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Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/30/25

This is at least the second time that Slylock Fox has proposed the old “one person divides, the other chooses” solution to this kind of dispute, and when the first one was published five years ago I already went on at great length about how I first encountered that idea in T*A*C*K, a sub-Encyclopedia Brown series of distinctly Slylockian “mysteries” for kids. So I guess today I’ll focus on our hapless canine judge. Criminal investigation and prosecution are the flashiest part of the legal system, and the post-human regime has managed to put together semi-functional versions of that, but much of the work of the judiciary involves managing noncriminal disputes between litigants, and we can see that Slylock’s animal civilization has a long way to go in that department. Our boy Sly is using the only tool in his arsenal — ratiocination — and frankly I don’t think it’s really up to the task.

Mary Worth, 3/30/25

“Oh, Belle seems wacky, but kinda fun, ha ha!” is what many of you and frankly I thought when she first appeared. “She definitely won’t start blacking out the eyes of her lover’s daughter in family photos literally minutes after she arrives unannounced at his home, with a sharpie she apparently carries with her specifically for that purpose.” We were fools. Fools! How could we have been so naive?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/30/25

“When is this boring stalker storyline going to get to the medical content that we expect from medically-themed comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D.?” is the question that’s been on the lips of a lot of people who do not regularly read Rex Morgan, M.D., the comic strip that has a lot less medical content than you’d expect. Anyway, does dying count as medical content? Because our stalker — I assume that’s him, based on his Lincolnian profile — seems to have died in mid-stalk, oops. Well, looks like Summer’s problem is solved, anyway! I guess maybe we should bring Rex in to say a few words about how the stalking lifestyle is unhealthy and then move on.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/24/25

One of my favorite terms of art from the world of standup comedy is “street joke.” A street joke is a joke a comic tells on stage that they didn’t write — but isn’t one that they lifted from another comic or writer, which is a significant sin among standups. Instead, a street joke is just one you heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone, or (in these days where most jokes spread online) from someone who saw it in a blurry, repeatedly reposted meme of some sort. Upon reading today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, I immediately pegged its dialogue as a street joke, and some quick searches confirmed my instinct: you can find it posted in uncanny Facebook groups called things like “Strange World” and “Deep Relationships,” tagged as being of “disputed origin” on a post in the r/quotes subreddit, or for sale on human made merch on Etsy or truly upsetting AI-generated t-shirts on Amazon. There are, of course, worse sins than putting a street joke in your comic strip, though I must once again remind comics creators that if your main characters are anthropomorphic birds, and you put in street jokes that involve birds, it really leaves the reader puzzling over whether the birds in the joke are also supposed to be anthropomorphic birds that the main characters interact with, like do the rooster-men in the Mother Goose and Grimm world scream like a person every morning or what, and frankly I don’t think that’s really the effect you’re going for with this.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/25

Oh, just to keep you up to date on the Rex Morgan, M.D., stalker plot: the stalker got kicked out of the museum, and then Augie and Summer went to the cops and they were like “What do you expect us to do, protect you somehow? Get back to us when he’s actually murdered you or something,” and so they went back to Summer’s place and Augie agreed to stand guard. Then there was a loud noise, which implied that something exciting happened, but nope! Nothing exciting happened. Just Augie accidentally closing a door too vigorously! More on this story as it continues, against all odds, to fail to develop.

Sam and Silo, 3/24/25

The thing I like about this strip is that Sam doesn’t respond to Silo without prompting. Frankly, it’s as if he wasn’t really talking to Silo in the first panel to begin with. This was all an internal monologue! “Why is this guy even talking to me,” he thinks to himself. Anyway, these two are supposedly best friends and spend all their time together.

Alice, 3/24/25

Big news, everyone: it seems that Alice, the title character in the syndicated newspaper strip Alice, has discovered the recreational drug known as “marijuana”. Brace yourself, things could get wacky!

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Mary Worth, 3/7/25

We have all, obviously, been thinking about Wilbur Weston’s sex life for far too long, but consider the psychic damage these endless “Wilbur, against all odds and logic, gets laid” plots are visiting upon his daughter in particular. Think about how you’d feel if you picked up Wilbur at the airport and he immediately launched into a digression about all the hot, hot vacation sex he had just had. You can see why Dawn is trying to steer the conversation towards some kind of lasting emotional connection Wilbur might form with this “Belle” person, but, nope! Wilbur doesn’t do long distance. We’re dangerously close to hearing him say the phrase “hit it and quit it.”

Family Circus, 3/7/25

Say what you will about the Family Circus, but unlike many comics, it rarely resorts to a “work backwards from a punchline” situation, though sadly that is what I think we’re seeing here. The idea of a clothing store that has a whole section of t-shirts with just state names on them is pretty funny, I have to admit, but ultimately where this panel fails for me is that I do not believe that Billy knows anything about the relative sizes of various states, or really any geography facts at all.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/7/25

“We have a giant, vicious robot, the ArtGuard 3000, that protects the peaceful, disturbance-free experience of our museum with multiple razor-sharp blades. Don’t worry, it will drag you down to the basement first, so our significant collection of regional art will not be splattered with your blood.”