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Marvin, 5/2/22

Ha ha, just look at the dead eyes on Jeff throughout this comic! He has absolutely been anticipating the day his wife is going to leave him for years, and he’s not happy about it but he’s basically numb to the prospect at this point, so might as well get it over with! Anyway, she is going to break some very bad news, Jeff, in the sense that Marvin is staying.

Mary Worth, 5/2/22

“He reconnected with the love of his life, leaving me free to pursue a hot and emotionally meaningless sexual relationship with a college stud. Honestly, he fixed a lot of my problems.”

Crankshaft, 5/2/22

Speaking of fixing problems, it looks like Crankshaft and his entire family are about to be killed when a huge asteroid smashes into the Earth! The rest of the human race will be wiped out as well, of course, but it’s honestly a small price to pay.

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The Lockhorns, 4/14/22

Really loving Loretta’s expression here. Instead of starting a sentence to sound like a compliment but twisting it into a cruel taunt by the end, as is his wont, Leroy has instead simply started a sentence to sound like a compliment only to use it as a springboard for some dumb bit of wordplay he thought up during dinnertime’s customary icy silence, and frankly, she can’t figure out how to feel about that. With the cruel taunt, at least she knows he’s thinking about her.

Marvin, 4/14/22

The phrase “social distancing” rocketed to the top of the public’s mind roughly two years ago in the opening stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I don’t know what possibility is sadder: that it took the Marvin creative team that much time to come up with the extremely terrible “smell distancing” variation (it doesn’t even have the same number of syllables, Jesus Christ) or that they came up with it right away but only now have decided that it’s no longer “too soon.”

Judge Parker, 4/14/22

Hey, remember the “April hides out with her family” plotline in Judge Parker that was so boring that I barely ever mentioned it on this blog, which exists entirely to crack wise about the boring antics in the world comic strips? Well, apparently within the Parkerverse it’s was so exciting that it’ll merit building a whole season of streaming TV around it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/14/22

You know what is exciting, for the moment? The current Rex Morgan, M.D., plot! Ha ha, goading a street tough into saying “What’re you going to do — hit me with that broom?” and then immediately hitting him with that broom is a very funny bit and I approve. Mind you, it doesn’t look like our hero’s hitting him particularly hard, but in his defense he is nursing a shoulder injury.

Shoe, 4/14/22

OH MY GOD THERE ARE BIRD JEWS EVERYBODY

JEWS

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Mary Worth, 4/3/22

It’s fascinating to me that in the year 2022, the rhythms of soap opera strips are still predicated on the fact that some newspaper subscribers don’t get the Sunday paper, while others only get the Sunday paper, so Sunday has to be treated in a special way for continuity storytelling — whether that means you take the Phantom route and doing entirely different Sunday and weekday storylines, or the Mary Worth route where you just recap everything for the week on Sunday and don’t introduce any new information. Today’s strip achieves this cleverly by showing us that Toby isn’t just crying in her car, she’s also playing the moments that brought her to this pathetic state over and over in her mind, including a fantastic vision of Helen transforming herself into a literal demon as she threatens to narc Toby out for a little light flirting. That panel should frankly be used in advertisements to get people to sign up for the Sunday paper. Do you really want to miss this, in vivid color?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/3/22

On the other hand, sometimes a strip just takes a Sunday to reintroduce you to all their characters, just in case in the year 2022 some Sunday subscriber is thinking to themselves, “Rex Morgan, M.D., what’s that thing’s whole deal” but isn’t feeling so curious as to walk over to the computer. Anyway, I’m cackling about the fact that Buck didn’t make the cut for the ancillary character panel. Not sure if they’re finally admitting that they’re never going to make Buck happen or if they feel like they need to get readers hooked and emotionally involved before learning how much of this strip revolves around Buck’s off-putting antics.

Marvin, 4/3/22

I know nobody likes Marvin, and and that it’s very understandable why Marvin’s dad doesn’t like him, but you have to admit it’s pretty wild that “I, Marvin’s dad, do not enjoy the company of my son, Marvin” is the entire punchline to this strip!