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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/4/17

Ah, it looks like Jordan is finally going to be parting ways with the Avery family, who he’s served well, participating in a little light fraud and caring for a man with dementia despite a lack of medical credentials. Heather is now taking Milton back to Britain to fob him off on the National Health Service, and Jordan, having navigated the complex medical ethics involved, will be staying in America to woo his nurse sweetheart. This conflicts with Heather’s plan to make use of Jordan’s seed, so I assume her line in the final panel means that she’ll be using the power of her family’s wealth and influence to ensure that no company will ever hire Jordan again.

Dennis the Menace, 3/4/17

I gotta say, the classic “little kid is threatening to run away from home into the wide world without protection, subject to who knows what horrors” gag seems a lot more menacing when the kid has a real roller suitcase and not a whimsical hobo bindle.

Beetle Bailey, 3/4/17

Killer thought that by having sex with a nun he could live out a fun, transgressive fantasy, but he clearly got more than he bargained for, emotionally.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/25/17

My one and only encounter with childhood religious instruction that I can remember came when I was maybe in the six to eight years old range; we were visiting my mom’s parents in Ohio, and I sat in a Sunday school class at their church. The teacher acted out the story of Jonah and the whale by putting a Playmobil man into a giant plastic toy shark, and as a know-it-all child this bothered me a lot, because I was very smug in the knowledge that sharks were fish and whale were mammals. But I didn’t say anything, which is just as well, since the bible actually uses the word “fish” (and the ancient Hebrews really didn’t make the distinction anyway); and besides, I wasn’t the type of kid to make a fuss in front of strangers, or to challenge authority. I guess you could say I wasn’t … a menace?

Anyway, while I suspect that modern-day Sunday Schools (especially those run by namby-pamby Episcopalians) don’t follow the injunction from Proverbs that “he that spareth his rod hateth his son,” I also have a hard time imagining that they just turn the other cheek when it comes to classroom disruptions that would get you a stern talking-to and note sent home at a Godless public school. Thus, the only way to interpret this panel that makes sense is that, here in Sunday School, Dennis doesn’t want to act out or cause a fuss, which is probably the least menacing attitude he could possibly take.

Mary Worth, 2/25/17

Speaking of Jesus, what’s Tommy been up to while Iris sows her wild oats all over campus? Thinking about big bottles of delicious pills, mostly! I dearly hope that when a tear-soaked Iris returns to her apartment from Mary’s advice session, we see her from Tommy’s perspective, and it’s like when a hungry wolf in an old cartoon sees someone’s head turn into a rotisserie chicken, except Iris’s head looks like a bottle of Vicodin, or maybe just one enormous Vicodin tablet.

Mark Trail, 2/25/17

OH MY GOD

MARK TRAIL IS A VAMPIRE

OR MAYBE DOC OR CHERRY

OR RUSTY

YES, RUSTY IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO BE AN UNDEAD BLOOD-SUCKING GHOUL

STILL, EITHER WAY: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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Dennis the Menace, 2/19/17

OK, so, the logical reading of this strip, up until the punchline, is that Dennis and Alice went to the bookstore, bought a book to correct Ruff’s bad behavior, then returned home to discover evidence of said bad behavior. But in the final panel, we learn that the book was already in the house, which means that between the second and third panels of the middle row, the two of them brought the book home, left it there, then went somewhere else, then came back again. Right? That’s the only way this sequence makes sense? Unless Ruff chewed the book to bits off panel, as Dennis held it in his hand! The dog’s gone mad, I say! Mad with rage! He won’t stop until he destroys everything his family owns!

Beetle Bailey, 2/19/17

Say what you will about General Halftrack’s leadership qualities, but in the last panel in the second row and first in the third row he proves his skill in dealing with the press by cheerfully answering the questions he wants to answer, not the ones actually asked. The punchline leaves him hanging on his greatest challenge yet.