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Archive: Judge Parker

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Something borrowed, something sharp

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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.”

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Will this bunny burst from his gold cocoon on the third day?

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Six Chix, 4/14/14

One of my running jokes that at some level in my mind may not actually be a joke involves the disposal of my remains after my death: in accordance with my will, I will be taxidermied and mounted in a heroic pose — I’m thinking wearing a bearskin and wielding a spear, though of course I will leave room for the whims of the artist — and whichever of my heirs intends to inherit my no doubt vast fortune will be required to display me prominently in their living room. But upon seeing today’s Six Chix, I of course immediately imagined another funeral scenario: a life-sized, anatomically correct chocolate replica of my mortal form would be covered in gold foil and laid out on a bier; after paying their respects, the assembled mourners would be required to peel back the foil and eat the effigy before anyone would be permitted to leave. The best part? Since only the first idea involves my actual corpse, we could do both.

Mark Trail, 4/14/14

Congrats to James Allen, who comments here as The Real Mark Trail, and who has officially taken over for Jack Elrod as Mark Trail’s scribe, transforming the Elrod-ball into the Allen-orb! And he gives us a look at the much darker and edgier direction he’ll be taking the strip right away. Geese, as everyone who has ever lived near a body of water knows, are the worst. They poop everywhere, they’re mean to other birds, they can be extremely aggressive with people, and have huge, powerful wings with which they can impose their cruel will. And yet Mark is an ally with this particular goose-gang, even knowing their leader by name! Welcome to Mark Trail 2.0, where the title character is much more morally ambiguous. Consorting with geese! My word.

Judge Parker, 4/14/14

The parents of the happy couple have been getting on like gangbusters over the course of this wedding weekend, but today we’re learning the real difference between a privileged jurist who dabbles in spy novels and a hardened, amoral arms dealer. While Abbott assembles his own ad hoc army, Alan can only sputter indignantly at how gauche the attacking gang of rival mercenaries is being. “Don’t they know we’re having a wedding here? Don’t they know who I am?”

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I suppose to figure out what “Souphead” is supposed to mean, you have to understand “Jughead”

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Archie, 4/9/14

Oh look, it’s Jughead’s cousin/homunculus “Souphead”, who isn’t any more beloved by the people in this comic strip than he is by us! Anyway, the most disturbing thing in this strip is Archie’s throwaway joke in panel one, which I guess is meant to be a gentle jibe but comes across much more harshly to me. “We have too many Jugheads already! The optimal number of Jugheads: zero. Why do you persist in occupying space and time in our universe, and thus resisting our beneficial Jughead-quantity-rationalization program?”

Judge Parker, 4/9/14

Oh hey, in case you were wondering, Randy and April managed to get officially married before the Gardia brothers’ mercenary force arrived by helicopter gunship, firing dozens of air-to-ground missiles into the screaming wedding party. As you can probably tell from the first panel here, Randy and April wrote their own vows, and I have for the most part spared you from their blandness. I’ll just say that I’m a little disappointed that the phrase “on top of a pile of money that people gave us for no good reason” did not appear.

Momma, 4/9/14

Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma called Francis a tramp! You probably think it’s funny because Momma and/or Mell Lazarus are old and are thus using “tramp” to mean “a person who travels from place to place and does not have a home or much money,” rather than “a woman who has sex with many different men,” which is probably the primary meaning in English today. But considering that Oedipal nightmares are one of this strip’s primary sources of humor, you may be wildly, horribly off-base.