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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/2/25

Oh, hey, sorry I haven’t kept you up to date on the tale of Summer and Augie and the bad date that Summer ditched to hook up with Augie. The short version is that after making a real ass of himself at the bar where Summer met Augie and getting kicked out by the bouncer, bad-date-man showed up at Summer’s workplace at the Morgan clinic and made a real ass of himself and got kicked out by the building’s security guard. As is all too typical for me, that ostensibly “interesting” stuff did not move me to comment, but today’s strip? Where Augie’s going on and on about how much he likes regional artists and educational vacations to Kansas City? Well, you know that’s gonna hook me in. I’m extremely invested in finding out if “regional artists” become the new “roots country.” Meanwhile, bad-date-man has stalked Summer to the art museum, and I guess we’ll find out this week if he’s going to make a real ass of himself and be kicked out by a museum security guard or if he decides that these people are pretty boring, actually, and he has better stuff to do.

Beetle Bailey, 3/2/25

Without the top row of throwaway panels, this strip is absolutely nothing, a boring non-joke about how the General is obsessed with golf and his soldiers don’t respect him, for that reason and also a variety of other reasons. With the throwaway panels … there’s a whisper of something funny in there. Probably they could condense all the other panels down to one or two and then it might actually elicit a sensible chuckle. Keep plugging away at it, guys, you’re gonna write a good one of these eventually!

Dennis the Menace, 3/2/25

I gotta admit, I spent most of this strip thinking, “Wow, the whole neighborhood thinks Henry’s a dipshit, huh. Can’t blame them, really. Look at how he dresses!” But then I got to the last panel and it turns out that everyone was actually mad at [record scratch] Dennis, whose menacing behavior provides this strip with its very title??? Ashamed to confess that they got me with this one, folks. They got me!

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Andy Capp, 2/21/25

Among the strips I’m starting to revisit is Andy Capp (never forget: ANDY CAPP!), and of course, there’s an important question one asks when starting to read this beloved British comics institution after the better part of a decade: is Andy Capp still a drunk? He’s a drunk, right? That’s his whole thing? Today’s strip, in which we learn that Andy would rather die horribly than spend his precious beer money on professional services of any kind, affirms this timeless truth.

Dennis the Menace and Bizarro, 2/21/25

One of my comics pet peeves is characters saying stuff they would never actually say (or having it implied that they said it moments before the in-strip action) just to set up a punchline. Take today’s Dennis the Menace, for instance: Surely a mail carrier would be much more likely to ask “Is he friendly?” or “Does he bite?” in a scenario where he’s encountering an unfamiliar and unleashed dog, as that would be relevant to his professional interests. Why on earth would he care about the dog’s peeing/pooping situation? I was planning on going on a whole diatribe about how cartoonists are simply obsessed with peeing and pooping, but then I read today’s Bizarro and immediately thought “Wait, is the implication here that Jesus drinks water and pisses out wine? Because that’s what the ‘In’/’Out’ labels pretty heavily imply to me,” so you know what, maybe I’m part of the problem.

Archie, 2/21/25

Reggie Mantle generally gets a bad rap, as he primarily exists in the Archieverse as an antagonist for our pals, but you know what? He’s absolutely in the right here. Is the student newspaper a joke to you, Jughead? Some of us are trying to learn about the practice of good journalism here!

Judge Parker, 2/21/25

Being best college buds with Sophie seems like fun — like, you get invited to bumpin’ party weekends out in the Hamptons. There are downsides, of course — like, said party weekends involve discovering corpses — but you have to take the good with the bad. Still, I don’t think it’s right that Sophie made Reena watch dronecam snuff footage without any warning or even anything fun as a lead-in (having to hang out with Randy Parker does not count as fun).

Daddy Daze, 2/21/25

Oh, Daddy Daze daddy, you and I both know that none of that ever happened! Why would you lie to your son about this?

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Dick Tracy, 2/20/25

Dick Tracy is a comic strip that operates in an exaggerated storytelling mode, entertaining us with outlandish plots about corpse theft and so forth. But it can also touch on very real, down-to-earth issues, like the problem of inadequate nephews. Are your nephews good-for-nothings who don’t even have the skills and/or gumption to properly steal a dead body? Dick Tracy sees you, and hears you, and knows you are valid.

Pickles, 2/20/25

Another comic I’ve added recently to my rotation is Pickles, a low-key strip about old people. I appreciate today’s installment because it avoids the cliche of making an adorable little moppet the resident computer genius and instead identifies the “generation [that’s] pretty handy with modern technology” as the children of old people, who are, let’s be extremely real, getting pretty old themselves. Sure, assigning tech support to a 52-year-old with bad knees may not get your strip cut out and hung on refrigerators, but you have to respect the commitment to verisimilitude.

The Lockhorns, 2/20/25

“Why doesn’t this person use the opportunity given to him to inflict violence on the one who has wronged him?” is Loretta’s takeaway from what she’s learning about soccer, and that should be concerning to Leroy, probably.

Dennis the Menace, 2/20/25

Mr. Wilson, they’re going to try to cancel you for this, but you’re right. Dennis Mitchell is a five-year-old child and just in general should not be spending extended periods of time at other people’s homes outside a formal arrangement; today he’s banging on a pot like a drum in a very irritating manner and you shouldn’t have to put up with it. I support you in your quest for a common sense resolution of the Dennis issue!