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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/9/05

I love the look on Buck’s face in panel three. It says, “Hmph! This gap-toothed proletarian and I may be similarly unkempt, but my wise and devilishly handsome eyes gaze upon Mrs. Morgan with only the utmost respect for her as a strong, educated, skilled career woman! Whereas this boorish oaf cares only for her sexy ’80s hairdo and prodigious bustline! He probably couldn’t even remember his name if it weren’t stitched onto his chapeau, let alone intelligently discuss contemporary scholarship about Mayan ruler cults!” He may also be amusing himself by thinking up his own rhymes, possibly involving the word “yank,” as a riposte to our fence-man’s little couplet.

Don’t be too smug, though, Buck: Frank probably has health insurance. But maybe not dental insurance, from the looks of things.

What is it about the common people and their ability to get under the skin of middle-class career women? My parents had a roofer who worked on their house for a while who always called my stepmother “mother,” something she found both creepy and annoying (whereas my father and I found it both creepy and amusing.)

Update: Due to overwhelming demand, I’ve added a new product to the Comics Curmudgeon store. You too can look like one of the “common people” (as I so insensitively put it) — but at non-common-people prices!

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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.