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Dennis the Menace, 9/22/11

Mrs. Wilson knows she needs to calm her radical anti-establishment husband down if this encounter is to end without violence. “Now, dear, you and I both know that 911 is a joke, but there’s no need to call him a pig to his face. You’ll just get tasered in the neck again, and I don’t think your heart can take it.”

Judge Parker, 9/22/11

Wow, that’s quite a large amount of cash that Sam and Abbey can just pull out of their bank account on a whim. Do you suppose that all subsequent Judge Parker storylines are going to be more and more transparently about the Spencer-Driver clan’s wealth? Will every strip in April of 2012 just consist of the two of them sitting around counting out hundred-dollar bills, pausing only to occasionally blow their noses into them?

Marvin, 9/22/11

Despite my burning and irrational hatred for Marvin, I have to admit I feel a twinge of sympathy for him in the second panel. Look at his growing sense of panic as he learns that, as his life draws to a close decades from now, even the joys of eating will elude him! Quick, someone tell him something reassuring about old age, like that he’ll finally be able to start wearing diapers again.

Spider-Man, 9/22/11

Yesterday’s post implied that Spider-Man would inspire by sick children by going to the hospital and getting arrested. In fact, he’ll inspire them by going to the hospital and telling them that being a superhero is for suckers and quitting in disgust. We regret the error.

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Funky Winkerbean, 9/20/11

Have you ever had the experience of seeing a word in print and thinking, “Wait, I thought I knew what that meant, but now I’m not so sure! Did she really steal a piece of metal from the machine shop, spend every night in her cell slowly and methodically carving down one end of it into an incredibly sharp point, and then stab her English paper in the kidney and leave it to bleed to death in the prison yard?” It turns out that “shank” as a verb can also refer to a bad shot in golf, so I guess she means that she screwed up on her attempt to write the paper, because if there’s one thing teenage girls go in for when they’re talking to themselves in their room, it’s golf metaphors!

In other news, remember how after the Funky Winkerbean time jump we were supposed to spend more time getting to know the next generation of high-school aged characters? Instead, we’ve mostly gotten Les being smug and maudlin and self-righteous and lusted after by various deluded women. But at last, we now have a genuine teenage plot! It will involve Crazy Harry’s daughter plagiarizing her English paper off the Internet, which will give Les an excellent opportunity to be self-righteous.

Judge Parker, 9/20/11

You know your opening gambit in a negotiation is the right move when it makes your adversary vomit in terror.

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Slylock Fox, 9/19/11

Good lord, what has that fiend Count Weirdly done now? He’s hypnotized these innocent rodeo dudes and forced them to dance about for his entertainment! And the only way Slylock can free them is to unscramble the magic word, which is … money? Huh. I’m thinking that Weirdly didn’t “hypnotize” the cow-poking gentlemen so much as pay them for their dancing services. You know, rodeoing doesn’t pay the bills like it used to, and if a cowboy has to make a little money on the side by showing off his square-dancing skills for a private customer, well, there’s no shame in that. Why are you trying to get in the middle of this wholly innocent and consensual private transaction, Slylock?

Judge Parker and Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/19/11

Say, what’s up in the Woody Wilson-penned soap strips? Well, it looks like Sam and Abbey will be buying a monstrously oversized three-bedroom behemoth that probably isn’t legal to drive on any road in the United States, and Sam, who certainly doesn’t have the specialized certification needed to operate it, is preparing his trademark negotiating technique that will take full advantage of this rapidly bankrupting motor home dealership’s dire financial straits. Meanwhile, the Morgan family is coming to grips with the fact that they also own an indulgent and impractical vehicle that none of them know how to steer. The fact that Sarah’s egregious act of ass-kissing in the face of all reality results in her immediate promotion goes to show that loyalty is more valued than competence within the Morgan clan, which should result in some nautical good times for all of us as the S.S. Rex sinks in some spectacular and hilarious fashion mere minutes after it hits the open seas.