Nostalgia, drugs, etc.
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/9/26
As predicted, the scam twins (who are named Jean and Jane, I don’t think anyone predicted that) are indeed the nieces of notorious non-twin scam artist/Rex Morgan, M.D., antagonist Rene Belluso, who I guess really is just going by “Jimmy” now. Remember how he got extremely hit by a car and super-duper injured, back in January of 2024? Well, he’s still walking with canes today, in July of 2026, probably at least in part because of the substandard medical care he’s been receiving in prison. Anyway, this got kind of dark pretty fast so let’s move on to the next strip, shall we?
Mary Worth, 7/9/26
Speaking of beloved characters from the past, you might think that this is Tommy’s beloved old crackhead pal Vin, but apparently it’s some similarly stubble-headed guy named “Reno.” You can tell the difference because Vin was outgoing, effusive, and eager to share his drugs with his good friend, whereas Reno is aloof, standoffish, and makes you do the work of coming to him and asking respectfully if he has any drugs to sell. Anyway, you can always make jokes about Tommy’s drug problems! It’s never too dark!
Pluggers, 7/9/26
Speaking of drugs, I used to make jokes about pluggers getting high when talking about the Pluggers panels that revolve around prescription meds, but then someone admonished me about this and pointed out that most prescription meds aren’t mood-altering or addictive and many people need to take them and you shouldn’t conflate them with recreational drugs. Which is fair! But check out the pinpoint pupils on this she-plugger today. Most pluggers are only taking the prescription drugs they need to keep their failing bodies alive, but this plugger in particular is definitely packing a bunch of fun pills on her vacation. She’s extremely zooted right now, before she’s even left!
45 replies to “Nostalgia, drugs, etc.”
“Geez, Tommy. Couldn’t you have called first so I could tidy up a bit?”
Pluggers:
You’re a plugger when your failure to label (a) your pills and (b) when you should take them turns each day into a pharmacological smorgasbord.
MW: You can tell Reno is bad and unredeemable because he is ugly and he smokes.
Mary Worth:
“Reno! — how many times do I have to tell you that smoking cigarettes isn’t good for you?”
Of course the crack alley is next to the pawn shop, with the sliding door, that still has a doorknob… Are we sure that Tommy isn’t high right now?
Beetle Bailey vs Six Chix : “Anyway, thank you for keeping me company while my wife is out shopping for shoes.” “Oh, it was nothing. I like it better when people thank me for my service when I actually did them a service!”
************
Rex Morgan M.D. : this is only MILD nephewism. Jean and Jane would need to be joined by a triplet named Joan, and do that gimmick where they all share the same dialogue split into three speech bubbles to actually hit TRUE nephewism.
(Would they use different names as RENÉ’S nieces rather than Jimmy? Like, they’d be Rachel, Roxanne and Raphaëlle?)
RMMD:
“See that prison guard over there? Let’s the three of us have a kaffeeklatsch in which the two of you describe your ongoing scams to me, so that he and his eavesdropping colleagues can listen in a conversation in which there’s no expectation of privacy!”
MW: Tommy tries calling his sponsor, Susan Reed, but unfortunately she’s baked to the gills herself.
RMMD: Jimmy, Jean, and Jane? Between all the J names and Ollman’s failed self help cult, it’s clear Rene and his nieces are the only escapees from some sort of religious compound. No wonder they’ve turned to a life of crime.
MW: I don’t care what Moy writes, I refuse to believe that Tommy would throw away his sobriety based on the words of Wilbur Weston. Tommy’s going to drag Reno to Charterstone to show Wilbur what a real addict looks like.
Of course Reno could just work at the pawn shop and on a smoke break, but this is Mary Worth. He’s definitely going to try and sell Tommy drugs.
RMMD – Medical Expense Management Tip of the Day – Avoid the high cost of medical expenses and recovery therapy by shifting them to the pubic dime….
MW – So…Reno is what, seventeen? And a National Honor Society member, to boot….
Pluggers – Travel Tip of the Day Save packing space by buying your Depends (TM) at a Rite Aid (TM) at your destination….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: With a flourish, Mary sheds her clever “Reno” disguise and saves Tommy from himself.
