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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/24/25

One of my favorite terms of art from the world of standup comedy is “street joke.” A street joke is a joke a comic tells on stage that they didn’t write — but isn’t one that they lifted from another comic or writer, which is a significant sin among standups. Instead, a street joke is just one you heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone, or (in these days where most jokes spread online) from someone who saw it in a blurry, repeatedly reposted meme of some sort. Upon reading today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, I immediately pegged its dialogue as a street joke, and some quick searches confirmed my instinct: you can find it posted in uncanny Facebook groups called things like “Strange World” and “Deep Relationships,” tagged as being of “disputed origin” on a post in the r/quotes subreddit, or for sale on human made merch on Etsy or truly upsetting AI-generated t-shirts on Amazon. There are, of course, worse sins than putting a street joke in your comic strip, though I must once again remind comics creators that if your main characters are anthropomorphic birds, and you put in street jokes that involve birds, it really leaves the reader puzzling over whether the birds in the joke are also supposed to be anthropomorphic birds that the main characters interact with, like do the rooster-men in the Mother Goose and Grimm world scream like a person every morning or what, and frankly I don’t think that’s really the effect you’re going for with this.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/25

Oh, just to keep you up to date on the Rex Morgan, M.D., stalker plot: the stalker got kicked out of the museum, and then Augie and Summer went to the cops and they were like “What do you expect us to do, protect you somehow? Get back to us when he’s actually murdered you or something,” and so they went back to Summer’s place and Augie agreed to stand guard. Then there was a loud noise, which implied that something exciting happened, but nope! Nothing exciting happened. Just Augie accidentally closing a door too vigorously! More on this story as it continues, against all odds, to fail to develop.

Sam and Silo, 3/24/25

The thing I like about this strip is that Sam doesn’t respond to Silo without prompting. Frankly, it’s as if he wasn’t really talking to Silo in the first panel to begin with. This was all an internal monologue! “Why is this guy even talking to me,” he thinks to himself. Anyway, these two are supposedly best friends and spend all their time together.

Alice, 3/24/25

Big news, everyone: it seems that Alice, the title character in the syndicated newspaper strip Alice, has discovered the recreational drug known as “marijuana”. Brace yourself, things could get wacky!

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Mary Worth, 3/7/25

We have all, obviously, been thinking about Wilbur Weston’s sex life for far too long, but consider the psychic damage these endless “Wilbur, against all odds and logic, gets laid” plots are visiting upon his daughter in particular. Think about how you’d feel if you picked up Wilbur at the airport and he immediately launched into a digression about all the hot, hot vacation sex he had just had. You can see why Dawn is trying to steer the conversation towards some kind of lasting emotional connection Wilbur might form with this “Belle” person, but, nope! Wilbur doesn’t do long distance. We’re dangerously close to hearing him say the phrase “hit it and quit it.”

Family Circus, 3/7/25

Say what you will about the Family Circus, but unlike many comics, it rarely resorts to a “work backwards from a punchline” situation, though sadly that is what I think we’re seeing here. The idea of a clothing store that has a whole section of t-shirts with just state names on them is pretty funny, I have to admit, but ultimately where this panel fails for me is that I do not believe that Billy knows anything about the relative sizes of various states, or really any geography facts at all.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/7/25

“We have a giant, vicious robot, the ArtGuard 3000, that protects the peaceful, disturbance-free experience of our museum with multiple razor-sharp blades. Don’t worry, it will drag you down to the basement first, so our significant collection of regional art will not be splattered with your blood.”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/2/25

Oh, hey, sorry I haven’t kept you up to date on the tale of Summer and Augie and the bad date that Summer ditched to hook up with Augie. The short version is that after making a real ass of himself at the bar where Summer met Augie and getting kicked out by the bouncer, bad-date-man showed up at Summer’s workplace at the Morgan clinic and made a real ass of himself and got kicked out by the building’s security guard. As is all too typical for me, that ostensibly “interesting” stuff did not move me to comment, but today’s strip? Where Augie’s going on and on about how much he likes regional artists and educational vacations to Kansas City? Well, you know that’s gonna hook me in. I’m extremely invested in finding out if “regional artists” become the new “roots country.” Meanwhile, bad-date-man has stalked Summer to the art museum, and I guess we’ll find out this week if he’s going to make a real ass of himself and be kicked out by a museum security guard or if he decides that these people are pretty boring, actually, and he has better stuff to do.

Beetle Bailey, 3/2/25

Without the top row of throwaway panels, this strip is absolutely nothing, a boring non-joke about how the General is obsessed with golf and his soldiers don’t respect him, for that reason and also a variety of other reasons. With the throwaway panels … there’s a whisper of something funny in there. Probably they could condense all the other panels down to one or two and then it might actually elicit a sensible chuckle. Keep plugging away at it, guys, you’re gonna write a good one of these eventually!

Dennis the Menace, 3/2/25

I gotta admit, I spent most of this strip thinking, “Wow, the whole neighborhood thinks Henry’s a dipshit, huh. Can’t blame them, really. Look at how he dresses!” But then I got to the last panel and it turns out that everyone was actually mad at [record scratch] Dennis, whose menacing behavior provides this strip with its very title??? Ashamed to confess that they got me with this one, folks. They got me!