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Judge Parker, 8/28/22

It’s excruciating watching poor Marie’s unspoken pleading as Abbey looks past and through her, slamming back those screwdrivers. “B-but this is my home, too, isn’t it? And you’re all my friends—my f-family, right?” At least Abbey has the grace to condescend to Marie’s “want it or think it” Junior Therapist schtick before checking out “Westin Resort Caribbean” on her phone while Marie fetches another screwdriver.

And final panel aside, Abbey won’t really scream: it would interfere with her talking, and this is Judge Parker.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/28/22

Welcome back to “Buck and Truck talk on the phone,” a continuing series.

Hey, isn’t “went off the grid and was presumed dead but came back” Truck‘s backstory? What if Mud Mountain Murphy—and every other Roots Country act—is actually just Truck Tyler through an Instagram filter, squishing up his mouth to sound a little different? It would explain Truck’s last-panel frustration at having to maintain the fiction in a live show! And it would reveal Buck as the masterm…. OK, I can’t finish.

Gotta say they missed an opportunity naming “Mud Mountain” Murphy: “Buck, Truck, and Muck” was right there.

Slylock Fox (panel), 8/28/22

“Why does Slylock Fox suspect Cassandra may be lying?” Because she’s Cassandra Cat, for crying out loud! She lies as she breathes, as Reeky Rat burgles, Shady Shrew pilfers, and Slick Smitty cons. And blue hair or no, she looks great doing it! Play your cards right and I bet she even springs for Meg’s Flea Dip special, you lucky fox!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/22/22

Oh ho. Oh ho ho. It’s a new week and a new storyline in Rex Morgan, M.D., and the game, as they say, is afoot! Buck’s about to be tasked with taking care of both an old man and a child, at the same time! What crises will arise that will force Buck to juggle these unexpected responsibilities? Will he fuck it up, somehow? You know it! It’s Buck, he’s very annoying and incompetent. Will this result in life threatening danger to the baby and/or old man? Probably not, because this is Rex Morgan, M.D., where all the stakes are very low. Will the old man and the baby look at each other and wordlessly acknowledge “You’re not so different, you and I, in the sense that we apparently need this schmo to take care of us”? Let’s hope! Might be the most we can ask out of this!

Crock, 8/22/22

Gotta admire the level of not giving a shit on display on today’s Crock. Sure, you could have this plumber working inside the fort, where all the plumbing would be. But seems like it’d involve drawing some backgrounds that aren’t the featureless Sahara Desert. What if there were just some pipe hovering in mid-air? Is that something a plumber could fix? Sure, why not, whatever. Oh, also he’s a rocket scientist or something, I guess.

Mary Worth, 8/22/22

Not sure what time of day/what alien planet is denoted by the pastel clouds and inky black sky in panel one, but I’d like to believe that Dawn chose to call Jared in the middle of the night, hoping to go straight to voice mail, unaware that he’s sleeping with his phone under his pillow in anticipation of exactly this scenario. Anyway, based on her dead eyes and the fact that she sounds like she’s reading a press release, I’m assuming Mary is just off panel, with cue cards, or a gun, or both.

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Family Circus, 8/17/22

The Keanes have been on vacation in New York City for a couple weeks now, in a series of panels that are actually reruns from decades ago; Don McHoull on Twitter pointed out that the Twin Towers were replaced by the modern-day Freedom Tower in last Friday’s episode, which was a surprise to me because I had been assuming that the originals were from before the Twin Towers were built in the first place in 1972. Very little else has been done to modernize the strips; today’s, for instance, reminds us of an era when telling the world that your restaurant was AIR CONDITIONED was a solid way to differentiate yourself from your competition. Sadly, I initially misread the awning sign as AIR CONDITIONERS, and got irrationally angry at Billy (it doesn’t take much) and was about to write a whole screed here on the theme of “You little shit, you think you’re gonna order a HAMBURGER at an APPLIANCE STORE???” His actual transgressions is a bit more normal than that so I’ll leave it be.

Pluggers, 8/17/22

I feel very protective of the idea that pluggerdom represents a specific cultural and socioeconomic position, but here we have yet another canonical Pluggers panel taunting me with the fact that sometimes the whole gimmick is just “all-number calling was rolled out nationwide by the early 1960s, so you’re a plugger if you’re older than about 63.” Why this particular take on the plugger mythos is accompanied by a particularly pissed-off bear in overalls holding up a sign the size of a license plate that doesn’t have enough digits on it to be an actual phone number is not clear to me, but I guess Pluggers knows its business.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/17/22

I am a middle-aged married man without children and so it goes without saying that I am very out of touch with what the kids today are up to, but I am given to understand they will often say they’re “talking” to someone as a euphemism for the early stages of romance, which can run the gamut from flirting in DMs to having actual sex but not yet defining their relationship or committing to monogamy. I guess the son half of this father-son duo, who appears to be 5-10 years older than I am and is therefore one of the younger characters in Rex Morgan, M.D., is at that stage in the process of wooing a nice lady he met at a funeral, but is showing his maturity by referring to it as “chatting.” Anyway, he’s gonna leave his dad alone to go get laid! Hopefully the old guy isn’t gonna drop dead while he’s gone, that would make the whole thing pretty awkward.

Mary Worth, 8/17/22

“Oh, yeah, your dad? Your terrible, terrible dad? I’ve been watching you turn into him for years, honey, but I wasn’t gonna say anything until you came crawling to me begging for help.” Truly Mary must completely break down her victims in order to build them back up in her image.