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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/27/10

Oh my gosh, have I really not commented on Rex Morgan for more than a month? Well, a lot happened in that time! Toots told June that all of Brook’s crazy stories about her drunken abusive mother were true, and then the nail salon lady gave Brook the day’s receipts to take to the bank, and Brook said she got robbed, and the cop didn’t seem to believe her but June showed up and did her Icy Death Glare thing at him and he scurried off. This really is a lot, for a soap opera comic strip!

Anyway, I will say this for Rex Morgan, M.D., and the other Woody Wilson-penned strip, Judge Parker: Generally speaking their plot outcomes are not painfully obvious a week into the storyline, the way they are in, say, Mary Worth or Mark Trail. We were discussing the current RMMD plot at this past weekend’s get-together, and I tentatively guessed that Brook was running some scam; I now tentatively believe she’s telling the truth, and am overjoyed to find that she will be vindicated by one of RMMD’s trademarked wacky walk-on characters: J. Elhew Bisbee, Hobo Detective! I’m only seeing about sixty percent of this dude’s face and I’m already in love with him. See those glasses? He won them from some irritating hipster, in a knife fight.

Pluggers, 5/27/10

Here are my three interpretations of this dynamic, in order of decreasing charity:

• Pluggers have crippling social anxiety and don’t want to interact with strangers unless they absolutely have to.
• Pluggers’ bodies are so bloated and creaky that getting out of a car seat is a painful exercise, so why bother doing it if there isn’t cheap food as a reward for the effort?
• Pluggers like making their wives do irritating little errands for them, as it is the only moment of power they feel over the course of their sad, pathetic day.

Mary Worth, 5/27/10

Say what you will about Mary, but she’s willing to see her meddle-missions through to the end, even at great personal cost to herself. Here, for instance, she pauses to do important meddling follow-up with Bonnie, despite the fact that she’s just been stabbed in the neck.

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Luann, 5/26/10

“Specifically, to the nunnery. I know we’re not Catholic, but take this pamphlet anyway; maybe you’ll decide to switch. Your brother has been resisting my suggestions, so I’m just going to have him kidnapped and forcibly tonsured.”

Gil Thorp, 5/26/10

I take back what I said yesterday; in no circumstances do I want to see any two persons or objects in motion in Gil Thorp attempting to interact, as today’s third panel proves that such an encounter can only end in the complete collapse of all of Euclidean space-time into chaos and madness.

Mark Trail, 5/26/10

So I guess the theme of this storyline is going to be “Sassy will be hit by so many cars”? I’m not particularly pleased with this. Why couldn’t it have been Rusty?

Herb and Jamaal, 5/26/10

Ha ha! Herb hates his marriage and wishes that he and/or his wife were dead!

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Gil Thorp, 5/25/10

I’ve read Gil Thorp for many years with three different artists at the helm, and I’ve sort of grown fond of the strip’s tendency to cut away from the sports action just as something exciting’s going to happen, showing us only someone reacting to it. But sometimes it would be nice to see actual events occurring; in this case, for instance, perhaps we could see not just the (unsettlingly pinheaded) shortstop crouching as the ball heads his way, but his bobbling of the play as well, or maybe the runners crossing home plate. Though perhaps it’s for our own good: Marty’s eyeball is a milky white, indicating that the play was so exciting that it was like looking directly into a blinding nuclear explosion.

Apartment 3-G, 5/25/10

OH SNAP LU ANN JUST ADMITTED SHE’S A BOYFRIEND-STEALING STRUMPET (in the safety of her mind, where Margo can’t hear her, or so she thinks). I’m a bit puzzled by the “maybe twice” line, which sort of implies that she steals so many boyfriends from so many people that she can’t keep track of them all, though it’s just as likely that she can’t remember because of her oxygen-deprivation-induced brain damage. Anyway, the last boyfriend I remember Lu Ann stealing from Margo was FBI Pete, with all the betrayal happening even before I started the blog, so who even knows how far back the other shenanigans happened.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/25/10

Every five and a half years or so, Herb and Jamaal tests the waters to see if the world of newspaper comics is ready for a joke about hiding corpses. We’ll see if they’ll print it in November of 2015, assuming that newspapers still exist then!