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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/20/21

Since Rex Morgan plots move in excruciating slow motion, we’ve all basically been waiting for weeks now for this moment, where best-selling but writers-blocked graphic novelist “Kyle Vidpa” gets Sarah’s epic fan letter (which almost certainly contains extensive drawings and plot suggestions for future Kitty Cop installments) and realizes it’s genius. There are two potential futures here: one is that “Kyle” steals the ideas for the new book his publisher demands, and the other is that he brings in Sarah as a “guest writer” and she achieves riches and universal acclaim. The first route seems unlikely since the story so far has gone out of its way to show that “Kyle” is a nice guy with a sweet wife and doting parents and a good friend in Buck Wise, who is sadly the center of the Rex Morgan, M.D., universe now, while the second starts to get us on the track of “Sarah is a terrifyingly talented and uncanny child-adult” that Terry Beatty amnesia’d his way out of when he took over the strip. Seems like we’ve painted ourselves into a real corner, how will we get out of it? (PREDICTION: It won’t be very interesting.)

Hi and Lois, 6/20/21

Today in “strips that don’t usually make me laugh for the intended reasons but did today” is Hi and Lois. I absolutely love the contrast between how happy Hi looks in the imagined version of this carefully programmed Father’s Day that was clearly designed by a five-person committee and how completely overwhelmed he looks in real life contemplating how exhausting this is going to be.

Panels from The Lockhorns, 6/20/21

Speaking of irony-free praise for comics, the Sunday Lockhorns grab-bag had not one but two bangers today. The first one manages to pull off two gags (Leroy was snoring loudly in church, Leroy is transparently ogling some other woman) without feeling like it’s putting a hat on a hat. The second one is just laser focused on a single, beautiful joke about how Leroy was seriously injured in a car accident.

Six Chix, 6/20/21

Wait, so, is this how matryoshka dolls reproduce? The big doll births a smaller doll inside herself, possibly hollowing herself out in the process, and then that doll, still entirely enclosed by her “mother,” produces a smaller internal doll, and the sequence goes on like that, excruciating birth following excruciating birth? And can we safely assume this is an act of parthenogenesis, with no male doll involved at all? Happy Father’s Day indeed!

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The Lockhorns, 6/4/21

Having done this blog for many years, I can tell you that there is definitely a weekly rhythm to many of the comics. Hopefully if you’re a reader of this blog, you are aware of enough comics “inside baseball” knowledge that you know that individual comics aren’t each written the day before they’re published or anything like that. They’re submitted weeks in advance, in Monday-through-Saturday chunks (Sunday strips are submitted separately and have to be sent in even earlier). And while I’m sure most cartoonists don’t sit down and power through six comics in one sitting, as you get towards the end of the week you definitely start to get some “I’m almost done with this, fuck it” vibes. I feel strongly that today’s Lockhorns, where Leroy assures Loretta that alcoholism is fine, actually, and he’s not sure why it gets such a bad rap, fits that bill, and yet (because I contain multitudes) I also think it’s pretty great, because sometimes you want that energy on a Friday, you know?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/4/21

You know what absolutely has not been phoned in, though? Today’s Rex Morgan, M.D. Just a symphony of incredible facial expressions from two guys who know they’re not supposed to find their kids incredibly irritating and so they won’t say that they’re incredibly irritating but they absolutely find all their little antics insufferable and can’t wait until they’re off at college or whatever. “He can’t see the face I’m making, so he probably assumes I actually love my kid, even though every moment I spend with them is a chore,” both men are thinking.

Mary Worth, 6/4/21

You know what would really help out Rex and Buck? If there were like a pane of thick, soundproof glass between them and their kids, and there was a phone that ostensibly let you talk to the person on the other side, but the phone wasn’t attached to anything, so it didn’t work. Ideally it would be the kid on the jail side of the glass, of course.

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Gil Thorp, 5/28/21

They say a happy marriage is one where each partner can still surprise the other, and by that definition my longtime partnership with soap opera comic strips has still got it. When this saga began at the library board meeting, little could I guess that it would lead here here, with a librarian gently letting a teen boy that she’s been acutely aware of his erotic assignations in the stacks, and looking over her glasses as she asks pointedly if he lacks for company tonight.

Hi and Lois, 5/28/21

Every once in a while, Hi and Lois likes to remind you that Beetle Bailey is Lois’s brother. Look, Chip has a picture of his Uncle Beetle on his nightstand! Also, it looks like Beetle has left the army and works for a fast food franchise now? Or maybe he’s joined a Communist army?

The Lockhorns, 5/28/21

I guess the joke here is that Leroy has made so little impression that his boss doesn’t even know his first name, but it’s pretty clear based on the banner that none of the underlings know their boss’s name either! Just a real sad lack of workplace camaraderie all around.