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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/11/25

WHO IS THIS MAN, AND WHY IS HE IN THE CROWD? I dunno. Probably he’s the person who was responsible for the stalker guy dying somehow is my guess, what with his cryptic but ominous thought-ballooning. Actually, with his unassuming demeanor and stealthy observational methods, this guy seems like he’s something of a stalker himself. Send a stalker to catch — and possibly kill — a stalker, that’s what I always say, and it looks like I’ve been proven right once again.

Gil Thorp, 4/11/25

A spectre is haunting Milford — the spectre of “Pop,” the beloved dead coach who was somehow even worse than Gil at coaching. Note the “Turn off the lights when you leave!” sign Gil left on the wall: he doesn’t want people seeing the ghost, because he knows that will inevitably lead to the ghost becoming the latest in the parade of unpaid Milford coaching assistants, like bitter janitor Steve Luhm and fake Negro League star Clambake, except dead, which is probably against school policy in some way.

Garfield, 4/11/25

Liz, that’s very much a sandwich. Like, I don’t know what the Paws, Inc., brain trust thinks veggie lasagna with tofu, cheese, and kale looks like, but I’m here to tell them that it pretty much looks like lasagna. There was no need for them to resort to putting clip art of a leaf on top of clip art of a sandwich to convey this idea. They could’ve just put clip art of a leaf on top of clip art of a pan of lasagna! I refuse to believe that Paws, Inc., doesn’t have very easy access to clip art of a pan of lasagna!

Dennis the Menace, 4/11/25

This body positivity pep talk is honestly one of the least menacing things I’ve ever seen! Except for the part where Dennis is in Mr. Wilson’s bathroom while Mr. Wilson is trying to weigh himself, I guess. That part’s pretty worrisome. I know we’ve just inured ourselves to that kind of thing but it’s still not great.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/8/25

Way back in the mists of time when I first started this blog, it was called I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To, and I still thinking of myself as fulfilling that mission, especially when it comes to letting you know when something exciting or important has happened in the soap opera strips. However, this goal runs into a philosophical conundrum with Rex Morgan, M.D., the strip where nothing exciting or important ever happens: sometimes it seems like something’s going to happen, but if I tell you about it, that’s leading you astray, because in fact nothing’s going to happen, so instead I usually wait to update you until it becomes clear that nothing is going to happen. Take this past week, for instance: after Augie did the responsible thing and reported the dead stalker to the police, the beat cop who showed up decided that Augie was actually the most likely murder suspect and started asking a bunch of probing questions. Was something exciting, like Augie’s arrest on false (or possibly true) accusations, going to happen? I sure didn’t tell you about it, because I didn’t want to toy with your emotions unnecessarily. But now it’s safe to discuss because a homicide detective has arrived and decided that the stalker simply drank three bottles of hooch then smoked crack and shot heroin simultaneously before eventually succumbing to his many vices. Problem solved! Nothing’s going to happen! Enjoy today’s strip and then go about your business.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/8/25

I actually spent a lot of time getting furious at this strip because everyone knows that in the comics, poodles are sexy French ladies, not old people, so what is this even about??? After some thought I think he’s riffing on “dumb blonde” stereotypes rather than old people stereotypes, but it doesn’t really work because (a) lots of people say “senior moment” but nobody says “blonde moment” and (b) poodles (in cartoons, anyway) are white while Grimm himself is blonde, or at least yellow.

Hi and Lois, 4/8/25

“Hey Josh,” you’re probably asking, “I know that in this current run of Hi and Lois, the Flagstons are beset by depression and anxiety, but is that true for everyone else too?” Yeah man, it is. They’re all burdened by awful knowledge they can do nothing about!

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/30/25

This is at least the second time that Slylock Fox has proposed the old “one person divides, the other chooses” solution to this kind of dispute, and when the first one was published five years ago I already went on at great length about how I first encountered that idea in T*A*C*K, a sub-Encyclopedia Brown series of distinctly Slylockian “mysteries” for kids. So I guess today I’ll focus on our hapless canine judge. Criminal investigation and prosecution are the flashiest part of the legal system, and the post-human regime has managed to put together semi-functional versions of that, but much of the work of the judiciary involves managing noncriminal disputes between litigants, and we can see that Slylock’s animal civilization has a long way to go in that department. Our boy Sly is using the only tool in his arsenal — ratiocination — and frankly I don’t think it’s really up to the task.

Mary Worth, 3/30/25

“Oh, Belle seems wacky, but kinda fun, ha ha!” is what many of you and frankly I thought when she first appeared. “She definitely won’t start blacking out the eyes of her lover’s daughter in family photos literally minutes after she arrives unannounced at his home, with a sharpie she apparently carries with her specifically for that purpose.” We were fools. Fools! How could we have been so naive?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/30/25

“When is this boring stalker storyline going to get to the medical content that we expect from medically-themed comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D.?” is the question that’s been on the lips of a lot of people who do not regularly read Rex Morgan, M.D., the comic strip that has a lot less medical content than you’d expect. Anyway, does dying count as medical content? Because our stalker — I assume that’s him, based on his Lincolnian profile — seems to have died in mid-stalk, oops. Well, looks like Summer’s problem is solved, anyway! I guess maybe we should bring Rex in to say a few words about how the stalking lifestyle is unhealthy and then move on.