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Judge Parker, 9/14/08

Is an attractive, large-breasted young woman answering the door wearing next to nothing for no good reason? Why, it must be Judger Parker then! Thank goodness Sam is on the case, since he’s repeatedly proven himself to be immune to sex appeal of any form and will continue grimly towards the goal of his mission: informing the inhabitants of Dewey Cheatem’s house that the man who is probably their friend or loved one or a member of their family has been killed. Sam would like you to believe that he’s doing this because he, and only he, and not the corrupt, incompetent Phoenix law enforcement apparatus, will be able to solve this mysterious crime, but I suspect that he mostly just likes being a dick.

Apartment 3-G, 9/14/08

Though the Alan Is A Drug Addict storyline in Apartment 3-G has given us all many joys, I believe that today is in fact the Big Payoff, as we learn that, for the true addict, Getting High Is All He Or She Cares About. As we have seen, this can damage your relationships with others, cause you problems on the job, and, once the only drug dealer in all of New York heads to the Hamptons for his annual vacation, will leave you incredibly bored, since you won’t have any hobbies left other than ingesting that wonderful dope.

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Mark Trail, 9/12/08

Would it be OK if I just posted Mark Trail every day, with minimal comment, for as long as it continues to be this mind-blowingly hilarious? Today our hero proposes solving a local water crisis — part of an enormously complex issue involving the need to protect nature but also leave room for development, the tangled legislation around water rights, agricultural water requirements, climate change, and the competing demands on drinking water from dozens of different communities of varying sizes and political clout — by calling in a man whose main problem-solving algorithm consists of “Does it have a face I can punch?” and “Are there any intervening objects that would impede the trajectory of my fist?” Hijinks will almost certainly ensue.

Almost as funny is the continued presences of our friend the raccoon, who is attempting to get fresh with the little girl in the first panel. Raccoons are well known to be fearsomely intelligent carriers of parasites and disease who are unafraid of humans and are probably plotting our overthrow even as I type this. Last year when Amber and I went to Vancouver, we saw in Stanley Park an enormous raccoon that was hanging out just inches away from a baby sitting in a stroller, while a woman (presumably the baby’s mother) was standing six feet away taking lots of pictures of this supposedly adorable nature encounter. I’m not saying I wanted to see the raccoon grab the baby and drag him or her off into the underbrush, but, well, a valuable lesson would have been learned if that had happened. Since the little girl in Mark Trail isn’t real, though, I’m totally down with a raccoon-kidnapping subplot here.

Dick Tracy, 9/12/08

Dick Tracy’s mission in life is to kill and maim as many criminals, suspected criminals, innocent passers-by, and bleeding-heart libs as possible, so it’s no wonder why he’s so excited to see a version of himself that’s thirty feet high, imbued with superhuman strength, and impervious to bullets. Still, I think illustrating his massive tie-erection in the first panel is in somewhat poor taste.

Mary Worth, 9/12/08

“Ian’s going to think I’m an idiot for letting someone steal my identity and then use my money!”

“It happens to many types of people, I’m sure! Not just idiots, but morons, twits, fools, dummies, lame-brains, airheads…”

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Gil Thorp, 9/11/08

Thank goodness that the huge Satan-worshipping fire orgy that rings in Milford’s football season has now become an annual event. God only knows what exactly is burning in the background of panel one — probably the high school, or perhaps the entire neighborhood surrounding it — but I kind of love Gil standing on his makeshift platform exhorting his crazed minions to ever-higher levels of ecstatic bloodlust. You’ll note that at least one devotee of the flame is flashing some devil horns at the end of her jelly-braceleted arm, indicating her devotion to the archdemon Astaroth. The fact that Cully has been given temporal dominion over the football team is a sure sign of the carnage that will conclude the evening, as he fallaway slams the unwitting victims directly into the inferno, ensuring that the Dark Lord will smile on the Mudlarks this fall.

Mark Trail, 9/11/08

After much promise, the just concluded Kelly-versus-Cherry storyline rapidly declined into a total snoozefest, but I’m still holding out high hopes that we’ll get some action out of this modern day St. Francis, his adorable daughter, and their sinister raccoon familiar. So far our gentle baldy has cunningly used the passive voice to explain the plight of the thirsty, thirsty animals, noting only that the water is being “drained away.” Eventually, though, the little tyke will want to know who is doing the draining, and he’ll have to admit that it’s the humans, with their endless appetite for well-watered suburban lawns and Bed, Bath, and Beyond-bearing strip malls. Presumably the two of them will then silently watch the dehydrated beasts in panel two stumble around in the vicinity of their cabin for a bit; next, the raccoon will chitter menacingly, they’ll nod their heads in agreement, and the killing spree will begin.

Apartment 3-G, 9/11/08

Lu Ann is capable of such charming depths of self-deception that I was hoping she’d take her initial thought balloon to its logical conclusion. “Beer cans, wine bottles, and pizza boxes! It looks like a scene from a frat house movie. That’s it! Alan is allowing a major studio to use his apartment as a set for a frat house movie! It all makes sense now!” It would also explain the terrible state of the curtains; as any good set dresser knows, the stereotypical denizen of a frat house in a frat house movie is such a seething cauldron of homophobia that he would literally have a stroke if he attempted to contemplate window treatments.

Marmaduke, 9/11/08

I originally read this caption as “Why don’t you bury him in his own lawn chair?” Which you have to admit makes sense, as Marmaduke appears to be dead.