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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/30/18

Several different uninteresting storylines featuring uninteresting sets of characters intersected at Buck and Mindy’s Vegas wedding, and so the big question after that was: what boring nonsense was going to come up on the bland Rex Morgan, M.D., slot machine after everybody parted ways? The “winners” turn out to be the Hanks, making their way across America one dumb roadside attraction at a time — except Hank Sr. has decided he’s going to go back to Millie’s diner and win back her heart. But now nobody is answering the phone at the diner!!!! Will our heroes stumble into a robbery or a fire or some similarly dramatic situation??? Or will it just be that things were really slammed and nobody picked up the phone, yes, that’s the more likely alternative, the much, much less exciting thing, that’s the one that’s happening.

Mark Trail, 8/30/18

Oh, it appears Mark’s reputation has preceded him here south of the border, down Mexico way, and what does that reputation consist of? Well, we know he hates evil-doers. We know he particularly hates those evil-doers who illicitly traffic in the cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. And we know that when he gets angry, vehicles explode. Jo(s)e’s precious classic car … ice cream truck … thing is not long for this world, is what I’m saying!

Dennis the Menace, 8/30/18

You’ve taken your five-year-old to a live performance fancy enough to require a jacket and tie … and he announces his intention to peacefully and quietly sleep through it, allowing all the other theater-goers, who appear to universally be adults, to enjoy the show? That is literally the least menacing possible scenario here

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/18/18

“It’s not as weird as being sent to check in on a patient’s beach house and finding it occupied by a bunch of strippers with hearts of gold, or as weird as stumbling upon a MRSA epidemic spread to teens all over town by infected wrestling mats, or as weird as a nanny and a couple of her friends conspiring to keep a demented old man in charge of a publicly traded corporation for their own financial benefit. Seems like that kind of fun stuff doesn’t really happen around here very much anymore! Just, uh, old comic book art hidden under the floorboards from here on out, I guess.”

Dick Tracy, 8/18/18

Thanks, Dick Tracy Narration Box, for reminding me, a Dick Tracy reader, that I’m consuming serialized content! Without this warning I may have spent the next 24 hours worrying that we’d never learn what Bribery and Lafayette Austin have to talk about, or that maybe the strip was just going to unceremoniously stop publishing altogether.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/18/18

Snuffy Smith trying to latch onto the sovereign citizen movement is possibly the least surprising development in the comics pages this year.

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Hi and Lois, 8/12/18

In this fallen age where we’re all overworked and underpaid and comic strip revenue is dropping and endless digitized archives are out there for the reuse and remixing, I’m always slightly suspicious that anything I’m looking at as a comic strip could be a rerun with new dialogue and slightly updated art. Take today’s Hi and Lois. Obviously the core joke is very of the moment. And I’m not sure if we’re supposed to understand Chuck Green’s “my” as meaning “I invented this” or “I just downloaded it.” But is there any world where the visual stereotype to go with either of those things is “guy with white pants, spray tan, and shirt unbuttoned to display chest hair”? Anyway, feel free to imagine whatever extremely 1982 hijinks were going on here before the phone got dropped into the panel.

Crankshaft, 8/12/18

Today’s strip, combined with this weird storyline from a few months ago, indicates to me that someone on the Crankshaft creative team has finally noticed that low-margin retail banking is no longer a profit center for financial institutions and that they’re increasingly trying to cut costs through automation. Unfortunately for the financial services sector, they pissed off someone with access to the unparalleled reach of syndicated newspaper comics. Feeling that burn, Big Banks?

Spider-Man, 8/12/18

Shout-out to Peter Parker for taking time out of his busy being-tied-up-and-ineffectual schedule to notice that Suwan has a feisty nature and a great ass. “Oh, yeah! Shake that thang while you argue with your uncle! Daddy like!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/12/18

Thanks for putting quotes around “Elvis,” Rex Morgan, M.D., narration box! Without them, we might’ve briefly wondered if we were looking at the real Elvis Presley, and that would’ve been exciting, or at least interesting!