BB: They REALLY wouldn’t believe Zero if he told them that Bigfoot manscapes.
GT: I LOVE the way this strip makes us use our minds by leaving out 75% of every plot.
9CL: Is it supposed to be noteworthy that those smirking exhibitionists aren’t wearing underwear?
MW: I wonder what prompted Santa Royale’s descent into squalor. That’s bankruptcy-era Detroit levels of disrepair we’re seeing today. Did Mary drive all the mom and pop meddlers out of business?
MW: “I shot up with a man called Reno, just to watch him high.”
Pluggers: This is the face of a Plugger who just got contacted on Facebook about a money-making opportunity to bring some “perfectly legal” Adderall pills on her vacation to south-east Asia, and who is about to spend the rest of her life in a Thai prison.
I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen this partiular Plugger before. Could she be Andy Bear’s patrty-loving sister, coming into town for a drug-fueled visit? Will Andy fall into the geriatric druggy lifestyle? Will he have to hock his TV to get money for ecstasy? Stayed tuned!
GT: You know, it’s economical not to have a storyline because then you can just draw people saying things! – Crow T. Robot
Luann: “Ahhh, kids these days!” — Example number who gives a crap?
S4th: The worst part of these ‘unstuck in time’ plots? The characters spend more time sitting around agonizing about how to get home (and now making meta-quips about how often this happens to them!) instead of going and having the wacky adventures. Ces, if you are *that* out of ideas, just retire!
JP: Speaking of which, Neddy is proposing a TV show about a woman who did crimes, but wants to go straight but her past won’t let her. Must have been easy doing a ‘ctrl-A’ replace of ‘April’ with ‘Ann’!
Well, you assume Rene “Jimmy” Belluso is a non-twin scam artist, but Jane and Jean are his nieces, after all, so they’ve got to come from some sibling relation. What if Rene/Jimmy has been pulling his part of an incredible “The Prestige”-style lifelong con this whole time? Won’t you feel silly then!
Either that or he’s secretly their real father and just no one has ever bothered telling them.
MW-“Vegas, baby, Vegas! What? We’re not shouting out the names of cities to gamble in?”
RMMD-“I’m somebody’s girlfriend.”
@Rosstifer: No, but the AI Brigman employed to create the cliched art to go with Moy’s cliched writing might be.
Luann – tomorrow, a snide remark about avocado toast.
Pluggers – pluggers have so many pill bottles because they take the “talk to your doctor about…” part of all the ads they see as a commandment.
@Liam: Next Unca’ Jimmy is going to tell the twins about being ‘Bass Taped’.
By the way, what modern prison has visitors just sit at an open table that any convict could easily leap over in a bid for freedom? Shouldn’t this be at one of those booths with the telephone receivers separated by bullet-proof glass?
@Anonymous: Their names would either have to rhyme (Huey, Louey, and Dewey), or be a bad joke (Daisy, May, and June), or the same name with only a vowel change (Pipeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye).
On a side note, what kind of sadistic parent names a kid Poopeye?
MW — Tommy had been hoping to find the hip and faux-glamorous dealer Vegas, but he’ll settle for the seedy, smoking, bare wall, anachronistic metal garbage can Reno. . .
RMMD — “It’s taken a while for you to heal from your accident.”
“It could be worse. The only non-prison doctor in town is Rex Morgan.”
DT I find the throwaway lines more interesting than the wake-me-up-when-they-understand-computers plot – in a world with known aliens, the Lunarians like the Moon Maid, what _would_ the X-Files-hommage “Skully” be a skeptic about?
CS “Oh right, comics are supposed to be the *funnies*, better toss in an offbeat detail like a snake charmer in my depressing familial abandonment Wall of Text story”
GT Looks like the artist used the break to find the time to properly render that double chin and put the “is Mimi _supposed_ to be overweight now that she’s divorced Gil, or it that just bad scribbled head outlines again?” questions to rest.
