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Rex Morgan, M.D, 6/29/24

Like most observers of Rex Morgan, M.D., I assumed this plot was going to amble on interminably with some low-stakes, low-violence bullying and a lot of philosophical questions about what bullying is and what causes it, but instead our bully has managed to incapacitate and possibly hospitalize poor Parker with a single punch to the gut. At least this will give Rex something to do in this plot, possibly by shaking his head and announcing, stone-faced, “This is the worst case of being punched in the stomach that I’ve ever seen.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/29/24

Whenever we get these “in the field” Beetle Bailey strips, I assume that our characters are in the midst of some kind of war games exercise and haven’t been issued weapons with live ammo. Which means Rocky is probably going to murder Beetle with his bare hands! He looks fuckin’ pissed.

Shoe, 6/29/24

I guess I have to be the keeper of the Shoe knowledge here and make it clear to all that this strip is not in line with established strip lore. Specifically, the Perfesser never smells good. I don’t care if he changes his socks. I’ve seen how he lives. He smells like something died, possibly him.

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It’s all happening, and by “all” I mean the publication of this week’s top comment:

“Pretty much anybody who actually read the Bible will tell you that Adam ate the forbidden fruit too with little convincing and thus has no place to be making passive aggressive cracks about Eve eating it, so I can only presume this midrash has made the decision to depict Adam as some kind of gaslighter. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what good and evil are. I didn’t eat the fruit. What? You sound crazy.'” –ectojazzmage

Along with the hilarious runners up!

“‘The Futon in the Rec Room at Camp Swampy,’ one of the Mountain Goats’ saddest songs.” –Rex Thrillho, on Twitter

“‘Does the metric system like the number ten?’ is such a dumb question. It would be like ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ except maybe the Keane Kompound has been sedevacantist since Vatican II.” –Ettore Costa, on Bluesky

“Turns out our ‘fingers’ are covered with stiff, insensitive feathers that make braille all but impossible to read, rendering the format completely unworkable. We’re birds!” –pugfuggly

“Holy shit! His mother and father, his aunt and her boyfriend, and the dog are all Marvin’s ‘staff’?! Like, they’re in his employ, to fire at will, there only to help him accomplish … the delivery of a, we’ll call it, a joke? Is Tom Armstrong on Marvin’s staff? As a reader, am I?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Jenny? Good news, bad news time. Bad news: Marvin is tracking a mysterious purple mess through the house. Good news: we’re finally free of the Grimace.” –Blackdrazon

“Years later, a few days after Grandma Keane is laid to rest, Bil and Thel are cleaning out her house when Bil hears Thel screaming from the bedroom. There, huddled in the corner of the closet, sits the desiccated corpse of their missing son. They will finally have closure of sorts, but never any answers.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Purple. The traditional color of royalty. A chair, reserved for only one person, like a throne. Marvin, suspiciously close to Merovingian. I wasn’t expecting today to be the the day that Marvin declared its titular toddler to be Emperor of France and blood heir to Christ, but I can’t say I was surprised it happened.” –Voshkod

“Oh goody, it’s time for another one of my ‘what age is Marvin supposed to be, anyway?’ headaches. In today’s strip he is a) walking upright, b) speaking in clear, complete sentences, and c) taking the initiative to clean up a mess that he made. And yet, he is still not toilet trained. Maybe he’s like Peter Pan or the kid in The Tin Drum, caught in a state of permanently arrested development as an open rebellion against the social order, or maybe Big Plumbing.” –TheDiva

“As if manual labor and the pain of childbirth weren’t bad enough, now we gotta do math!?” –Hibbleton

“Theologians have argued for centuries about whether or not Adam had a belly button, but maybe they should have been arguing whether he had male-pattern baldness.” –Schroduck

“The characters in Marvin are so loathsome that I could easily imagine ‘Jeff and Pam dump demented Grandpa at an abandoned Sears with Marvin, who tries to form a feral bond with a half-melted mannequin’ as a 2024 story arc.” –Quiggle

