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Judge Parker, 6/26/12

Awww yeah it’s a massive rural marijuana grow operation, everybody! Obviously Judge Parker saw that Mark Trail did a story depicting vast fields of marijuana plants and got noticed by the popular press for it and so now they want in! Judge Parker of course did its own pot-growing storyline back in 2007 and ’08, when Sam and Abbey’s elderly next-door neighbors built a mysterious landing strip and then brought Abbey some brownies which made her act all funny and she and Sam almost had sex but then didn’t and then Abbey tried spying on them to find out more and eventually they ended up getting busted totally off-panel, for growing pot. But this new batch of pot growers aren’t the sort of genteel dabblers who can afford to live in the same zip code as the Spencer-Driver clan; they’re no doubt tougher rural types, connected to both larger drug cartels and inner-city distribution networks, heavily armed and not amenable to soft, rich, big-city types literally stumbling onto their turf. Or maybe their hostility will dissipate once Avery negotiates a multimillion dollar deal for them to appear in their own reality TV series on the Discovery Channel, Real Farmers of Mendocino County.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/26/12

“For instance, you can still love someone even if they snoop on other people’s conversations, always assume that anything negative you say is about them, and get all pissy about it!”

Beetle Bailey, 6/26/12

Desperate to save his only friend from the horrors of war, Sarge tries assigning Otto to desk duty, despite his illiteracy. But the General knows that the Army needs bodies for the front line — and doesn’t care what species those bodies are from.

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The Lockhorns, 6/4/12

I guess the “surprise” is supposed to be whatever the brownish glop on Leroy’s plate is, but since every Lockhorns meal involves earth-tone glop of some sort, and since Loretta hasn’t served herself anything, maybe something more momentous has happened. After all, despite endless decades of marital combat and mutual loathing, what could be more surprising than one partner in this hell-union finally announcing that he or she was leaving? It’s always seemed that they can’t imagine a life beyond their endless, claustrophobic war, and so if Loretta really is about to grab her bag and walk out forever, it would explain why Leroy is looking even more slumped over and crumple-faced that usual. After all these years, what will he do? Will he have the capacity to do anything other than stare at the brown glop for hours, as it congeals?

Spider-Man, 6/4/12

My experience with Broadway theaters is fairly limited, but they’re mostly older buildings and often surprisingly small and cramped. So, kudos to the owners of this theater for retrofitting it so well for handicap accessibility that Clown-9 can drive his duckhead-car (which isn’t exactly large but is still significantly bigger than, say, a Rascal mobility scooter) off the street, through the doors, and right up the aisle! Meanwhile, anti-kudos go to the artist of this strip, who apparently realized that they forgot to make Peter visible in panel two and decided “Enh, we’ll just put his face in a weird little circle thought-bubbling out of nowhere.”

Mark Trail, 6/4/12

You better watch yourself there, mister, because littering in America’s majestic wilderness and murder aren’t that far apart in Mark’s moral code! Note in panel one that Mark has a firm grip on his belt — it’s the only way he can stop himself from punching this guy a time or three right now.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/4/12

Looks like Herb’s mother-in-law has been spending some time with her favorite book, Incredibly Bland Aphorisms From History’s Insanest Philosophers.

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Crankshaft, 3/6/12

Despite my (too many) years of reading Crankshaft, I’ve only just at this moment realized that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft is constantly destroying due to his dangerous inability to operate a schoolbus, is also one of the guys who meets Crankshaft and some other old dudes at a sad chain diner where they drink coffee and pun sullenly and probably leave stingy tips. The endless mailbox-annihilation incidents might explain why Keesterman has finally snapped, looking in panel three like he’s going to react to Crankshaft’s mild ribbing with a punch to the face, something I dearly hope we get to see over the remainder of the week, from several different angles.

Hi and Lois, 3/6/12

We’ve seen some intermittent attempts to make Hi and Lois’ marriage interesting, but frankly I think there’s much more drama to be wrung from the lives of the Flagstons’ next-door neighbors. Check out Irma’s disgruntled look in the final panel: not only is her family mired in debt, but that means that she can’t even have a nice party without it devolving into recriminations and violence, which to her is the worst indignity.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/12

There are occasional Beetle Baileys in which our heroes (?) are fighting something called the “Red Army,” and while it’s usually clear from context that these are training exercises, it would be fun to believe that today’s strip takes place in an alternate universe where the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed into combat against the Soviet Union, and that, as you’d expect, their division has been quickly defeated and its few survivors are now being rounded up. Given the creepy fact that we see no people attached to these massive gun barrels, it’s also possible that the Red Army is a band of out-of-control military death-bots, who are making short work of their hapless biological adversaries, not least thanks to the humans’ inability to function without technology that’s controlled by the cyber-enemy.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/12

Lucky Eddie has blatantly stolen this joke from Groucho Marx, but I’m not going to get too upset about it because in a minute he’s going to be mauled to death by bears for his crimes.

Marvin, 3/6/12

Yesterday I praised Marvin for grappling with interesting themes and avoiding scatological content. Naturally, today’s strip features the smug hell-infant boasting that he can just shit in his pants whenever he wants.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/6/12

If you’ve enjoyed this Herb and Jamaal strip about burping, why not enjoy the four paragraphs I somehow managed to write about it, back when it first ran in 2004?