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Mark Trail, 7/3/20

Hey, uh, you may have heard that James Allen is finishing up his time at Mark Trail! When asked by the Daily Cartoonist whether it was his decision or King Features’, he said “A bit of both — I’m tired and they wanted a new direction.” Maybe it was a mutual decision and maybe it was informed Allen’s tendency to get into social media feuds, with, for instance, members of Congress, or random people on Twitter who run Andy Griffith podcasts, who can say, but the real important question is: how will this affect the current movie storyline? Will the new author just drop this promising development abruptly, just like the tale of Franco Wallace, lover and pinhead, faded out too soon when Woody Wilson left Rex Morgan, M.D.? Or will the new writer have to find their own way through the plot, just as the producers of this human trafficking movie are going to have find their own way to profitability now that the IP rights holder has casually agreed to funnel much of its revenue to charitable causes?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/3/20

Wow, I’ll say this about the great love story that’s about to begin here: June absolutely, 100% had to know what she was getting in to.

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Gil Thorp, 6/30/20

I have to admit, I honestly appreciate that Gil Thorp has refused to pander the usual narrative conventions of the slobs vs. snobs sports battle and has instead delivered the actual inevitable outcome, which is that the snobs would win handily, but also there’d be no hard feelings all around. But if it the effort manages to get at least one Mudlark and one non-Mudlark laid, won’t it all have been worth it?

Shoe, 6/30/20

Man, Shoe really is just all about “OK, we’re doing pandemic jokes now, it’s what’s going on in our readers contemporary lives and we’re gonna talk about it!”, isn’t it? Too bad that by alluding to our current epidemiological situation the strip used up all the up-to-date references it had available, with none left over when it came time to think up a musical act to use in this joke.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/30/20

Welp, June has grown tired of Rex’s failed attempts to make the story of how they met interesting, so she’s seized control, and on day one, Rex has horribly injured himself! I am immediately riveted. Go on, June! Tell us more! Spare no (literally) bloody detail!

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Folks, before we jump into me making fun of today’s comics, I wanted point you to an article I wrote about comics elsewhere! I talked to a bunch of comics artists about their decision to acknowledge — or ignore — the coronvirus pandemic’s effect on our everday lives, and it turned into a meditation on how time and history intersect with the ephemeral medium of newspaper comics. Check it out over on Polygon!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/11/20

We’re fully a week and a half into this “Rex tells Sarah about how he and June met” storyline and June hasn’t even shown up yet, and are you feeling, bored, huh? Do you think this storyline, and Rex Morgan, M.D., storylines in general, move too slowly? Do you wish they’d just get to the point already? Well, it sounds like you’re a big whiny baby, and not a cool supergenius baby who can figure out how to blackmail people, but a dumb baby who had amnesia and now doesn’t know anything anymore. Do you want to be a dumb baby? Do you? No? Then shut up and let this strip set up “context” for the next six to eight weeks, buddy.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/11/20

OK, there are kids of suffering that awful characters in Funky Winkerbean endure that I like and kinds of suffering that I don’t, and I’ve decided that this is the first kind. Do it, Mason! Watch the special secret tapes that were emotionally intimate and only for Les! Strip-mine his personal agony to make a virtuous but unwatchable movie, which is worse than Les strip-mining it himself to produce three virtuous but unreadable books, for some reason! Use Lisa’s corpse to burnish your millionaire action hero status with some indie cred and further your career! Take no prisoners!

Beetle Bailey, 6/11/20

Plato’s “Science Facts” pamphlet is four pages long, including the cover, which is an otherwise blank page that just has “Science Facts” written on it. This is one the saddest things I’ve ever seen.