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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/26

Hey, I have been behind on reporting on this news, but, just as both Rex and little Johnny are recovering from surgery in-strip, Rex Morgan, M.D., writer/artist Terry Beatty has been recovering from heart surgery in real life! His wife has been posting updates on his Facebook page and he seems to be on the road to recovery, but let’s keep him in our thoughts. I assume that, given long lead times, these real and fictional surgeries were not intended to coincide, just like the “Truck has to self-quarantine because he’s come down with a serious respiratory illness” storyline from the spring of 2020 was not intended to be about COVID. Does Beatty have an extremely non-fun version of the Gift of Prophecy?

Meanwhile, speaking of predictions, I’m glad to see I was sort of right when I said June would get Buck to come pick up Rex at the hospital. It’s just that he was busy! Oh, wait, I guess technically she doesn’t say he was busy, just that he was “unavailable.” Can you imagine giving Buck the opportunity to spend time with you and he brushes you off? I would be rethinking some things about my life, I tell you what.

Shoe, 2/7/26

Granted, everyone in Shoe looks extremely depressed, all the time, but that is not someone who is belting out this song in the exuberant manner of the original Bob Seger System recording. That’s a guy who’s basically whispering it to himself, perhaps in a minor key. He doesn’t need the Perfesser cracking wise at him about how bad the food is at this restaurant. He needs some time alone with himself, to ramble and gamble about in his own inner life.

Marvin, 2/7/26

This is probably a joke about how Bitsy has been neutered, but I prefer to think that he’s at long last admitting to himself that, like most characters in this strip, he’s fundamentally unlovable.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/3/26

OK, this is, no joke, some significant menacing here. First of all, this guy has never appeared in the strip before, so I assume Dennis is in the yard, unaccompanied by a parent or guardian, of an adult who is a total stranger to him. And check out that fence! That’s a serious fence this five-year-old kid scaled, presumably with pockets full of rocks, which he is now spookily skipping across a pool belonging to, as noted, someone he’s never met in his life. Kudos to you, Dennis, this time! You’re really freaking me out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/3/26

Man, I love Rex’s grim expression here in panel two. It’s pretty clear that “Jimmy” is a mistake for Johnny and not Michael, but it’s very important that he know for certain whether this embarrassing failure of an appendix to maintain structural integrity happened inside the torso of his biological son or his adopted son, so he can start figuring out whose genes to blame.

Herb and Jamaal, 2/3/26

Normally, actually prestigious restaurant awards are driven by their own institutional investigation and decision making processes — you don’t send in an “application” that gets “declined” or anything, you just wake up one day and find out that they gave the award to your hated rival. Still, I’d like to believe that the Michelin Guide made an exception for Herb and Jamaal and sent them a personal note in the mail telling them to eat shit.

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Heathcliff, 2/1/26

Before the heavy crown of Heathcliff stewardship descended upon Peter Gallagher from his uncle, he contributed comics panels to Weird NJ magazine, which included a character named “The Jersey Tomato.” It’s difficult to find images of The Jersey Tomato online, but her whole deal appears to be that she’s a tomato who’s a sexy lady, or possibly a sexy lady whose head is a giant tomato. Anyway, since taking over Heathcliff, Gallagher has rewritten much of its DNA, and it’s impossible not to see a bit of the Jersey Tomato in this incredible new character, “The Hot Ham,” a ham who’s a hot, sexy lady, or possibly a hot, sexy lady who’s mostly a giant ham. I’m excited for this strip’s burgeoning audience of Zoomer fans to add “aromantic (except for hams)” to the long list of sexual-emotional orientations that I as a middle-aged person do not have to worry about.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/1/26

Oh, snap, it’s not Buck at all who’s picking up Rex from his surgery, it’s June’s crazy beloved Aunt (?) Tildy! A few years ago we were teased with a “Tildy is an old drunk” storyline that immediately turned out to be a “Tildy loves soda pop and takes ‘unplanned naps’” storyline, but let’s keep our hopes up that she has some kind of impairment that makes Rex’s drive home a truly terrifying one.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/26

Somewhat counterintuitively, this strip about caricatured hillbillies with occasional cameos from a big-city sharpie from the Woodrow Wilson administration was a pioneer in making jokes about cryptocurrency. So I’m excited for them to explore the crypto-adjacent world of prediction markets, where anyone can place prop bets on just about anything and insider trading is not just legal but encouraged because it makes their predictive powers more accurate (and enriches insiders in the process).

Crock, 2/1/26

I mean, obviously. What did he think the “car going in the tunnel” thing was about?