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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/5/14

After weeks of being mad that their babysitter was a terrible little whore, June has now, reluctantly, come around to the conclusion that the problem is really that her daughter is a blackmailing monster, and so she’s going to have a little talk with Kelly about the situation. Sarah’s creepy, unsmiling gaze, locked on Kelly in both panels, is pretty harrowing. “Remember, Kelly, snitches get stitches,” is what that look is very, very forcefully saying.

Judge Parker, 5/5/14

April is of course a well-trained intelligence agent and highly skilled killer, but it’s her long experience with her new in-laws that will help her out in this scenario. Remember, when trying to track down a member of the Spencer-Driver-Parker clan, just follow the trail of discarded cocktail glasses!

Spider-Man, 5/5/14

Say what you will about the ludicrous “Iron Jonah” plot that’s just now wrapping up, but it did feature a surprising amount of super-heroic action! Thank goodness that’s over so we can spend the next one to four weeks on more familiar ground, with some good old-fashioned feelings-processing.

Apartment 3-G, 5/5/14

“Keep it up, Tommie! You’ve isolated yourself from your friends and you’re working yourself to exhaustion for no pay at the command of this weird, controlling dude you barely know, and you’re still talking about that baby deer like it’s a person! You look great, in that sweater you’ve been wearing for three weeks straight! I’m an actual psychiatrist, by the way!”

Pluggers and Shoe, 5/5/14

THEY’RE BIRDS DAMN IT

BIRDS

BIRDS DON’T WEAR DENTURES AND THEY DON’T GO TO THE DENTIST AND THEY DON’T FLOSS BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TEEEEETH

GOD DAMN IT

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/14

Welp, at last, Jess has solved the mystery of why her father was murdered. It’s not just because he was a dick that nobody liked; it’s because one of the people to whom he was a dick disliked him so much that he decided he deserved to be killed. Shouldn’t she be filming this or something?

Judge Parker, 4/22/14

Hahaha, remember when Abbott gave April a bunch of diamonds of mysterious provenance? Well, apparently they were a wedding present for Randy (a dowry, maybe?), and also bait to lure the Gardia brothers into a firefight they can’t win, and, well, if Randy gets killed in the crossfire while April safely wanders around the jungle looking for Katherine, then I don’t think too many people are going to lose sleep over that, do you?

Apartment 3-G, 4/22/14

Oh, man, I love that Tommie is just holding the phone away from her head as Margo launches into her freakout. “Not coming home — I don’t undersand. What’s going on?! Who’s going to cook me dinner?!? I’m getting hungry! Tommie? Tommie?”

Gil Thorp, 4/22/14

In case you’re wondering what’s going on with wacky klutzy Lucky Haskins and Amy Lange: Lucky has convinced Amy that she can improve her luck by rubbing his head. That isn’t a euphemism for anything, though as you can see here their encounters are suffused with a certain queasy eroticism.

Spider-Man, 4/22/14

Good news, everyone! Spider-Man and “Iron Jonah” aren’t going to be killed by plummeting into the arch in Washington Square Park because they’ve been saved by Iron Man at the last minute. Since the whole point of this crisis was that Jonah was going too fast and any impact would leave him smeared all over the inside of that outdated Iron Man suit, I’m not sure how Iron Man SLAMMing into him at full speed is really much of a solution, but any denouement in which Spidey’s rescue attempt is upstaged by another, better superhero is OK with me.

Heathcliff, 4/22/14

Heathcliff and his ex-con dad have trained an army of bee henchmen! Nobody can touch them now.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/20/14

We’re four and half months into the Terry Beatty era on Rex Morgan, M.D., people! One of the interesting challenges in taking over a long-running continuity strip like this is integrating your predecessors’ character designs into your own style, which can have awkward results — see, for instance, Niki’s starfish hair, which was always pretty bizarre but at least sort of worked with Graham Nolan’s aesthetic, but poor Beatty is kind of stuck with it here. I am glad to see that the new artist is adhering to another tradition involving Niki — namely, that whenever frank discussions of his sexuality are on the table, he’s suddenly drawn to look like he’s about thirty years old.

Judge Parker, 4/20/14

Don’t worry about April out in the jungle, Randy … she’s in her element out there! Plus she has a nice, sharp knife. When you make April leave her own wedding reception to go look for your stepmom because she wandered off into the mercenary-lousy jungle, somebody’s going to get stabbed.

Beetle Bailey, 4/20/14

I’ll admit it: I got to panel five and I thought, “Well, I never expected that Beetle Bailey’s decades-long run would end with all of Camp Swampy dead in some sort of mass cult suicide, but I’m willing to run with this.”