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Judge Parker, 4/7/09

Judge Parker has long been known as the soap opera strip most concerned with land use and planning issues, which is why we were treated to a weeks-long story on water rights a couple of years back. Now, to bide the time while Sophie puts her plans into motion to completely upend junior high’s social hierarchies and emerge as her school’s beautiful and terrifying goddess-queen, our B-team will be keeping everyone posted on the intriguing possibilities of well-planned big box reuse.

Still, I’m uneasy with this whole “Europa Aerospace” company. Does that sound like the sort of company that will happily be producing solar cells to help cut down on our reliance on fossil fuels? Or the sort of company that plans to help Europe conquer outer space? Soon decaying, empty former Wal-Marts and Targets everywhere will be transformed into launch pads for small but stylish rockets. These Euronaut-piloted vehicles will litter Earth orbit with fashionable, smoke-filled zero-G bistros and brasseries, discos housing endless throbbing techno dance parties, and thousand-year-old cathedrals. It’s a damn shame that a genuine American hero like Steve was used to enable Eurotrash’s orbital triumph.

Gil Thorp, 4/7/09

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the greatest Gil Thorp plots are the ones in which one of the characters suffers some form of head trauma. Thus, I’m very excited about the possible directions in which this plot might travel. Will we be treated to a rare but thrilling instance of Thorpian rage? Or will we instead enjoy a comic amnesia plot, in which Gil forgets his whole life to this point and is baffled to find himself in charge of a hideous band of loser teenagers in the worst town imaginable?

Mark Trail, 4/7/09

“Be sure not to tell me, though, because Lord knows I can’t be bothered about things that involve humans. Now, if a bear or a raccoon were lost and in trouble, I might get worked up, but you? Not so much.”

Pluggers, 4/7/09

For pluggers, finding 42 cents worth of loose stamps in a drawer is an “achievement,” I guess.

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Well, if it’s Monday, it must be time reveal another shameful instance of a legacy comic dipping into its own archives. Below is the B.C. from 8/15/05:

Followed, of course, by a comic from the B.C. collection Dip In Road, first published in 1969:

These come from faithful reader Suzii, who notes:

It stuck with me because I first read it when I was a little enough kid to have no idea what “berserk” meant. Now I’m all grown up and a professional word person, and I still have no idea what’s funny about this — let alone what’s so funny as to be worth a second shot at it.

Also! By now you are well acquainted with my narcissistic tendency to acknowledge comics that mention me by name. Well, I suppose I must now extend this to novels! The Tea Master, a novel currently competing for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, mentions me and several other bloggers in the course of its adventures! It also features a “notorious” unicorn crap passage. Check it out!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the comment of the week!

“That facial expression — it’s like he’s asking himself, ‘Where did my penis go?’ It’s OK, buddy, it’s just a towel.” –Donald the Anarchist

And the runners up! Very funny!

“All babies are evil. It’s only the comics page that has the guts to print this. The rest of the paper is intimidated by the power of Big Baby.” –Mac

“ENGAGE DISPLAY(EMOTIONAL): TEARS. ERROR! ERROR! #227: TEAR DUCT JAM. CLEAR TEAR DUCT MANUALLY. (A)BORT, (R)ETRY, (I)GNORE?” –Dragon of Life

“Hmm, that makes me wonder, do pluggers have tails? Have we ever seen one? I can’t decide if it’s more unnerving if they do or if they don’t, and that worries me.” –Zaq

“Oh, Ziggy. All hat, no pants.” –Poppinjay

“Is Ziggy a plugger? Let’s examine the evidence. Evidence for Ziggy being a plugger: He is poor; he is a hideous mutant human thing; his life is an endless string of disappointments and depression; he is constantly being reminded of his depressing life by members of the service industry. Evidence against: He appears interested in traveling outside the United States, unlike pluggers, whose international experience consists of yelling drunken racial slurs at Travel Channel ads.” –Ms.X

“Has Tommie become so jaded from living with Margo that one drunken woman swearing is something to smile about? ‘Wow, she only used one of the f words on me.'” –Rainbird

“Has anyone considered that maybe Ziggy doesn’t need pants?” –Sequitur

“Does it strike anyone else that Ziggy frequently visits his travel agent, yet is never actually depicted traveling anywhere? I have a feeling this is yet another one of Z’s touchingly pitiful strategies to get women to talk to him. The travel agent — for some reason wearing a nurse’s uniform — is well aware of this situation. Ziggy comes in three, four times a week. Sometimes he just takes a handful of pamphlets, mumbles something inaudible, and shuffles out the door, red-faced. You can see how embarrassed they both are. They’re not even coming close to making eye contact. The travel agent, however, is bound by professional duty to at least pretend to be cheerful, but Ziggy’s solemn expression speaks volumes about the grim reality of this incident.” –Joe Blevins