@Lauralot: Or, Tommy buys the drugs and takes them back to Wilbur’s apartment to show Wilbur he’s no longer a user. Dawn hugs Tommy and they leave for their evening at the mall for the teen dance-offs. Left alone, Wilbur’s eyes drift to the drugs on the table….
@The Quiet Man: nope, looks like phones and glass are for max security, not everywhere. A quick check shows that there are prisons with supervised rooms for multiple inmates to meet visitors, e.g.: https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/visitors/in-the-visiting-room/
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Shame about the crutches, but it’s nice to see Dr. Thaddeus S. Venture has returned to the small screen. Any bets on whether Jean and Jane originated from a slug in Hank’s vat?
@Ken: Maybe what with the Panel2 frown Tommy is looking for a dealer to punch to show he’s no addict (or Brigman _wishes_ this is what she’s about to draw and the frown is hers:)
Mary Worth: Ehhhh…I’ve seen better depictions of criminals in the Chuck Colson prison comic book.
Pluggers: I was going to make a joke about how Pluggers spend more packing meds than clothes because they wear Hawaiian shirts all the time anyway and just throw some stuff in the suitcase, but then I got distracted about what kind of flowers there are on Mrs. Bear’s shirt, and whether they’re maybe not flowers at all but the faces of horrible squid monsters on the attack and now I’m wondering which pills I took this morning
MW: Say it ain’t so, Reno! Did you fall on hard times after the Hong Kong Cavaliers kicked you out of the band for your excessive drug use? We all saw you wipe your sugar boogers in the end credits of Buckaroo Bonzai!
@CanuckDownSouth: But Rene Belluso is the Moriarty to Rex’s Sherlock! The Sideshow Bob to Rex’s Bart! The Reeky Rat to Rex’s Slylock Fox! He should be trussed up like Anthony Hopkins in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and his visitors have to pass multiple layers of security!
MW:
“Reno!”
“Listen, I changed my name to ‘Carson City,’ man!”
“Capital, capital!”
@yo go re: Because their mother brought many a gentleman caller to their home, the twins call many men “Uncle”.
Rex Morgan, MD: It’s good that Jane pointed out that JimRen’s injury is slow to heal. Otherwise, I might have assumed it was just Soap Opera Strip Time in action, where things that happened months ago in the strip might have happened days ago in the story, or vice versa.
Every time I forget someone’s birthday, I assume it’s a problem with Soap Opera Strip Time.
RMMD: By the way, let me throw in my own “as predicted” gloat, for a comment a few days back saying that Rene would be badly injured and using the girls as his instruments of vengeance against the Morgans. I have to deduct a couple points — I said he’d be in a wheelchair, here he’s on crutches — but I’m on target so far. Now all we need is, as @Bob Tice predicts above, for the three of them to gloat about how well Jimmy’s revenge scheme is going, right in front of the guard.
Mary Worth is turning into a Chick Tract quite rapidly.
FC: “No need. Since the repeal of the Mann Act, couples no longer have to produce a marriage license when we cross state lines.
Mary Worth: Tommy hasn’t been in the Cracked Walls District in a while. The new overflowing trash cans are so much nicer than the old ones!
GA: “Ava Luna! I see that you’ve been by the Willy Wonka factory for some chewing gum!”
@The Quiet Man, RMMD: His Jimmy Kimmel to “Win Ben Stein’s Money”‘s Ben Stein!
Jean and Jane get loose change from passers-by while giving them nice music to listen to. Uncle Jimmy accidentally helps people with his stolen self-help plan, giving them their money’s worth. This family is just really bad at scams, aren’t they? I wouldn’t be surprised if the twins are actually good musicians and they recorded their own playing for the love of the game.
***
“Finally, I own my own business! Sure, it’s in a run down alley so I probably won’t get much drive-by business, the door has a door knob so it’s not particularly accessible unless I leave it hanging open, and I don’t get a dumpster out back, just a garbage can right by my door, but it’s MINE! Seedy Ally Brigman is going places, baby!”
@Victor Von: Just another day on Salsipuedes Street.
RexMo – It’s sweet that they’ve died their hair “Jumpsuit Orange” in solidarity with Uncle Jimmy.