“I’m intrigued that the ghost alien has tentacle eyes that have lashes and a flirtatious vibe in direct contrast to the bland face eyes. Wait, no, not ‘intrigued.’ What’s the word .. ah, yes: mortified.” –Vice President John Adams

“The mark of a good bartender is not only remembering people’s drink orders, but remembering whatever stupid pop culture references they toss out as well. Beth is a good bartender.” –Weaselboy

“I’d like to think that ‘Don’t get him wet’ is a well-understood unspoken rule about Gil. I certainly don’t want to hear anyone utter it again.” –nescio

“We all know that sand is coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere. What this strip presupposes is … maybe that’s sexy?” –Stop Motion Cyclops

“The lack of Euclidean geometry or even a track or any distinguishing features beyond a vast white plain that drivers could go any direction in made the R’lyeh 500 one of the more challenging NASCAR races.” –Old Man Shadow

“‘I think you need a pit stop’ is how Gertie’s husband begs her to take her meds. He knows full well how dangerous she can be when an unmedicated Gertie doesn’t fulfill her obsessive need for twisted metal and burning flesh. The authorities currently suspect the Spike Strip Bandit of causing eight fatalities, and he’s got the latest wanted poster to prove it.” –MasterMahan

“Oh, great, the punkinheads are playing in unfinished building sites! I guess parents really did allow ‘free-range kids’ back in the 1970s, or whenever this panel was originally published. (Hint: That house will sell for $15,000.)” –BigTed

“A superyacht? We see the true nature of the Charterstone world: Jeff is actually a billionaire who pays Mary to carry out mind games on the residents, who are all just playthings in the couple’s diabolical world. They deliberately engineered the death of Wilbur’s fish as a wager to see what it would take to break him.” –Tonio

“Here’s hoping Jeff bills Wilbur for fuel and crew overtime costs. Should run into several thousand dollars.” –SabeHombre

“Okay, like you say, that’s not Jeff’s boat, so there’s still a slim possibility that the fish funeral is an elaborate front, a conspiracy in which every character in Mary Worth agrees to get Wilbur down to the docks, clock him in the back of the head, and two days later he wakes up on the deck of a merchant vessel bound for another country. The captain throws him a mop, and that’s the last we ever see of Wilbur. When Dawn gets back, everyone simply agrees that she never had a father. ‘Oh!’ says Dawn, confused but agreeable.” –Dan

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Mary Worth, 6/28/24

I’ve been accused, with perhaps some justification, of being a “coastal elitist”. It’s hard to keep track of what interests do or don’t make you fit that category: my sense of the vibes are that pleasure craft like Dr. Jeff’s are considered “real America” rather than “coastal elitist” coded, despite the fact that they are very expensive and you literally need access to a coastline to enjoy one. This is my way of saying that I don’t actually know much about boats, but I feel like I know enough to say that this one is very big, right? Like in terms of boats owned by retired, mildly successful doctors? Back in the old days Dr. Jeff’s boat was decently sized but it didn’t really loom over you the way this one does. Anyway, Wilbur has experienced not one but two very traumatic large-boat-related incidents, and it would certainly be entertaining if the extremely tentative emotional stability engendered by the prospect of this well-attended fish funeral were shattered by a full-on panic attack.

Alice, 6/28/24

Ever since I’ve gotten on my Alice kick a few months ago, I’ve been sharing with you the “wow, this strip sure is weird!” ones but sparing you the ones that are like “these modern times are new and scary, things were simpler way back then!” So I have to say, this wasn’t the first strip I thought would take the position “Enh, people aren’t very good at most stuff, let’s give the robots a try,” but truly I always appreciate a zig where I expect a zag.

Family Circus, 6/28/24

I understand the Keanes are conservative and don’t think their kids are ready to learn the truth about where babies come from, but I’m telling you, in the absence of solid facts children will come up with some truly wild and frankly very unsettling ideas about how the world works.