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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/10/09

OK, I’m sure I’m going to get all sorts of comments and emails from doctors and other medical personnel (and from the developers of medical-themed Web sites) about how the Internet is going to revolutionize medicine and replace those huge, hard-to-read medical textbooks and not every doctor holds all information about all diseases in his head at all times and blah blah blah, but … I find panel two, in which Rex makes his serious face and declares that he’ll be solving this medical crisis with the help of the Internet, to be kind of funny. I guess I mostly associate the intersection of the Web and medical diagnoses with people posting things like “how can u tell if u have siphalis?” to Yahoo! Answers and/or hypochondriacs spending ten minutes with WebMD and coming away convinced their sore throat is esophageal cancer. I’m all the more skeptical because the weaselly little ship’s doctor is blatantly coming down with Norwalk himself right before our eyes, while all Rex can do is stand around and look concerned in a manly way while he reaches for any excuse to get down to the ship’s computer lab and start his intensive search for barely legal Ukrainian soldier-boy porn.

Marvin, 3/10/09

“Oh, excellent! I’ve just constructed a delightful little joke that based on two complementary concepts, ‘work’ and ‘play’! Except … it’s possible that the rubes who read this strip won’t pick up on my subtle wordplay. How can I make things a bit more obvious? I know … now, where did I put that bold font?”

Family Circus, 3/10/09

Berating your baby brother is all good fun, Jeffy, but you’d better watch yourself: it looks like PJ’s time as the only member of the Keane Klan who doesn’t know how to punch you in the face is about to end just … about … now.

Apartment 3-G, 3/10/09

OMG MOMENTOUS MOMENT! Margo’s father finally appears in the strip! And he looks … uh … pretty much like every other dude who has appeared in Apartment 3-G, ever. Huh. Whee.

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Hi and Lois, 3/8/09

My goodness, today’s Hi and Lois presents one of the most searing indictments of standard-issue suburban heteronormality that I’ve ever seen — it certainly strikes me as more compelling than Revolutionary Road, which, I should confess, I didn’t see, because it looked pretty snoresville. Side note: I think Revolutionary Road should have been marketed as a Titanic sequel, and framed as a dream sequence going through Leo DiCaprio’s character’s mind as he froze to death in the North Atlantic, imagining what his life would be like if he survived and married Kate Winslet’s character. The numb, soul-crushing lifestyle he envisions for their future would really just reflect the fact that his body and mind are shutting down in the icy waters.

Wait, where was I? Oh, right, Hi and Lois. Lois, driven completely bonkers by her unruly brood, contemplates just leaving, just walking out, getting some “fresh air” and not coming back. Her wide-eyed look in the next-to-last panel is particularly harrowing: she’s just staring off to space, thinking, “What if I just keep standing here? They say that freezing to death is just like falling asleep. You don’t even feel anything. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to fall asleep in the nice white fluffy snow, forever?” Eventually, she decides that venturing into her hell-house is marginally better than dying of frostbite, so she turns around and returns, a wan little smile on her face.

The first two throwaway panels add an extra little bit of awful to the whole affair. “Woah,” Hi says, “Your mother sure looks like she’s about at her breaking point! I’m just going to take this newspaper with me to the bathroom and not come out again for the rest of the night.” At least Chip doesn’t actively flee when asked to help, though I note that he “took over” without once getting off the couch or even looking up from the tiny little screen on his cell phone.

Mary Worth, 3/8/09

On that note, I should mention that Mary Worth appears to be setting itself up to compete with the recently completed “sometimes we slap and terrify our partners because we love them too much” Mark Trail storyline in the repressive patriarchy department. Adrian may be a full-grown adult and a doctor to boot, but we’ll soon learn what happens when a fragile, vulnerable, young little girl attempts to choose her own husband: betrayal and grifting and heartbreak and despair. Once Ted has left town with her life savings, Adrian will finally agree to the plan her father has been pushing all along: an arranged marriage with the son of Dr. Jeff’s neighbors, so that their children will eventually inherit both estates and achieve a higher status in the ranks of the local landed gentry.

Family Circus, 3/8/09

Ah, NyQuil — is there any problem you can’t solve?

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 3/8/09

There’s nothing Mr. Wilson longs for more than to pound back a few bourbons, get in his car, and slam himself into a tree.

Crankshaft, 3/8/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because Crankshaft is old, and all his friends are dying!

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Beetle Bailey, 3/5/09

Our soldiers are refusing to take performance-enhancing drugs, like steroids, because they prefer non-performance-enhancing drugs, like heroin.

Blondie, 3/5/09

Dagwood’s transformation into a Howard Hughes-style, urine-jar-storing shut-in begins today.

Dennis the Menace, 3/5/09

“Plus you keep downloading viruses from all those porn sites.”

(Possibly more menacing alternative: “Plus I keep downloading viruses from all those porn sites.”)

Family Circus, 3/5/09

Jeffy finds himself encrusted with filth with such depressing regularity that he has established some sort of rating system for it.

Hi and Lois, 3/5/09

Hi and Lois is attempting to match Ziggy’s patented brand of second-rate empty-background existentialist absurdism — and, sadly, coming up fairly short.