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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/7/07

More often than not, when I mention to people that I’m a fan of Rex Morgan, M.D., and similar strips, it completely boggles their mind. “But how can you force yourself to read that boring crap day after day?” is generally the sort of thing they ask me. Days like today are the payoffs that keep me going. Sure, the final panel, with Rex going into such paroxysms of shock and horror that his face is about to collapse in on itself, would be hilarious even without context, but you really need to backstory to appreciate all the other psychodrama going on here — everyone’s sneering at Rex’s mothball-scented bid to match his father’s rugged outdoorsmanship, and Niki blowing the whole thing to bits with his city-kid need for creature comforts.

In a conventional narrative, Rex and Niki’s initial antagonism on the trip would eventually soften into mutual compromise — Rex would wow Niki with his fly-casting skills, and Niki would teach Rex hip youth-culture lingo like “radical” and “extreme”; and maybe Niki would help Rex understand why the good doctr needs his dead father’s approval so badly, and that a situation where one is waist-deep in water and short on food isn’t necessarily a Katrina survivor’s idea of fun. But this is Rex Morgan, M.D., a strip whose hero never even tries to grow as a person or engage in a single moment of self-reflection. Niki will be made to hate fishing every bit as much as young Rex did, only to try to force it on his own son years later for reasons he can only dimly grasp. Thank God Sarah Morgan was born a girl, and is thus forever safe from Rex’s relentless Pygmalionesque schemes.

Mary Worth, 10/7/07

And sometimes the hoary old soaps can deliver perfect moments of emo pathos. I have to admit that, while the grinding gears of Mary Worth plot changes are generally audible from miles away, I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a capstone on l’affaire Drew or a setup for more heartstring-pulling to come. Either way, though, I’m going to enjoy imagining these roses sitting on Dawn’s dresser, withering more and more each day, but staying in their vase until they’re reduced to a skeletal mess, and Dawn seeming to draw more and more strength from their death until she’s more powerful than Drew could possibly imagine.

One Big Happy, 10/7/07

Ha ha, this is some of the most dick-tastic dad action in the funnies since — well, since Rex Morgan. One could argue that the point of a school-assigned spelling lists is to teach children how to spell, not how to memorize arbitrary lists of words just long enough to pass a test, and that we should be impressed that Joe has actually managed to get his little pea brain around the concept of homonyms. But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see Joe squirm about in his usual learning-avoiding contortions. Dad’s shown himself to be more of a math guy, anyway.

Spider-Man, 10/7/07

This strip is notable solely for panel five, which contains a passable likeness of Leonardo DiCaprio that apparently absorbed all of the artist’s celebrity-drawing abilities, as nobody else at this “Hollywood costume party” is even remotely recognizable as someone famous. But while I’m here, I might as well point out that this is yet another example of the most irritating weapon in Spider-Man’s narrative arsenal: the dilemma that solves itself in a day or two with no intervention from the protagonist whatsoever (see here for a particularly egregious example from a couple of years ago). In this light, it’s probably impossible to believe that the typically dramatic NEXT! box will live up to its promise. “You can’t go home again — or can you? Oh, wait, actually, I was right the first time. It turns out that you can. Never mind!”

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/4/07

I suppose I’m expected to say something about this, right? God damn, you know, I got into this gig to make jokes about Rex Morgan’s sex life and stuff. Well, if I had to sum it up, I’d have to say:

I don’t hate it.

I don’t hate it on principle, for starters. I don’t believe that the comics, or the newspaper comics in particular, should be a all-fun death-free zone. And, to touch on a specific aspect that seems to have pressed a lot of buttons: I’m a big proponent of quality-of-life decisions in medical care. I think that, if given the option of adding a few extra months to your life at the price of constant pain, “no” is a legitimate answer.

In a bigger sense, as I noted in a quote in a newspaper story whose author was nice enough to solicit my opinion like I’m some kind of expert, I’m in favor of comics artists deciding to do things that are kind of ambitious. Whatever my thoughts are on the execution of this, my esteem for it is boosted by its context: it sits in the middle of a section of the paper full of “legacy” strips now produced by committee, whose tired punchlines seem quite often to be literally phoned in. This series was undeniably trying at something a little grander.

As for the execution of the storyline, to me it was kind of hit and miss: some of it was really affecting, and some was pretty tin-eared. That quality has been on ample display over the past few weeks. There was a lot of this final sequence that I found quite moving, but then, hey! It’s weird cheesy Phantom of the Opera/“Puttin’ on the Ritz” guy! It kind of, um, spoiled the mood for me a bit.

