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Judge Parker, 2/14/12

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Did you ask for a sexy, sinister assassitrix from your Valentine, the syndicated continuity strip Judge Parker? Well, you got it! Monique Zatari will almost certainly be the villain in the current confusing Judge Parker whodunnit; her character exists not only to stir America’s most erotic fears about Middle Easterners, but also to right a four-year-old wrong. Remember the last time the good white people of Spencer-Parkerburg were menaced by a lady of Islamic extraction? Remember how we never got a sense of the size or shapeliness of her breasts? Well, you won’t be able to say that about Monique Zatari, by God.

Crankshaft, 2/14/12

I know I’m on the record as publicly not caring about the chronological inconsistencies that arise from the various time jump shenanigans in the Funkyverse, i.e., why did everyone in Funky Winkerbean discontinuously get 10 years older but their world is still contemporary with ours, did Crankshaft jump forward with Funky Winkerbean, etc. But I do find a different kind of time-problem interesting: namely, when a strip’s essentially timeless nature (i.e., it’s always happening now, no matter how long it’s been running with the characters the same age) runs up against decisions to fix important bits of character development to real points in history. If Crankshaft really was a minor league player in 1940 whose career was cut short by the outbreak of World War II, that makes him at minimum 88 years old now. Which means he … probably shouldn’t be working as a school bus driver? I’m sure that there are 88-year-olds out there now who do a fine job of driving large commercial vehicles, but they’re few and far between. Kudos to the strip for sticking to its guns, I guess, but maybe a quiet retrofitting of Crankshaft’s service to Korea might be in order?

Mary Worth, 2/14/12

Soooo … much as I’ve enjoyed Mary’s Dinner With The Moral Abyss That Is Nola so far, it is starting to get a bit repetitive! And Mary’s offer of advice reminds us that Nola arranged this meeting to get Mary’s thoughts on whether her boyfriend is cheating on her; of course, Mary would have no real way to offer an informed opinion on the matter, since Nola hasn’t supplied any details but instead has gone off on a long discursis on how awesome it is to have sex with other people’s husbands and not care about anybody’s opinions about anything. I’m beginning to think that maybe Nola is just stalling Mary while her accomplices are kidnapping Dr. Jeff or clearing out Mary’s safe deposit box or something. You might not approve of that, but Nola only has it all because she’s determined not to let anything stop her!

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Hey, everybody, I’m back! And let’s get right into the horror, because when you think of the holidays around the end of the year, you think of sheer gut-wrenching terror. So, what was the most terrifying event that the newspaper comics industry belched out during my absence?

Panel from Judge Parker, 12/23/11

Was it when Randy’s language-generation unit started shorting out, producing a sentence that was almost but not quite something an English-speaking human would say?

Panel from Gil Thorp, 12/24/11

Was it when Gil stared at you with his meaty face and empty, soulless eyes, wishing you a Merry Christmas as a thousand tiny explosions twinkled behind him?

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/24/11

Was it when Mary Worth tried to make your head explode, with her mind?

Panel from Judge Parker, 12/25/11

Was it the moment that you realized that you were forbidden to even open your Christmas presents in the privacy of your own home until Sophie gave you permission?

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/26/11

Was it when Lu Ann started hearing Margo’s voice, even when Margo wasn’t present?

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 12/29/11

Was it when lovable Zero was revealed to be Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies?

Panel from Mark Trail, 1/1/12

Was it when we learned that the deformed child-thing known as “Rusty” was dimly aware that time passes outside the Lost Forest compound, and that humans traditionally make “resolutions” to mark the beginning of a new year? What sort of “resolutions” does the Rusty-creature “need” to make?

Dick Tracy, 12/24/11

Anyway, terrifying as all of those were, none of them could compare to the night when Dick Tracy and his wife desecrated the memory of the baby Jesus by engaging in Linus-Sally sex roleplay. Gross!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/28/11

When Dan Diller scrawled “TOMMIE” on one of his old Allman Brothers 8-tracks and told her it was her new album, that was really more “pathetic” than “terrifying.”

