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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/26/22

I’ll admit it: I do a lot of bitching and moaning about all the “roots country” bullshit in Rex Morgan, M.D., and I appreciate the fact that the RMMD brain trust has clearly been working feverishly to come up with an angle that will turn my attitude about it around. Like, how about if the new roots country guy, Mud Mountain Murphy, is a cheerful giant of a man who looms over Buck in a vaguely menacing fashion and yells all the time? All I can say is: great job, guys, you nailed it, I am 100% on board with Mr. Murphy. You know I love a good upnose shot in this strip and now there’s a good excuse for one!

Dustin, 10/26/22

Most comics characters have fairly generic white collar jobs, and I always think specific things are funnier than generic things, so I appreciate it when a character gets a specific job instead, even if it isn’t central to the strip most of the time. Like, Curtis’s dad in Curtis works at the DMV, and even though you never see him at the office, his occasional gripes about work are always DMV-specific, which adds a fun texture to the strip. Dustin’s mom is a radio DJ, which is also promisingly specific, except it’s not at all clear what kind of station she works for or what her show is about, since all that ever seems to happen on it is people calling in with extremely half-baked setups to jokes that sometimes, as is the case today, don’t even merit punchlines. I said Sunday that Dustin is now 25% griping about petty annoyances by volume; it’s also at least 10% this, which is somehow even worse.

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Crock, 10/16/22

I’ve been reading Crock for … let’s just say “many” years now, so I am of course well familiar with all of its terrible running gags, one of which is that Crock’s mother (never actually seen in the strip) is in a nursing home somewhere and she’s very, very mean, even meaner than her cruel son. But in all that time, I always assumed (quite reasonably, I think) that the nursing home she was in was back in France. Algeria is a colony under military occupation, which is the very reason Crock and the Legion are there in the first place! It’s no place for old French civilian ladies! But no, it turns out that she’s been in the Maghreb all along, which really raises a lot of questions about (a) whether the creative minds behind Crock ever really had a handle on the geopolitics behind Beau Geste or if they just liked the aesthetic, and (b) why Crock never visits his mother if she’s actually so close.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/16/22

Ha ha, wow, looks like Hank Jr.’s impulsive marriage really was meant to be. They’re both fans of roots country legend Truck Taylor! Who could’ve guessed? Not Hank Sr., he’s not going to the concert because he clearly hates that shit, but he’s making nice to keep the pancakes coming.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/16/22

No real notes here, just want to say that I am in love with Koppy’s sarcastic greeting here. They might not have invented a Bill of Rights for animals yet, but nothing can stop Koppy from firing off the subtle yet sick burns! Except getting punched in the mouth by Slylock, probably.

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Six Chix, 10/10/22

Man, it’s been a while since there’s been a Six Chix with so many specific inexplicable details as this one, and I feel like we need to kick off the week by celebrating it! “Back to the land” generally refers to a movement in the ’60s and ’70s where people rejected modern industrial society and moved to rural areas to live in ways they hoped would be more self-sufficient and connected to the earth. What does this have to do with robots? Why is the back to the land robot carrying a bindle, like it’s a hobo or a child pretending to run away from home in a old-timey comic? Why doesn’t the back to the land robot have legs? Is it significant that the other robot is plugged into the wall? Why is now a particularly panic-inducing time for this trip back to the land to happen? Is the plugged-in robot flailing his arms around in panic like the Lost In Space robot, or is he finger quoting around “back to the land”? Feel free to wildly speculate about the answers to all these questions in the comments, but I assure you that you will never figure it out.

Gil Thorp, 10/10/22

Milford’s new trans student Tobias is also the newest Mudlark, recruited as a kicker after Gil saw him playing soccer. This is big news! The traditionalist Gil Thorp readership needs to be introduced to the idea in the most Gil Thorp way possible: by having him pull off an deranged trickeration play (a rainbow kick, to be clear, is a soccer move) that we only have described to us while two other characters that we’ve never seen before look at the off-panel action. Why is mohawk dude telling Guy “you gotta see this” when Guy is clearly looking directly at the football field, just like mohawk dude is? Did Guy close his eyes so he didn’t have to see the woke hellscape? This too is classic Gil Thorp, and I appreciate it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/22

Oh yeah, in Rex Morgan, Hank Jr. and his long-distance girlfriend got married! It all happened off-panel, but don’t worry, they’re here to assure you that it wasn’t very interesting and you didn’t miss anything.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/22

Ugh, it’s called athleisure, Dennis, look it up. I guess it’s kind of menacing for an eight-year-old to sound like a furious senior citizen writing a rejected letter to the editor about how women today dress like whores in public, but maybe not in the same spirit of menacing as the strip title intends.