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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/20

Hey, remember Nancy, Kelly’s sneering mean-girl nemesis who tried to key Kelly’s car, back when Kelly was being chauffeured around in a hearse by mobsters because this strip used to be interesting? Well, Nancy briefly tried to do something interesting, but don’t worry: it was prevented from ever happening, off-panel, which is good because otherwise we might have had to watch it happen, instead of getting an entire Sunday strip of virtuous characters talking to each other on the phone.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/20

I genuinely love that (a) techno has been rendered as “boing bop bing” here and (b) that Hi has gone from dubious to extremely over it as Chip works his way through this bit.

Dustin, 9/20/20

You guys, Dustin finally did an actually kind of funny joke! Unfortunately the joke is that Popeye is on TV holding a can labelled “kale.” The punchline to the strip itself is not funny.

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Arctic Circle, 9/7/20

Oscar brushes past “Right to Repair” and a common consumer gripe to set up a visual pun that … doesn’t quite work. First, Oscar has to hint at the joke: bad sign. Second, even with the hint, you might not know that’s an emperor penguin. And third, it’s hard to see the emperor penguin as naked when he’s wearing that sweet tux.

Curtis, 9/7/20

For a New York City straphanger whom we’ve never seen drive a car, Greg seems pretty damn excited about driverless cars! And Curtis is somehow Ted Forth?

Rex Morgan, M.D. 9/7/20

I was going to make a crude joke about Hank Jr. going at his Hulk Hogan doll with a vibrator when I thought, “Hey, are character model kits really a thing?” That set me off on a magical Internet adventure to learn about Bandai Hobby, Moebius Models, and LEGO Star Wars, convincing me in the end that yes, it is totally plausible that Hank Jr. is going at his Hulk Hogan doll with a vibrator.

Sam and Silo, 9/7/20

Lots of websites monetize their communities by introducing dating services, so here goes:

ED CRANKSHAFT — MEET YOUR SOULMATE, ONLY $29.95 PLUS TAX!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/4/20

“Get lost, kid; can’tcha see I’m working? Go huff glue or something.”

Judge Parker, 9/4/20

Producer Ellen knows the score. Don’t confront a hysterical narcissist who has the attention span of a gnat. Just spool out empathetic-sounding noises until she loses track and falls into incoherent screaming.

Kevin and Kell, 9/4/20

Net neutrality is a policy that regulates Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as common carriers. ISPs generally hate net neutrality, because it doesn’t let them prioritize, meter, block, or differentially price different types or volumes of traffic. So Kevin is acting against his own interests here — maybe he’s a customer-service-driven altruist? We’ll see what happens when a couple basement-dwelling teenagers choke his routers with game and porn downloads from The Pirate Bay.

Or maybe haha he’s a rabbit and doesn’t want to be a tortoise.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/4/20

Ol’ Grimm is on remarkably good terms with his parasites.

For Better or For Worse, 9/4/20

Long-time readers will remember when For Better or For Worse was a BIG DEAL here at The Comics Curmudgeon. I remain impressed at the author’s gall in promising “new-runs” that would blend legacy strips into new material to create a “Michael and Meredith nostaligize” narrative, only to drop that pretense the instant editors fell for the scam, offering instead flat-out reruns for the next thirteen years.

One of the strip’s unresolved puzzles was how insufferable Michael and vapid Elizabeth could Do No Wrong (even in the choice of the execrable Anthony as her spouse), while relatably human younger daughter April could never catch a goddamn break. Here, in recap, we see the exact moment April was ostracized. It appears that Les Moore may not actually be the biggest asshole in comics!

— Uncle Lumpy