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Judge Parker, 8/5/12

The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, it was at the tail end of a big Hitchock binge, and so one of the things I found most striking about it was that it was about half of a typical Hitchcock movie. Which is to say: As in most of his movies, we get a cast of quirky character trading snappy dialogue, and start to get a sense of dysfunction underlying their interpersonal dynamics. Usually, the story’s excitement would emerge from these relationships fairly early in the movie; but in The Birds, whatever plot you think is brewing is suddenly and violently pushed aside by an incomprehensible apocalypse, as (uh, spoilers, I guess) every bird in the world suddenly goes insane and starts attacking humanity. It’s well and truly shocking in particular if you’re a Hitchcock fan, because you watch one of his meticulously constructed universes suddenly shatter under assault from an external force that is never explained.

This is a long way of me saying that, if the current round of enjoyable but predictable Judge Parker antics were abruptly interrupted by a terrifying and bloody raccoon revolution, I for one would be fully in favor of such a development.

Mary Worth, 8/5/12

Guys, sorry I left you hanging on the Mary Worth boat-plot — metaphorically, I mean, not literally hanging off the side of a listing cruise boat, like these guys. Anyway, Wilbur didn’t fall to his death and it looks like our gang will be rescued by a helicopter instead? Which, call me a swimming-snob if you must, but is it really easier to pluck half a dozen terrified passengers from the tilted deck of a rapidly sinking ship than it is for those passengers to, say, swim the length of two swimming pools through warm coastal non-oceanic water to safety? Tell me I’m crazy! Am I crazy?

Rex Morgan, 8/5/12

I’ll probably get sick of “Rex Morgan smiles to himself while taking flack from sassy old people” plotlines at some point, but for now, I say bring ’em on! “Tell me something I don’t know!” Rex says to Melissa, trying to figure out how to get into the space suddenly left open in her will by her ungrateful niece.

Spider-Man, 8/5/12

As if you couldn’t tell from the entire run of Newspaper Spider-Man to this point, spider-sense can not predict or protect against public humiliation.

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Judge Parker, 8/2/12

If you haven’t been following the storyline of Judge Parker — and let’s face it, you probably haven’t — it’s gone something like this: the mean people at the run-down fishing lodge suddenly became nice people, but it turns out it’s only because they’re secretly in league with (or perhaps secretly are the same people as) the owners of the marijuana field Avery accidentally fell into and they just wanted to get Sam and Avery out on the river so that they could steal Avery’s camera and get the marijuana pictures off of it, except that Avery took his camera fishing with him, foiling their evil plans. And now they’re presumably planning to lure Sam and Avery down into their cellar and imprison and/or murder them there. This is a good example of how Sam’s charmed life has dangerously lowered his defenses. “Why yes, I am wealthy and good-looking and well-connected, so it totally makes sense that you’re going to give me some luxury item for free. I’ll just trundle down into your dank basement and take my pick!”

Mark Trail, 8/2/12

Time in Mark Trail passes in a surreal, dream-like fashion, so who even knows how long ago it was that Rusty saw the poachers shoot that bighorn from a plane. Has it been days? It seems like it might have been days. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Rusty, is what you really want to do is get a good, stomach-turning picture of some rotting sheep-flesh, with the more flies the better, if you want any respect from the avant-garde art world. You should actually crop out the poachers’ faces if you want to emphasize life’s impersonal cruelty, as I assume you do.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/2/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Jamaal is farting constantly, and also because Herb is going to die of a massive heart attack!

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Dick Tracy, 7/6/12

So the new Dick Tracy writer-artist team of Joe Stanton and Mike Curtis have been on the job for more than a year now, and I haven’t been discussing the strip here as often as I did in its previous iteration, mostly because the art is pretty good and the plots are no longer marked by incomprehensible dream-like lunacy punctuated by horrific violence. If I have one major criticism, it’s that so much of the plots seem to have been aimed at assembling all of the strip’s classic villains into one overarching criminal syndicate, which has gotten a bit tiresome to those of us not up on eighty years of Tracy lore. But over the past few week’s the assembled baddies have been caught up in an epic gunfight as Tracy and the cops bust in to make arrests, with a fair amount of carnage ensuing.

Which makes me wonder — what if the last 15 months have just been carefully putting all the pieces of the storied Dick Tracy rogues gallery in place just so they can all be killed in a crazed, botched police raid? And then the new team can say “Ha ha, this strip is ours now, we’re going to make up all sorts of new crazies?” Probably won’t happen, but it would amuse me. Plus I kind of want to see this Indonesian action film called The Raid about a police raid on a huge gang-controlled high-rise tower that goes horribly wrong (here’s the trailer, but be warned that it’s crazy violent) but in practice I probably don’t have the stomach for that much movie violence so maybe this Dick Tracy is as close as I’m going to actually tolerate.

Judge Parker, 7/6/12

Wow, for once things are not going right for our wealthy Judge Parker heroes! They’re being tailed by marijuana farming hoodlums, their fishing lodge is a dump, their reservations never went through, and the proprietress is going to assault them with a hammer at any moment. Don’t worry, though, there are still breasts, so the world makes some sort of sense.

Mark Trail, 7/6/12

If you need more evidence that Mark Trail plots are recycled from another era, imagine a contemporary American parent sending their child (or hideously ugly ward, in this case) off into the wilderness to go take some pictures of sheep. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of it, because children need to learn more self-reliance than this modern crop is picking up, plus “Rusty in danger” plots are extremely hilarious.

Apartment 3-G, 7/6/12

“So, it’s completely safe, when competent people do it, but it’ll be really dangerous with me in charge. Lemme just scan the entry for it on WebMD and then let’s get started!”