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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/25

I regret to inform you that we are almost to the end of week one of “Kelly is in college, now” and it appears we never did make our way out of the phone talking part of the storyline. But I do think today’s strip has an nice message about how much better Summer and Kelly get along now that she’s out of her rebellious phase. Back then, Kelly was very dismissive about her mother’s “dumb boyfriends,” but now she’s like “Mom, I’m not at home anymore, so shouldn’t you be using the opportunity to, I dunno, have more sex? Just a suggestion. Welp, gotta go!”

Curtis, 1/9/25

Today’s Curtis is a repeat — you can tell because Curtis isn’t wearing the streamlined new hat he got as a gift in 2018 — and I’m pretty sure it may date to before I even started doing this blog. That’s because I can’t find any evidence I talked about it when it first ran, and maybe I’ve become a different person over the years, but I find it hard to believe that at any point in my long life of reading the comics so you don’t have to I would’ve neglected to note that Greg thought of his ample posterior as being in a monogamous sexual relationship with his chair, and his butt and the chair have sex, and are in love, and we’re left to speculate on the mechanics of both types of interaction. I feel like I would’ve talked about it! It’s a lot.

Pluggers, 1/9/25

“Oh Lord, I started out the day with good intentions, but then I got out of bed and, as usual, that’s when it all went wrong! So much blood! So much killing! If You didn’t want me to maul and maul and maul, why did You make me a bear with such powerful claws?”

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Dustin, 1/8/25

I think I speak for insufferable pedants everywhere when I say that I immediately clocked this as not being an actual line from Confucius — it’s way too touchy-feely — and felt great satisfaction when exactly 5 seconds of research proved me right. It’s widely attributed to the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, as part of the longer quote “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything,” but nobody seems to have a specific citation for it, so that’s probably not true either. I leave the details to the elite team of Brainyquote investigators in the comments, but I do think that if there were even a thin thread connecting this to Confucius, you’d find that attribution everywhere online, because the older and more exotic the source of an anodyne statement like this, the more people love it.

Anyway, it made me wonder: What would Dustin’s dad think of Confucius? I feel like his opinion would be mixed: obviously he’d be into the filial piety and respect for hierarchy, but Confucius rejected the strict codes of Legalism and emphasized that an enlightened ruler leads by means of moral example, which a lawyer would be dubious about. I also considered trying to figure out what Dustin’s dad would think about Thomas Carlyle, but it turns out that his Wikipedia article is really long, and why would I waste my precious time on it when I could be making jokes about Dawn Weston walking into a door in Mary Worth?

Mary Worth, 1/8/25

In other news, Dawn Weston, having eschewed corrective lenses for the dumbest reason imaginable, walked into a door in Mary Worth, which incredibly means that she didn’t even get out of her own apartment building before we were treated to The Mr. Magoo-ening Of Dawn Weston. Honestly, looking at those doors I half expected them to open automatically, and maybe she did as well, who can say. Anyway, I look forward to Dirk tactically abandoning his “Nerdgirl” taunt and moving on to “Bruisegirl Nosebleedchick.”

Hi and Lois, 1/8/25

Ditto, she’s been around since 1954, she’s never had any teeth, and at this point she’s pretty sure she’s never going to have any teeth. Stop taunting her! Mush is all she will ever know, across however many decades she has left to suffer in this ageless hell!

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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!