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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/18

Oh, snap, did our man Jordan steal some valor? We learned yesterday that he lost his legs to an IED in Iraq not while “on patrol,” since he wasn’t in a combat unit, but rather while he was walking to a market to buy vegetables, because he was an Army Food Services Specialist. You’d think most people would be perfectly willing to honor anyone wounded by enemy action in a combat zone, and that the soldiers he fed would’ve deemed him a hero for risking his life to help supply them with fresh food and not MREs or industrial flash-frozen meals shipped from the States. But, whatever, Jordan just wants to give people a “good story,” and it makes me suspicious that the truth is even further removed from the “real” tale he’s been telling his fiance. Like, in a month we’re going to find out he wasn’t in the army at all, but actually was just a line chef at a restaurant who had to run to the supermarket to get some more spinach during the late dinner rush, and accidentally slipped and fell into the into the industrial floor buffer. Then a week after that we’ll find out the restaurant was an Olive Garden and he was actually picking up more of the Secret Olive Garden Ingredient (Grade B butter).

Mary Worth, 10/15/18

I don’t want to tell Mary how to do her job (“job”), but if you’re trying to woo an emotionally closed-off shut-in back into the world by giving him a specific task to complete that matches his skills, maybe just spend some time with him doing that task and making neutral chit-chat instead of bombarding him with feelings talk the moment you trick him out of his apartment? This is the speech for when he realizes he’s enjoyed the day in spite of himself, not when he’s still in the car on the way over! He’s not going to come out again for another year.

Six Chix, 10/15/18

One thing I really hate is characters explaining things to each other that they already know, so I’m going to assume that the vampiress on the left has only recently been turned into an undead ghoul by the vampiress on the right. Our newbie has finally gotten over the initial shock and is starting to really lean into the aesthetic, but still hasn’t really that the one thing that’s truly her long hoped for ticket to Instagram stardom is also the one thing that makes selfies physically impossible.

Family Circus, 10/15/18

My favorite part of this cartoon, in which literally everybody is devastated at not being able to go on a trip to New York with Big Daddy Keane (which, why? he isn’t that great) is that Billy is wearing a “Good On Ya Mate” t-shirt he got from his canonically Australian mother. Ha ha, Billy doesn’t know the difference between New York and Australia! The only geography he understands is “here” and “somewhere else.” He’s a moron!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/18

I’m not sure why Slylock felt like he needed so many accomplices for his grim little sting operation here. I do love how pleased Patty looks — maybe she feels like, having gotten a social invitation from Slylock, she’s moving up in the world! — and how tense everyone else looks, as they all wait for this desperate addict to sneak off to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and try to pocket the, uh, “toothpaste,” yeah, that’s exactly what Patty’s been stealing from the town’s medicine cabinets, toothpaste. Only our li’l pig pal is completely ignoring the fraught emotional texture of the evening. He’s just eatin’ dinner! He loves dinner! It’s weird that dinner’s been served in the living room off of a coffee table, but guess what: he doesn’t care!

Spider-Man, 10/15/18

“Look who escaped the chopper via their own personal jetpacks!” “Kingpin and the Golden Claw!” “Yeah man, that was a rhetorical question. They were the only other people in the chopper. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Is this … is this how other people feel when they’re talking to me? Hoo boy.”

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Family Circus, 10/14/18

Maybe it’s the “vest,” but I’m pretty much imagining all of these being said in a faux Eastern European accent, aka “the Dracula,” and having said that now I’m imagining a version of Dracula where instead of decamping from Transylvania to Victorian London, he heads to the American Old West instead? Excuse me, the “Old Vest.” And then he, like, drinks the blood of a bunch of cowboys and so on. Their exsanguinated corpses end up in the “symmetry,” ah ha ha! (That laughter should be imagined in the voice of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, or, if we’re being real, the Muppets’ Count Von Count.) It’s very sad to me that Billy (age 7) will make millions from this idea and not me, but I’m nothing if not scrupulous about intellectual property laws.

Dennis the Menace, 10/14/18

Henry is just joking wryly in the throwaway panel, but what if he weren’t? What if a whole series of babysitters, despite being paid good money to care for a child, and despite child abandonment being a literal crime, had just left Dennis to his own devices, fleeing into the night, never to be seen again? Just dozens of them being hauled into court on child endangerment charges, shouting “IT WAS WORTH IT, NO JURY WILL CONVICT ME, I HAVE PICTURES.”

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The Lockhorns, 9/29/18

Congrats to the syndicate colorists who successfully researched and reproduced the New York Jets’ team colors in this panel! Also, since the Lockhorns feel like a very Long Island family to me, Leroy’s fandom makes sense, geographically and (I can say this as a similarly long-suffering Bills fan) spiritually. Anyway, my main point here is despite the best stabs at accuracy from everyone involved, Leroy still looks like Mario’s brother Luigi, which is fairly comical and probably not helping the Jets in their quixotic quest for a winning 2018 season.

Pluggers, 9/29/18

Despite appearances, this isn’t an old man looking forward to some wholesome quality time with his grandson. That’s the smile of a skillful Monopoly shark who’s finally gotten to the stage of the grift when he says, “Say, why don’t we try betting some big money on this one, champ?”

Family Circus, 9/29/18

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets — I just wish it weren’t on a weekend, O Lord.” I wouldn’t have called it in advance, but seeing a St. Augustine/Taxi Driver mashup in the Family Circus just feels right.