat on their backs north to the Zurichsee, plop it back down in the water.
I notice Baja didn’t do a Mary Worth Mashup today.
We can’t have that so here’s a substitute.
BG&SS: “We have a quaint little dance here we call ‘usin’ every part of the flatlander’.”
MARY WORTH: Y’all are being way too nonchalant about the obvious prophetic warning this scene conveys. It’s all fun and games until Toby and Mary are swatting at parrots with wire hangers (on the other hand this will earn Toby a 50% discount, so it all evens out )
MW: Parrot lands on park bench next to Toby. “Well, HELLO THERE!”
Peacock lands on park bench next to Toby. “Well, HELLO THERE!”
Southern cassowary runs up to park bench right in front of Toby. “Well, HELLO TH — AIIIIEEEEEE!”
@Horace Broon: And this has to be a cipher that fools the quick perusal of the murderer AND King the victim has to be able to quickly get it down. A more complex cipher where the first letter then jumps frames and shifts for the second letter would be hard to do purely in one’s mind (not impossible, but hard) and particularly so when stabbed and oozing out life.
@116 Poteet:
Wilbur runs up and Tobi snarls “Hello,
NewmanWilbur.”@treetown: Yeah, the timing on this keeps bugging me. If King supposedly wrote that whole game after being stabbed, he had plenty of time to call for help. I’m hoping, then, that the cypher just involves the annotations added to an existing game record. (A vain hope, I’m sure, given past Minit Mysteries.)
BG&SS – Budiness is on the grow for Piney Creek Sharpening Service. Everbody got a axe ta grind in ‘Merica these days!
@NotImportant: The manuscript was written before the stalking incident happened – that means that Augie can either see the future or is a time traveler. I especially like the time travel theme, but either one would add a whole new dimension to RMMD. Of course, either one would be interesting, and we can’t have that.
I can imagine a time travel story in which Augie goes back in time and prevents Mud from writing Muddy Boots. Even better, he goes back in time and prevents June from going to the hair stylist who gave her that hideous spit curl.
Late Thread Cuisine: Creamed eggs on fried noodles. Plus peas!
@Ettorre:
Ah, but would you want to read it if Summer were a brunette who worked in a law office? It could make all the difference!
@113 Sequitur: Today’s strip didn’t inspire me. I’m not sure tomorrow’s will.
@Baja Gaijin: There’s celery, too, and mushrooms, somewhere in that pile of white glop. That’s one of the gloppiest glops I’ve ever seen. If someone served that to me, I would carefully pick out the fried noodles that weren’t touching any glop and eat them.
@Baja Gaijin:
This is shit on a shingle substituting egg for beef and fried noodles for the toast.
@122 Baja Gaijin:
I’m not sure what to make of that. Sounds icky but actually it might be okay.
@124 Baja Gaijin:
Tomorrow’s is pretty much like today’s.
Tomorrow in Gearhead Gertie….
Gertie reads her bible.
JP: I guess… Ces is discovering the joys of fatherhood?
Reminds me of when the once-great strip “Life in Hell” became “Matt Groening’s Kids Say the Darndest Things.”
(Mind you, in no way am I implying that “Judge Parker” was ever, ever great)
@125 I speak Jive: I was talking about the peas that weren’t touching the glop. They luckily were in an adjacent bowl.
@126 Anonymous: Maybe. Cream of chicken soup, half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, celery, parsley, and a few other things make up the glop. And the raw, not canned, mushroom slices.
@127 Sequitur: It could be good. It could be barf-inducing. Looking at it, my guess is the latter.
@2+2=7: While inside a deserted restaurant Wilbur’s singing ‘Hangin’ out, hangin’ out, hangin’ out with my mayo… having myself a pa-a-a-a-rt-ay!’
@131 Baja Gaijin:
Maybe my response was tempered by the fact that I’m hungry and haven’t had dinner yet.
@Baja Gaijin: I recently picked up a copy of Jane/Michael Stern’s 2013 LEXICON OF REAL AMERICAN FOOD, one of their overwhelming number of books praising kolache, scrapple, johnnycakes, migas, the Hot Brown, cat head biscuits, gumbo, Coneys, etc.
It’s quite a bit of fun, though, and I have been reading descriptions and commentary on Springfield Illinois Horseshoe, St. Louis Slinger, and Rochester NY Garbage Plate.
Talk about your Terrors of the Table.
@Sequitur: Well what YOU need right now, my man, is a hot big Rochester NY Garbage Plate (extra chili and melted cheese), with a bowl of poutine on the side.
@Ukulele Ike: While not at all being picky eaters, my son and I have trouble developing huge affection for the garbage plate. I think it’s the macaroni salad.
@Baja Gaijin: It really looks like someone went to the fridge / pantry and tried to find something, anything that vaguely went with leftover hardboiled eggs to make up a meal. It’s just… does that need a recipe card? Were people that desperate for meal ideas in the 70s??
@135 Ukulele Ike:
So long as the chili is mild. This ol’ bod can’t handle spicy anymore.
@Baja Gaijin: Waiter, I ordered fried eggs on creamed noodles! Take it back!
@Baja Gaijin: Drugs were fairly commonplace in the 70s.
@Rube: But as a citizen of the Great White North you have the option of Tourtiere! And Poutine!
Garbage Plate is déclassé to a man in your culinary sphere.
@137 CanuckDownSouth: The recipe card was needed to tell housewives to add the crispy noodles to their already-known “dumping a can of Cream of Something soup with some other assorted crap into a pot and baking for a half hour” meal prep.
@139 Grover’s Customer: Damn! Do you have a DeLorean with a flux capacitor? You’ll need it to return your meal to 1973.
@140 taig: You’re telling me that someone took some drugs then barfed on the plate? I can believe it.
@Ukulele Ike: I can well remember when poutine was unknown west of Ottawa. It’s taken a short time to become our national food.
@Wool Worth: My 2nd favorite nut behind cashoos