“Oh, so Borneo isn’t good enough for you, Ziggy? So it’s little more than a punchline for a lame joke? As somebody whose family hails from and is based in that region, I have to say that I am deeply — wait a minute, have I just been offended by a goddamn Ziggy strip? Jesus Christ.” –Muddtallica

“So … enraged … about … children … can’t … actually … hold … phone … close … to … face!” –Smokehouse

“As a midget with a freakishly large nose, Ziggy likely wears no pants in order to force the world to acknowledge him as a sexual being.” –ThaGeeGee

“You know, the more everyone keeps mentioning it, the clearer it becomes: this is a kidnapping storyline in A3G, which is fantastic, because kidnapping storylines in A3G can only end in discounted zipper-bound merchandise! I’ll get my credit card.” –Black Drazon

“Tommie seems to have developed a serious case of happyfaceitis in her ear in panel 2. Eventually it will become its own head, and Margo will teach it to belittle Tommie when she’s too busy to bother.” –kt

“Adrift in the wake of his father’s abandonment, young Gunther found solace in the sturdy regularity of the Cartesian coordinate system. Eventually, he swore, his whole body would be covered in comforting grid lines that could never ever leave him.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“Mark Trail: Our clothes are from 1962 but our technology is from 1998.” –emilochka

“We need a dotted-line path showing Thel’s route of cleaning every room, disposing of Barfy-poo, scrambling through the laundry to find something presentable to wear, spraying air freshener throughout the house and on her unshowered body, etc., all culminating at the doorstep, so that her humiliation would be complete. Then next week’s strip showing the path of that neighborhood kid as he meanders around the back yard, avoiding the four unmarked graves, would be more deeply meaningful.” –seismic-2

“Doesn’t Beetle Bailey’s mention of Iraq and Afghanistan violate the Billingsley-Bentley ‘Vagueness in Comics’ Act of 1982?” –Captain Thunder

“Beetle Bailey has achieved some sort of high-water mark for topical relevance this week. In addition to finally acknowledging the fuller geo-political implications of U.S. military service, they also note that it’s April. And it actually is April!” –Lorne

“FC Mom is not cleaning up — she’s trashing the place. She’s not taking any chances that today might be the day Children’s Family Services comes to visit and takes the little monsters away.” –Rachel211

“I find myself concerned for ‘the girls in Hawaii’ — given that the point of military training exercises is to learn how to kill other people without being killed yourself, in challenging terrain. Notice, too, that Plato is dressed like one of those hula dancers — clearly he’s envisioning a covert ops type mission, wherein he infiltrates the local hula school before blasting everything in sight.” –Rana

“Killer with his bongos is anticipating an invitation to join the Buena Vista Social Club once he gets to Cuba. Which, given that he’s in his 70s by now, would be just the gig for him.” –Beatrice

“When the plot of Mary Worth begins to remind you of a David Mamet script (House of Games), it’s time to up the drinking.” –Dingo

“Look at Ted Confey. That’s the way you do it. He gets his money for nothing and his chicks for free.” –Chicago Bob

“MW Haiku: Ted’s facial shadow/ Confounds the laws of physics:/ Where the sun don’t shine.” –Charterstoned

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Family Circus, 4/5/09

This has got to be one of the most heartbreaking Family Circus cartoons I’ve ever seen. After spending all day (and all of her young womanhood) shut in with her litter of squallers, she’s suddenly confronted with the prospect of interacting with another adult — someone who wouldn’t want to spend time in a living room covered with cheap plastic crap and poorly-colored pictures, someone who she might even want to look nice for. Naturally, it turns out to be just another one of the little neighborhood urchins. At least he’s proposing to take Jeffy outside, so she can weep with abandon.

Beetle Bailey, 4/5/09

At long last, Beetle Bailey admits that American soldiers in training might be preparing to do something other than make stale jokes about alcoholism, sexual harassment, and fisticuffs! Still, one has to hope that the final panel — in which it is suggested that Castro’s long-standing paranoia about a U.S. invasion is true, that France’s Pacific possessions will be an invasion target as America gets involved in its first-ever war with a nuclear-armed opponent, and that American soil itself will soon find itself under military occupation and martial law — is as far removed from reality as this strip’s typical content.

Crock, 4/5/09

The throwaway strip that sits atop each Sunday’s Crock always features the strip’s title character’s name carved into a stone monument sitting majestically in the middle of the desert, like some kind of Ayers Rock-like monument to the French colonial empire; generally random characters wander around said Crock-rock making confusing references to the joke to follow. So I suppose I shouldn’t be unsettled by today’s edition, in which the great monolith seems to be muttering obscenities to itself — but I am, OK? I really am.