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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/8/08

The current Rex Morgan plotline got exciting some weeks back and, as is ever the case when that happens, I immediately lost interest. I discussed this phenomenon, which I call The Rex Morgan Problem, a while back, and here it comes around again just like clockwork. I think part of the problem is that “exciting” is really not something these strips do well. Ludicrous? Overwrought? Brimming with unspoken and petty resentments? Cryptohomoerotic? Yes, yes, yes, and you’d better believe that’s a yes. Exciting? Not so much.

Anyway, speaking of unspoken resentments, I do kind of love Niki’s expression in panel three. To quickly sum up several weeks of ostensibly exciting developments, Niki was briefly left alone in the cabin with one the escaped prisoners, who tried to relate to him as a fellow lowlife and offered him some stolen cash to switch sides; Niki refused because of his fear of letting Rex down. In today’s final panel, he looks to be contemplating the fact that right now he could be (a) warm, (b) dry, (c) rich, and (d) about to be embarking on an awesome cross-country crime spree instead of trudging through the dark, wet woods with a sullen and vaguely creepy doctor.

Spider-Man, 1/8/08

Speaking of non-exciting “excitement,” Spider-Man has actually toyed with superhero-on-villain action for the past few days. I refuse to label the Persuader a “supervillain” despite his descriptive one-word name, because he wears street clothes and his only “power” is his unusual stature; still, he’s proved more than a match for Spidey, escaping from his spiderwebs and failing to get in the way of the web-slinger’s wildly misdirected web-slinging. Maybe it’s time to admit that Peter Parker’s longstanding refusal to fight crime or even get off of the couch comes not from laziness or apathy but of a crippling fear of exactly this sort of inevitable failure and humiliation. The self-esteem issues that would naturally arise go a long way towards explaining his eternal passive-aggressive attitude towards any hint of his wife’s success.

Dennis the Menace, 1/8/08

The teacher in green’s wide, crazy eyes are more terrifyingly menacing than anything Dennis has done in my lifetime. She looks like she’s about to go on a killing spree, and, even more troubling, that she’ll testify that Dennis’ fairly tame caricature spoke to her and told her which of her students should live and which should die.

Gil Thorp, 1/8/08

“Frankly, it smacks of math. And the last thing I want my players wasting their time with is math. That’s why we have the poindexters who sit at the scorer’s table!”

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Gil Thorp, 1/7/08

One of my favorite terrible things about Gil Thorp is the way its narration boxes and exposition characters just hurl the full (and almost invariably WASPy) names of characters at you willy-nilly. I guess it’s supposed to keep you up on who’s doing what, but for me it has the opposite effect, as anyone who isn’t the main thrust of the storyline invariably gets lost in a sea of badly drawn faces. Was Grant Sanders an important player in the recently concluded football storyline? Has Bill Hawkins ever appeared in the strip before? Who the hell knows? I’m not very good with names in real life, and generally the people I encounter there don’t have facial features that move around and change shape from moment to moment. The only thing I’m sure of is that the dude at left in panel three was a prominent member of the Lollypop Guild.

Five bucks says that “Let’s get the A-Train involved here” also features prominently in Andrew Gregory’s foreplay banter.

Hi and Lois, 1/7/08

Hi is regarding his son with goggle-eyed horror not because they actually had some kind of upcoming vacation to St. Moritz — after all, this is the family whose idea of a dream trip was a week in cheesy faux Old West mining town, and even that apparently drove them to the verge of bankruptcy. No, the Flagston patriarch is stunned that Chip can actually summon up a phrase in a foreign language. For obvious reasons, they had always pegged him as the dumb one, and long ago spent his college fund on trips to cheesy faux tourist attractions.

Slylock Fox, 1/7/08

I hate to sound like I’m kissing up, but today’s Slylock is really a perfect little noir vignette — and while Reynard Noir is on vacation, too! I love the look into the Rats’ depressing home, with crumbling plaster covered over with Reeky’s wanted posters. The neat stack of photocopied bill sheets on the stool and the paper cutter in the foreground remind us that counterfeiting is exactly the sort of crime that fits the manic, obsessive energy of a meth fiend like Reeky. And I love the way Mrs. Rat is sitting at her vanity in a sexy slip (no doubt it’s 95 degrees and they don’t have AC), while her loutish hubby bellows commands from the other room. If only it ran in my newspaper, I could see it in black and white as it was clearly intended to be.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/7/08

Ha! It’s Funky Winkerbean! Even the exposition is cruel!

Judge Parker, 1/8/07

“So, I masturbated into your underwear drawer. Hope you don’t mind!”

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Curtis, 1/2/08

The Curtis annual Kwayzee Kwanzaa digression never disappoints. Never. This year, we have the tale of a master thief, who stole a water buffalo’s hide while she was bathing (did you know that water buffalos are people inside their hides? It’s true!), then married and impregnated her, only to earn the wrath of a two-headed poisonous snake by stealing its eggs. Really! And now the snake has done something awful to the buffalo lady, probably changed her unborn buffalo-human hybrid baby into some kind of three-way buffalo-human-two-headed-snake hybrid, and a valuable lesson will be learned, namely: don’t do mescaline, kids. I hate to say it, but the whole thing make Hanukkah look kind of boring. Did the Maccabees ever transform into animals, or marry animals, or anything? Can we get a deuterocanonical rewrite here?

Gil Thorp, 1/2/08

We saw last week that Andrew is exactly the sort of quick-witted sharpie who might actually recognize a double-entendre like “We’re not huge — but you don’t have to be if you’re talented” when he sees it, and might enjoy trying to slip it past an obviously hungover Marty Moon. We’ll be looking forward to hearing more ribald quips from this hatchet-faced wunderkind once he starts talking about “the Bucket.”

Marvin, 1/2/08

His medicine cabinet … and his bloodstream. Those heavy lids and eyebags indicate that Grandpa has been so doped up by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex that he can barely stand up straight. The saddest thing is that this strip is taking place at two in the afternoon, and he’s just managed to lift his head off of his drool-soaked pillow long enough to shamble into the bathroom and get another fix.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/2/08

If my record-keeping is on track, then “Bob Bennett” is actually faithful reader benro, who apparently goes to a doctor’s office frequented by vomiting fetishists. Bonus Scadutoism: “Woopee”.