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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/19/17

This strip has gone through a lot of changes over the years, but one constant that I appreciate is that Rex is always being a smug dick about something. “Oh, sorry, June. Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s his initials. E-R-B, get it? I thought you were up on your classic pulp sci-fi. But I guess I didn’t marry you for your literary taste, am I right? Ha ha! Margie, your husband, who I’m almost certainly about to learn ran off and left you in dire emotional and financial straits, sounds like a real cool guy. Where my ERB-heads at?” (Wait till Rex finds out that little Johncarter was named not after the Barsoom series of books, which his father never read, but after the 2012 film, which was a spectacular flop.)

Mark Trail, 7/19/17

OH SNAP it looks like I was right about the hostage lady being one of the bad guys! This is a solid twist AND gave us the chance to see Agent McHairisland’s complete shock and surprise. What do you suppose this was about, then? Did our fake hostage just need some time to get into character? Is she known across the whole Midwest as the “Method” Bank Heistrix?

Gil Thorp, 7/19/17

Speaking of things I was right about, I guess I was right about this being Heather and Kevin from last football season! But weren’t they seniors last year? Is it really still summer? Are these tall dudes emissaries from an alien species who hope to harness Kevin and Heather’s on-Earth skills for use in a long-running interstellar war, à la 1984’s hit film The Last Starfighter, but for jocks? WHAT’S GOING ON

Mary Worth, 7/19/17

We all know the greatest Mary Worth plots begin with Mary working in her rose garden, so I have great hope for this one. Someone gave Dawn a job, guys! What a terribly misguided decision, which I hope we’ll see acted out in graphic and comical detail over the next several months!

Hi and Lois, 7/19/17

Traditionally this strip has featured an adorable and loving relationship between the infant Trixie and her pal the sunbeam, and I have to say I’m not on board for this gritty reboot. “I’M NOT GOING TO BE IGNORED, TRIXIE” –literally the sun

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/18/17

Just to show you where I’m at with Rex Morgan, M.D., emotionally, every once in a while a strip comes along where I can sort of visualize a potentially interesting story direction if I squint at it, but I don’t talk about here, but then it turns out soon afterwards that nothing actually interesting is going to come of it, and then I do talk about that here. So, like: yesterday, June’s old pal Margie, who’s shown up after having not seen June for many years, casually mentioned that her son and Michael Morgan were born on the same day, which … how could she know that??? Possibly because she’s been stalking the Morgans for a long time in prepration for some long-term grift or Single White Female situation? Anyway, turns out nope, it’s just that June sent a birth announcement to her hometown paper for some reason. Boring! I promise to keep you up to date as this situation singularly fails to develop.

Dennis the Menace, 7/18/17

“The trouble with Dennis is that he arrives more often than he leaves, in violation of the Law of Conservation of Dennises. With each new ‘hello’ without a corresponding ‘goodbye,’ another iteration of Dennis exists in the house. I’m not sure if this is just straight-up time travel or something much more complex involving the nature of causality, but our local section of the space-time continuum is definitely feeling the strain!”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/17

It’s no secret that the last exciting thing that happened in Rex Morgan was Sarah getting hit by a car, but with each new story I allow myself to experience a frisson of hope. Sure, “June’s childhood best friend comes to visit” may not seem like it has a lot of meat to it, but the presence of her child has my “I’m planning on crashing with you indefinitely” sense tingling. Remember when June’s trashy cousin showed up and wouldn’t leave because she’d had a fight with her mom, and Sarah verbalized the class-based judgements that her parents were more subtle about, and then the cousin’s dumb boyfriend showed up too and Sarah made him hand over his skateboard as his price for laying low in the basement, but eventually he painted whales in his basement prison and June’s cousin got a job as a manicurist so everything worked out fine? That was great, and what I’m trying to say is that this lady and her kid better be fleeing a dicey domestic situation, or creditors, or the Irish mob, or something interesting, or else I’m gonna be real mad.

Spider-Man, 7/16/17

The amount of time Mole-Man spends justifying the plundering of Subterranea’s public treasury for his own private gain as he fled his former realm indicates that he knows exactly how unjustified the whole thing is. “Look, uh, I left most of it behind! My former subjects, who did all the manual labor to extract it, are welcome to it! If they depose my successor! The part I took was just a tiny, tiny bit! And what about strip-mining, huh? If it’s a crime for me to bring some precious gems out of the underground kingdom, where does that leave every mining company in the world, huh?” Still, his retelling of the story does provide the opportunity for him to both use the phrase “worm-mount” and to show us said worm-mount, a freakish lamprey-mouthed beast hundreds of feet long with treasure chests lashed to its back that Mole-Man is riding like a pony, so literally anything he does from here on out is forgiven as far as I’m concerned.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/16/17

THE ANSWER IS HE LICKED IT

HE JUST UP AND LICKED COUNT WEIRDLY’S SKI-DOO

I’M SORRY, “SUPER SKI”

I GUESS SKI-DOO IS A BRAND NAME

ANYWAY, HE LICKED IT, TO SEE IF IT TASTED SALTY

SLY, WE NEED TO TALK