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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/4/21

A classic Rex Morgan, M.D., trope is when ancillary characters give Rex and his family free stuff for no good reason — clothes, antique furniture, passes to Sea World, what have you. It’s always great fun! But now we’re seeing a new running bit where people effusively thank Buck, a boring drip, for doing extremely boring stuff like recommending comic books to children. No thanks! Somebody give the Morgans an actual human child, we haven’t seen that in years.

Crankshaft, 5/4/21

Normally I’d read today’s strip and think, “Oh, look, it’s yet another Crankshaft where the wordplay that’s the whole central joke of the strip is based on a homonym and so it wouldn’t work at all when spoken aloud, and nobody involved in the production of the strip cared enough to mention it or try to rework it or anything.” But then I saw Crankshaft’s face in the third panel, and I can’t really put my finger on it but he’s giving off very strong, “Listen up, fuckos, a pun is happening” energy, so I guess I’ll allow it.

Dennis the Menace, 5/4/21

OHHHHHH SNAP WHO’S GETTING MENACED NOW

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/28/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because Grimm wants to murder a cat! No, wait … it’s funny because … Grimm is doing mafia cosplay, and has announced his desire to murder a cat using gangster patois? There’s no wordplay or anything, it’s just funny when a dog pretends to be a gangster, to lend a thin veneer over the murders he already wants to do?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/28/21

Remember a couple years ago when we learned that war hero amputee Jordan actually did a little light stolen valor? Anyway, I’m excited to learn soon that Michelle wasn’t working with COVID patients at all, just doing regular checkups, but really any patient these days could have COVID, if you think about it, oh, and also she was doing all her sessions on Zoom.

Gasoline Alley, 4/28/21

Incredibly, these two met just eight weeks ago and are already married! That’d be a quick courtship in any context, but is especially crazy in Gasoline Alley, given that the strip once spent eight weeks explaining how cool scrapbooking is.

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Judge Parker, 4/26/21

Oh, hey, remember when Sam got kidnapped a couple of years ago? Well, kidnapped might be a kind of strong word for it. Yes, he was taken away at gunpoint by this lady against his will, but that was only to get him to a meeting with April’s dad Norton, so that they could plot out some crimes to get Judge Parker Senior out of jail for the crimes he did, after which time Sam was free to go (to put their crime plan into motion), and technically a normal person would interpret this sequence of events as being kidnapped, especially the part at the beginning with the gun. But Sam is supposed to be the man of action in this strip, responsible for all sorts of derring-do! Remember when Sam’s pal almost got hacked to bits by a chainsaw? That’s the sort of thing that used to happen to him and his friends all the time! Sam should be significantly more chill about that previous encounter with not-April, is what I’m saying.

Slylock Fox, 4/26/21

A thing I really respect about Wanda Witch is her cheerful attitude about everthing, embracing the darkness of her chosen profession/species (?). She seems fun, and who wouldn’t want to hang out with her at home and sing along as she pounds out “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” on the piano? And if you think there’s something unusual about a florist delivering roses with the thorns still on them, you have a lot to learn about the courting customs in the positive-vibes goth subculture that Wanda and her paramour Count Weirdly are clearly both members of.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/26/21

Look, Funky’s monologue about how he had it rough during the COVID lockdown was insufferable, of course, but at least it sort of made sense as something you’d talk about at an AA meeting. But now it looks like he’s just gonna launch into a recap of the strips where he gets verbally abused by his personal trainer, and I can’t see any real therapeutic value in that.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/26/21

OK, so we’re on day two of “Jordan and Michelle are about to go nuts all over each other’s hot bods, we must stop watching now,” followed by very pointedly continuing to watch, and I know that there’s a whole thing where the Sunday strips have to stand alone because some people don’t see them and some people only see them, but this is really starting to make me uncomfortable, I have to say.

Dustin, 4/26/21

My initial reaction reading this was, “Wait, why is Dustin getting home in what I assume is the early afternoon? Why isn’t he at work?” And now I have a new worst crime to accuse the comic strip Dustin of: making me briefly think exactly like Dustin’s terrible father.