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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/17

Haha, well, with June’s suggested plan that Heather fulfill her dreams of motherhood by seducing her manservant foiled by her impending departure to the Old Country without him, we now come to an entirely different set of calculations. I hereby apologize for mocking the new, retooled Rex Morgan, M.D., for making its medical plots about snoozeville issues like sleep apnea and dehydration, since it now appears to be wading into the complex ethical issues over whether a person with dementia can be said to be capable of giving sexual consent. Unless Milton’s medications makes him, um — how can I put this …. prone to masturbating in the hallway, or just wherever he happens to be in the house. Then the whole issue is really just a matter of dexterity on Heather’s part.

Pluggers, 3/27/17

Since pluggers are usually depicted as being mournfully resigned to their lot, no matter how dire, it’s actually a little heartening to see this late-middle-aged dog-man so worked up about something that I too find extremely irritating. Still, I don’t think we need to encourage pluggers to start venting years of built-up simmering rage, especially now that I know that many of them are armed and ready to stab something, anything, whatever will make them feel powerful and alive again.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/17

I get why a new writer might want to retool a long-running strip a bit, especially when it comes to a character who, through a long series of choices that might’ve individually made sense, became an art prodigy at a prestigious private school who’s bankrolled by a mob widow and chauffeured about by said mob widow’s brutal enforcer. Still, it seems like the best approach would probably be to rip off the band-aid quickly; I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the strip that got it right was Newspaper Spider-Man, which was coerced by its corporate parent into going along with the comic book continuity’s One More Day storyline in which Peter’s marriage to MJ was erased from history by a demon (no, really), and so introduced the shift in the most half-assed way possible: by just straight-up announcing it with no further explanation beyond a wall of text telling us, “yeah, this is what we’re doing now.” Then, when it turned out everyone hated this idea, a new wall of text was like “oh, yeah it was all a dream, sorry y’all.” I’m not saying Rex Morgan should be quite that blatant about it, but honestly the more they dwell on changing up Sarah’s character, the more obvious the grinding gears are. Just send her to public school! It’ll be fine! We won’t even notice, probably!

By the way, June saying “I don’t recall you being close friends with any of those kids” is one of the coldest things I’ve ever seen a comic strip mom say to her too-smart-for-her-age socially weird daughter. That’s also big talk from someone who has exactly one friend, her erstwhile nanny, who is decamping for England after June suggested she have an affair with a household employee, so as to acquire his seed.

Marvin, 3/19/17

I don’t know if Sunday Marvin strips have always referred to its repugnant title character as “the playpen philosopher” and I’m just now noticing, or if this is a recent attempt to rebrand the hated baby. Either way, I’m disappointed that there’s no philosophy in today’s strip, though I suppose responding to your father’s unconditional affection with disgust is “philosophical” compared to, say, smugly announcing that you reek of shit and piss.

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Slylock Fox, 3/15/17

Wow, some hard truths about animals being laid down here, including the hard truth that owls … are actually kind of dumb? I bet the post-animalpocalypse regime will come to feel bad staffing its entire legal system with owls, then. Just another human superstition they should’ve rejected! Also, it mysteriously seems that the very smart crows never appear in Slylock Fox, at least not in any of the strips in my archive. We can only assume that the Event that granted all the animals sapience made the crows super-intelligent, and they all built spaceships and went to a different, better planet, or maybe transcended their physical bodies and became creatures of pure mind.

Shoe, 3/15/17

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny because Loon’s butt froze, but I have to question what prompted the question in the first place. The Perfesser is just reading the financial section of the newspaper, and thinks, “Huh, you know who seems like a criminal who probably had a warrant taken out against him to ensure that he couldn’t use any of his ill-gotten resources to continue his illegal activities? My friend and co-worker over here!”

Mary Worth, 3/15/17

Dr. Jeff has been taking some time off from his busy schedule of going to the Bum Boat with Mary and trying and failing to get her to marry him to nurse his bad knee at his daughter and son-in-law’s house, so surely he’ll understand when Mary decides to take time off from going to the Bum Boat with Dr. Jeff and rejecting his marriage proposals to go on a fun, sexy cruise with Tobey! And screw the column! Nobody gives a shit about the column! Let nothing stand in the way of this glorious plotline!

Blondie, 3/15/17

Neither Alexander nor Cookie know what “flash in the pan” means. Sad!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/17

[long, increasingly awkward silence]