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Rex Morgan, M.D., and Mark Trail, 8/2/19

Have the soaps gone soft on us? Here we are with a couple of certified villains, and now we’re being asked to, like, sympathize with their motivations, which aren’t abstract evil but rather arise from the socio-economic superstructure in which they — like us — find themselves embedded. Oh, boo hoo, credentialing institutions dangle the prospect of fulfilling and renumerative careers that they can’t deliver, leaving thousands of idealistic young people burdened with debt! Waaaah, small businesses in this country are finding it harder and harder to compete in the marketplace and end up in a downward spiral of indebtedness that they can’t ever escape from! At least Mark, Doc, and Leola are watching JJ’s meltdown with rightful suspicion. Don’t come literally crying to us because you blew all your money on vehicles with an unusual number of wheels, JJ!

Mary Worth, 8/2/19

Somehow, the sight of JJ blubbering about his small business loan isn’t the funniest thing in the soap opera comics today. No, that honor goes to Dawn and Hugo’s date at the Bum Boat, where the strained, manic quality of their “flirting” reads as if each of them is wearing a wire and has been told to keep the other talking long enough that they eventually say something incriminating. Anyway, do you think Hugo knows about Billy Big Mouth Bass? Pretty sure this is Dawn’s big opportunity to finally impress this irritating euro-splainer with something America has that France doesn’t. We can’t deliver universal health care, but if you want easy access to an animatronic mounted fish that sings, the United States is the country for you!

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Mark Trail, 8/1/19

A while back, I asked whether Mark Trail, the comic strip, knew how mines work. Today we can see that the “blame game” has already started and the other characters are making Doc in particular feel bad about not knowing how mines work, despite the fact that obviously nobody involved knows how mines work. “It was probably confusing!” says Mark. “An hour ago, when I said ‘Good job, Doc — you led us right to it!‘ by ‘it’ I meant ‘a small cave, definitely not a mine, those are definitely two different things and I can easily distinguish between them!’ God, what a dope you are, Doc.”

Mary Worth, 8/1/19

Is this whole relationship going to revolve around quickly entering bodies of water together? I was going to make fun, but, you know, people can and have done a lot worse.

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Dustin, 7/30/19

Oh, snap, is Dustin about to get get catfished? Seems that way! Now, I don’t mean to be rude to elder brethren, and clearly there are gullible marks and savvy sharps of all age groups, but just as a general rule, you might expect it to be the older folks in this strip who are more likely to by successfully cybergrifted, wouldn’t you? But you have to keep in mind that while Dustin presents itself as a relatively even-handed strip about the little foibles and frictions that arise when Baby Boomers and Millennials live under the same roof, it’s mostly about how Dustin, in particular, is the dumbest motherfucker alive.

Gasoline Alley, 7/30/19

I’m not saying any of us could’ve predicted this, necessarily, but if someone had asked, “Which long-running continuity comic strip is going to feature a shiny object snatched away from a major character by a keen-eyed corvid?” we’d all have said “Oh, Gasoline Alley, no question.” I for one support the choice to set this episode in Gasoline Alley’s hitherto unexplored “Little Jalisco” neighborhood, because seeing Rufus getting roasted by passersby in Spanish is definitely funnier than it would be in English by an order of magnitude.

Six Chix, 7/30/19

Oh wow, is this a comic strip about witches fighting against death itself, with one particularly angry witch stealing the scythe used to reap souls, for her own inscrutable and possibly terrifying purposes? This is an extremely metal development! All the money in entertainment today is in massive cross-platform tentpole franchises, and Six Chix has clearly been trying to make that happen with interrelated storylines like “I Fucked A Bigfoot” and “What If Bigfoot Were A Lady In Sexy High Heels” and “The Bible: A Quentin Tarantino Film,” but let me gently suggest that “Witches vs. Death” has a lot more potential.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/19

Oh, uh, it looks like when I jokingly said that the villain in this new age grifter storyline would be Rene the art forger I was … right? Huh. Huh. You know, when longtime writer Woody Wilson handed this strip over to Terry Beatty, the storylines got a lot less over-the-top and there have honestly been fewer cartoonish villains, which is why it’s particularly funny to me that Rene, who was an amiable and kooky character during the Wilson era, is now the sinister mastermind behind literally all crime.

Mary Worth, 7/30/19

Man, you’d think the whole point of having a meddling busybody of a condo manager is that at least you wouldn’t have to worry about fully clothed college students making out in the pool. C’mon, Mary, you’re slacking on the job here!