But in the end, the decision for this storyline to go the way it did didn’t shock or upset me because of the other context it exists in, namely Funky Winkerbean itself. Honestly, this is the strip with the missing arms and the alcoholism and the murdered fathers and the infertility and the hey hey. You want to know what FW plot really pissed me off? Harry Dinkle going deaf. Because in real life, people get cancer, people get second bouts of cancer, and people die from it, all for no good reason. But when you get ironic, O. Henry style afflictions — well, that just seems needlessly cruel.

That’s all just my opinion, of course. And one thing I do appreciate is all of you commentors who have been sharing your opinions — and your really touching and harrowing stories — over the past little while. The comments on yesterday’s post are particularly worth reading. Whether you think this outpouring is because of the strip or in spite of it, I’m touched that you chose my blog as a place to share this stuff.

For Better Or For Worse, 10/4/07

Meanwhile, Grandpa Jim: totally not dead, FYI. Ha ha, old man, you thought it’d be easy to get out of this strip? You were wrong — dead wrong!

But you’re not dead. Just to make that clear.

Crock, 10/4/07

This is the first Crock I’ve genuinely and non-ironically laughed at in about ever. It’s about the fact that Crock only shows the slightest bit of consideration towards other living things if it somehow forwards his interests or his appetites; as a bonus, there’s an undertone of cannibalism. I began to worry that I might be kind of mean spirited.

Marvin, 10/4/07

But then I was appalled at this comic, which is about putting babies in prison, so I felt better about myself.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/07

That final panel isn’t artsy visual narrative, or a metaphor for Rex’s dual nature, or anything like that. It’s actually offering us a look into Rex Morgan’s head, wherein lies … another, slightly smaller, Rex Morgan head. And what’s inside that Rex Morgan head? You’ve got it: yet another Rex Morgan head. It’s like those damn nesting Russian dolls, only with Rex Morgan heads.

Oh, and they can all talk, apparently. Damn creepy.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/4/07

Actually, Herb, he’s a 16th century writer, but what’s 1,200 years in the grand scheme of things? We shouldn’t let minor details detract from your achievement: you just managed to use an entirely irrelevant quotation that you got out of Bartlett’s to justify to yourself the fact that you’re a crappy friend. Bravo!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/1/07

Let’s leave aside for a moment the cringe-inducing and increasingly intrusive pederastic vibe that the Rex-Niki relationship is giving off. Even if we pretend none of that is happening (LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU), the text is quite amusing enough even without its subtext. Surly Dr. Morgan, who can barely be bothered to rescue his ex-nanny, practice medicine, be nice to his wife, or acknowledge his daughter, now suddenly is all excited about standing waist-deep in freezing water and gutting a fish? I have to imagine that this burst of activity is springing out of Rex’s infinitely deep well of self-hatred: maybe Green Lumberjack Shirt Rex, mentor to Young Urchin Niki, will like himself! This whole project seems so blatantly destined for disaster that I can barely contain my excitement. Presumably after about twenty minutes Niki will freak out because he’s having Katrina flooding flashbacks, and the overpowering stench of mothballs will drive away all the fish, so Rex will tell Niki how disappointed he is, and then they’ll drive back to the city in silence. Then it’s all over but the quiet, private weeping.

The Morgans’ previous attempt at water-based recreation didn’t go particularly well, either. And yes, Rex apparently feels the need to dress like a complete dork whenever there’s the slightest chance that he might end up in a river.

Dick Tracy, 10/1/07

Wow, it’s kind of unusual for Dick Tracy to shy away from showing us a scene of unspeakable carnage like this; admittedly, the strip’s gaze is sadistically lingering on the poor Baron’s shock and grief, but that’s subtle stuff when compared with the mangled bodies that are this feature’s stock in trade. Perhaps Dick’s descriptions can grow increasingly graphic over the course of the week. “…and there are bits of bone and viscera everywhere … they’ll need a firehose to get it off front steps of the Capitol …”

For Better Or For Worse, 10/1/07

Ah, life’s great cycle, told in FBOFW’s new achronological style. Panel five depicts the moment when Deanna’s creative spirit was last allowed full expression, before her stifling mother began the job of dampening it; the first three panels depict the snuffing of its final embers, as a smirking Michael goads their children to ensure that she’ll never have a moment of self-reflection that might lead to her escape.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/1/07

Yet another Curmudgeon reader gets TDIET props! Devin Wilger of Saskatchewan is none other than faithful reader Citric, and I’ll let him describe the panel in his own words:

Basically, the strip is inspired by my father (and, to a lesser extent, me) … [my father] has since surpassed anything I was annoyed with before and fell off a building, and broke his nose, in separate incidents, and didn’t go to the doctor after either one. And yet, if my mom has something bothering her, he does insist she go.

It’s sort of creepy to see my dad depicted as my wife though. I’ll say that right now.