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“Human bodies are still frail and mortal? What the absolute hell”

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Mary Worth, 5/5/21

Say what you will about this “Drew the dissatisfied Instadoc” storyline, but it’s been hard to predict its twists and turns! Like, is Drew going to be bamboozled? Seduced? Will Ashlee actually become the next Bella Hadid, with Drew as her svengali along for the ride? Anyway, based on today’s strip I’m foreseeing an extremely exciting sequence of events, where Drew has to cancel because of a work thing, and then Ashlee gets miffed and passive aggressively fails to follow up to schedule a new photoshoot and eventually quietly unfollows him, and then like three months later Drew thinks, “Wow, remember Ashlee? She was pretty but I guess some things aren’t meant to be.” This will take eight to eleven months.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/5/21

What sort of wonderful surprises can increasingly unavoidable Rex Morgan recurring character Buck Wise deliver to our heroes? Could he, say, use his industry connections to arrange a meeting between Sarah and her favorite author? Ha ha, no, of course not. That would be absurd. He could make sure her fan letter gets actually read, though! Or at least he could tell her that it would get actually read, which from her point of view would probably end up amounting to the same thing.

Shoe, 5/5/21

I’ve spent more time than I care to admit trying to figure out the whole deal with Skyler and the Perfesser’s relationship, which I now regret as today’s strip makes it pretty clear that relationship is entirely transactional.

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I will never submit to the easy and morally suspect trend of pro-Buckism

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/4/21

A classic Rex Morgan, M.D., trope is when ancillary characters give Rex and his family free stuff for no good reason — clothes, antique furniture, passes to Sea World, what have you. It’s always great fun! But now we’re seeing a new running bit where people effusively thank Buck, a boring drip, for doing extremely boring stuff like recommending comic books to children. No thanks! Somebody give the Morgans an actual human child, we haven’t seen that in years.

Crankshaft, 5/4/21

Normally I’d read today’s strip and think, “Oh, look, it’s yet another Crankshaft where the wordplay that’s the whole central joke of the strip is based on a homonym and so it wouldn’t work at all when spoken aloud, and nobody involved in the production of the strip cared enough to mention it or try to rework it or anything.” But then I saw Crankshaft’s face in the third panel, and I can’t really put my finger on it but he’s giving off very strong, “Listen up, fuckos, a pun is happening” energy, so I guess I’ll allow it.

Dennis the Menace, 5/4/21

OHHHHHH SNAP WHO’S GETTING MENACED NOW

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The not particularly dangerous game

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Dennis the Menace, 5/3/21

Man, clearly the menace here is not Dennis, who’s merely playfully experimenting with the results of intensifying ontological categories, but rather Henry, who’s walking away from the table with a smug little smirk on his face. “Ha ha, Dennis you scamp,” he’s thinking, “Can’t let her get too comfortable! I’m carrying exactly one bowl into the kitchen, so I’m doing my part to clean up.”

Dick Tracy, 5/3/21

Say, how’s Sam and Dick’s witness babysitting going? Well, they lost him, but then they found him again. Ha ha, police work isn’t all fun and games! Sometimes it’s grinding attention to detail in pursuit of a suspect, and sometimes it’s endless bureaucracy and red tape. But other times it can be an invigorating round of hide and seek, which is, literally, fun and games. Enjoy it while it lasts, boys!

Judge Parker, 5/3/21

You’ve been tracking … the CIA’s movements? Like, the whole CIA? All [checks Wikipedia] 21,500 employees? Maybe the CIA shouldn’t have let April quit, she seems like she’s pretty good at spy stuff.