And what does the new year have in store for us? More of Spider-Man dodging his responsibilities, I bet!

Spider-Man, 1/2/12

“I was about to tackle these hoods myself, until Thor came along! Hopefully someone will come along soon to take care of Thor for me?”

Anyway, I’m back on my usual routine tomorrow morning, promise. But, as threatened, I must use the beginning of the month to remind you of the existence of my various social networking shenanigans! If you want to keep up with my doings while you waste time on the Internets, feel free to follow me on:

• Twitter!
• Facebook!
• Tumblr!
• Google Plus!

I post more or less the same stuff to each of these, so if you should probably pick your favorite service and just follow me there rather than subscribing to all of them.

No new COTW until Friday, but still I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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A sad note here before we launch into this week’s top comments: Eduardo Barreto, who took over the Judge Parker art duties from original artist Harold LeDoux, has passed away. His tenure at Judge Parker was cut short when he contracted meningitis a few years ago, and (unconfirmed) word is that his death was from complications from that disease. He had a fairly extensive comic book background, but to me he’ll always be the man who transformed Judge Parker from an odd-looking relic into a strip about hilarious sexy people doing hilariously boring things — and he got the better end of that team-up. Thanks, Eduardo.

And now, your comment of the week!

“A rolodex? Fancy elitist animal monsters! In my day we just scrawled the names of friends into the wall behind our letter-writin’ desks.” –bunivasal

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Dick Tracy puts a cunning plan into motion to learn the identity of his assailent. He waits until some bullets whistle past, then compares the grouping against his database of ‘Accuracy of Malformed Villain Attempts to Kill Dick Tracy’ (AMVAKDT). ‘Amateur’, he mutters, as he crafts a crude but gruesome death trap out of studio lights and gaffer tape.” –Lesser Whark

“If you’re like me — and I hope you’re not — you probably read that last panel as foreshadowing that Aunt May’s dessert would cause a gastrointestinal calamity to such a degree as could only be labeled ‘THUNDER OVER ASGARD!'” –Chareth Cutestory

“Pack of vicious eeevil wolves? Thousand-pound bear on the defensive? Mark Trail demands more carnage! Send in the housepets!” –Nate

“WTF is going on with Mary’s left hand in panel 2? Is she supposed to be whispering behind her hand? (If so, her hand is in the wrong place.) Is she pantomiming ‘phone’ because Bree’s not very bright? (If so, her hand is in the wrong place.) Is she trying to keep her brain from exploding and squirting out her ear? In that case, her hand might be in the right place.” –wossname

“The inter-species marriages have another impact on plugger mortality rates: diet. This can take several forms. Normally the carnivore-spouse attacks the herbivore spouse, eats her and then–because there is no one around to do the Heimlich maneuver–chokes to death on her bones. Marriages between competing species of herbivores are less dramatic in their lethality, but when it comes down to a grass versus grain diet, or leaves versus roots, usually one spouse crowds out the other out of the ecosystem, resulting in a slow death from starvation. Of course, when one spouse is an egg-layer death genarlly comes by spatula or skillet after the husband asks the wife to cook more of her own eggs. Pluggers do not believe in any form of birth control.” –Droopy Says

RMMD: “You go take care of Kelly! I’ll continue to commit felony assault!” –Cloudbuster

“Oh, Dolly. It’s PJ. Of course you need to tell him why. You’ve spent, what, four decades telling PJ why. ‘Why does Mommy cry some afternoons and drink cooking sherry?’ and ‘Why does Daddy sometimes look longingly over the fourth wall at Ted Forth?’ and ‘Why do I keep hitting myself?’ are probably a representative sample of all the whys Dolly has had to tell PJ over the years.” –Lily Sincere

Thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• Wussie: In praise of spineless men: I don’t mean to be a bother, but would you mind if I mentioned Wussie: In Praise of Spineless Men, the new essay collection from Josh Muggins? Author of How to Pick Up Japanese Chicks and Doom Your Immortal Soul? Ring any bells? No? Well, if you change your mind, it’s at Amazon, B&N, and iTunes. Sorry to interrupt. Really.

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