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Archive: Mother Goose and Grimm

116

Too many Harwoods

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/17/25

I am really enjoying the quiet desperation of Yvonne’s facial expression as she tries to convey to Rex and June how crazy-making her Hanks-Harwood-dominated living situation is. “He’s always saying crap like this. ‘I’m planning a Ritz Brothers marathon!’ I don’t know if those are the cracker guys or a vaudeville act that somehow has a YouTube. Maybe they aren’t even real, but even if that were the case, it could be that he’s doing a bit or it could be that he has advanced dementia and we can’t even tell because all of his cultural references are so baffling. And he’ll be asleep when we get back! I won’t even be able to ask him about it! And tomorrow it’ll be some other bullshit!”

Shoe, 9/17/25

I like that they’ve given the Perfesser a little bit of business to do here, knotting his tie as they talk — the implication being that he’s putting himself back together after getting naked for an exam, and in so doing is beginning to feel dignified enough again to push back on this advice. “Oh, is that your diagnosis, doctor? Are you saying that the good product designers at the Frigidaire Appliance Company would lead me down the wrong path?”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/17/25

You all know Grimm, the lovable dog who’s one of the title characters of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm. But what if I told you that he was about to go to jail, possibly for years, as a punishment for his various crimes?

121

I guess you really have to … hand it to them [everyone starts yelling at me]

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/12/25

Say what you will about Rex Morgan, M.D., but it is straight-up killing it in the “characters make interestingly exaggerated hand gestures” department. Nobody is even close! I expect the strip to once again sweep the Handy Awards this year. (People keep telling the Academy of Hand Gesture Artistry that “handy” sounds like a sex thing and they should change the name, but they just go on and on about “tradition” while gesticulating wildly.)

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/12/25

Ha ha, yes, The Handmaid’s Tale certainly is a cultural touchstone with striking visuals and production design elements that we can see on various billboards and commercials! Quick question for the Mother Goose and Grimm creative team, though: you know the show is about a society facing an existential fertility crisis that becomes a cult where the few remaining fertile women are enslaved and ritually raped by high-status men, right? Oh, you don’t? You don’t read my blog, huh? I know I’m mean to you sometimes, but I think reading my blog would help you out in situations like this.

Archie, 9/12/25

The Millennials are addicted to Instagram, and Zoomers have already had their brains rotted by TikTok, but what means of cybercommunication will the rising Gen Alpha embrace? Well, according to today’s Archie, which is definitely an informed commentary on contemporary teens and not a rerun from more than 20 years ago, it’s email. That’s right, folks, check your spam filter, because if you cross a teen in the year 2025 you will soon be roasted in absolutely devastating fashion in a message from lakyn13@juno.com!

222

She’s flying AWAY from New York, she should be singing “California” by Phantom Planet

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Mary Worth, 9/9/25

Mary Worth’s use of bold font is … let’s say, unconventional, but I do think that Olive’s word balloon in the second panel being entirely boldfaced strongly suggests that she’s started belting out “New York, New York” at the top of her lungs, right? Fun fact: the song she’s singing here, which is performed in the 1944 musical On The Town by Gene Kelly, Jules Munshin, and Frank Sinatra, is called “New York, New York,” while the “start spreading the news” song is technically called “Theme from New York, New York,” and was originally sung by Liza Minelli in Martin Scorsese’s 1977 musical before Sinatra did a cover version that became iconic. Kinda weird, right? Where was I going with this? Oh, right: if I were on a plane and a child started loudly singing “New York, New York” (either of the two, frankly), I would attempt to open the emergency exit mid-flight so I could jump out and plummet to my blessed death.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/9/25

So, uh, Mother Goose is just kind of … standing around in the middle of the Y and, uh, swinging her interlocked fists around while wearing a bikini? And she’s judging the people doing yoga, who are, to be fair, three people standing so close as to be touching one another doing downward dog (?) without any kind of mats or anything? Not sure if anyone involved in the production of this comic has seen someone do yoga, or ever been to a gym, or watched videos of anyone exercising. I guess that “Twister” zinger was too hard to resist, though!

Archie, 9/9/25

Damn, I never had Dilton pegged as an Archie hater. Is he just doing it to appease Reggie? It’s sad when you see a man of science succumb to peer pressure like this.