BUSKSCAM 2026: THE RECKONING
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/1/26
Oh, hey, so it turns out June was so snooty about those buskers last week because she could tell that the lady with the violin wasn’t really playing it and their amp was just pumping out prerecorded music. This could’ve been just another minor irritation for the Morgans except that these evil twins seem to know June and Sarah???? It is honestly funny to think that they know not just June but also her minor child and have travelled all the way to their hometown and think it would’ve been “sweet” to “scam” them (by tricking them into putting money into their little tip bucket even though they aren’t really playing music???), but that’s not, like, their main mission or anything. It would’ve been sweet, but the prospect won’t distract them from their overall goal (tricking other people into putting money into their little tip bucket even though they aren’t really playing music).
B.C., 7/1/26
Pretty sure this is just what shingles is. You’re about to get shingles, Curls!
Heathcliff, 7/1/26
IT’S “HAMKY SACK,” C’MON HEATHCLIFF, I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO SPELL THIS OUT FOR YOU
37 replies to “BUSKSCAM 2026: THE RECKONING”
Egad! Why could the creepy twins want to scam June out of her precious 37 cents? Unless they were…her ENEMIES!
Don’t worry folks, no need to get excited, this is all gonna end up at a Truck concert, with, I dunno, Augie there too?
RMMD: Beatty: “Damn the interesting plotlines! They’re scammers! June is never wrong!”
Heathcliff: Having this scene take place in front of a meat market can cause some confusion. For all we know, that ham is inside the window and Heathcliff and his friends are doing some kind of incantatory dance.
It’s because they don’t have souls, Red-Headed Caveman Guy! All your beloved pets pass into total oblivion when they die! There, you went and made it deep. Way to ruin a perfectly good day of rock leanin’ and starin’!
Heathcliff: If you imagine that ham hanging inside the shop, it looks like Heathcliff is Madonna-style Vogue-ing and the other two cats are backup dancers.
RMMD: Hey, when Mud was faking his crapfest in the bathroom, wasn’t he scamming? And using music as a pretext?
Look at Heathcliff. There is a guy who found the stash of quality shit, and nothing enhances the taste of ham quite like cat feet and sidewalk. It’s a good day, friends.
RMMD:
I haven’t seen a sneer like the one displayed in the first panel since Snidely Whiplash last appeared in Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.
BC: I need to know why Peter is leaning against Curls’ rock-desk. I mean, no legacy cartoonist is wasting their time drawing a single unnecessary detail, so why push tee-time back 5 minutes to sketch in a character who doesn’t even speak? My personal theory: B.C. needs to get rid of a few supernumerary characters, and we’re about to see the start of the tragic Paleolithic Pandemic story arc. Peter will be the first to be infected, but he won’t be the last.
BC: Why don’t we ever hear about sightings of live bacteria and viruses? Because we live in the #$*@ Stone Age!
Wrecks Moregone:
“And it wouldn’t have been any crime after their clinic’s negligence crippled mum and put us to busking in the street!”
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Wary Morth:
“Like the love affair Fabiana sold you for an emerald?”
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Suburban Fairy Tales:
“Where is home?”
“Where the heart is.”
“In my chest?” (Tries to burrow into it.)
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Questioned Malcontent:
Good heavens, her boobs are even huger from the side and are growing right out of her clavicles!
The violin notes stopped appearing the moment Twin 1 stopped “playing” the violin. She either has a remote control for the speaker or she was really playing.
Heathcliff:
“Don’t pay any attention to him — he’s just hamming it up!”
RMMD: When did Rene Belluso transmogrify into twin girls?
MW: “Hey Dad, since you’re such a great judge of character, have you talked to Belle lately?”
Heathcliff: Remember the “Invisible Bike” lolcat? Here, Heathcliff demonstrates “Invisible Recliner.”
Heathcliff: That’s a bean bag shaped as a ham, right? Because I doubt kitties could keep a ham aloft with their rear paws or heads.
RMMD:
“We’re such stylized bad girls, you just know that if we were appearing in Mary Worth, we’d be smoking cigarettes!”
RMMD: So, the “scam” is, “Not only am I not really playing this violin, but I’m also NOT using your 75 cents for medicine?” Hardly worth that sneer.
