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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/25

Look, I get it, soap opera strips are a slow-moving medium, you can’t count on people reading every day so you have to repeat stuff, etc., etc. But I think if you start the week by introducing a new storyline, like “Sarah’s ex-babysitter Kelly, who used to be a hot goth but was transformed into a square-ass loser by long-term exposure to the Morgans, is in college now,” by Tuesday you should have advanced beyond the “Wow, linear time sure does progress” phone call stage.

The Phantom, 1/7/25

The Phantom recently wrapped up a story arc that lasted literally seven years, so I guess we have to understand that its pacing game is on a different level. Throughout this whole “there’s a novelty pub in London where everyone’s been punched by the Phantom” plotline, we’ve been seeing bits of an interview the proprietor did on a thinly veiled version of the Graham Norton Show where he dishes on Phantom lore. Not sure if this is an attempt to get new readers up to speed on the strip; I think it’s a bit too impressionistic for that, but I do admire the narrative ambition.

Mary Worth, 1/7/25

Mary Worth, as always, shows how it’s done. Nothing much happens in today’s strip per se … but a crucial decision has been made that we feel in our bones will lead to wacky results, and now we’re on the edge of our seats waiting to learn what those results will be. Maybe Dawn will end up making out with the incorrect slab-shaped man down at the club, maybe she’ll put hot sauce in her salad instead of ranch dressing and have a meltdown on her date, or maybe she’ll simply mow Ian down with her car as she swerves around the Charterstone parking lot. The possibilities are endless!

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Judge Parker, 1/6/25

Detective Yelich has been Sam’s inside man on the police force since the Great Judge Meth Caper of ’23, which, you may recall, included an episode in which Yelich got drunk and kidnapped a material witness to a murder case. So, yeah, detective, Sam isn’t gonna buy you shit! He can already threaten to ruin your life if you don’t help Alan with his little maybe-my-daughter’s-a-murderer problem! The only reason he had you meet him at the diner is so there would be witnesses if you decided that killing him might be easier and more fun than living under his thumb forever!

Marvin, 1/6/25

If you ever decide that “FINE, my comic strip WON’T be about poop for once, so what’s a good joke that doesn’t involve poop,” you could do worse than pulling out whatever trivia book you have as reading material in your bathroom and building a punchline out of something you find when you open it at random. In the interests of intellectual honesty, though, one of your strip’s characters must read said trivia item out of said book. Anyway, my favorite part of this strip is that Marvin’s trivia-loving friend has a big smile on his face as Marvin delivers the punchline. “That’s right, Marvin!” he’s thinking. “That rabbit is long dead. And it serves him right!”

Family Circus, 1/7/25

28 years ago, Ma Keane got a new haircut, and while strip reruns still include anachronisms like old-fashioned metal trash cans, the family matriarch’s old ‘do is always replaced with the new one as if it were one of Stalin’s purged generals. That’s true even if she’s wearing a kerchief that no longer serves much of a purpose wrapped around her newer, shorter hairstyle. Anyway, Big Daddy Keane sure is grumpy, presumably because he found a box that he briefly thought was full of delicious Jack Daniels but then he opened it and found a stack of dumb old issues of the Saturday Evening Post instead.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/5/25

Lord knows I’ve spent enough time contemplating the economy and politics of Hootin’ Holler, so I might as well take this opportunity to unpack its cosmology a bit. You are all, I trust, familiar with Granny Creeps, a chthonic sorceress or perhaps demigoddess who creates potions and spells from native roots and lichens and lives in a local cave — indeed, in a strip from a few days ago, we learned that she recently blocked up the cave mouth with rocks so she can “hibernate.” Today, we are reminded that there’s another town resident who tinkers with powers beyond our ordinary plane of existence: Zeldy, who works brighter, more ethereal magic, a being of wind and spirit who looks into the future rather than drawing power from the past. Now, Zeldy hasn’t been seen in this strip since 2013, but I have a terrible suspicion about why this pastel-hued, pale-skinned medium is being brought back to a strip that already has an ominous green figure: it’s called Wicked Fever and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has, regrettably, caught it.

Hi and Lois, 1/5/25

God, I love the fact that Lois and Irma have gotten into this Hawaiian bit just so they can spend 90 seconds making sure their husbands are getting drunk before they peace out. Sure, they might get weird looks at the mall, but they can be secure in the knowledge that their blotto husbands neither know nor care when they’re coming back.