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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/23/23

Like all industries, the newspaper soap opera strip game is inevitably prone to jealousies and copycat moves when one strip has a true breakout moment — like, say, when a character falls to his death off a cruise ship, except it turns out that he didn’t really die, actually. Still, it’s hard to top the original, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel like Wilbur earned his not-death, in that we had quite a bit of lead-up involving him getting drunk, feuding with Estelle, doing the “King of the World” thing, etc. Whereas this storyline seemed to be hinting instead at some battle of wits between Rene and Hank Jr. that might eventually escalate to a battle of fists, but instead we just get Rene going from 0 to murder in a single panel, and Hank foiling said murder attempt two panels later by simply stepping out of the way, an act that can never be spun as “exciting” even if the narration box describes it with an exclamation point. Anyway, I’m not sure if Rene is actually dead or just Wilbur dead, but I do hope that either way a few hours in the bosom of the sea dissolves a lot of that spirit gum so that, when they fish him/his corpse out, his dumb chinbeard is only halfway attached.

Mary Worth, 4/23/23

Speaking of people who died, but then didn’t die, but then died a much more crushing death, which is to say a romantic and emotional death, here’s Wilbur, sob-singing his way through 1976 banger “Don’t Cry Out Loud” in front of a karaoke crowd that I assume is cringing so hard they’re sustaining internal organ damage, and then we smash cut to Dr. Ed and Estelle publicly canoodling and declaring their love for one another. It’s perfect, and now that you’ve read it, you can go do some lawn work or spring cleaning or just lie down and have a nice little Sunday nap, because all is right with the world.

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Mary Worth, 4/21/23

I’m not at all a person who’s in favor of repressing one’s feelings, but Wilbur is openly weeping in front of you, Mary! I don’t think he needs the language of song to help him fully express his emotions! He just needs some tissues so he doesn’t get snot all over your upholstery.

Dennis the Menace, 4/21/23

I dunno, Dennis, you appear to have put on a shirt and tie to set the mood for the single guest your mother invited over, so I’m going to actually guess that you’re in the top decile of manners for six-year-olds nationwide.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/21/23

Ha ha, look at Yvonne’s face in that second panel, that’s a woman who’s trying so hard to not just blurt out “SO ARE YOU EVER GOING TO SING ‘MUDDY BOOTS’ AGAIN OR WHAT”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/20/23

One of my little life problems is that I have an absolutely terrible memory for names, which as you can imagine is often embarrassing, because I can usually remember a lot of other stuff about a person I’ve met a few times, to the extent that we’re talking and hitting it off and it’s no longer socially acceptable for me to not know their name, frankly. I experience this same problem with characters in newspaper comic strips, and take it from me, it’s quite hard to Google the names of people in newspaper comic strips, especially when (a) you don’t know their name and have to work from descriptions like “guy in Rex Morgan, M.D., whose dad is a horror comics artist” and (b) the deepest archive of textual material online about newspaper comic strips is on a blog that you yourself write, and you often find several entries where you wrote about the character whose name you’re trying to find in a way that makes it very clear that you couldn’t remember the name back then either and ended up writing around it.

This is a long way of saying that I do appreciate that Hank and Yvonne keep introducing themselves to Fergus, but: I’ve got it, now! They can stop! It’s just getting weird, honestly! I guarantee you that even though Mud appears to have retained their last name, he only thinks of Yvonne as “the woman who will not shut up about ‘Muddy Boots.’”

Hi and Lois, 4/20/23

Guys, the CSI franchise is very much on CBS. Were there no HBO shows you could think of for this gag? Sopranos Street? Sesame Succession? Does Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC not pay its jokesmiths enough to afford premium cable?

Dennis the Menace, 4/20/23

Ha ha, just a little light demonic possession! I judge this: pretty menacing.