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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/26/22

I’ll admit it: I do a lot of bitching and moaning about all the “roots country” bullshit in Rex Morgan, M.D., and I appreciate the fact that the RMMD brain trust has clearly been working feverishly to come up with an angle that will turn my attitude about it around. Like, how about if the new roots country guy, Mud Mountain Murphy, is a cheerful giant of a man who looms over Buck in a vaguely menacing fashion and yells all the time? All I can say is: great job, guys, you nailed it, I am 100% on board with Mr. Murphy. You know I love a good upnose shot in this strip and now there’s a good excuse for one!

Dustin, 10/26/22

Most comics characters have fairly generic white collar jobs, and I always think specific things are funnier than generic things, so I appreciate it when a character gets a specific job instead, even if it isn’t central to the strip most of the time. Like, Curtis’s dad in Curtis works at the DMV, and even though you never see him at the office, his occasional gripes about work are always DMV-specific, which adds a fun texture to the strip. Dustin’s mom is a radio DJ, which is also promisingly specific, except it’s not at all clear what kind of station she works for or what her show is about, since all that ever seems to happen on it is people calling in with extremely half-baked setups to jokes that sometimes, as is the case today, don’t even merit punchlines. I said Sunday that Dustin is now 25% griping about petty annoyances by volume; it’s also at least 10% this, which is somehow even worse.

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Mary Worth, 10/25/22

Good (?) news, everybody: Zak didn’t fall to his death mid-selfie, or at least he hasn’t yet! No, he’s grabbed onto a cliffside branch, Sgt. Snorkel style, and now needs Iris to drag him to safety. There was a bit of dialogue in a strip last week in which Iris said she can easily handle this hike due to the “strength training” she’s been doing; I assume that, despite her current protests, she will eventually be able to rescue Zak, finding her power in an adrenaline-fueled burst like the stories you hear about mothers lifting up cars to save their children, which really fits in with the nature of their relationship.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/25/22

When Summer announced her plan to follow in her father’s footsteps and write a book, a lot of my commenters speculated that she would be following in her father’s footsteps and writing a book about her mother, Les’s dead wife Lisa. But, nope! Turns out she’s going to be writing about all the alive losers in her dumb loser town, which frankly seems like a much, much worse idea.

Hi and Lois, 10/25/22

I truly enjoy the fact that in panel one Lois and Irma are genuinely shocked by whorish athleisure fashions of the sort that used to be impossible in polite society but are now on sale at every department store, but in panel two they’ve managed to mediate their discomfort through an ironic quip to find their equilibrium. Do I enjoy the fact that this attitude has been grafted onto women who canonically cannot be past their early 40s, women who have never worn a girdle in their lives and whose mothers probably never did either? Well, no, but that is just a professional hazard of writing a blog about newspaper comics strips, where the assumed age of your audience is roughly 75.

Gasoline Alley, 10/25/22

Speaking of which, it is absolutely shocking to me that any character in Gasoline Alley is supposed to have seen a film made as recently as 2016. This strip is going to cause riots in the streets!

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Six Chix, 10/24/22

Ha ha, it’s a blood bank, get it? Get it? Anyway, what I find intriguing about this is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to insert a card into this blood ATM machine, which implies that some sort of socialistic vampire central committee is just handing out blood to vampires according to their needs; the vampires, in turn, must only take what they need, because otherwise it would rapidly run out, which speaks to a level of self-restraint that I don’t think is very well explored in the vampire mythos.

Hi and Lois, 10/24/22

I was about to make fun of this product placement by saying “You know what they should be selling is a Thirsty Thurston pint glass,” but it turns out that they are absolutely selling Thirsty Thurston pint glasses, so, you know what, well played, King Features.

Dennis the Menace, 10/24/22

Dennis is learning that if he just acts obnoxiously enough, he’ll drive away anyone who cares about him! Self-menace levels: high.

Blondie, 10/24/22

Interesting that Dagwood has a big glass of red wine as part of his “not different from any other day” work lunch. I guess this puts quite an interesting spin on the constant desk naps.