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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/31/20

Real Rex-heads know that one of the Morgans’ children is actually the biological son of June’s childhood best friend, who she hadn’t seen in years and who came back into her life just long enough to hand over her son to the Morgans’ care before dropping dead, and there was a brief moment where it looked like the kid’s paternal grandparents might want to fight them for custody, but it turned out they just wanted to baby-sit for free. Well, guess what: Rex and June need some free baby-sitting, so it looks like they won’t be letting the calls from these sad, lonely old people go straight to voice mail anymore!

Mary Worth, 10/31/20

Nothing really new to report in today’s Mary Worth, but “Tommy and Brandy argue at work through clenched teeth about who’s addicted to what and who isn’t like who’s dad” is exactly the sort of petty pleasure I — and, I assume, all of you — come to Mary Worth for.

Dick Tracy, 10/31/20

Oh, sorry, Little Orphan Annie isn’t a vampire! She’s just a former poor girl who got rich by sheer luck, and now she smiles warmly at people who help the currently poor from the back her limousine, without getting out to help or even saying hi herself. Which is, you know, a lot less interesting, frankly.

Dennis the Menace, 10/31/20

Did, uh, did Dennis steal a car? That’s pretty menacing, actually.

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Dennis the Menace and Hi and Lois, 10/29/20

Truly, there’s nothing more menacing than a child who becomes extremely aware of their own ability to perform a sort of exaggerated pantomime of childhood antics. Look at Dennis’s sickeningly smug facial expression in panel two — it’s like he didn’t ruin the wall for the joy of it, but rather just so he could unleash this sub-Family Circusism on his poor mother. Dot, too, is really overdoing it; a child rejoicing in the suffering of a sibling is demonstrating a distasteful but natural human emotion, but she’s making such a big deal of her cruel mirth that it’s clearly meant for an audience, one that for the moment is withholding the attention she so obviously and pathetically craves.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/29/20

Snuffy’s facial expression similarly seems wildly overdone, but I think we’re supposed to read it as genuine. See, he’s really depressed because he’s so poor and so deep in debt that he can’t afford to buy anything to eat, which is … the punchline to this strip, I guess?

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Dick Tracy, 10/22/20

Despite the fact that Dick Tracy wears a bright yellow coat and has a rogue gallery full of weird mutants, his strip is actually a fairly accurate depiction of police work in several senses, including the fact that there often isn’t much mystery involved in any given crime. Oh, did an heiress die from being drained of blood, vampire-style? Probably she was killed by the local professor guy who’s part of a gang of vampire cosplayers who think they should’ve inherited the money instead, and he’ll be going after the other sisters next! Anyway, I genuinely enjoy how the tubes coming out of Professor Stokes’ mouth make him look particularly pathetic. You’ll never be a real vampire, buddy, no matter how goofy an overcoat you buy!

Mary Worth, 10/22/20

It has been brought to my attention by my more drug-savvy readers that this could also be a pipe for smoking meth, not just crack like I said before, so really, who can say what Tommy is resisting here, but the point is that if you don’t enjoy the sight of our boy staring at a pipe with eyes the size of dinner plates, then I respect your opinion but I think you’re missing out one of the fundamental pleasures of Mary Worth.

Dennis the Menace, 10/22/20

A fun fact about Socrates is that he was put on trial for various trumped up charges of “corrupting the youth” of Athens, and was convicted by only a very narrow majority of the jury, but then in the penalty phase of the trial he got to give a speech about what he thought his punishment should be, and he said the Athenian government should give him free room and board for life like they did for Olympic champions, and then a much larger portion of the jury voted to have him executed. What I’m trying to say, Dennis, is that a much smarter and more menacing man than you has already tried this little strategem, and it very much did not work.