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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/31/23

I suppose this little kid already knows about the car accident, but it would be extremely funny if this were June trying to deliver bad news gently. “Is my mom okay?” “Don’t worry, Tommy. There have been huge advances in mortuary science lately, and she’ll still be able to have an open casket funeral.”

Gil Thorp, 1/31/23

Only selling vapes to kids old enough to buy them? Generating income from legitimate jobs? This vape fundraising is the most licit illicit money-making scheme this strip has seen since the days of the tattoo parlor that hooked kids with illegal DVDs that were actually legal!

Mary Worth, 1/31/23

The only thing funnier than telling a date that you and your ex broke it off because he did something that “shook [you] to your core” and offering no further explanation is a comic strip illustrating this incident by showing you and your friends weeping openly, also with no further explanation.

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Judge Parker, 1/30/23

JUDGE PARKER PLOT RECAP SPEEDRUN: The Spencer-Drivers were all gathered at Abby’s compound contemplating their next move vis-a-vis the whole “crooked cops and meth dealers are after them” business, when a drunken Detective Yelich went and kidnapped the traumatized son of Judge Meth who’s the only witness to his family’s murder, in an attempt to lure Judge Meth to the compound, except it turns out that’s exactly what Judge Meth wanted, and so he’s here now holding Sophie at gunpoint, and now suddenly the traumatized son is slightly less catatonic. Sure would be funny if the initial thought that the son was the murderer was correct, and he resolves this whole dilemma neatly by killing his father. Turns out he just loves murdering his family members! He just can’t get enough of it!

Six Chix, 1/30/23

Imagine if you lived in a universe where everything — your house, your food, the landscape around you — was made up of the exact same material as your flesh. What would “homemade” mean in that scenario? It sure would be [lowers sunglasses like David Caruso on CSI: Miami] chilling.

Gil Thorp, 1/30/23

“Look at the beautiful flag flying in the breeze, Dr. Pearl. I tell you what, there’s nothing more American that forcing students to engage in feats of physical strength for the amusement of others in order to fund extra-curricular activities that could’ve been paid for by the district’s budget if the town hadn’t voted down the last four school bond issues.”

Crock, 1/30/23

Between this strip and the one from a couple weeks ago about iPods, you have to imagine that the Crock creative team spent the turn of the century terrified that the rising generation would focus so much attention on their devices that they wouldn’t care if they killed themselves or someone else in the process. And in a sense, didn’t they turn out to be right? Well, no, but it’s fun to think about Crock saying “eenternet ‘ookup” in a cartoonish French accent, so I’ll allow it.

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Gil Thorp, 1/23/23

Maybe I’m going to get pushback for this by people who are and/or know actual teens, but my take on vaping, setting aside for the moment its purpose as a drug delivery system, is that it’s one of the dorkiest things I encounter in the real world on a regular basis. You’re sucking cotton-candy flavored mist out of an object that looks either like a tiny alto saxophone or something that would’ve been called a “deathstick” in a bad late ’90s cyberpunk movie. Not that a teen should take lessons on being cool from me, a 48-year-old man who blogs about comic strips, but it’s just sad that the Magic the Gathering nerds have internalized that vaping is too cool for them. To be fair, Nick refuses to buy into this dichotomy either, and is happy to share his cool guy vaping bounty with them. Nick seems like an all right dude, to be honest, maintaining his generosity despite the nerds’ rudeness!

Slylock Fox, 1/23/23

For some reason I assumed that the answer to “which way” was going to be a cardinal direction and I was about to pen a screed about how the liberal coastal elitists at Slylock Fox have constructed a mystery where you have to know about the relative locations of the zoo and lake in Central Park. But it turns out the answer relies on knowing which side of the bus the doors are on, and as a transit nerd I’m down with this one.

Honestly, the biggest story here is not Harry Ape robbing yet another bank, but the continued existence of a zoo in a post-animalpocalypse world. I suppose the animals could maintain it with empty cages and habitats as a monument to their former enslavement, but there are other possibilities, and they’re all much darker.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/23

You know, for someone who’s dirt poor and also doesn’t really seem to care about living a healthy lifestyle, Snuffy sure visits the doctor a lot! And it occurred to me, looking at this strip, that we often see him in that situation with his shirt off and the top half of his overalls unbuckled, which (a) indicates that a decent amount of thought went into the question of “Given how Snuffy canonically dresses, what would it look like if he had to disrobe?” and (b) is really a blessing, considering how much further they could’ve gone with it.