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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/7/07

More often than not, when I mention to people that I’m a fan of Rex Morgan, M.D., and similar strips, it completely boggles their mind. “But how can you force yourself to read that boring crap day after day?” is generally the sort of thing they ask me. Days like today are the payoffs that keep me going. Sure, the final panel, with Rex going into such paroxysms of shock and horror that his face is about to collapse in on itself, would be hilarious even without context, but you really need to backstory to appreciate all the other psychodrama going on here — everyone’s sneering at Rex’s mothball-scented bid to match his father’s rugged outdoorsmanship, and Niki blowing the whole thing to bits with his city-kid need for creature comforts.

In a conventional narrative, Rex and Niki’s initial antagonism on the trip would eventually soften into mutual compromise — Rex would wow Niki with his fly-casting skills, and Niki would teach Rex hip youth-culture lingo like “radical” and “extreme”; and maybe Niki would help Rex understand why the good doctr needs his dead father’s approval so badly, and that a situation where one is waist-deep in water and short on food isn’t necessarily a Katrina survivor’s idea of fun. But this is Rex Morgan, M.D., a strip whose hero never even tries to grow as a person or engage in a single moment of self-reflection. Niki will be made to hate fishing every bit as much as young Rex did, only to try to force it on his own son years later for reasons he can only dimly grasp. Thank God Sarah Morgan was born a girl, and is thus forever safe from Rex’s relentless Pygmalionesque schemes.

Mary Worth, 10/7/07

And sometimes the hoary old soaps can deliver perfect moments of emo pathos. I have to admit that, while the grinding gears of Mary Worth plot changes are generally audible from miles away, I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a capstone on l’affaire Drew or a setup for more heartstring-pulling to come. Either way, though, I’m going to enjoy imagining these roses sitting on Dawn’s dresser, withering more and more each day, but staying in their vase until they’re reduced to a skeletal mess, and Dawn seeming to draw more and more strength from their death until she’s more powerful than Drew could possibly imagine.

One Big Happy, 10/7/07

Ha ha, this is some of the most dick-tastic dad action in the funnies since — well, since Rex Morgan. One could argue that the point of a school-assigned spelling lists is to teach children how to spell, not how to memorize arbitrary lists of words just long enough to pass a test, and that we should be impressed that Joe has actually managed to get his little pea brain around the concept of homonyms. But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see Joe squirm about in his usual learning-avoiding contortions. Dad’s shown himself to be more of a math guy, anyway.

Spider-Man, 10/7/07

This strip is notable solely for panel five, which contains a passable likeness of Leonardo DiCaprio that apparently absorbed all of the artist’s celebrity-drawing abilities, as nobody else at this “Hollywood costume party” is even remotely recognizable as someone famous. But while I’m here, I might as well point out that this is yet another example of the most irritating weapon in Spider-Man’s narrative arsenal: the dilemma that solves itself in a day or two with no intervention from the protagonist whatsoever (see here for a particularly egregious example from a couple of years ago). In this light, it’s probably impossible to believe that the typically dramatic NEXT! box will live up to its promise. “You can’t go home again — or can you? Oh, wait, actually, I was right the first time. It turns out that you can. Never mind!”

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Crankshaft, 10/6/07

Wow, most comics characters at least make some sort of pretense of respecting religion and some vague concept of a Supreme Being, but Ed Crankshaft has officially added to his Most Cantankerous Comics Character Ever cred by sneering at the notion that any sort of just deity might respond to our pleas. Since he lives in a universe shared with Funky Winkerbean, in which characters are visited by afflictions both arbitrary (cancer, alcoholism) and ironic (hearing loss, limb loss) at a much higher than average rate, he’s obviously decided that begging his Creator for some droplet of mercy will only intensify the punishment to come. Still, the fact that he’s doling out his atheistic opinions to his fellow oldster, reading a book about prayer in a doctor’s waiting room and desperately trying to hold on to some thread of possibility for continued survival, reinforces the ’Shaft’s hardcore crank status.

Hi and Lois, 10/6/07

Of course, Crankshaft’s religious impulses may have been cynically flattened by cartoons like this. Remember, kids, if your congregation is large and wealthy enough to build an enormous, Medieval Times-inspired faux-castle for its church, its members must be one step closer to salvation! It just stands to reason!

