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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/18

Those of you who are longtime OG Joshreads dot com trufans remember how in the early days of this blog we had a great deal of fun with the Canadian soap opera-ish comic strip For Better or for Worse, and one of the days we had the most fun with it was January 26, 2005, when the strip came up with an inexplicable and hilarious series of words a Canadian tween might use to denigrate a classmate for her promiscuity, the most absurd of which was “roadside.” What I’m trying to say is, the two Hanks have been doing their tour of roadside attractions for weeks, and now Hank Sr. has finally encountered a “roadside” “attraction” in the form of Millie Gray! Sorry, Lefty Gillis, your gal’s about to be swept off her feet by her first love, a big shot horror comics artist who has an RV and everything! Sorry, Hank Jr., you’re gonna have to find a non-RV place to sleep tonight! If this RV is rockin’, it’s a sign that it’s a little unbalanced, so don’t come a knockin’, as it could tip right over!

Mary Worth, 6/24/18

Brandy: A woman haunted by a vague, intrusive fantasy that she’s desperately fleeing from the faceless adversaries trying to track her down and kill her, a woman comforted by the white noise of crashing waves on the beach. Is she the perfect match for a ex-con pill fiend who was wildly incompetent at every aspect of being a drug dealer? Looks like we’re going to find out!

Mark Trail, 6/24/18

Mark Trail wouldn’t be my first guess as to which soap opera strip character would show up with a cherry-picked anecdote to explain that, sure, spicy foods from weird foreign countries are becoming increasingly popular, but they’re probably detrimental to the health of God-fearing Americans and we should stick the flavorless boiled meat dishes our Anglo-Saxon ancestors enjoyed, but, you know what? It’s definitely not a surprise or anything.

Dennis the Menace, 6/24/18

Summoning a pack of neighborhood dogs of all shapes and sizes to do his bidding? Pretty menacing, I would say!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/18

“Prototypical persons with NPD present with many interpersonal problems and comorbid disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder, with consequent increases in risk of suicide, alcohol and substance abuse, and eating disorders” is a sentence from the Psychiatric Times that I’m just going to leave here for no reason!

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Blondie, 6/19/18

Apparently Blondie HQ finally got wind of the insanely dumb Rick and Morty fan riots at McDonald’s over Szechuan Sauce, and decided to tackle it as only they can, which is to say by taking care not to infringe on anybody else’s intellectual property. Still, I like the idea that in Dagwood’s imagination the dispute stops being about a specific kind of sauce and just becomes about sauce as a general category, and also that it only took nine signs before they got to extremely stilted phrases like “Unfair to sauce cravers” and “Stop the sauce withholding madness!”

Judge Parker, 6/19/18

“I ask that you hold all questions until the very end. Particularly about the spelling of my name, which, as I’ve already established, is M-A-H-L-E-R. Harold is spelled the usual way. I’m not sure how you spell Godiva. Ahem. At approximately 9:30 am, Ms. Danube’s body w–” “Commander Mahler! How do you spell ‘Danube?’” “God damn it, what did I say?”

Mary Worth, 6/19/18

“I’m close to my mom too. She’s still young and hot though, and has an extremely active sex life. [as Brandy’s weeping intensifies] How horny was your mom, Brandy?”

Mark Trail, 6/19/18

“Settle down, Rusty! Rambunctious little boys are the first to be sacrificed.”

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Dick Tracy, 6/18/18

Hey, remember how Sawtooth was on his way to Neo-Chicago, to do crimes? Well, even though he’s a brutal cop-killing thug with teeth made out of real saws, he still has other interests, and one of those interests is taking in live midnight audience-participation showings of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Too bad Sam Catchem was there too! God, you’d think you could avoid the cops at underground events like Rocky Horror, but I guess this is pretty clear evidence that it is not as alternative and punk rock as it was 30 years ago, right? Anyway, Sawtooth is about to punch a cop in a face, in public, which probably won’t help with the whole “sneaking into town in disguise” part of his plan.

Mary Worth, 6/18/18

Ahh, Tommy and Brandy, just another pair of economically marginal Americans working themselves to death! Maybe soon they’ll fall in love, share expenses on a tiny apartment in a so-so neighborhood, and occasionally get to have sex after work, assuming their shifts can sync up and they aren’t too exhausted.

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/18

Speaking of sex, Killer just did sex and … then came back to the barracks, literally putting off smoke? I don’t know why it bothers me so much that this is smoke and not steam. I know “putting off steam after sex” isn’t how sex works, but putting off smoke after sex is definitely not how sex works.