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Mary Worth, 1/20/20

Well, Thyroid Awareness Month has wrapped up nicely, with Zak doubling down on his grim determination to be the most supportive boyfriend possible by buying Iris healthy food and not making her feel bad about doing less volunteer work so she can conserve her Hashimoto’s-sapped energy. Now we’re shifting gears: did you know that January is also There Are No Good Men Left Once You’re In Your 60s So Just Settle For Whoever Or You’ll Die Alone Awareness Month? It’s true! And Estelle and Wilbur are going to make you ever more aware of this over the coming weeks, as Estelle forces herself to laugh at Wilbur’s terrible jokes and tries to forget his appalling behavior and just generally unpleasant personality.

Gasoline Alley, 1/20/20

I’m not even going to bother bringing you up to speed on Gasoline Alley, but I am going to say this: if you’ve given one of your characters a “whimsical” name like “Baleen,” I think it’s kind of weird to milk laughs out of other characters finding it strange? I dunno, it just seems kind of overdetermined to me. Long story short, I hope our salty waitress has a long and serious talk with this young man about the difference between baleen whales, which use bony plates to filter food out of the water as it passes through their mouths, and toothed whales like the orca.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/20/20

Back in the days when Woody Wilson wrote this strip, people used to give the Morgans stuff all the time: free tickets to SeaWorld, steeply discounted vacation homes, and so on. But under Terry Beatty’s watch, the gravy train has been slowed somewhat. Sure, June and Rex scored some free toddlers a couple years back, but her best friend had to die to make that happen. Fortunately, the Morgans don’t care about other people’s well-being, really, so Aunt Tildy’s transparent hint that she’s gonna drop dead soon really ought to have June’s ears pricking up. What are they going to get in the will, do you suppose?

Crankshaft, 1/20/20

Man, I am mesmerized by whatever is in Crankshaft’s spoon here. Sure, he could easily make himself some kind of soggy off-brown slurry to eat at home for much less money, but then he wouldn’t be able to trade bon mots with his friends as he chokes the tasteless stuff down, you know?

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/19/20

I have to say that I am living, unironically, for this storyline where Rex and June are at their absolute wit’s end because they’re being extremely mildly inconvenienced by Aunt Tildy. I mean, not even inconvenienced in any substantive way! Just kind of annoyed, but too passive-aggressive to actually speak up about it! It’s great! Let’s watch ’em squirm! In fact, I certainly hope this “Cousin Charley” thing is the setup to a flashback about a similarly well-meaning but irritating relative who made their lives slightly less enjoyable for a while, and we watch this play out and Rex and June getting pissier and pissier for the next six to eight weeks, and then we come back to the present and get some more Aunt Tildy annoyance. Let’s air some exceptionally petty grievances, people!

Funky Winkerbean, 1/19/20

There can be absolutely no more appropriate ceremony to begin the process of sinking millions of dollars into a prestige Lisa’s Story movie than to ritually set some money on fire.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/17/20

Congrats to Beetle Bailey on more or less understanding an aspect of modern life! Just a few little corrections:

• The term you’re sort of botching is “social media star,” though honestly what you’d really want to say is “influencer.”
• Despite the fact that King Features has 1,067 Instagram followers, Beetle, even with three times that many, would be several orders of magnitude away from being a true influencer.
• Instagram wouldn’t really be Beetle’s platform, anyway; where he’d do gangbusters would be with his own ASMR YouTube channel.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/17/20

Finally, Rex sees an opportunity to nail down exactly how old his wife is, something he’s been trying to figure out without just breaking down and asking her directly for years now. But June’s not going to let him get out of it this easily.