MW: There should be a law, an actual law, that forbids people from giving advice, based on the stupidity level of their past decisions.
GT: Ask any Cleveland sports fan; “We’ll do better next time” is NOT a template you want to use for marriage(s).
RMMD:
“We’re sort of the antimatter Castor and Pollux of Glenwood, aren’t we.”
“Huh?”
RMMD: The Morgans are the Mount Everest of donating in the world of panhandlers. Getting June or Rex to toss a few dimes into their hat guarantees the girls a photo and front page headline in the Hobo News.
RMMD: I swear, when I first saw today’s header I thought it said ‘BUCKscam’ and it was revealed that the DeeDee twins here had an elaborate plot to scam Buck. It *has* been a while since we’ve seen him after all. Hey, maybe June will tell Rex about the scammers (of COURSE she will) and Rex will call Buck (‘ugh, my wife will not stop complaining about…’) and we’ll get one of Beatty’s classic upnostril while awkwardly gesticulating on the phone shots!
GT: ‘I thought it was because I’m the White Male Protagonist. Didn’t I just solve the illegal immigration/mass deportation issue forever? Just in time for Prom too!’
S4th: Dammit Ces! You’re forgetting your own tropes! The Forths were supposed to disappear into their disturbingly frequent fugue state for the rest of this plotline and Ronan and Mrs. Ted Forth were supposed to come back at the end wondering what the hell happened to them because it ruined the trip! If you’re going to keep pulling this crap, at least be consistent about it!!
MW: Of all the things we know and are disturbed by about Wilbur, the fact that he has a beloved ‘Hello Kitty’ mug might be one of the most disturbing of all.
Ph: It’s gonna be those robots with Schmelon Schmusk’s face who like to pontificate, isn’t it?
RMMD:
“I hope that this story arc has us making busking efforts at the local Mennonite, Amish and Quaker communities next!”
“Why is that, Sis?”
“It would be displaying sects and violins!”
Heath: Cats are well-known for playing with their food before they devour it, so this Heathcliff is about as grounded in reality as the strip is permitted by law to be.
RMMD: Yes, getting the loose change in June’s wallet (approximately 78 cents, plus a ten peso piece that managed to get in there somehow) would have been the crowning achievement of your life of larceny.
Jesus Hosea Christ, but the smug, self-righteous superiority of this whole setup makes me want to throw things. Of course the busking violinist is only pretending to play her music. Of course this means they’re probably lying about everything else, including the need to pay their medical bills. Of course they are comically, sneeringly evil about the whole pretense and enjoy the thought of fooling the good, honest people of the town. Of course this means that they (and by extension all transients) are not to be trusted or given money for any reason, because they are criminals and leeches who deserve no empathy or kindness or any acknowledgement that they are fellow human beings sharing this brief, unpredictable and often painful journey through existence as we know it, only the haughty contempt of Good People like June and Sarah. Of course.
RMMD: At this point the only explanation is that a busker ran over Beatty’s dog.
FC In a world where people have only 4 toes per foot and 4 fingers per hand, what *does* happen to “This Little Piggy…”? We can see by the stub-marks that “had roast beef” is still the third one, so does the last toe get “had none” or “cried weeeweewee all the way home”? And does it say something about the society that the rhymes it reaches its children end with sad deprivation or optimistic escape?
GT I suppose one could interject about Mimi here, but it really is hard to argue with “I’m actually not attracted to your sex, sorry”
B.C.: The lore of ghost animals is really quite extensive, especially dogs and cats. As for viruses and bacteria… maybe you need a ghost microscope?
FG: thank goodness we live in a world where we can deliver messages by — phone! Take that, Mongo!
JP: bored, Soph? How about taking over cooking duties as apparently your family has been living on highly processed meats since Marie quit
MW: Daddy Wilbur drinks from Hello Kitty. Another of his endearing qualities.
PHANTOM: Are the guards wearing wigs or did they dye their hair?
Perhaps the author just finished reading the book Sounds Like Titanic, a nonfiction memoir about a violinist who was hired by an orchestra only to find out that they were simply miming along to a tape. That’s not exactly comparable to standing there with a plainly visible speaker and requesting donations, which is arguably (as was pointed out here) some kind of performance art. But then again, anyone asking for money in public in this comic must be planning something evil enough to deserve a Snidely Whiplash sneer.
