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Mary Worth, 8/21/12

Wilbur and Dawn recover from their TV-induced “people came together to help one another” hallucination and realize that life is, after all, brutal. And that they both kinda miss Dave. Back to square one: the perfect Mary Worth story arc.

OK, POOL PARTY!

Herb and Jamaal, 8/21/12

It’s so unfair, because Jamaal really was checking out her blouse — everybody is saying “bold, flowery prints” for fall, but Jamaal thinks the only way to avoid ’70’s Earth Mother connotations is to build the look on a classically constructed garment. And the stitching on this one is simply slovenly, it’s a size too large, and for God’s sake tuck it in. Seriously, girl, you go out in public dressed like that? And slap people when they notice? Bitch.

Shoe, 8/21/12

P. Martin Shoemaker (Shoe), an editor at the Treetops Tattler, documents a single exception to the pending collapse of his industry.

“Say, you’re not by any chance reading Shoe, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/21/12

THE EYES OF SNUFFY PEER INTO YOUR SOUL! FEAR HIM!

Judge Parker, 8/21/12

Sam begins to suspect that all Avery’s talk of passion, seduction, Old Hardy, wild life, and prevailing in the end may not be entirely about fishing. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, our Sam.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Momma, 8/17/12

If you’re wondering why Francis would scurry away from the beach in terror after just looking at a nagging sign his mother made, despite the fact that she isn’t even present to enforce her insane edict … take a look at the handwriting on the sign, which Francis easily identifies as his mother’s. Now take a look at the handwriting in his thought balloon. Does it look … familiar? Can you imagine the horror of having Momma’s voice in your head, every time you think? Leaving you always wondering whether your thoughts are even yours at all? This whole beach situation is quite frankly the least of Francis’s problems right now.

Spider-Man, 8/17/12

Just to briefly catch you up on the exciting newspaper Spider-Man action: Spidey was trying to figure out where he could find Clown-9 so they could have a showdown, then he saw an ad in the paper for a circus, and he said, basically, “A circus! Clowns love circuses! He’ll be there!” This seemed like not the most air-tight sequence of reasoning, which even Spider-Man has figured out, because now he’s just going on TV to tell Clown-9 when and where to show up so the two of them can engage in violent, deadly combat. Some might think that he could have chosen any arbitrary spot as the site for their battle. “I’ve a message for Clown-9! I challenge you to a showdown tomorrow night at the old abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town!” But no, best to do it a the circus, where hundreds of innocent people, including many children, will be gathered to watch. Good planning, super-hero!

Six Chix, 8/17/12

Hey, at least bug-eyed crawling-on-the-floor lady admits that something’s wrong with her, horribly-stooped-over seriously-are-you-a-hunchback lady!

Judge Parker, 8/17/12

As we’ve seen, Avery’s negotiating strategy involves agreeing to everyone’s demands immediately and giving them as much money as possible, so yes, I’m willing to believe that people rarely say no to him.

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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.