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Judge Parker, 8/17/13

Uh oh, is there trouble in paradise for Randy and April? This is a good example of why you need to discuss your closely held values with your partner before making a lifelong commitment. It seems that Randy, as a judge, believes in the rule of law and civil rights and all that namby-pamby liberal garbage, whereas April is an shadowy undercover operative who believes in kill kill kill kill KILL and then letting God sort ’em out, maybe, if He has adequate security clearance. She may have already thrown one suspected evildoer overboard, so this theoretical discussion might get a lot more concrete real fast! How will our newlyweds resolve this conflict of worldviews? (Probably it will be resolved when April kills Randy with an untraceable poison.)

Archie, 8/17/13

OBJECTION, this Jughead joke is not about Jughead’s laziness or his voracious appetite or his aversion to intimacy with women or his endless trend-chasing, and those are the only aspects of his personality. You can’t just add whimsical castle-sitting into the mix this late in the game!

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Slylock Fox (panel), 8/11/13

In a neglected roadside nature museum sits a dusty diorama labeled “The Eagle.” But there is no eagle — just the shattered skeleton of a fox lying on a patch of bloodstained dirt near a few tufts of reddish fur and what might be part of an ear. The yellowing card reads, “The diet of the American Bald Eagle is almost entirely fish. An eagle will not attack a fox unless it competes for the eagle’s food or otherwise provokes it.”

What I’m saying is don’t piss off the eagle, Sly. I mean just look at him, Jeez.

Beetle Bailey (panels), 8/11/13

Oh look, it’s Beetle’s Dad! Did you know he’s also the father of Lois Flagston from Hi and Lois? His wife starves him until he completes the work she’s assigned! Just like in the Army!

Hi and Lois, 8/11/13

No starvation for Hi — Lois keeps meat on those bones with a steady diet of nutritious soups. But his family’s relentless petty demands give him no peace, and drive him by degrees to the farthest margins of his home. Lois is blind to his suffering — this is just the way families are, isn’t it?

Judge Parker (panel), 8/11/13

I’ll spare you the cheesecake, money porn, and blocky “romantic” banter (well, most of it) in today’s Judge Parker, but floating there in the final panel is proof that Randy’s fianceé is an original badass. That’s right — the minute she and Randy split up to evade the mystery woman in the floppy hat, CIApril confronted her and stone-cold threw her hat in the water. Final warning, too: if she stalks them even one more time, April will tell all the girls in homeroom Mystery Gal’s a total skank.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Edge City, 8/6/13

Oh hey it’s Edna and Morris Not-Ardin, off to visit America’s battlefields in their new RV. I hope they have fun and all, but what is the deal with this guy’s face? Has he got two mouths? An extra ear, with teeth? Is he some kind of weird Mr. Magoo/Popeye hybrid? Is that an enormous chaw of Mail Pouch parked in what just might be his cheek? For me, his image keeps flipping back and forth like one of those ambiguous figures from Psych 101:

Edna lets it all pass. She’s got her own problems, coping with the oral aftermath of her horrific trombone accident.

Hi and Lois, 8/6/13

And then one day, Hi Flagston just gave up. “Fetch me the gin, Lois.”

Apartment 3-G, 8/6/13

Margo snuffs out an alarming flicker of empathy as she spins around the room.

Judge Parker, 8/6/13

I only read Judge Parker for the articles, but here’s some eye candy — and a challenge — for the oglers in the audience. The challenge is this: do oglers of pretty comic-strip women ogle other representations of pretty women, such as mannequins? If so, would they ogle drawings of mannequins, such as those presented in panel one? Are features like heads and knees essential to this exercise? And how far does it go, the ogling: would it extend to a photo in a cartoon of a sketch of the shadow of a statue of a woman? What role does the quality of representation play, relative to the attractiveness of the original subject? I have to say, Judge Parker wouldn’t have been my first source for a deconstruction of male gaze theory, but there you have it.

Rhymes with Orange, 8/6/13

Lady, your problem is not the obsolete phone — it’s the renegade car.

— Uncle Lumpy