Veteran comics character raises profile of editors

After 66 years of comic strip life, Rex Morgan M.D. is welcoming an editor into the soap-operatic world that revolves around his medical practice. This gratifying development follows a storyline about domestic violence that saw Buck, Rex’s friend from high school, shot in the head with a nail gun by his wife Doris (if you’re wondering, Buck survived and Doris went to jail).

Now Rex’s precocious five-year-old daughter Sarah has been asked to produce art books for the local museum, and the stuffy folks in charge have assigned an editor, Ms. Lanning, to keep the project on track. Clearly they don’t realize what a gifted child Sarah Morgan is. And of course, the fact that she was born when Rex and his assistant-turned-wife June were nearing 80 (and to this day look no older than 35) makes her special in so many ways.

After pouting for a panel or two, Sarah seems to have decided that having an editor isn’t so bad. In a recent episode set at the family dinner table, Rex asked, “What do you think of having an editor, Sarah?” The clever tot spoke for many people when she replied, “I don’t really know what an editor does, Daddy! But I like Ms. Lanning…she seems nice.”

Yes, Sarah, many people don’t know what editors do, and yes, we are nice.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this particular storyline plays out. Will Rex suspect Ms. Lanning has obsessive-compulsive personality disorder when she becomes fixated on replacing every one of Sarah’s commas with a semicolon? Will Sarah have a generalized tonic-clonic seizure when Ms. Lanning says her book is too long? Will Rex and June close their medical clinic and open a publishing house to promote the work of their child prodigy?

Whatever happens, it’s good to see editors and the work they do getting some attention.