Archive: Rex Morgan, M.D.

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So ends the 2018 Fall Comics Curmudgeon Fundraiser. So exciting! Thank you, generous readers!


Sherman’s Lagoon, 12/1/18

In Slylock Fox, the judge is invariably an owl. That won’t work under water of course, but why an octopus? It’s the long arm of the law, not the many arms. Some Hawaiian people believe the octopus is the sole survivor of a previous creation, but that still seems like Slylock Fox territory. All hands on deck? Many hands make light work?

It would be funnier with eight gavels.

Crankshaft, 12/1/18

In the final days of Apartment 3-G, the characters swapped identities and chanted incoherently as they swirled about the frame. At last, we have a successor.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/1/18

So all week long it’s been “Funky is a jerk at the gym,” alternating between his passive-aggressive whining and jumping on some lady’s treadmill to “draft” her haha. Now he’s inevitably stumbled off the machine, but instead of being greviously injured out of simple justice, he’s been thrown onto the leg press machine for his last exercise of the day.

Why finish up with the leg press? Because it’ll give him a big number so he’ll come back tomorrow. Despite his pathetic cardiovascular conditioning and will-o’-the-wisp upper-body strength, Funky has quads of iron from keeping all that mass upright all day. With his leg muscles isolated and the 45° rails carrying half the weight, he can probably press a quarter ton. See you again tomorrow, Samson.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/18

After two weeks of nonstop kidney disease, we pause in the final panel to confront the tragedy of color blindness. I hope the grub in Jordan’s Generic House of Food is better than the décor.


— Uncle Lumpy

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Marvin, 11/3/18

Maybe it’s just me, but when you see the phrase “mentoring Marvin” in isolation, parsing “mentoring” as a verbal noun with “Marvin” as its object — i.e., “the process of being a mentor to Marvin” — seems like a much more natural reading than parsing it as a verbal adjective modifying “Marvin” — i.e., “Marvin, the baby that goes around being a mentor.” But apparently I’m wrong! Apparently that’s not what’s happening here. Apparently people think that a heavy lidded cynic cruelly disabusing you of treasured beliefs that tie you to your loved ones counts as “mentoring” now. Apparently you can “have all the answers” even if you consistently and stubbornly refuse to learn how to poop in a toilet.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/3/18

A thing that I forgot to mention about the current Jordan and Michelle storyline in Rex Morgan, amongst all the stolen valor, is that a drunk guy tried to mug them but just ended up lunging at them and missing, and then it turned out that said drunk guy was an PTSD-afflicted vet who also went to high school with Jordan, and because Jordan had this pre-existing personal relationship with him he asked the judge to be lenient, which, isn’t it interesting how our supposedly objective system of justice is really informed in practice by the innumerable social ties that hold individuals together, but that’s neither here nor there because the important thing is that this dude is hallucinating! And Jordan has promised, without consulting Rex, that he can get this hallucinating dude in to see Rex, today! I am vibrating with glee imagining the scowl that Rex is going to grace us with on this one.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/18

Oh, snap, did our man Jordan steal some valor? We learned yesterday that he lost his legs to an IED in Iraq not while “on patrol,” since he wasn’t in a combat unit, but rather while he was walking to a market to buy vegetables, because he was an Army Food Services Specialist. You’d think most people would be perfectly willing to honor anyone wounded by enemy action in a combat zone, and that the soldiers he fed would’ve deemed him a hero for risking his life to help supply them with fresh food and not MREs or industrial flash-frozen meals shipped from the States. But, whatever, Jordan just wants to give people a “good story,” and it makes me suspicious that the truth is even further removed from the “real” tale he’s been telling his fiance. Like, in a month we’re going to find out he wasn’t in the army at all, but actually was just a line chef at a restaurant who had to run to the supermarket to get some more spinach during the late dinner rush, and accidentally slipped and fell into the into the industrial floor buffer. Then a week after that we’ll find out the restaurant was an Olive Garden and he was actually picking up more of the Secret Olive Garden Ingredient (Grade B butter).

Mary Worth, 10/15/18

I don’t want to tell Mary how to do her job (“job”), but if you’re trying to woo an emotionally closed-off shut-in back into the world by giving him a specific task to complete that matches his skills, maybe just spend some time with him doing that task and making neutral chit-chat instead of bombarding him with feelings talk the moment you trick him out of his apartment? This is the speech for when he realizes he’s enjoyed the day in spite of himself, not when he’s still in the car on the way over! He’s not going to come out again for another year.

Six Chix, 10/15/18

One thing I really hate is characters explaining things to each other that they already know, so I’m going to assume that the vampiress on the left has only recently been turned into an undead ghoul by the vampiress on the right. Our newbie has finally gotten over the initial shock and is starting to really lean into the aesthetic, but still hasn’t really that the one thing that’s truly her long hoped for ticket to Instagram stardom is also the one thing that makes selfies physically impossible.

Family Circus, 10/15/18

My favorite part of this cartoon, in which literally everybody is devastated at not being able to go on a trip to New York with Big Daddy Keane (which, why? he isn’t that great) is that Billy is wearing a “Good On Ya Mate” t-shirt he got from his canonically Australian mother. Ha ha, Billy doesn’t know the difference between New York and Australia! The only geography he understands is “here” and “somewhere else.” He’s a moron!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/18

I’m not sure why Slylock felt like he needed so many accomplices for his grim little sting operation here. I do love how pleased Patty looks — maybe she feels like, having gotten a social invitation from Slylock, she’s moving up in the world! — and how tense everyone else looks, as they all wait for this desperate addict to sneak off to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and try to pocket the, uh, “toothpaste,” yeah, that’s exactly what Patty’s been stealing from the town’s medicine cabinets, toothpaste. Only our li’l pig pal is completely ignoring the fraught emotional texture of the evening. He’s just eatin’ dinner! He loves dinner! It’s weird that dinner’s been served in the living room off of a coffee table, but guess what: he doesn’t care!

Spider-Man, 10/15/18

“Look who escaped the chopper via their own personal jetpacks!” “Kingpin and the Golden Claw!” “Yeah man, that was a rhetorical question. They were the only other people in the chopper. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Is this … is this how other people feel when they’re talking to me? Hoo boy.”