DT: So Fritz-Ann used department funds to buy a state-of-the-art customized setup to catfish a couple of shut-in nerds playing whatever the Neo-Chicago equivalent of Call of Duty is. They’re right, the police are massively overfunded.
C’shaft: Okay, so now I want to know what the ballroom owner’s angle is in all this? Because apparently they’re paying all their staff and a big band to play for an audience of two, and have been doing so for quite some time, and that doesn’t make sense unless this is a larger-scale version of those little Italian restaurants that are secretly fronts for the Mafia.
Dustin: Dustdad is a middle-aged manchild who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables or watch movies without explosions in them and who would be wallowing in a dirty house filled with discarded takeout containers if his wife ever got up the sense to leave him, I don’t want to hear about Dustin being in a state of arrested development.
GT: “Your stick-to-it-tive-ness is why you, White Male Protagonist Gil Thorp, are the most beloved person in your community as you deserve to be.”
Luann: Come on, Bernice, I’m sure you have inter…um, tal…people who tol…you know what, you just sit there and keep talking to your fish.
MW: Oh SHUT UP, Mister “Belle is a really nice gal, I’m sure once you take the time to get to know her she’ll stop trying to kill you!”
@Activist: re: Phantom – almost certainly headdresses showing the Wambesi have cultural similarities to the Maasai, Oromo, etc, and that these guards are therefore elite warriors serving in effectively dress uniforms
Questionable Content : I would have preferred if this had gone
Panel 1 : NuZlata : …Well, since no one has seen me like this, I could just transfer back to my old body, no harm no foul…
Panel 2 : OldZlata (regaining consciousness) : …Huh? Wha-? Where am I? Who-!?
Panel 3 : *Uncomfortable beat as the two Zlata stare at each other*
Panel 4 : BothZlata : ZLATA YOU FOOL! “Copy data” is no the same a “Transfer data”!
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Rex Morgan M.D. : ideally, a narrative shouldn’t have to cut back to characters the protagonists snubbed going “IT’S OKAY THE PROTAGONIST SNUBBED US, WE ARE EVIL BAD GUYS!”
I recognise there are times when its necessary, like as a way to show that the protagonist is shrewd, but I don’t think this is quite one of those times?
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Ripley’s Don’t Believe It :
d) Ancient Mesopotamians did not spend 49 hours a year sitting on the toilet, looking at pictures of cute cats on their phones. This is merely a liberty the artist took to try and find a common element between today’s surprisingly disparate ‘fun’ ‘facts’.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: CHILDREN OF THE CORN, EXCEPT IT’S CHILDREN OF RENE BELLUSO (THE ONE ON THE RIGHT IS SECRETLY BALD AND WEARS A WIG)
RMMD- Grinning evilly whilst busting kinda destroys the “poor us” mythos. They’re not scammers, they’re auditioning to be Mae Mae’s backup band.
“What the hell are you talking about, man? We live in a demon-haunted world, to quote Carl Sagan. Every noise in the night, every light in the sky, every wisp of cloud or low-hanging mist is a ghost, maybe of man, woman, child, dog, or the saber-toothed tiger. That’s why we propitiate all these spirits with offerings and defend ourselves with wards. That’s why we bury our dead with beads and weapons. Did you think we did it to confuse archeologists or anthropologists? I mean, that’s a funny side effect, but not our main reason.”
Also Rex Morgan M.D.: An absurdly complicated scam carried out for absurdly low stakes by odd-looking villains who have beef with the designated good guys? Look out, folks: Dick Tracy has escaped its containment! It got Judge Parker long ago, and now it’s coming for Rex Morgan, M.D.!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Their names are Jené and Esmé.
I doubt the B.C. writers are aware that Hitmen for Destiny did a much funnier bit about “why don’t animals have ghosts?”
I dunno, Josh. “Hack-y sack” seems like it would have been a good title for today’s post. Hiyooo!!
BC: Actually kind of a solid gag. If the subtext wasn’t “How dare you demonstrate skepticism? Die in a plague!” I’d like it better, though.