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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/5/17

The extremely slo-mo amnesia-driven retconning of Sarah Morgan, which is so very slo-mo that it only serves to highlight the fact that the retconning is happening, continues apace, and I guess we’re going to keep discovering how far back a year of comic strip time actually goes. Say, remember like three years ago in real-world time, when Sarah caught her babysitter Kelly fooling around with her boyfriend, and used that discovery to blackmail her into servitude? Sarah doesn’t! Sarah doesn’t remember it at all! Sarah can’t understand why all the adults around her treat her with mingled fear and disgust!

Gasoline Alley, 4/5/17

If I had to say what Gasoline Alley’s mission is, I guess it would be to relentlessly promote folksiness in all its forms, including folksy expressions that nobody ever says, like “It takes 50¢ to get you started and $5.00 to make you stop!” But the lady at the far right of the second panel is taking this far too literally. Reg hasn’t even started yet but she’s already implying that she would pay a handsome sum just to get him to shut up! It’s like tipping a stripper, only instead of showing appreciation for Reg’s dancing prowess and hot body, the only thing she “appreciates” is Reg not talking any more! Seems kind of rude, in my opinion.

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Pluggers, 4/4/17

Sometimes the point of Pluggers just seems to be “pluggers are old,” which, you know, nothing wrong with that, we’re all going to be old someday, if all goes to plan. These gags generally take the form of “Old pluggers have assumptions and cultural references that are now forgotten by younger people.” Today’s panel takes a somewhat different tack: this plugger looks just as baffled at the concept of “5 ¢ Milky Ways” as any indie-rock-addled hipster youth. The difference, I suppose, is that a young person would’ve downloaded their recipe from a fancy website to their iPhone or whatever, whereas the plugger is in touch with the long, unbroken chain of knowledge that goes back generations, preserving and copying these manuscripts dutifully like a medieval monk, even if they don’t fully understand it.

Six Chix, 4/4/17

Who says there’s nothing new under the sun? I would’ve thought sci-fi writers over the past century or so had already rather exhaustively detailed all the problems with time travel: you step on a butterfly and turn America fascist, you go back to meet Jesus and accidentally become Jesus, you have sex with some lady and become your own grandfather, etc. But nope, Six Chix has discovered something new: don’t you hate it when you think you’re going to the Renaissance or to our spacefaring future, but you just end up in some lady’s uterus, leaving her torso grotesquely distorted? We never should’ve meddled in the mysteries of the timestream!

Family Circus, 4/4/17

Look at those impossibly cheery faces! Definitely, definitely this involves murder somehow.

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Mark Trail, 4/3/17

Oh, man these guys are dastardly criminals indeed! Not only are they callous about Billy having tasted hot lead, but they’re also defeating government facial recognition software, through the power of scowling! Sadly, their faces are now stuck that way. Their kidnapee is correct to just sort of stand around sadly in the background waiting for them to decide what to do with her even though nobody’s really paying attention to her. They’re stone cold loco!

Gil Thorp, 4/3/17

Whoops, it looks like basketball season and the tale of Aaron Aargard the Opioid Orphan have been wrapped up without us even finding out if the basketball teams went to the playdowns? Now we’re abruptly starting baseball season, which will apparently involve journalism shenanigans of some kind. Unless Dafne’s FOIA request was part of an investigation into whether a well-respected local jurist is keeping a bunch of hungry teens prisoner in her basement.

Crankshaft, 4/3/17

Lillian is about to find out that the only literary pursuit less lucrative than running a used bookstore in your garage is actually writing a book.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/3/17

I assume that, like many developing nations in Africa and Latin America, Hootin’ Holler routinely gets shipments of clothes donated by various charities. Apparently they just got a big box of sassy teal empowerment shirts from the late ’80s or early ’90s, along with a bunch of “BUFFALO BILLS SUPERBOWL XXVI CHAMPIONS” hoodies.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/3/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hagar and Lucky Eddie are going to be executed, for their many crimes!