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Wizard of Id, 10/3/25

It absolutely makes sense that people hear “New York” and think of New York City — the city is a world cultural capital, is the economic engine of the state and indeed much of the country, and a majority of the state population lives either in the city itself or its immediately adjacent suburbs. Still, when you grow up (like I did) in a very different kind of city that happens to be at the complete opposite end of the state, you get a little whiplash when you hear about things happening in “New York.” For instance, when New York legalized marijuana for recreational use, I was already living in Los Angeles, another megacity that was ahead of the curve on that one, so the idea of people in Brooklyn or Manhattan being able to buy weed at some high-end hipster dispensary absolutely made sense. But legalization was a state decision, not a city one, and going home to the Buffalo area and seeing janky stores in suburban strip malls near where my parents live named things like “The Devil’s Lettuce” was significantly weirder. Anyway, that’s kind of how I feel about newspaper comics doing weed legalization jokes. This topic belongs in alternative comics on the seedy internet! Not in the newspaper in front of God and everybody!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/25

I was trying to imagine what hedonistic and shocking activity the assembled Ameripolitans would be engaged in when Rex and June turn around and sneak back to the wedding as it gets later and wilder to see if they can make off with enough wedding cake to satiate their greedy children. Honestly doesn’t seem like an orgy crowd, but maybe … cocaine? Hard rocking country musicians, many of whom are older guys who probably came of age in the ’80s … they’ve moved on from booze to coke at this point, right? Never mind what I said up above about the Wizard of Id, I’m a blogger on the seedy internet and I’m allowed to make these jokes.

Mary Worth, 10/3/25

Damn, Mary, can’t you just be pleased and satisfied that these dogs Incredible Journeyed it here to see you? Do you need their drippy human owners to show up too? Why is nothing anyone does ever good enough for you?

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Gearhead Gertie, 10/2/25

I was actually visiting a friend in Durham on the day Dale Earnhardt died, a date that I will always think of as “North Carolina’s 9/11,” so I know the strong feelings that his life and death elicit, and hopefully I’m not about to step out of line in this post, but: Dale Earnhardt died in a car crash during the Daytona 500? Because he ran into a wall at 160 miles an hour? And had previously complained about some rules that NASCAR had changed that slowed down races, and so NASCAR tweaked the rules again for the “aerodynamic package” allowed for cars, in order to (in the words of the remarkably detailed Wikipedia article on the subject) “keep cars bunched up close together and to allow more frequent passing at high speed”? Anyway, Gearhead Gertie has been a lot of business about her petty gripes with her husband lately, so I’m pretty excited that today’s panel is about Dale Earnhardt’s ghost or soul or whatever, which has been trapped in a photo on Gertie’s end table, saying, “Learn no lessons from my death. Go faster. Ever faster. Never slower. If they tell you to slow down, tell ’em to go to hell and leave them in your dust.”

Mary Worth, 10/2/25

Santa Royale is a bucolic California seaside college town, a fairly transparent stand-in for Santa Barbara, so it’s very funny that we suddenly have introduced into canon the idea that it’s immediately adjacent to a vast, dense forest, with no cell reception. I assume that Saul is terrified because he knows it’s full of … brigands? Wolves? Fae folk? Looking forward to finding out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/2/25

Look, I’ve talked a lot of shit about the roots country Americana Ameripolitan scene on this blog, but I’m not such a hater that I won’t admit that a wedding full of musicians who are all playing for one another would be extremely fun and interesting! Not Rex and June, though. They need to go home and go to bed. They’re very boring people!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/28/25

Well, I guess Truck’s not-son Cody did in fact come out ahead of beloved (?) tween neo-vaudeville novelty act “Shorty and the Beanpole,” because not only did he score an invite to Truck’s wedding but he was also allowed and/or required to perform. Obviously he was only paid in “exposure” and “the chance that he might feel the slightest amount of paternal affection for once in his life,” but now it’s all worked out … for him, anyway. Too bad about his band, but the lucrative world of younger people doing covers of country classics doesn’t have room for anything more than the one guy and one guitar that the nostalgics crave.

Mary Worth, 9/28/25

It’s only appropriate that in Mary Worth, interspecies psychic communication takes the form of a human projecting their own floating head into an animal’s mind, though I have to say that Greta and Max’s expressions look less like “We are receiving a message from our friend” and more like Olive has simply overridden their consciousness and will take control of their zombie-like bodies, for rescue purposes. Funnier to me, though, is Mary fretting “what if they forgot about us?” Like, as I age, I definitely have learned more and more that the people “in charge” in any given situation are just folks like me and often have things less in hand than I assumed all adults did as a kid, but I do sincerely believe that the people running a hot air balloon festival would in fact notice if one or more of the balloons went missing. Surely somebody involved has, like, a clipboard, right? A clipboard with a list of balloons on it?

Pickles, 9/28/25

It’s true, Grandpa Pickles walking into an oil change place and thinking it’s his optometrist’s office, which is almost certainly in an entirely different location, is not necessarily a sign that his vision is failing. He should probably take a comprehensive cognitive functions test, however.

Crankshaft, 9/28/25

This one … this one seems even more serious, to be honest. But Crankshaft is pretty sanguine about it. Let’s just take all these pills at random times and let the miracle of the human body take its course. See what happens. He’ll be behind the wheel of a schoolbus full of children when it all goes down, by the way.