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Dustin, 5/9/25

It’s a little weird writing a blog about the relatively small world of the syndicated newspaper comics, because I know for sure that many of comics creators read my little posts but it’s not always clear which ones do, so when a strip makes a change that could be interpreted as being in response to my criticism my first reaction is to become slightly drunk with power. Like for instance, I’ve complained for years that the Dustin strips about the dating life of its Millennial Zoomer characters all take place in fern bars and don’t involve dating apps at all; today’s strip, I’d like to imagine, is the result of the Dustin team finally saying “FINE, we’ll do a dating strip that involves the apps, that’ll shut him up. The kids don’t put their pictures on dating apps, do they? That would be insane.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/9/25

So it turns out that Kelly did not break up with Niki before starting to date a tall boy she met at college, and once she figured out her mother was no longer in mortal danger she went over to the garage where Niki works to break the news to him, and his reaction was pretty chill, all things considered. Today we learn why: seems like he’s got a new gal himself, with a kerchief! Is “Big Sandy” one of Glenwood’s wholly disproportionate number of retro musical acts? Are these two young people dabbling in the exciting rockabilly lifestyle? Is god-damned Buck involved, somehow? Reload joshreads dot com non-stop for further developments!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/9/25

Jesus Christ, what is this lady standing on? Is it her face? Is it more feet? None of the potential answers are good!

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Dustin, 4/27/25

You might recall last week when Dustin was, if not concerned about his parents’ increasingly obvious marital dysfunction and mutual antipathy, then at least kind of satisfied to see it. But Meg? Meg’s younger, and she no doubt has even fewer memories of her parents ever having been happy. This is just the background radiation of her life, and if she has a choice between listening to her father mutter about the long list of resentments her mother clings to or looking at literally anything on her phone, well, that’s not really a very hard decision for her.

Mary Worth, 4/27/25

I’m sorry, I object to this. One thing that I am very certain about is that, culturally speaking, Dawn is an utter philistine. Dawn has not seen Psycho enough times for it to worm its way into her subconscious. Dawn has never watched a black and white movie, or really anything longer than one of your middle-length TikToks. This scene should really be overlaid with the text “POV: Your father’s new girlfriend tries to unalive you with a kn*fe” and somehow take place in the front seat of a car.

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Dustin, 4/17/25

Really loving Dustin’s facial expression in the second panel here. “Ah,” he’s thinking, “he doesn’t love her either. He may hate her as much as he hates me. It’s not great, but it’s kind of satisfying to know, honestly.”

Mary Worth, 4/17/25

Dawn’s face in panel two here is almost as good. That’s the face of a college student who is absolutely going to choke down the soggy, room-temperature sandwich she’s been carrying around in her backpack all day, just to spite the woman who was loudly fucking her dad most of the previous evening. The fact that she’ll save herself from being poisoned is just a bonus, assuming she wouldn’t prefer a quick death to enduring the rest of Belle’s visit.

Marvin, 4/17/25

This isn’t really about facial expressions, just about how Bitsy the dog is infested with parasites and that makes him an outcast from dog society. His facial expression in panel two, as he contemplates the fact that everyone is disgusted by him, is kind of poignant, I guess.