Viral Texting

Above you’ll see today’s Rex Morgan, M.D. If you’re not familiar with the strip, it’s one of the longer running comic strips, having begun its life in 1948 as a sort of Funnies PSA, in which the eponymous Rex (not present in this strip) would confront some patient’s pressing medical dilemma in his hometown of Glendale. Then things got strange and went into soap-opera zone. Rex has been involved in shoot-outs, become mentor to a kid whose mother was blown up in a meth-lab explosion (she got better, though) and discovered one of his best friends was an imposter leading to Rex standing in the middle of football field with a briefcase full of money to make a handoff to some blackmailers.

Still, apparently the day-to-day humdrum of your average comics page private practice doctor has not been exciting enough to attract younger readers, and as such it would appear the current writers have begun attempting to inject some “real life” into their fictional creation. Namely: technology. It began relatively innocently with Glendale’s Mayor Dalton’s prostate having a “Pacebook” page (which has since manifested as a real facebook page).

This week they went one step further and attempted to forecast trends with something called “viral texting.” Now, I have no idea who these characters are (or who they’re talking about), except that they are obviously “young people” (although, to be fair, Rex Morgan hasn’t aged much since 1948, except for some greying behind the ears a la Reed Richards). My favorite is that the guy, who is so young and “with it” that he sits on top of the picnic table and drinks soda, has the ability to view “viral texting” with the detachment of someone much longer in the tooth and call it “the jungle drums of youth.” We should all be so lucky to have such poetic friends.

This one came via my brother.