Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/31/25
Wait, is something happening in Rex Morgan, M.D.? Is something interesting happening in Rex Morgan, M.D.? Wild. Truly wild. Something’s happening. Who would’ve guessed it?
Blondie, 5/31/25
Guys, you’ve both been angling to swing with Ernie and Lily for months now! You think your wives don’t know? They know!
Pluggers, 5/31/25
Sorry, dog-man, it’s actually Saturday! Close, though. So close.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/29/25
Look, obviously I’m not asking that a comic strip that deliberately has fun with a character that’s in some ways like a person and in some ways like an animal be 100% realistic or even consistent. I’m just saying that we should acknowledge that a dog telling a dentist “Sometimes I have chunks of human flesh stuck between my teeth” is fairly menacing! Like not in a cute Dennis way, but in a genuine “I attack and seriously wound those who irritate me” way.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/29/25
An aging roots country star wearing colorful western gear silently ruminates over his past failures as a husband while contemplating a beige-ish blob of fried (?) diner food he has speared on the end of his fork. Is this the perfectly representative Rex Morgan, M.D., strip? Well, it doesn’t have Rene Belluso trying to pull off some obvious scam, but it also doesn’t have Rex doing any doctor stuff, so it’s pretty close.
Dick Tracy, 5/29/25
“Remember, Sam. People with criminal histories? Criminals. People without criminal histories? Also probably criminals, and talented ones too. Now let’s go down to the courthouse and get arrest warrants for everyone in town, including ourselves.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/20/25
On Sunday, June got the mail, and told her sons that the family had gotten a wedding invite, and they were like “You get free cake at a wedding! That’s the reward for sitting through the boring parts!” Then yesterday and today, she also told Rex about the invite, and he gave the exact same response. This would’ve been a perfectly serviceable bit if it had played out over a minute or so in a sitcom, but it works significantly less well in a continuity strip, where it takes three days and at the end you have to remind people what happened over the previous two days, in case they never read those strips, or just forgot about them.
Luann, 5/20/25
“Sassy old lady” is also a hoary sitcom trope, and I probably shouldn’t get as much amusement from it as I do, but you have to admit it works particularly well in Luann, when the sassy old lady quips are generally along the lines of “Hey why don’t you loser kids shut the fuck up for once in your extremely overthought lives, huh? Let’s have some tea.”
Crankshaft, 5/20/25
Look, buddy, this lady works at a florist shop, so I agree that she should not just repeat the name of the flower you named back at you as a question, but should rather let you know if they have them available and how much they would cost if they do. However, I do not think taking her question as an opportunity to launch into a meandering soliloquy about times gone by is going to speed up this transaction. Quite the opposite, in fact!