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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/21/26

The Comics Curmudgeon has been, in one sense, an experiment to see what writing a blog about newspaper comic strips for 20-plus years does to the human brain, and I’m here to testify that the results are … let’s say, mixed? Like, for instance, last night I literally had a dream that the end of the scam twins storyline in Rex Morgan, M.D., was revealed to be the swan song for the strip as a whole, and I woke up quite bereft! But thank goodness this was just a product of my fevered mind, and instead we’ve got a new adventure brewing, involving … a retired cartoonist working on some commissions? Pass. Hard pass. Glad it’s still happening, but we’ll be skipping this one.

Dick Tracy, 9/21/26

I thought this fellow was holding up his index finger in panel two in a “So you see…” sense, indicating impending exposition in which he would explain at length how Vio routed the money he stole from Ubusoft. But I guess he’s just pointing at that floating, indecipherable text (?) box on his monitor because it contains the explanation, somehow, which is honestly a real relief to me because now I don’t have to even briefly pretend I’m going to try to understand how it all worked.

Garfield, 9/21/26

Not to speak ill of another representative of the mid-to-late ’00s newspaper comics blog milieu from which I myself emerged, but I always thought the idea behind Garfield Minus Garfield was a little off. To me, the funny twist is not imagining that Garfield doesn’t exist, but that to Jon he’s an ordinary cat whose thought balloons are outside of his ability to experience. That really works with today’s strip, where as a cat owner he might be thinking, “Huh, my cat, who obviously does not speak or think in complete English sentences, does seem to be unusually dramatic and despondent on Mondays. Weird! Also not sure where he got that coffee mug from.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/21/26

Sorry, this strip doesn’t work for me at all. Nobody in Hootin’ Holler knows what a “citrus fruit” is, and if you tried to explain it to them they’d have you executed for witchcraft.

Intelligent Life, 9/21/26

Jesus Christ, you two, the Borg aren’t “AI,” they’re cybernetically enhanced biological intelligence, and Picard famously defended the citizenship rights of his AI friend in court, how are you such incredible losers but also not even good at being sci-fi geeks

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Intelligent Life, 6/22/26

Everything I’ve learned about all the characters in Intelligent Life has been against my will. I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I instantly recognized this blond guy as “Barry,” the stereotypical jock used as a punching bag by the nerd characters in the strip. He likes beer and wings and is constantly unsuccessfully hitting on women, and — and now we’re at the point where I’m learning new stuff about him, which I didn’t ask for and don’t care for — he also has a terrible relationship with his father, I guess.

Pluggers, 6/22/26

Look, for as long as I’ve been reading this strip, the answer to the question “Are pluggers OK?” has been a resounding “no.” But I feel like they’re building less and less of a superstructure around this sentiment in individual panels and are now just hitting us with “Life is suffering, for pluggers. Every moment is agony. They’d be happier dead.”

Pickles, 6/22/26

Pickles, meanwhile, is a comic strip about the foibles of old people that isn’t afraid to get a little edgy sometimes, but I declare today’s strip, where the vagaries of fading memory mean that poor Opal has spent hours in an act of loving artistry, making a scarf for a member of her family only to be struck anew by grief, is a little too edgy for my tastes.

Pardon My Planet, 6/22/26

Yesterday’s Pardon My Planet was about domestic discord among wolf-people, and I thought about doing a post basically saying “Ha ha, this strip, which is mostly unpleasant marital drama among its cast of mostly interchangeable regular characters, has finally branched out into doing unpleasant marital drama with furries” but decided against it. But today, with the clown stuff? Well, I feel like you all needed to know about it. Do you think “Bobo” is a male clown name? No judgement, but it does add an extra little twist to this scenario.

Luann, 6/22/26

I saved the grimmest one for last. Brad and Toni are going to have sex in the shower, you guys. They’re going to have sex in the shower after she announced herself as “zit” and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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Blondie, 5/22/26

The sad thing here is that Alexander and Cookie can’t actually hear what Dagwood is jamming out to. Sure, we readers are privy to the truly gross stuff he’s streaming, but they’re just assuming, and even though they’re right they shouldn’t jump to such a harsh conclusion. “Wow, Daddy’s really working his earbuds” seems particularly disrespectful for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.

Intelligent Life, 5/22/26

Gwen’s expression in the final panel here … is that a sex thing? Is “Pokemon Go” a euphemism for sex, among the dork-ass nerds of Intelligent Life? I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all!