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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/2/05

So I pretty much lost interest in this Rex Morgan storyline when it became less about human remains and sexual innuendo and more about this mysterious homeless guy living just off the Morgans’ property and June’s endless treks back and forth between the kitchen and the yard. But the epiphany in this strip hit me like something very heavy dropped from a great height. The filthy, shabby, unfashionable clothes … the six-day growth of beard … the pus-encrusted, self-tended wound … the prickly and evasive attitude … of course he’s a graduate student! Sadly, this is something that those who have never been there probably can’t appreciate, like the time that I found out that our neighborhood’s letter-to-the-editor-writing, quixotical-city-council-campaign-waging, neighborhood-meeting-attending-and-blathering-on-and-on-through crank was, like me, a copy editor. But I spent so much of my early 20s BS-ing my way through grant applications, convinced that their rejection would leave me homeless and destitute, that I feel just a little bit vindicated by this strip.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/8/05

In my very first critique of Rex Morgan, M.D., I expressed my admiration for the dramatic “camera angles” that the strip loves so much, but there’s such a thing as going too far. The King Features marketing site claims that the strip’s goal is to “heighten the awareness of readers about the importance of modern medicine,” so maybe panel two is supposed to show us what it feels like be an ear, nose, and throat specialist.

There’s a lot of pointing going on this strip, too. I like the way Rex’s finger is sort of protruding from nowhere in the second panel. You just keep that digit away from those nostrils, doctor.

And yes, don’t think I’m missing all the innuendo, either. “I know what you’re up to! You’re going to … try to find more bones!” God, I hope their house turns out to be built on an ancient Indian burial ground, so that some evil spirits will rise up to vent their wrath upon the living, putting an end to this inane banter in the process.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/25/05

Whoa, no wonder June was unable to identify a human bone last week: if her freakishly extended arm in the first panel here is any indication, her body doesn’t actually contain any bones. Nurse by day … Elastic Lass by night!

Or, in this case, also by day.

I know medical professionals are all down on the way Americans eat now and everything, but I think if I were a preschool-aged moppet like little Sarah, I would be a lot less perky and endearing if my parents forced me to eat “Flakey Wheats” for breakfast every morning. I’ve eaten Cap’n Crunch and Cocoa Pebbles regularly for the past thirty years, and my I still have all my teeth and most of my pancreas, thank you very much.