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Judge Parker, 9/30/07

Oh, man, water! The sinister plot being machinated by the sinister Mr. Caesar is all about control of the world’s water sources! Sure, you may be saying “This is even more boring than I thought it would be,” but I’m hoping that Mr. Caesar has in his employ a bevy of environmental scientists who have given him an inside track on the coming total collapse of the globe’s water supply. In just a few months, the world of Judge Parker will be reduced to a Mad Max-esque desert hellscape, with roaming bands of angry refugees battling over the precious remaining water and gasoline deposits — and Caesar, with his enormous water storage facility with all its pipes and tubes and such, will be the most powerful warlord of them all. Sam will be wishing he’d sold his shares then!

Fun fact: The Wall Street Journal is one of the few major newspapers whose Website is available only for subscribers. Which means that Sophie, wealthy meganerd that she is, is paying for access. At least she’s not paying some guy in India to read it for her.

Curtis, 9/30/07

I know the joke here is supposed to be that old standby “Curtis is irritating”, and surely he gets off on some unfortunate tangents, but his idea is actually fundamentally sound, and is almost certainly being put into effect by any number of tech-savvy churches with younger congregations. Certainly Rev. Caldwell could probably get a better sense of how to attract young people to his church by asking actual young people, rather than sending memos to the deacon board, which is no doubt dominated by social-climbing middle-aged types like Mrs. Dunlap.

To be fair, Curtis’s suggestions for video entertainment need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Blondie, 9/30/07

“Wanna hear something else funny? Now that you’ve broken your neck and are either dead or permanently paralyzed, I don’t have to return any of the tools I’ve borrowed from you!”

Family Circus, 9/30/07

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Grandma is worried that Jeffy is retarded. What’s funny is that Jeffy apparently has the same concerns about Grandma.

Meanwhile, in Mary Worth, Dr. Jeff is getting into dangerous territory…

Panel from Mary Worth, 9/30/07

Don’t ask about “the bum boat special” unless you really want to know, Drew.

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Gil Thorp, 9/22/07

And once again, another Milford football season begins with defeat, vandalism, and desperate media spin. I may not know much about football (I went 0-3 this week in my family’s friendly betting league, setting me up to go out of the running altogether next week in some kind of all-time record for futility) but I can tell you that if the coaching staff of Valley Tech or Oakville or Generic WASPy Name High or whoever the Mudlarks are playing next week haven’t worked out that “awful quarterback + vaguely competent offensive line = working on screens and draws”, they’re probably even worse at their job than Gil, and may actually be Europeans who are confused by the odd shape of this so-called American “football”. Thus, Gil’s “off the record” comment to Marjorie (I think that’s Marjorie, right? Snoopy reporter girl? Broke the head-bashing Tyler story wide open, just like Tyler broke his head wide open?) seems particularly pointless, as it’s hard to imagine what she’d do with it, journalism-wise, other than just, you know, report it. Maybe Gil knows that by making her feel like she’s privy to insider information, she’ll remain his pliant media mouthpiece, leaving Marty Moon the only reporter who dares ask the tough questions of Milford’s althetics politburo. It can’t make that much difference in the long run, since the Milford Star, like most high school papers, probably only publishes two or three times a semester, so this interview probably won’t run until the Mudlarks are already out of the running for the playdowns.

Meanwhile, panel three is about the saddest thing you’ll ever seen in your life, as a trio of Milfordians hang their head in shame at the savage spray-painting the front of the school received. There’s nothing more humiliating than losing a football game by 10 whole points, so surely these kids are going to be way too depressed to learn anything today. I do like the fact that, if Gil’s segue is to be believed, the athletic department is responsible for cleaning the graffiti up. I can just see the janitor sneering at Coach Thorp and saying, “I’m not doing it! This never would have happened if your team wasn’t so shitty.”

Family Circus, 9/22/07

You know how sometimes a cat doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be inside or outside? Oh, that’s always funny when that happens! So it’d be just as funny when a little kid does it, right? Of course! Well, except change “funny” to “indicative of crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Poor Jeffy is hopping back and forth over the door lintel, tormented by an inner drive that he can’t really grasp, only knowing that it’ll only be OK for him to come in the house when he gets it just right. So he goes in, then out, then back in, over and over, until his little thighs get so tired that he just collapses in the doorway, and all Dolly can do is stand there with her hands on her hips and say “Mommy, I think Jeffy’s stupid.” Nice support you get from your family there, Jeffy.

Dick Tracy, 9/22/07

I have to admit that other than the horrible stub-fingered hands that are omnipresent in the strip, I really do like the art in Dick Tracy. It has a very distinct stylized aesthetic that is both unique and unmistakable; Gretchen’s crazy eyes looming menacingly over that wrapped package could appear nowhere else in the newspaper. I also think that events in the individual strips actually have a great internal rhythm. It’s only when you start contemplating the continuity as a whole that it dissolves into a sea of incomprehensible nonsense. I was sort of hoping that Gretchen and her spy flunkies would crash their helicopter directly onto the Baron, killing all four and removing any chance that any of the details of this baffling plotline would ever be clarified. Instead, we’re presumably going to get Gretchen running endlessly towards the Pentagon or whatever for three weeks, following by the bomb going off in her hands and some cryptic explanation from Detective Tracy. At least we’ll get to see someone blown to bits, which is also an event that could be portrayed nowhere else in the newspaper quite as graphically as I expect we’re going to get treated to here.

Marmaduke, 9/22/07

Having failed in all of his other attempts to stop this huge, rampaging hellhound’s reign of terror, the dogcatcher has decided to try to kill Marmaduke with lung cancer.

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Marvin, 9/19/07

At some point between my childhood, when I read and disliked Marvin, and my decision a few years ago start reading and disliking Marvin again, the strip expanded somewhat from its initial emphasis on infant-related humor. In these days of shrinking newspaper circulation, this may be because babies very rarely actually read the comics. Anyway, Marvin now also features thought-ballooning-animals (who don’t read the paper but who have been repeatedly demonstrated to appeal to those who do) and cranky old people, who do definitely read the paper (boy, do they ever). Fairly typical of the Marvin old people schtick is today’s comic, which features two sick, angry old men, their body language transparently demonstrating their mutual dislike, sitting together (because they have nobody else to spend time with, except their even more hated wives) at the mall (because they have nowhere else to go).

By the way, Roy’s “I hear you” isn’t a way of showing solidarity or agreement or anything like that; it’s part of this duo’s continuous game of mutual oneupmanship, and he’s just boasting that he hasn’t gone completely deaf yet.

Family Circus, 9/19/07

“Actually, Jeffy, after years of horrifying mistakes and experimental subjects that had to be put down as an act of mercy, Grandma determined that it’s best to go with leathery, bat-like wings. She’ll be forming them out of the skin from your thighs, since you won’t be using your legs anymore. Oh, also, you’ll be living in her basement from now on, OK?”

Archie, 9/19/07

Haw haw! It’s like men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, am I right, everybody? Like two different planets entirely! Haw! Also, it’s like women will believe completely bogus statements and men are high all the time! Haw haw!

Pluggers, 9/19/07

Pluggers are both unbearably cheap and completely thoughtless.

Oh, and confidential to everyone who couldn’t get enough of yesterday’s slap-happy Mary Worth action: thanks to faithful reader Dingo, you can get in on it!