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Happy Monday everyone! Today’s Marvin is not about Marvin’s dirty diapers! Instead, it’s about Jeff and Jenny’s dirty toilet. Look at how big and bulgy it is! Do you think we’re meant to understand that, like a diaper, the toilet has been filled with poop and now needs to be disposed of and replaced? Do you think the Marvin creative team has just forgotten how indoor plumbing works and can only think of human excretory processes in terms of diapers at this point?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/2/19

Shout-out to Rex Morgan, M.D., for showing us the moment when Buck learns that he has to change into scrubs in order to be in the room for his wife’s C-section, and the moment after he put on the scrubs and has evaluated their aesthetics, but not, blessedly, the moment during which he actually changed into them.

Gil Thorp, 12/2/19

We’re still in the “Chet gets his comeuppance” phase of this storyline, which will presumably last the rest of the week and never become particularly interesting, but I want to point out that Gil Thorp, the strip that brought us such classic catchphrases as “Ease up, friend,” doesn’t rest on its laurels. Look for teens across the country to be sassing each other with “Catch up, pal. Nobody cares” well into next spring!

Mary Worth, 12/2/19

Oh no! Iris is letting her hot young boyfriend down by choosing to age normally and experience menopause! If she really cared about him, she would maintain her fertility and, by extension, her sexual desirability just by wanting it bad enough! Guys, I’m … I’m starting to suspect that Mary Worth may not be a feminist comic strip.

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Mary Worth, 11/29/19

Well, Iris has decided to consult a doctor for the symptoms she’s been experiencing. This guy kind of looks like Dr. Jeff, except younger, so maybe it’s supposed be Dr. Jeff’s son Dr. Drew, who two-time Dawn and got smacked around for it but hasn’t been seen since the new art team took over. Anyway, remember years ago in Funky Winkerbean when Les’s wife Lisa was told her cancer was in remission, but it really wasn’t and she was only told that as a result of some kind of paperwork mixup, and then she died? Well, it looks like Iris’s obvious pregnancy is currently being misdiagnosed as a typical case of old-broad-itis, which should lead to wacky results. As Marx put it in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Gil Thorp, 11/29/19

Ha ha, Chet thought he could trust Marty Moon to help him with his plot to undermine Chance Macy and win his stepson’s love, but that’s too far even for Marty, so Marty narc’d him out, probably ruining his career and his marriage! Good times, good times. When the Mudlarks fail to make the playdowns yet again, Marty and Gil will be able to agree that at least nobody likes Chet anymore, so the season hasn’t been a total loss.

Gasoline Alley, 11/29/19

Is … is this really a great story? I know that the economic collapse of many small-town and mid-market media outlets has been devastating, removing an important check on political power in those communities, but I’m starting to wonder if they maybe deserved it.

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Gil Thorp, 11/18/19

Well, weeks after making the mistake of trying to blow the whistle to Milford’s “mainstream” (i.e., Thorp-friendly) press, Chet is doing what he should’ve done in the first place, which is talk to Marty Moon, preferably in a context where Marty can get as drunk as possible with a non-Marty person paying for the drinks. So the setup is right, but the execution is botched. Marty says he’s listening but you can see in panel three that he’s already tuning out Chet’s blather about “two-a-days” and “Sam Finn” or whatever. C’mon, Chet! Lead with the scissors-throwing! Everyone loves a good scissors-throwing!

Family Circus, 11/18/19

“Daddy” may be back at the help of the Family Circus, but the layers of narrative artifice on display during “Billy (age 7)’s run” are still present. Dolly prays to the Christian God, but He does not exist within the Circus’s circle; the Father and Creator is downstairs, watching football. (Of course, in real life, this God is dead, and in-panel reality is sustained by Jeffy, depicted here as His prophet.)

Mary Worth, 11/18/19

Crouching in your office chair, airing your hairy legs out and pressing an ice pack gingerly against one side of your head doesn’t exactly scream “patented hangover cure” to me, but I guess Wilbur’s the expert! I don’t want to say every plotline in Mary Worth should involve Wilbur getting dumped or otherwise romantically devastated, but, like, every fourth one or so? That’d be great.