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/07

Oh man, oh man, I am so looking forward to Lu Ann’s Adventures In Unrealistically Specific Memory Loss! Does she even remember that she’s an artist? Doesn’t she wonder why she’s an elementary school art teacher if not? Wait a minute — did she somehow manage to hold on to her art teacher job despite the fact the she presumably didn’t come to work in the weeks and weeks she spent barricaded in her carbon monoxide-filled art studio? Does she even remember what a “job” is? Is that why in the first panel she looks so baffled when Alan claims to have one?

Speaking of carbon monoxide poisoning — did anyone ever have words with the kindly studio landlord about the incredibly unsafe status of his building? I’m not up on New York landlord-tenant law, but surely the right to not be suffocated is at least implied in most commercial leases, yes?

Dick Tracy, 10/6/07

Good lord, I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to look at the hideous visage of Dick’s commie nemesis anymore. But then I saw his weird, weird ass. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Dennis the Menace, 10/6/07

Dennis reducing his only friend to a urine-soaked lump of fear is pretty much par for the course for this strip, but I’m kind of intrigued by Henry’s little smile at the psychological hold his son has over his playmate. Presumably the Mitchells will spend this camping trip gaslighting Joey until he’s only fit for a locked mental ward. The only question: is there some financial gain spurring their cruelty on, or is it mere sadistic sport?

Mark Trail, 10/6/07

I haven’t been discussing Mark Trail much because it’s been so painfully moronic, but here’s the gist: Shirley the duck and her chicks, who have been saved first from bulldozers and then from (no, really) rain by Homer the construction foreman, Mark Trail, and some other chumps I refuse to go into the archive to identify, are now about to be eaten by this rather awesomely rendered fish. What lesson will we learn in the end?

• Sometimes nature itself can be crueler than the most rapacious developer.
• There’s no point in trying to protect the weak or care about anything; might as well give up and start drinking!
• Ducks are delicious, and baby ducks are especially delicious.
• Not even fish are safe from Mark’s patented Right Hook O’ Justice!

Discuss.

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Gil Thorp, 10/5/07

My God, what kind of Google search results for “Culver Vale” would be so shocking to Howard Gourwitz that we would be treated to the vision of each and every one of his upper teeth? Obviously mere text couldn’t elicit a reaction of such visceral horror; no, Howard has clearly plugged “Culver Vale” into Google image search. In my unrelenting quest for the truth, and with total disregard for my personal safety, I bravely chose to do the same, and received one and only one result:

“Look at this, Tony! Cully allowed himself to be photographed wearing a conservative suit, and squatting and presumably defecating behind the flag of Oregon! And to think we’ve shared a locker room with this sicko!”

Tony’s search results may have been skewed by the addition of the word “stud”, as the dialog in panel one implies. And no, I’m not searching on that. Bravery has its limits.

Dick Tracy, 10/5/07

OK, now that this Dick Tracy plot appears to be wrapping up, I can say officially that none of it makes any sense. The East German Soviet Sympathizers (EGSSes) kidnapped the Gretchen to exchange for the Baron … why? Once the Baron wandered off, Dick and the CIA guys started treating the EGSSes as sympathetic … why? Gretchen claimed to be giving the CIA guys the frequency to the chip in the Baron’s head, but actually gave the frequency to the chip in her head … WHY? Gretchen had a chip in her head … WHY??

But most of all, what the hell does “trying to revive to Cold War and blame it on Mideastern terrorists” even mean? I’m sure the EGSSes don’t actually want the Cold War back; they just want a different ending for it. Were their ex-Soviet puppet masters going to look at the smoldering wreckage of the Rotunda on the TVs in their underground bunker and chortle “Ha ha, the Americans soon will be invading another Middle Eastern country, but we and we alone secretly know that the Cold War is back on! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!”

Spider-Man, 10/5/07

Yes, you … you forgot about airport security. And because you’ve put your spider-suit in your suitcase, and it could easily be written off as a Halloween costume (which I believe is what happened when you flew to LA), the only hitch this puts in your plans is that it might cause you to miss your plane … which … has … nothing to do with superheroics whatsoever argh argh ARGH! Honestly, this strip constantly manages to defy my ability to parody its lameness.

Pluggers, 10/5/07

A plugger’s face is a mass of lacerations and barely-scabbed-over wounds. But at least he’s getting his money’s worth out of that 60 cent disposable razor!

Archie, 10/5/07

I’m sure your beverage choices are very interesting, Betty, but let me offer you some advice, one blogger to another: I think your readers will be more interested if you skip to the part where you explain why you aren’t wearing pants.