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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/2/05

They can gussy it up with the fancy camera angles, but this supposedly tense confrontation scene would be a lot tenser if its antagonists were anyone other than these two clowns. Royal’s epic combover only thinly disguises the fact that his face is clearly modeled on Peter Lorre, which means that I can’t help but think that his voice is modeled on Peter Lorre, which means that I find everything he says hilarious. Peter Lorre could be forcing me to dig my own grave at gunpoint and I would find his voice funny. “Oh, hurry up, you! Stop laughing and keep deeging!”

Dr. Hamilton, meanwhile, apparently decided that the best thing to wear for his face-off with evil would be his grandpa-style fishin’ hat. Frankly, I’m beginning to think that Fence Post Frank is off the hook for this heinous crime: surely if some soft-handed fancy pants like Royal Gilstrap tried to retain his skull-bashing services, he’d be too busy laughing at his funny voice to seal the deal.

Earlier this week, Dr. Hamilton threatened to “destroy” Royal if the latter had anything to do with Buck’s comatose state. Hey, Professor, if you had managed to snag a few grand worth of funding for the young man, maybe he wouldn’t have to whore himself out to the artifact-trading underworld to keep himself in hoodies and stubble mascara. Just a thought.

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Hi and Lois, 6/1/05

Sure, Trixie, that nice hawk is just giving the adorable little mouse a ride. A ride … into his stomach!

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I feel like there’s been something of an uptick in melancholy in this strip of late. Maybe soon Hi and Lois will be faced with a dilemma: travel to Europe, or pay to have Trixie’s colon unblocked? She is the one they’ve had the least amount of time to get attached to…

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Marmaduke, 5/31/05

Philosophers have long pondered whether a tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear it makes a sound. Along those lines, we in the comics criticism game must ask: if the author of an unloved comic goes insane, will anyone notice? Today brought not one but two utterly baffling one-panelers. At first, I thought I was going to have to break my not-doing-the-same-comic-on-consecutive-days rule and publicly ponder today’s Family Circus, but a clever commentor pointed out that what I thought was a religio-political allusion was in fact just an unforgivable pun. Marmaduke still baffles, however. I believe this is the first in-panel word balloon in this feature; who would have thought that this technique would be inaugurated in a scene where a tree demands not be urinated on? I mean, that is what’s happening here, right? The human characters can hear the talking tree, right? And what’s the significance of the hole from which the word balloon is emanating: is the speaker really someone inside the tree, like a squirrel or an elf or … a … very small man or something? And is there a joke of some sort here, beyond the obvious “talking tree + imminent urination = total hilarity” formula? If anyone can shed any sort of light on these conundra, I will be most grateful.