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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/20

Hey, remember Nancy, Kelly’s sneering mean-girl nemesis who tried to key Kelly’s car, back when Kelly was being chauffeured around in a hearse by mobsters because this strip used to be interesting? Well, Nancy briefly tried to do something interesting, but don’t worry: it was prevented from ever happening, off-panel, which is good because otherwise we might have had to watch it happen, instead of getting an entire Sunday strip of virtuous characters talking to each other on the phone.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/20

I genuinely love that (a) techno has been rendered as “boing bop bing” here and (b) that Hi has gone from dubious to extremely over it as Chip works his way through this bit.

Dustin, 9/20/20

You guys, Dustin finally did an actually kind of funny joke! Unfortunately the joke is that Popeye is on TV holding a can labelled “kale.” The punchline to the strip itself is not funny.

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Gil Thorp, 8/31/20

Man, remember when I had cautious but high hopes for a wacky Gil Thorp summer storyline? Well, it’s pretty much the end of summer, and I haven’t talked about Gil Thorp at all, but I can summarize what went down like this: star quarterback of yesteryear True Standish came back, having graduated and been inexplicably drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays, which is a baseball team, and the sassy and vaguely beloved Corina Karenna, who played catcher on Mike “The Mayor”’s ragtag baseball team from the bad kid school, was recruited to help True work out his arm. If that sounds like it might’ve been vaguely wacky, keep in mind that most of the eight weeks was spent talking about True and Corina’s mothers, who have both battled depression, which was very serious and not wacky at all. But now Corina is attending Milford, it seems, which will … help her mom in some way I didn’t really follow, so I hope that the upcoming fall will feature less of her fiercely but tenderly caring for and defending her beloved family (SNOOZE) and more of her defying authority or at least sassing back at authority at a rate at least 10% higher than the usual Mudlark would.

Dustin, 8/31/20

The point of Dustin is, of course, to turn the battle between Dustin’s dad and Dustin into symbol of the Boomer-Millennial struggle. Of course, thanks to comic book time Dustin’s dad is now Gen X and Dustin is probably a Zoomer, but the point is that Dustin is lazy and can’t hold down a job or find a girlfriend so that’s evidence that young people in general suck. But here’s a young person who works at Dustin’s dad’s law firm and wears a suit and everything, but apparently he still sucks because, uh, phones? Anyway, since it’s clear that young people in general are fully capable of holding down a job, Dustin’s dad might want to consider that his kid sucks because he did a bad job raising him, just putting that out there.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/3/20

“Well, also, I’ve been told that we need to form a human pair-bond in order to make the clinic function at peak efficiency, and you’re the only woman I’ve ever ‘flirted’ with. But I didn’t bring that up because I’m told that I need to hire you before I attempt to mate with you, rather than making the mating a requirement for the job, correct? That way I won’t be violating labor law? Apologies, this is all very new to me.”

Dustin, 8/3/20

Wow, Dustin doesn’t seem like such a loser now, does he, Dustin-dad? Sure, you’re always on him to get a job, but that’s a great way for him to catch a disease or die in a war (assuming the job is the war kind). I guess you’ll think twice about making fun of hi — haha, obviously not, this brief moment of affection will definitely pass.