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Mary Worth, 8/21/12

Wilbur and Dawn recover from their TV-induced “people came together to help one another” hallucination and realize that life is, after all, brutal. And that they both kinda miss Dave. Back to square one: the perfect Mary Worth story arc.

OK, POOL PARTY!

Herb and Jamaal, 8/21/12

It’s so unfair, because Jamaal really was checking out her blouse — everybody is saying “bold, flowery prints” for fall, but Jamaal thinks the only way to avoid ’70’s Earth Mother connotations is to build the look on a classically constructed garment. And the stitching on this one is simply slovenly, it’s a size too large, and for God’s sake tuck it in. Seriously, girl, you go out in public dressed like that? And slap people when they notice? Bitch.

Shoe, 8/21/12

P. Martin Shoemaker (Shoe), an editor at the Treetops Tattler, documents a single exception to the pending collapse of his industry.

“Say, you’re not by any chance reading Shoe, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/21/12

THE EYES OF SNUFFY PEER INTO YOUR SOUL! FEAR HIM!

Judge Parker, 8/21/12

Sam begins to suspect that all Avery’s talk of passion, seduction, Old Hardy, wild life, and prevailing in the end may not be entirely about fishing. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, our Sam.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 8/2/12

If you haven’t been following the storyline of Judge Parker — and let’s face it, you probably haven’t — it’s gone something like this: the mean people at the run-down fishing lodge suddenly became nice people, but it turns out it’s only because they’re secretly in league with (or perhaps secretly are the same people as) the owners of the marijuana field Avery accidentally fell into and they just wanted to get Sam and Avery out on the river so that they could steal Avery’s camera and get the marijuana pictures off of it, except that Avery took his camera fishing with him, foiling their evil plans. And now they’re presumably planning to lure Sam and Avery down into their cellar and imprison and/or murder them there. This is a good example of how Sam’s charmed life has dangerously lowered his defenses. “Why yes, I am wealthy and good-looking and well-connected, so it totally makes sense that you’re going to give me some luxury item for free. I’ll just trundle down into your dank basement and take my pick!”

Mark Trail, 8/2/12

Time in Mark Trail passes in a surreal, dream-like fashion, so who even knows how long ago it was that Rusty saw the poachers shoot that bighorn from a plane. Has it been days? It seems like it might have been days. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Rusty, is what you really want to do is get a good, stomach-turning picture of some rotting sheep-flesh, with the more flies the better, if you want any respect from the avant-garde art world. You should actually crop out the poachers’ faces if you want to emphasize life’s impersonal cruelty, as I assume you do.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/2/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Jamaal is farting constantly, and also because Herb is going to die of a massive heart attack!

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Herb and Jamaal, 8/1/12

Herb’s mother-in-law Eula, who both lives and works with him, is always on his case, constantly. One could write this off as just part of the eternal conflict between a mother-in-law and her child’s spouse, or, perhaps more accurately, as a tired, stereotypical retreading of the supposedly eternal conflict between a mother-in-law and her child’s spouse. Or, as today’s strip demonstrates, it could be that she’s terrified by Herb’s obvious emotional and sexual connection to his “best buddy Jamaal,” and will do anything to distract him from it, in the vain hope that she can keep her family together.

Lockhorns, 8/1/12

Call the Lockhorns hackneyed if you must, but it can still take us to depths of relationship hell that we never imagined existed. I mean, just think if you were at a place in your marriage when you thought, “God, I wish we had gotten that murder-suicide pact nailed down when the time was right. But what’s the point, now?”

Marvin, 8/1/12

It’s Marvin’s 30th anniversary, and from this day forward, I will no longer think of him as a horrible brat-child glorying in his inability or refusal to poop in a toilet. Instead, I will pity him as a victim of a capricious creator who for whatever perverse reason delights in forcing him to stew in his own excrement.

Shoe, 8/1/12

You may be alarmed to learn that Shoe is having sex with his golf clubs. Personally, I’m even more unsettled to discover that he’s getting emotionally attached to some of them.