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Mary Worth, 2/3/20

Folks, remember when Mary Worth storylines would be about randos who drifted into Mary’s orbit for a few months? Remember Delilah and Charley, and the guy who kept trying to convince his wife to eat more, and Nola the office sexpot, and Entertainer Esme? But for the last couple years, the strip has almost exclusively revolved around Wilbur and — I’m not afraid to say it! — people who are sex adjacent to Wilbur, i.e., Estelle (currently having sex with Wilbur), Iris (previously had sex with Wilbur), Dawn (would not exist if someone hadn’t once had sex with Wilbur), Tommy (the knowledge that at one point his mother was having sex with Wilbur on the regular almost certainly was one of the underlying causes of his drug habit), etc. Why can’t this strip stop rubbing it in our face that Wilbur fucks? It’s so bad that when we took a detour last year in a plotline that asked us to consider Ian Cameron a potential object of sexual desire, it came as a relief. Anyway, I assumed that Hugo would quietly fade out of the strip, just like he would quietly fade out of Dawn’s life, but it looks we’re going to get a plot where Wilbur has decided see what all the fuss is about re: the hot French guy his daughter’s fucking. Hopefully this time around he’ll have the courage to ask him “Are you a professional? Or into illegal activities?” to his face.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/3/20

Meanwhile, Rex Morgan, M.D., is doubling down on old people. Remember Aunt Tildy, and how she was convinced she ws dying? Welp, Rex ran some tests and it turned out she just had a fairly basic set of mild and easily treated age-related problems. Meanwhile, here’s Andrzej who’s healthy as a horse, maybe because the years he spent as partisan in the Polish forest as a teen fighting Nazis toughened him up, or maybe he just eats right and exercises, who can say, but the point is that Aunt Tildy could use more of his can-do attitude. Could Rex and June play matchmaker between these two? That might help Tildy find a real emotional grounding that will improve her outlook about her health, or at least get her out of the Morgans’ house.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/29/20

Well, I have to say I’m impressed. If you had told me yesterday that Beetle Bailey was going to add a small but significant fact to its canon of deep lore, never in a million years would I have settled on “Major Greenbrass is General Halftrack’s brother-in-law.” I’m reasonably sure this has never come up in the strip before? It’s also possible that the Major, feeling secure in the knowledge that General Halftrack and his wife hate each other, assumes Amos has never taken any interest in his wife’s family and maybe doesn’t even know who her brother is.

Also, I’m hesitant to say that I, someone who’s never served in the military, knows more about military ranks than Beetle Bailey, a U.S. Army themed strip that’s been running for decades, but … generally you graduate from West Point or ROTC as a second lieutenant and from there it’s only three more promotions until you’re a major, so I’m not sure how Greenbrass was promoted five times and is still only a major — unless he got busted down in rank for some infraction twice, only to be bailed out by his hapless brother-in-law, or, in my theory I’m growing more and more fond of, the man he’s tricked into thinking he’s his brother-in-law.

Mary Worth, 1/29/20

If Mary has an eye for anything, it’s Charterstone residents trying to subtly move out without telling her, just like Iris is doing. And why wouldn’t she want to spend more time in her hot boyfriend’s cool loft apartment downtown in the Santa Royale Arts District, rather than in a hellscape suburban condo complex full of old people, one of whom is her awful ex-boyfriend. Anyway, looks like Tommy’s going to have a lot of time alone in Charterstone now that his mom’s moving most of her clothes to Zak’s. Let’s pray he gets into some terrible mischief, because if we’re going to endlessly focus on the Westons and the Beedles, we should at least be spending time with the most entertaining person out of all of them.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/29/20

It seems that Hagars’s Norway hasn’t been entirely Christianized yet, and for the reasons made clear here: the omnipotent God of the Christians isn’t really someone you can have an argument with, you know? The Norse pantheon was always a little closer to the common man, even as they were shipwrecking him.

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Mary Worth, 1/27/20

Finally, it’s Monday and it’s time for a new Mary Worth plot and … oh, wait, no, we’re still talking thyroid stuff! You’ve probably been wondering how Iris’s thyroid condition would affect her enjoyment of sandwiches, and the answer is: not at all! Gluten free sandwiches are great! Even Zak likes them! And if you’re wondering if Iris enjoys that sandwich lyfe with Zak more than she did with Wilbur, well, never forget that time Wilbur took Iris to his favorite sandwich joint and they sort of rubbed the sandwiches on their lips while staring off into space with dead, joyless eyes. Whereas today Zak and Iris look like they’re high on some wonderful drug while they chow down gluten free sandwiches. It’s no wonder the “you!” is Iris’s word balloon is italicized, as everything is, predictably, better with Zak.

Crock, 1/27/20

Ah ha, women, amiright? They sure love bingo! And colonialist powers, amiright? They sure lose all understanding of ethical behavior and, in a desperate attempt to maintain their control over an unwilling populace, resort to measures like rounding up and interning noncombatants, even attempting to cast such war crimes as “moral victories!” It sure is a crazy world out there!

Dennis the Menace, 1/27/20

This is it. We’ve reached a true nadir of menacing. Dennis is crying involuntarily because his mother is cutting onions, and it makes him think of all the times he cried at school because a mean kid picked on him. This is as non-menacing as it gets, and it makes me sick.