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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/25

I regret to inform you that we are almost to the end of week one of “Kelly is in college, now” and it appears we never did make our way out of the phone talking part of the storyline. But I do think today’s strip has an nice message about how much better Summer and Kelly get along now that she’s out of her rebellious phase. Back then, Kelly was very dismissive about her mother’s “dumb boyfriends,” but now she’s like “Mom, I’m not at home anymore, so shouldn’t you be using the opportunity to, I dunno, have more sex? Just a suggestion. Welp, gotta go!”

Curtis, 1/9/25

Today’s Curtis is a repeat — you can tell because Curtis isn’t wearing the streamlined new hat he got as a gift in 2018 — and I’m pretty sure it may date to before I even started doing this blog. That’s because I can’t find any evidence I talked about it when it first ran, and maybe I’ve become a different person over the years, but I find it hard to believe that at any point in my long life of reading the comics so you don’t have to I would’ve neglected to note that Greg thought of his ample posterior as being in a monogamous sexual relationship with his chair, and his butt and the chair have sex, and are in love, and we’re left to speculate on the mechanics of both types of interaction. I feel like I would’ve talked about it! It’s a lot.

Pluggers, 1/9/25

“Oh Lord, I started out the day with good intentions, but then I got out of bed and, as usual, that’s when it all went wrong! So much blood! So much killing! If You didn’t want me to maul and maul and maul, why did You make me a bear with such powerful claws?”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/25

Look, I get it, soap opera strips are a slow-moving medium, you can’t count on people reading every day so you have to repeat stuff, etc., etc. But I think if you start the week by introducing a new storyline, like “Sarah’s ex-babysitter Kelly, who used to be a hot goth but was transformed into a square-ass loser by long-term exposure to the Morgans, is in college now,” by Tuesday you should have advanced beyond the “Wow, linear time sure does progress” phone call stage.

The Phantom, 1/7/25

The Phantom recently wrapped up a story arc that lasted literally seven years, so I guess we have to understand that its pacing game is on a different level. Throughout this whole “there’s a novelty pub in London where everyone’s been punched by the Phantom” plotline, we’ve been seeing bits of an interview the proprietor did on a thinly veiled version of the Graham Norton Show where he dishes on Phantom lore. Not sure if this is an attempt to get new readers up to speed on the strip; I think it’s a bit too impressionistic for that, but I do admire the narrative ambition.

Mary Worth, 1/7/25

Mary Worth, as always, shows how it’s done. Nothing much happens in today’s strip per se … but a crucial decision has been made that we feel in our bones will lead to wacky results, and now we’re on the edge of our seats waiting to learn what those results will be. Maybe Dawn will end up making out with the incorrect slab-shaped man down at the club, maybe she’ll put hot sauce in her salad instead of ranch dressing and have a meltdown on her date, or maybe she’ll simply mow Ian down with her car as she swerves around the Charterstone parking lot. The possibilities are endless!

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Hello, faithful readers! Did you have a good Christmahanukkwanzaa? Are you ready for a return to comics blogging form, here on your favorite website, joshreads dot com? Well, good news: I’m back and prepared to read the comics so you don’t have to, once again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/25/24

So what did you get up to on Christmas? Did you wait around for your doctor to call you up and tell you it was OK to walk on your treadmill, which he’ll only do after sarcastically asking, “I dunno, do you think someone might stab you the minute you leave the safety of your chair”?

Gil Thorp, 12/26/24

Or did you just straight-up go to jail, like Marty Moon?

Gasoline Alley, 12/27/24

Or did you give, or possibly receive, yet another cursèd doll, to go with the one your friend group already has, doubling the number of demonic toys out in the world and ensuring the ultimate destruction of the human race???

Mary Worth, 12/25/24 and 12/28/24

But whatever, I didn’t have time over the holiday week to think about evil dolls because Dawn’s Christmas Day hunk date turned out to be exactly the blockbuster event that I predicted. First up: turns out Dirk is kind of an asshole — ha ha, what are the paces he’s planning on putting her through that he requires her to protienmaxx at dinner? — but also, it turns out that Dawn 100% thinks of being vegan as a “diet” rather than an ethical framework for respecting animal life, so honestly I don’t feel that bad about it.

Mary Worth, 12/29/24

“Ha ha, Mary, I know, young people really do rush into things instead of taking the time to get to know somebody! It sure would be terrible if I got fingerbanged in the front seat of a car by some hunk I met two days ago instead of spending the last 20 years ‘getting to know’ an angry failed academic decades older than me! Ha ha!”

Mary Worth, 12/30/24

Uh oh! Conflict incoming! Will shallow hunk Dirk still accept Dawn if she has to wear glasses, like she used to?

Mary Worth, 12/31/24 and 1/1/25

Obviously he will not accept them, duh. Remember “negging,” the emotional manipulation technique promoted in the late ’00s by pickup artists and others amongst worst people alive? Well, Mary Worth has finally gotten wind of it in the year of our lord 2025, and obviously Dawn Weston is the first victim.

Mary Worth, 1/2/25

And it worked! She’s 100% in love with this guy, already, despite the fact that he has not been particularly nice to her! In 2025, we’re going to discover: is Dawn going to find that the thing she’s been seeking has been inside her all along? Or has the thing she’s seeking only gone inside her fairly recently? (I’m talking about Dirk’s penis, if that’s not clear.)

Curtis, 1/2/25

Oh, also, Curtis did another Kwanzaa storyline, but instead of being about cool shit like giant telepathic otters it’s about how when you die, you’re reborn as a child in an endless white void and are very confused until you eventually run into your mother. A bit theologically confused and zero giant magical animal content. I give it a C+, but I believe that 2025 has the potential to be at least a B-, comics-wise. Stay tuned!