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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/9/22

Oh, sorry folks, I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the antics of “Mud Mountain Murphy!” Well, after doing some mild flirting at the diner, Mud Mountain Murphy ate a truly superhuman amount of food — and, like, I mean that, it was cartoonish, no real person would or could eat that much — with seemingly no ill effects. I say seemingly because that hesitation and those beads of sweat say that we might, in fact, be in store for some ill effects! It would be easy and juvenile to make a joke about a “mud mountain” in Mud Mountain’s pants, but honestly that’s a best case scenario for him, especially given that Rex Morgan, M.D., occasionally remembers the M.D. in its name and we might be about to see a massive on-stage coronary event.

Beetle Bailey, 11/9/22

Sure, Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries appears to be one of the few newspaper-adjacent entities still comfortably in the black, but I think it shows some hubris to do a whole newspaper comic strip where the joke is “Newspapers are literally garbage, good only for wiping up spills, and everyone but doddering old men know it!”

Gil Thorp, 11/9/22

In an earlier time, when only a few major media outlets dominated small markets like Milford, it was easy for Gil to cement his dominance and protect his career: he simply had his allies in the press publish stories proclaiming his victory in games he had lost! You begin to see why Marty Moon acts like he’s such a crusader for truth: you may not like his methods, but at least he’s offering an alternative voice out there.

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Mary Worth, 11/6/22

Welp, it looks like Mary Worth does have an important lesson to teach us about love, and it’s that if your gal rejects your marriage proposal, all you have to do is (literally) dangle the prospect of your death in front of her to make her realize what she could be missing. The best case scenario here is that we find out that Zak staged this whole incident and it throws their relationship into turmoil, but assuming they do get married, we need to start thinking about who’s going to make the biggest ass of themselves at the wedding. Everyone’s going to say “Wilbur,” of course, but I am begging you to not sleep on Tommy, who could quite frankly go in any number of erratic directions emotionally even if he stays sober.

Beetle Bailey, 11/6/22

I’m fascinated and a little saddened that Beetle, the laziest man alive, doesn’t even contemplating reading for pleasure in order to lull himself to sleep, and instead picks up a book that promises to teach him a skill! But all’s well that end’s well, and by “end’s well” I mean that in the end he’s finally imprisoned, for his many crimes.

Family Circus, 11/6/22

Look, I know we’re all upset that Ma Keane is talking about and describing “Not Me” directly, when we all know it’s supposed to be a little in-joke that’s visualized but never spoken about, but let’s not let that distract us from the most important thing here, which is that Billy is so dumb he can’t even count to six.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/1/22

Huh, well, I guess Funky really is shutting down Montoni’s after all? This of course provides a great opportunity to trace the experiences of these longtime beloved characters as they move into a new phase of their lives do some nostalgia bullshit about the good old days of the strip, which, in a visual medium like the comics, is obviously best delivered by a wall of text and some photos that would be 100% invisible to anyone reading this in a newspaper, if anyone still read newspapers.

Judge Parker, 11/1/22

Gloria’s righteous rage has led her and Sam to the home of the judge at the heart of this mystery, where she won’t stop righteously ringing her doorbell until she gets answers! Of course, you might find her righteousness a little misplaced given that the judge himself just had most of his family brutally murdered, either by crooked cops or meth gangs or maybe his own son, so maybe he doesn’t want to chat about your wounded but still alive husband, Gloria, jeez.

Beetle Bailey, 11/1/22

I was going to do a whole riff here along the lines of “Ha ha, you know your legacy comic strip has been going on for 70+ years when the only new joke you can come up with is ‘What if one of our characters were covered in ticks?’”, but then it occurred to me that this is a strip about golf, the official pastime of legacy comic strip creators, and maybe the risks of tick infestation are everyday “relatable” content to these guys. Good to know that I can add “could end up with Lyme disease” to “boring” and “expensive” on my list of reasons why I don’t play golf.

Mary Worth, 11/1/22

Mary Worth is not just entertaining: it also seeks to impart important life lessons to its readers. This week that lesson is “don’t stand on cliff edges,” which may seem obvious to you but you never know who needs to hear it!