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Beetle Bailey, 3/8/14

Saturdays in Beetle Bailey are for the grandiosely dysfunctional Halftrack marriage; today’s installment at least has something resembling mean-spirited cheer compared to some of the more frankly traumatizing examples we’ve seen. Anyway, I’m not sure what interpretation here is more unsettling: that Mrs. Halftrack is desperate for sexual validation and doesn’t know what “person of interest” means and, as revenge for everything, the general refuses to tell her, or that Mrs. Halftrack and the local constabulary have some weird erotic roleplay going on and she’s rubbing it in her husband’s face.

Hi and Lois, 3/8/14

Still, today’s Hi and Lois wins the coveted award for Most Chilling Marital Misanthropy In A Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC Strip. I’m genuinely impressed by the attention to detail shown in panel one, in which Irma has the key to her husband’s basement prison casually dangling from her wrist. “She’ll let us out in a few hours!” Thirsty proclaims cheerfully, not realizing the he will never see the sun again.

Judge Parker, 3/8/14

Yes, the invention of armed, remote-controlled unmanned drones raises troubling questions about the future of armed conflict and the ability of hegemonic states to prosecute low-intensity warfare against non-state actors largely in secret, without expending much by way of blood or treasure. But if this technological advance leads to the insufferable Parkers being blown to bits by a remotely launched Predator missile, couldn’t we say that it was all, in the end, worthwhile?

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Judge Parker, 3/7/14

April’s dad may be an amoral arms merchant who deals with ex-Romanian secret police and has a “retirement fund” made up entirely of blood diamonds, but at least he likes Judge Parker Senior’s terrible book, which puts him one step above the real monsters: liberal Ivy League college professors.

Heathcliff, 3/7/14

Heathcliff only loves his owner-family for financial reasons.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/7/14

Herb has been having sex with the restaurant’s catering truck for years, but is now starting to question his auto-monogamy.

Pluggers, 3/7/14

Pluggers’ electronics are covered with more disgusting slobber and drool than you can imagine.

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Judge Parker, 3/1/14

I was going to apologize for not keeping you up to date on the conversation between April and her dad, but then I realized that it’s literally lasted two weeks and can be easily summed up as follows: April’s dad is on the run from some Romanian weapons-smugglers he’s fallen out with, and now they’ve managed to plant a tracker on April’s car and are on their way to this impregnable jungle fortress/cancer research facility, presumably travelling via heavily armed helicopter gunship. Good times appear to be in the narrative hopper, though, if the sinister grin of bloodthirsty mercenary/cheerful groundskeeper “Abbott” as he promises that April and Randy’s wedding ceremony will not be unduly disturbed by the endless screaming of their enemies is any indication.

Blondie, 3/1/14

Nobody in this strip is what you’d call “introspective,” so I guess Elmo is as likely a candidate as any to stumble onto self-reflective questions of ontology. Dagwood, who can only dimly grasp the philosophical thought processes this line of questioning has provoked in his young pal, is probably wrong about what’s going on in that closet; it’s more likely that Elmo is just using the dark, warm space to go into a fetal position, having arrived much too quickly at the “why is there something instead of nothing” problem.

Spider-Man, 3/1/14

It’s good to see that New York’s criminal element has a clear-eyed perspective on exactly how much of a threat Spider-Man is to them (namely, not much).