Post Content

Judge Parker, 6/8/14

OH MY GOD

THE MURDEROUS, VILLAINOUS ARMS MERCHANT NAMED “FLACO” WHO’S BEEN MENACING OUR HEROES FOR MONTHS IS GOING TO SPARE THEM BECAUSE HE LOVED JUDGE PARKER SENIOR’S TERRIBLE, UNREADABLE BOOK

THIS IS THE GREATEST POSSIBLE RESOLUTION TO THIS STORYLINE, MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN I COULD’VE POSSIBLY IMAGINED

Seriously, remember back on the cruise where we first encountered these sinister wedding-ruiners, and Alan read a negative review of his book from an awful elitist Ivy League double-professor, and then later he ran into her on the cruise and he publicly humiliated her, because she had an opinion? That character will have been treated by our narrative with significantly less compassion than Flaco, who sells deadly weapons to the highest bidder in conflict zones worldwide and before that worked for the Securitate, the most notoriously brutal Eastern European secret police of the Cold War era, all because Flaco loves Alan’s shitty spy novel. I love everything about this. Maybe Flaco will stop demanding the diamonds back, as long as they’re invested in turning The Chambers Affair into a terrible, unwatchable movie? Dare to dream!

Momma, 6/8/14

Sure, Momma is terrible to her kids, but there’s nobody she’s harder on than herself, and it’s often in her dreams and reveries that she really lets her self-loathing run rampant. Here she is imagining being spurned by her husband, in the afterlife! Or maybe just her corpse is being spurned by his corpse? Either way, pretty depressing!

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 5/22/14

In case you forgot, the title of Les’s book about his dead wife Lisa dying of cancer is Lisa’s Story, which is a terrible boring title that conveys zero information about the book’s tone, genre, or content. At least with a book there’s a cover and a subtitle to draw in attention; as a movie title, Lisa’s Story would be wholly meaningless and an instant kiss of death. In other words, I’m looking forward to this Funky Winkerbean storyline about heroic marketing professionals in the entertainment industry doing their job to the best of their ability in the face of impossible odds.

Judge Parker, 5/22/14

I can’t remember if we ever got an origin story on these diamonds, but based on the players involved the best-case scenario is that Abbott purchased them from a legal, licensed dealer with the millions he made over the years from selling weapons to despotic governments, violent rebel militias, and terrorist fanatics. The worst-case scenario involves a private slave-worked mine in Sierra Leone given to him by a grateful warlord as a thank-you for a long and fruitful business relationship, and is probably best not dwelled upon. Anyway, just sit tight, Randy! Everything is going to be fine! … for you.

Spider-Man, 5/22/14

I’m intrigued by the statement “he can’t play Doctor Octopus anymore,” as it seems to imply that Octavius’s villainous identity was no more than a role, a character he was putting on, and now that his mechanical arms have been somehow detached from his body, he returns to his essential “real” self. Anyway, “Spider-Man fights bio-mechanical madman with super-strong metal arms” was obviously way too exciting for the newspaper Spider-Man narrative aesthetic, so let’s all settle in for “Spider-Man fights portly scientist with bowl haircut.”

Gasoline Alley, 5/22/14

“That’s right, and I won’t get to work in a mine until I’m 18, thanks to these job-killing, innovation-stifling government regulations!”

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/11/14

Whoops, looks like June is not being a very good mother on Mother’s Day! How is little Sarah going to get by without her “assistant”/terrified thrall? This is what June is going to get as a Mother’s Day gift: she will wake up suddenly in a panic at 3 a.m., only to find Sarah standing next to the bed and staring at her with those shadowed eyes. “I’m very upset with you, mommy,” she will say. “Very upset.”

Judge Parker, 5/11/14

She’ll still be having a better Mother’s Day than stepmother-of-the-groom Katherine Parker, though! Sure, she’s being held captive by a vicious mercenary with a score to settle, but … she’ll be fine? Probably? This crazed, terminally ill arms dealer/con man says so?

B.C., 5/11/14

Typically an adolescent queen ant takes off from her birth colony on a “nuptial flight” with a swarm of males, most of whom mate with her and then die within a few days. She falls to earth, loses her wings, and begins pumping out worker-slaves, who build a new colony around her; she does nothing but eat and give birth to new workers for decades, using the sperm from her long-dead lovers that she stored inside her body to fertilize herself. That’s a scenario that would make for an interesting Mother’s Day comic, is what I’m trying to say.

Crankshaft, 5/11/14

“Happy Mother’s day! You’re a terrible person and inept mother who scarred me emotionally! I don’t love you or even like you very much! This is not a joke! It’s very very real.”