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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/6/17

Ugh, so, I guess this is really happening: Rex Morgan, M.D., is going to do a Very Important Storyline about America’s forgotten criminals: people who sell knockoffs of artwork by classic comics artists online. It’s not just nerds who want framed panels of The Flash from 1973 or whatever who are the victims, of course: think of the elderly comics creators trying to squeeze a few last dollars out of their creations, since their original contacts with their publishers left them sorely undercompensated. And think of the anxious nerds who agreed to serve as the middlemen in these online auctions! What about them? Why, did you know that even if these art-forging scumbags are caught, the chances that they’ll be shipped off to Gitmo are slim to none? Thank God Rex Morgan, M.D., is here to raise awareness, just like it raised awareness of MRSA back in ’08, and now there’s no more MRSA.

Pluggers, 10/6/17

Yes, obviously the joke of this strip is “Ha ha, it’s funny because they’ve lived together for so long that they’re finely attuned to even the subtlest expressions of contempt for one another.” But wouldn’t it be funny if it’s just about how Kangaroo Plugger-Lady Who The Colorists Think Is A Rabbit had incredibly powerful hearing, what with those big ears of hers? Like what if she could hear, from three feet away, the vaguely moist scrabbling noise that an eyeball makes when it’s moving in its socket. She could hear so much, if that were the case. She could hear everything.

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Pluggers, 10/4/17

Do you guys know about Just Watch? It’s a great site where you can plug in pretty much any movie or TV show you can think of and it’ll tell you which of the innumerable streaming and paid download sites out there has it available. (There are probably tons of others, but this is the one I use.) Anyway, I plugged Gunsmoke into it and found…

So I immediately take back all the unkind thoughts I had about Older Dog-Man here. You’ve hit the jackpot, buddy! Your meticulously catalogued collection of videotapes, kept secured in your locked Gunsmoke Closet,represent a resource more precious than gold in the plugger community. Of curse, videotape is an analog medium, and with each viewing the tape degrades, so you’ve got to be smart about rationing wholesome Western entertainment. That’s why you have to make sure that your fellow pluggers pay a price that reflects both market demand and the irreplaceable nature of the resource before you allow them to sit enraptured and watch 333×480 black-and-white imagery flicker across the flat-screen TV that your nephew, after much coaxing, finally hooked up to your wheezing old VCR. He doesn’t get a cut. You sent him $5 for his birthday every year until he turned 18. And you dutifully hit “Record” on the tape machine every night at 11 for years when they still played decent syndicated TV on that UHF channel that’s all half-hour commercials for kitchen stuff now. You’ve earned this.

Lockhorns, 10/4/17

Even see a comic that just seems really stuck in a specific time period, like the Lockhorns with its sort of early-to-mid ’60s suburban vibe, and think, “You know, this strip should really get in touch with a more modern set of cultural touchstones if it wants to stay relevant”? Well, be careful what you ask for, is all I’m saying.

Marvin, 10/4/17

Wait, does Marvin’s dad think that women … don’t use toilets? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems this strip has yet to fully explore all of its characters’ terrible and wrongheaded ideas about urination and defecation.

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Six Chix, 9/30/17

I find crows a little uncanny, what with their keen intelligence and ability to recognize and remember human faces. So I’ve always been a little averse to learning too much about their ways, lest I freak myself out even more about them, but today’s Six Chix finally led me to fatefully Google “what do crows eat?” Because … what is that the crow is scarfing/ripping/tearing/shredding/mutilating in panel two there? Remember, the coloring is done by the syndicate — it doesn’t necessarily represent the artist’s intent. It sort of looks like a pile of leaves but then it also kind of looks like the gutted body of another bird, right? Those are little bird feed sticking up from the end of it on our right? As the nice bird-feeding lady looks on in horror? Anyway, turns out “crows eat frogs, lizards, insects and anything else they can catch and swallow. They’re also known to eat carrion.” After that, I decided I was ready to give in to full-on bird horror, so I Googled “will crows eat other crows,” but I only got as far as “Crows occasionally murder each other for reasons that mystify scientists” before I decided, you know what, I’m not actually emotionally prepared for this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/30/17

We joke a lot on this blog about the true meaning of menace when it comes to this strip, but really: is there anything creepier than someone — especially a child — doing something destructive and manifestly not in his own best interest, for impenetrable reasons of his own, with a smile on his face? At this point I’m just hoping that bucket is full of water that came out of the faucet, if you catch my drift.

Pluggers, 9/30/17

I feel like this panel is cheating by giving us a plugger definition not just in the caption but also in a word balloon? Anyway, you have to respect the fact that, no matter how many folksy aphorisms you jam into the text here, this panel still looks like a couple guys cruising for erotic e-stim play partners in the parking lot of the Dillard’s out on Route 78 that closed down in 2011.