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Phantom, 5/3/13

I don’t expect any of you to understand what’s happening in this strip, seeing as I read the Phantom daily and can barely tell you what’s going on. But I am super charmed by the fact that pilot Ted West (who is flying jet airplanes for drug dealers, I think?) has a card in his wallet with a picture of an old-timey balloon on it where he refers to himself as an “aviation professional.” I guess sinister African drug lords really appreciate whimsy!

Judge Parker, 5/3/13

Say, remember when Sophie was a lilac pantsuit wearing spookily adult-like child-nerd, but then cheerleaders were mean to her and so she decided to become a cheerleader, as revenge? Well, as Uncle Lumpy once demonstrated, strip time flows extremely slowly in the Parkerverse, but that all happened like four or five years ago in real time, so we’re pretty much right on schedule for her to have flowered into a designer sunglasses-wearing, road-raging mean girl. I love Sam’s “OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I CREATED” look in panel three.

Marmaduke, 5/3/13

Aww, isn’t that cute! These kids think that if they find a little toddler and sacrifice him to Marmaduke, he won’t devour them too! (He is totally going to devour them.)

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Spider-Man, 4/23/13

A long-running and beloved franchise like Spider-Man is often caught in a dilemma of its own success: how can it keep topping itself? For instance, Spider-Man, a heroic crime fighter with strength and powers beyond that of ordinary humans, has in the past been disabled by ordinary gangster who hit him in the back of the head with a club and a falling brick that accidentally fell on his head. What storyline could be more exciting, more thrilling than this? Today we have the answer: Spider-Man knocking himself unconscious by accidentally backing into a pipe. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!! His only weakness is the one weakness he shares with just about everybody: a violent blow to the head.

Judge Parker, 4/23/13

Judge Parker has set up one a though experiment: is there an investment so risky and bone-headed that even a member of the Spencer-Driver clan could lose money on it? Neddy has written a $60,000 check to her new friends, do-gooders who build water filtration systems for developing nations, with the promise that they’ll literally pay her back double as soon as they sign some deal with the U.N. It’s all right there in a contract that one of said friends drew up! Will Neddy finally feel the shame of financial failure? (Haha, of course not, probably they’ll pay her back triple instead of double, just because.)

Beetle Bailey, 4/23/13

Oh, look, Beetle Bailey is taking a day off from its usual semi-senile military antics to present you with the most horrifying thing you’ve ever seen! Haha, are you tired of dry, lifeless hamburgers, Sarge? Why not enjoy this burger? It’s made up of flesh that’s been shredded into innumerable tendrils by an enormous industrial meat grinder; yet somehow, impossibly, that flesh is still alive, still moving, those tendrils writhing and squirming. The abomination has no eyes, so it cannot see, yet somehow it still senses the presence of another living thing, and so it drags itself impossibly across the plate, leaving an oozing trail of blood behind. It moves ever so slowly, and Sarge is paralyzed in terror as it twitches towards him. It hungers, he knows; it hungers for revenge, and to feed. He feels the clammy touch as the leading edge of this pulsating meat-mass touches his hand. He wants to run, wants to scream. But he cannot.

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Family Circus, 4/7/13

Yes, thought Billy. Books. Learning. His teachers and parents had put forth so much effort trying to convince him that he needed to take some time away from the TV to expand his mind a little. He had reacted with sullen, stubborn resistance, as always. But eventually, one day when he was bored, he started picking up some of these books everyone seemed to think were so great. Just to pass the time, you know. And soon he was hooked. There was so much to know! Each fact lead to another. Something new to learn. And each new fact, each new field of study, contributed to his understanding of the world and his future place in it. Specifically, his future place in charge of it. How could he come to rule over all unless he were the smartest man alive? So Billy kept reading. Kept learning. Kept planning. The world didn’t seem so big anymore. Didn’t seem so strange and inexplicable. It was a problem you could solve. It was small enough that you could shut it up in a box, a box with a locked door, and only Billy would hold the key. You hear that, world? You’d better stay on Billy’s good side. You’d better be real nice to him. Because someday, he’s going to be in charge of how much air and sunshine you get.

Judge Parker, 4/7/13

Ha ha, looks like Judge Emeritus Parker isn’t changing his mind about the unmitigated hellscape that is marriage! That face in panel four is one of the greatest examples of humiliated petulance on an adult that sequential art has ever seen. Glory in it!

This being Judge Parker the judge is also right to assume that this pith helmet is the best money can buy. Like, literally. If you used advanced mathematics and materials science and economics to create the most durable, lightweight, and expensive replacement for old-fashioned pith available, you would get the stuff in that helmet. It’s probably made from the bones of endangered tropical birds, tempered with the tears of children attending America’s top-rated non-boarding private schools, and forged in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Panels from Spider-Man, 4/7/13

There are other panels that come between these two, but you don’t need them. “Well, I tried and failed to find the bad guy. Now it’s the other guy’s problem! I wonder if he’ll have time to grab a bite to eat, what with his busy schedule of being a better superhero than I am.”

Crankshaft, 4/7/13

They say that keeping physically active is a great way to stave off dementia as you get older, though obviously it doesn’t work in every case.