Post Content

Judge Parker, 1/24/07

Sometimes I like to imagine what would happen if you came from another planet or something and were given a cursory education in the usual sort of comics, with jokes and whatnot, and then you encountered a gem like today’s Judge Parker. Would you stare in horror at the third panel for hours, trying to figure how “You see, I have cancer … and the doctors are not optimistic!” might qualify as one of these “jokes” or “punchlines” you’ve heard about? Would you connect your Interstellar Space Radio to Central Command on Planet Zyvex and say, “Call off our invasion fleet! These Earth humans … they laugh at suffering and death! They find the painful passing of their old ones a source of amusement! Surely they would throw all thoughts of their own safety aside and fearlessly engage even our most deadly trained Sau’dukar Warriors in bloody combat! For Melkar’s sake, turn those ships around!”

It’s not likely, I know, but I’m just saying. Judge Parker may have just saved us all from being forced to dance for the Galactic Emperor Chennux’s amusement until we dropped dead from exhaustion.

Alien invasions aside, the phrase “I’m an old woman and I’m going to die” may be the most depressing ever uttered in a comic strip, and I’m including Funky Winkerbean in that assessment. At least Funky gives you some sort of pun to cut the gloom. In fact, based on that first panel, I’m not convinced that Rachel is still alive at the moment; she looks an awful lot like Norman Bates’ taxidermied mother. Which doesn’t speak well for Abbey’s sanity. Not that anyone with that haircut could truly be called “sane.”

Beetle Bailey, 1/24/07

This Beetle Bailey storyline of barely closeted homosexuality has been winding along like a third-rate Tennessee Williams knockoff for weeks now. First Beetle finally realizes that his attempts at physical intimacy with women are a sham, then starts to subtly acknowledge his abusive relationship with an older man. Today, having finished with his beard, he’s decided to pawn her off on the village idiot.

Miss Buxley, of course, isn’t consulted about her own sex life, because she’s a pretty girl and this is Beetle Bailey, duh.

Luann, 1/24/07

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the only way this storyline is going to make any sense is if it involves a faulty contraceptive and a time machine.

In case you haven’t been following Luann, our flat-topped adoptee is supposed to be in Iraq. Now, never having been either adopted or in a war, I may not know what I’m talking about, but I think I’d have other things on my mind if I were him.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/24/07

What’s it going to take to revive this painfully tedious storyline? A horribly burned, foul-mouthed, halfwit-criminal-dating meth cook? I for one am ready to take that chance.

Archie, 1/24/07

Yeah, so Jughead wants to eat Archie’s eyes. The look of stunned horror on Veronica’s face in panel two is actually pretty much justified.

Post Content

Family Circus, 1/21/07

I thought I had seen the depths to which Keane family dysfunction could sink, but that was before murderous little Jeffy sweet-talked his mother into lovingly handcrafting the very projectiles with which she would soon be pelted. In a way, this cartoon is emblematic of that dark, little-discussed side of parenthood: sometimes, you can pour all of your soul into that little life that you nurtured first in your body and then in your home, neglecting your own private life, personal development, and relationship with your partner to help them become a person, only to see them transformed into an inscrutable monster, an opaque being who only resents you for crimes you can’t imagine or explain, who, despite the years of midnight feedings and changed diapers and band-aids and drives to school and hot meals, is ready to crack your skull open with a ball of ice the moment you turn your back.

On the other hand, she did call him “little man.” I’d be pretty pissed too.

Beetle Bailey, 1/21/07

I know they’re called “throwaway panels” because they just get thrown away, but really, this isn’t even trying. “Hey, I’ve got to fill these two panels with something — how about something that isn’t funny on its own, and that doesn’t really fit in with the main joke, but is just close enough to it that you sort of stare at it for a while scratching your head waiting for it to make sense, but it never does? Bingo! Tee time! I’m off!”

Judge Parker, 1/21/07

With what look like new Barretto-drawn strips back in the daily Judge Parker, our anonymous fill-in artist is offering his swan song with some entirely gratuitous Abbey T&A. I ask you, does anyone rock the chino capris like Ms. Spencer? I think she goes down to Old Navy and buys the Ass Crack Revealing Cut version in bulk.

Also, Sunday’s Mary Worth was a wasteland of exposition and white people, but in the final panel we did get to see her terrifying all-seeing third eye!

I never doubted your powers, o master! Please to not tear my soul asunder with your oculus of ultimate power!

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 1/19/07

You know who I hope is at the door? Fun Tommie! Yes, the reason Tommie’s been so boring is that, due to a freakish space-time anomaly, she was split into “Dull Tommie” and “Fun Tommie,”
with the former being the one we’ve been watching all this time. As to where “Fun Tommie” went, she’s been boozing and screwing her way up and down Manhattan for most of the last three years, and is finally coming back to take a nap.

Sadly, it’s actually no doubt Gina at the door, come to say something rude and then flit off. Or a boring dark-haired white guy in a blue suit to sweep Tommie off her feet. YAAAAWWWWNNN.

Beetle Bailey, 1/19/07

I think the coloring gnomes are finally forcing the integration of the comics by any means necessary. First TDIET sees its first ever person of color, then suddenly Killer becomes black. We shall overcome!

One Big Happy, 1/19/07

So, as this freezing family trudges ever-deeper into this endless, inescapable forest, who are we betting on being the sole survivor of the inevitable descent into cannibalism? Dad would be the early favorite, since he’s the strongest and a nominal authority figure, but don’t count out Ruthie: she’s scrappy, has a low center of gravity, and is completely batshit insane. Joe — poor surly, none-too-bright Joe — doesn’t really stand a chance.

Marmaduke, 1/19/07

Wow. When Maxi Light and Power celebrates another profitable quarter at its next shareholders’ meeting, and they honor everyone who helped bring the company stock price up another six percent, I hope that, along with the CEO who broke the union and cut unnessecary expenditures on power plant safety equipment, this nameless poodle, who repeatedly and selflessly submitted to sexual slavery just so Maxi’s crack staff could read this damn meter, is singled out for public recognition.

Pluggers, 1/19/07

“You’re know you are really a plugger?” Wow, and I thought this strip’s “Plugger’s/Pluggers” problem earlier this week was bad. Presumably this is meant to distract us from the “content” of this “joke”, which boils down to “You know you’re a plugger if you have a child when you’re relatively young and then live for another sixty years or so.”