Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/21/23

We all know that newspaper comics in general and newspaper soap opera comics in particular are being kept alive by a readership that skews old enough that it is imperative that everyone involved in producing said soap opera comics do everything they can to keep said readership alive, for their own sakes. The tactic Rex Morgan, M.D., has taken to meet this goal is to make everything as low stakes as possible, because even the smallest degree of surprise could cause unpleasant cardiac complications, which is why everyone is treating the fact that an attempted murderer has managed to escape custody and is now at large like a funny little “Oopsie! Ha ha, that’s our Rene!” This cruise ship is still at sea, which means that the killer and his intended victim are stuck together in a limited space, a premise that has powered any number of successful suspense films — but don’t worry, there’s no suspense here! It’s Rex Morgan, M.D. Everything is fine.

Beetle Bailey and Dennis the Menace, 5/21/23

I get and honestly respect that one of the biggest advantages of writing a syndicated newspaper comic is that you can run into one of life’s little modern annoyances and say to yourself, “Hey, you know who else probably finds this annoying? All the old people who read my comic strip.” Of these two examples of the genre, I have to say that Beetle Beetle is by far the more successful, in that it’s integrated the inciting annoyance into a character-driven joke, whereas Dennis the Menace just has Mr. Wilson yelling the things that we all, admittedly, want to yell.

Gasoline Alley, 5/21/23

Not to be a know-it-all, but the average price of a gallon of milk in the U.S. has been higher than the average price of a gallon of gasoline for 19 of the past 23 years! I’m also hung up on why Clovia says that gas AND postage is high and that’s why it’s cheaper to mail something than drive it. Still, I get that inflation can be a confusing economic phenomenon that doesn’t affect all regions or products equally, so I want to reserve my harshest criticism for Slim, who in the final panel reveals that he thinks an oil barrel is some kind of animal or maybe plant that, when properly fed and cared for, produces more oil.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 5/17/23

How is Gil’s arch-rival Luke Hernandez dealing with Gil’s secret baseball weapon, a blind pitcher teaching the Mudlarks to open their third eye and achieve cosmic oneness with the universe? Well, he’s flying to Korea with his assistant Coach Kim to try to recruit one of Kim’s relatives, who’s apparently some kind of baseball superstar. I’m assuming he’s going to pull a picture of Gil out of his wallet and show it to Kwan and say “See this man? He deserves death. He must be destroyed. You shall be the instrument of my vengeance.” Kwan doesn’t speak English, but just the power of Luke’s simmering hatred will be enough to get him onboard.

Mary Worth, 5/17/23

God, can you imagine how much Mary wishes she could just stare at her phone rather than listen to Jeff blather on about whatever it is he thinks is interesting or important? She’s just a little too old and polite to do it, but she envies the freedom of the young.

Hi and Lois, 5/17/23

I didn’t think we could get sadder than “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare into the sun,” but I think “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare at the TV, which is not turned on” might do it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/23

Uh oh! Looks like word’s gotten out that Mud Mountain Murphy is extremely easy to trick. At his next concert, he’ll still be singing “Muddy Boots,” but he’ll also be asking if his fans would be interested in helping him launch MudCoin, his own namesake cryptocurrency, with the help of his new best friend here!

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 5/12/23

Gil Thorp is notorious for bringing back beloved characters from years past, and so when I recognized Gregg Hamm’s name I was excited to see how far back in my archives my search for him was going to take me, but it turns out that all the Gil Thorp plots have blurred together into one big timeless smear in my mind, because Gregg’s story was from the summer of 2022, when he managed to pitch while tragically blind thanks to a little light cheating on the part of his teammates. And while I joked about his “tragic blindness” a lot I never really got the impression that he had anything other than just bad vision, but now here he is with a white cane and everything! I’m pretty sure I saw new writer Henry Barajas say that there’s supposed to be a time jump of a few years between Neal Rubin’s last storyline and his first one, but I’d like to believe that he’s fully lost his sight in the past year, and now is going to transform the 2023 Mudlark team by teaching them how to “feel the catcher’s signals.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/23

OK, we’ve been joking a lot about how Yvonne has been a little fixated on hearing Mud play “Muddy Boots” one last time, just for her sake, but clearly she cannot hold a candle to these two Mud Mountain Murphy superfans who have presumably spent the last 24 hours or however long it’s been since Fergus’ previous concert in a state of deep depression and/or rage. Those facial expressions tell me that they’re in the midst of near-orgasmic ecstacy at the return of their hero, and probably were planning a suicide attack of some sort on him if he hadn’t returned to form tonight.

Marvin, 5/12/23

Obviously I’m never happy to see or think about Marvin, the character, but I kind of like knowing that even when I don’t see him, he’s busy making the lives of the other characters in the strip miserable, because honestly I’m not a big fan of those people either.