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Judge Parker, 3/20/14

The Bowers/Abbotts père et fille share a private moment and a little shop talk. The thought of simply declaring her Dad’s gift and paying import duties and taxes on it never crossed April’s mind. “Can money even move in that direction — ‘away’?”, she muses. Somehow it doesn’t seem physically possible!

Welcome to the family, girlfriend – a true Parker at last!

Or maybe not? Long-running strips need to be really careful about irrevocable steps like marriages, graduations, and deaths. They upset a strip’s balance, limiting the ways characters can contribute. And if there’s one constant in Judge Parker over the last fifty years, it’s that Randy Parker is a clueless, self-satisfied tool, perpetually used and discarded by women. This principle is so much a part of the strip’s bedrock that even on the eve of his wedding, I can’t believe they’ll go through with it. I fully expect that April will die in a hail of gunfire or (more likely) disappear into the jungle at the last possible moment. Anyway, stay tuned — we’ll know in mere months!

Luann, 3/20/14

That said, what on earth is going on in Luann? Everybody’s been moving through middle-school and high school over the strip’s 29 years, and now they’re seniors announcing college plans for the fall. Ethnic ciphers Rosa and Delta are off to Yale and Howard, most of the cast to nearby “Moony Uni” (OK sure, some kind of Unification Church outfit, I guess), and Luann to the local Community College.

Is Luann really just six months away from becoming a “college hijinks” strip, or a soaper about declining academic standards and unsustainable student debt? Is inert, self-absorbed, academically dishonest Luann even remotely plausible as a college student? All these questions will have to wait, because: OMG YOU GUYS PROM!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/20/14

Yet another newspaper drops Herb and Jamaal, and Herb blames his son for it.

Spider-Man, 3/20/14

“I was going to save those men — but their plight has flushed Spider-Man out of hiding! Now they can just die for all I care, for putting that stink on my beloved city!”

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— Uncle Lumpy

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Better Half, 3/15/14

Don’t ask Harriet, Stanley — she gave up on dreams long ago. Didn’t mind the format so much; just got sick of the programming.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/15/14

What passes for joy in the Funkyverse: He’s Not Really Dead, Part IV.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/15/14

The Reverend Croom has figured out Herb spits in his food.

Heathcliff, 3/15/14

Oh man, is that a cat thong in the middle there? The neighbor lady looks pretty horrified; I bet it’s a cat thong.

Between Friends, 3/15/14

OK, so this is Between Friends, which mixes joke-a-day and soapy arcs about the lives and times of three middle-aged women and should therefore be called Among Friends, but that’s not important right now. There’s an unfulfilled stay-at-home mom and a frazzled working mom and childless divorceé Maeve here, finishing up a whirlwind European vacation and wrenching final breakup with her ex-husband by visiting her company’s Paris office and trying to gin up a glam new international job. So you can apparently do a lot more with the whole “3 Girls” concept than orphan deer and off-panel plane crashes, even when everybody’s Canadian.

Hey, I’m filling in during Josh’s mostly-annual Spring Trip West through Sunday, March 23. Let me know if the site starts acting up on you and I’ll do what I can to fix it: uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 3/7/14

April’s dad may be an amoral arms merchant who deals with ex-Romanian secret police and has a “retirement fund” made up entirely of blood diamonds, but at least he likes Judge Parker Senior’s terrible book, which puts him one step above the real monsters: liberal Ivy League college professors.

Heathcliff, 3/7/14

Heathcliff only loves his owner-family for financial reasons.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/7/14

Herb has been having sex with the restaurant’s catering truck for years, but is now starting to question his auto-monogamy.

Pluggers, 3/7/14

Pluggers’ electronics are covered with more disgusting slobber and drool than you can imagine.