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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.

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Mark Trail, 1/13/16

Gabe, I’m sure you’re a very distinguished chiropterologist, and your skill at delicately plucking bats off of cave walls is unsurpassed, but you don’t know anything about selling magazines, OK? If America’s magazine-reading public (mostly airline passengers and people who accidentally clicked the “auto-renew” box on Magazines.com six years ago) see a big story in Woods and Wildlife about a healthy bat colony, they’re not going to think “Oh no! We need to act now to fight white-nose syndrome, probably by allocating millions of tax dollars to whatever university has Gabe on the faculty!” No, they’re gonna think “Wow, look at all those plump, healthy bats. Plenty more where those came from. Bet we could eat ’em, or mine ’em for coal, somehow.” If you want to move hearts, you need to show some full-on bat devastation. I dearly hope this plot climaxes with Mark carefully calibrating his punches to only stun the bats for the photographer, who then daintily daubs talcum powder on their noses for a heartrending but entirely fraudulent cover shoot.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/13/16

At one point in Alan Moore’s Watchman comics series, the psychopathic vigilante Rorschach is captured and arrested. Physically slight, he’s hassled on his first day in prison, but swiftly and brutally ends his first fight by grabbing a pan of hot grease from the cafeteria line and dousing his attacker’s face, leaving him screaming in agony. As the other prisoners look on in horror, he growls his most memorable line: “I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me!” I just thought of that when reading this strip, probably for no particular reason.

Gil Thorp, 1/13/16

Gil Thorp’s basketball season plot has been snoresville so far, but is it about to involve some mid-game pantsing? I could get behind a rash of tit-for-tat pantsing leading to a new record for technical fouls in the Valley Conference.

Judge Parker, 1/13/16

Sorry, American “linguist”! You’ve no doubt done seen and done awful things in the name of protecting your country from the shadows, but Katherine wants that step-grandchild real bad, so it looks like you’ll be dying alone in a Serb prison!

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Panel from The Lockhorns, 1/10/16

I love the way Leroy is delicately leaning up against the bookcase, but why do you suppose he’s idly thumbing through the thesaurus? Is this meant to indicate that he’s been waiting so long that he’s resorted to reading reference books for entertainment? Or maybe we’re meant to realize that his marital hell has so scarred him that he no longer has the vocabulary to describe it, and he’s desperate for new words that will truly convey the depths of his emotional torment.

Marvin, 1/10/16

Sure, I have a whole blog about comic strips, and sure, I complain about Marvin and his poop jokes about once a week on average, but there are still limits to how much space I allow the comics to occupy in my skull. For instance, I can’t remember whether Marvin’s grandparents who had to move into chez Marvin when they lost all their retirement savings are supposed to be Jeff’s parents or Jenny’s. And I refuse to look it up! You can’t make me! Even though knowing the answer would probably better help me get the family dynamics that establish the nuances of this strip, in which Grandpa opens his heart with Jeff and is cruelly mocked in return!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/16

Haha, of course Welton Green is part of Dolly Pierpoint’s sprawling mafia empire! Of course this guy knows all about Sarah and is probably under strict orders to let admit her! “The test is happening right now! Are you ready? Here it comes!” [winks exaggeratedly and hands Sarah a check]