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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/6/21

Sarah may have forgotten all her magical art skills due to her amnesia, but at least she still has the vague notion that artists use paint and brushes in their day-to-day work. Despite being a doctor’s daughter, the quotidian details of medicine are apparently unfamiliar to her. Doctors punch people, right? That’s how they get them to stop complaining about their various ailments? By knocking them unconscious with a fist to the jaw?

Mark Trail, 4/6/21

Over in Mark Trail, Mark’s offhand remark to Rusty that “crickets are land shrimp” went viral on Rusty’s TikTok BikBok, and so he’s flown to LA to do a hip-hop video with Reptiliannaire, a reptile-themed rapper. However, because I know a lot of people read Mark Trail for accurate information about flora and fauna, I find today’s strip irresponsible: I can assure you that you are not likely to step out of LAX and encounter an iguana in the backseat of the first car you enter in the “California reality.” (You will instead get into a Lyft that smells like weed.)

Mary Worth, 4/6/21

Hey, remember when Saul first showed up in Charterstone, and he was a rude jerk to everyone, and then then his dog died, and he was emotionally devastated, and also it turned out that many years ago his family forced him to give up his true love in order to marry someone else, and he literally fled in terror when Mary tried to get him to talk about his feelings, so eventually she just forced him to adopt a dog against his will? Well, he’s never been to therapy! What could he possibly gain from it? It’s for girls, mostly.

Blondie, 4/6/21

You ever look at some particularly weird character design choice in a legacy comic and think to yourself, “Enh, that’s just the ossified memory of some decades-old artistic style that sort of made sense in a former aesthetic and is too closely tied to the character to ditch now, it’s probably not worth thinking about.” Well, I regret to inform you that those design choices are very real and literal in the universe of the strip, and they make other characters in the strip horny. They are absolutely a sex thing. Huge apologies for breaking this to you like this, but I don’t believe in letting my readers live in a world of comforting lies.

Pluggers, 4/6/21

“Oh well,” you’re probably thinking after that one, “at least I don’t know much about pluggers’ peeing and pooping situation.” Well, I’ve got bad news on that front too.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/4/21

This is not the first time that Slylock Fox has done a strip where the “solution” is “fans don’t actually lower temperature, so I guess all this wax is going to melt, oh well.” But the previous iteration of this story was just in some bird’s dumb candle store, whereas the stakes here are much higher. This museum is a repository of priceless cultural heritage from the pre-animalpocalypse Before Times, and it’s sad but all too typical that these dim-witted animals that took over our civilization can’t maintain the HVAC systems needed to hold it together.

Mary Worth, 4/4/21

You might recall that way back at the beginning of this interminable storyline, Saul asked Eve if she wanted to go get lunch at the mall. Everything that’s come after has proved that he’s a man who’ll go to any length, including helping an abused woman reach emotional closure and finding a lost dog in the process, to get that food court date. Everyone loves eating at Arby’s and Wetzel’s Pretzels, but you can’t expect Saul to go by himself like some kind of weirdo, can you?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/21

You ever see a narration box beg for its own annihilation? Truly, wonders on the comics page never cease.

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Gil Thorp, 4/2/21

So there’s been a lot of buzz in this new storyline about the triumphant return of Zane Clark, after the resolution of some unspecified family drama, and this is upsetting me because I usually pride myself on remembering beloved Gil Thorp characters from the past, but his name doesn’t ring a bell and I’ve never mentioned him on this blog. But today I was relieved to learn that in fact Zane is dead, and possibly has been for years! I think it’s quite progressive that ghosts are allowed to participate in Milford athletics, honestly, although it seems there’s still some social opprobrium that comes with them dating the living.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/2/21

So it turns out Sarah got bored with the gangster version of this adventure even faster than she got bored with the cowboy version, and now they’re doing some kind of superhero shtick, with her as Rex’s sidekick and Buck as Rene’s sidekick. But Rene unleashed his ultimate weapon, paint, and now he and Buck are sort of ambling away and Rex and Sarah are walking slowly in the other direction, and their only hope is that she just kind of casually pull some item out of his handbag. I think Sarah kind of sucks at imagining things, is what I’m getting at.