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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/20

A lot changed in the tone of this strip with Terry Beatty took over writing duties for Woody Wilson, but there’s one thing that I’m glad stayed absolutely the same, which is that Rex is a petty little bitch and if you even slightly irritate him just once he will never forget it or forgive you. A normal person would probably be like “Ha ha, Aunt Tildy seems like a kook but if you say she’s part of your extended family I’ll buy it” but Rex has the local SWAT team on speed dial and is definitely waiting for June to admit that Tildy isn’t technical a blood relation so that he can have her forcibly extracted from his home with the help of lots of surplus military equipment.

Dick Tracy, 1/9/20

Dick Tracy, meanwhile, has come a long way since the days when its antagonists wore gimp masks and got eaten alive by rats. Still, you have to admire the low-key perversity involved in having this May-December pairing discussing how their DNA-altered leading lady “nailed” the aura of a robo-seductress right in front of her like she isn’t even there.

Mary Worth, 1/9/20

Man, can you think of a single narrative in the history of human storytelling that wouldn’t have been better if the main conflict were resolved by the protagonist having some tests run on their thyroid, proving that was the source of all their problems after all? I sure can’t! War and Peace, Hamlet, the Bible … all of them would absolutely have benefited from the ol’ thyroid-test denouement. Honestly, if Rise of Skywalker had ended with Rey and Kylo in mid-lightsaber battle and then Rey asked Kylo “Did he test your thyroid?” and then Kylo became a good guy, that would’ve been honestly a much more satisfying end to the entire Star Wars saga than what we actually got.

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Sam and Silo, 1/8/20

I haven’t been on the Sam and Silo train for that long, but the overall vibe has always been that it’s an extremely low-stakes strip about two lazy, incompetent cops who have the good fortune to work in a tiny community without any real crime. So it’s a little bit of a shock today to see our heroes suddenly trudging through the winter forest, guns drawn and more or less ready, on the hunt for a dangerous, desperate criminal who will no doubt decide that it’s them or him if they end up cornering him. Honestly, this strip would be just as funny and a lot more poignant if the exchange happened as a gut-shot Silo (or Sam, I honestly can not be bothered to keep track of which is which) bled out in the snow, just a few feet away from their quarry, who’s doing the same.

Mark Trail, 1/8/20

“Unable to withstand the elements or not enough money … all kinds of reasons! Well, really just those two. But aren’t they good enough? Doesn’t the failure of just about every exploratory expedition come down to either inadequate resources or inability to deal with the conditions in the area you’re exploring??? So those reasons cover all the other reasons????? GET OFF MY BACK TRAIL!!!!!!”

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Mary Worth, 1/7/2020

Ah, I think we’re about to learn this storyline’s valuable lesson: it’s very important that you not go to some doctor for normals and poors who accepts your cut-rate health insurance, because he’s just going to diagnose you with old. No, you need to go to Dr. Howard, whose fees only dot-com millionaires can afford, and who can pump you full of teenager blood to reverse the aging process, or at least offer you the array of modern cosmetic enhancement procedures that allow, say, Tom Cruise and Paul Rudd to be believable leading men despite being older than Wilford Brimley was when he starred in Cocoon.

Dennis the Menace, 1/7/2020

Dennis is breaking the fourth wall in a quite menacing fashion here. What is he going to do with Margaret that he doesn’t want us to see? I mean, probably just being a sullen dick to her while she attempts to have a civilized friendship with him, I guess, which quite frankly we’ve seen enough of.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/2020

PANEL ONE: Aunt Hildy oversteps her bounds, in a friendly but potentially irritating way!

PANEL TWO: June sets a firm boundary, while taking care to acknowledge the good intentions behind Aunt Hildy’s offer!

PANEL THREE: Aunt Hildy acknowledges and accepts the boundary June sets, as the reasons given for it make good sense! This is the sort of roller coaster of drama that we’ve come to expect from this strip, and I for one am exhausted.