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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/27/16

June and Heather have spent the past several days discussing the fact that Heather loves June’s new baby and wants to have a baby but is married to a man vanishing into Alzheimer’s and thus will never have a baby and is very sad about it. But remember, Heather isn’t just a sad Scottish ex-nanny with a senile husband; she’s also a criminal conspirator who has masterminded schemes of corporate skullduggery not once but twice. She is going to feel zero moral qualms about kidnapping that baby the moment June leaves the room, is what I’m saying.

Momma, 1/27/16

This is a joke about … STDs, maybe? “Bad colds” being code for “herpes”? That’s the joke? Or maybe the joke is “Francis thinks it’s OK to say ‘My new girlfriend is always kissing me! Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!’ to his mother, which isn’t a ‘joke’ so much as a ‘nightmare from which we will never wake.'”

Dennis the Menace, 1/27/16

There are few things more unsettlingly menacing than spending hours each night poring over old Calvin and Hobbes strips and then passing off the behavior you’re carefully mimicking as “naturally weird.”

Hi and Lois, 1/27/16

See, you thought the joke of this cartoon was going to be that these little kids unthinkingly reminded the old man that he would be dead soon, but in fact the joke is that they’ve reminded him of the many terrible, terrible things he’s seen and done. It’s nice when a long-standing feature like Hi and Lois can keep you guessing!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/24/16

I can’t stop laughing at “I’m an English governess and I know how babies are made.” “They’re made by s-e-x, June! P in V! Only English governesses are privy to this knowledge, while the rest of you lot believe your myths about the stork or the cabbage patch or what have you!” Or maybe this relates to June’s implication in the final panel; as an English governess, Heather knows that aristocratic British men can sire bastard children with their servants, but the wives of the wealthy can never do the same, no matter how badly they want to. What June is telling her is that it’s a new world now. Why, even British princesses have equal rights to inherit the throne as their brothers. Go for it, Heather. Jordan is waiting for you.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/24/16

I assumed that the newspaper clue was not the crossword barely visible at bottom right, but the paper sitting out on the chair at left, which Max had created with a laptop and some desktop publishing software that was also locked in the closet with him. Surely — surely! — Max’s disappearance would not be front page news. Definitely not banner headline front news. Definitely not cleverly composed photo front page news. Inside pages of local section, at best.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/16/16

I’m going to warn you, in case you ever meet me in person: I’m terrible with names. I’ll meet someone, maybe on multiple occasions, and I’ll have lots of positive interactions with them, and I’ll remember all sorts of details about their life that they’ve told me, but for whatever reason the name doesn’t stick, and it eventually gets to the point where it’s too embarrassing to ask. Once, during my ill-starred time in grad school, I was in a seminar with a new student, and one day a friend and I were hanging around the department office when this new guy spotted us and started walking towards us, and my heart dropped because I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, and I knew that the rules of propriety demanded that I introduce my friend to him, and when he came up to us I literally started saying “Hey, this is–” having no idea how I was going to finish that sentence, when suddenly the new guy cut me off and said, “Don’t bother,” and proceeded to tell us, with relish, how grad school was a sham and he was quitting to join a dot-com startup. He walked off and it was one of the greatest feelings of relief I ever had or would experience. Anyway, I have to imagine that this is how Rex felt, as he opens the conversation about tuition in panel one. Obviously he has to bring it up, he knows this is a private school, he’s no dummy, but surely … I mean, not Sarah … not the Morgans … they can’t expect us to dirty our hands … oh, Sarah’s tuition is paid for forever by blood-soaked mob cash? Excellent! What could possibly go wrong?

Six Chix, 1/16/16

Ha ha, it’s funny because that alien is alive and sapient and then we watch the cat straight up murder and eat it.