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Beetle Bailey, 11/12/10

I know I should be way, way past the point where I get discombobulated by arbitrary, contextless things happening in Beetle Bailey in order to set up a cheap laugh, but something about Donna here doesn’t strike me as right. Why does she have a “Donna” nameplate on her desk? Doesn’t the fact that Killer addresses her by name in the first panel establish her identity and adequately lay the groundwork for the hilarious URL-based punchline? Also, why is her desk empty but for a single tiny slip of paper, but she has two computers sitting uselessly on the shelf behind her? Is this to establish her “computer savvy,” since obviously anyone who knows how to create a terrifying “web-site” must be surrounded by advanced computer equipment at all times? This comic seems like what happened when the crew at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC heard the phrase “Internet dating” in passing and tried to extrapolate what that might mean without doing any further research.

One of the things that rings false about the appearance of Donna is that the Beetle Bailey is actually fairly stingy about the introduction of named characters, only bringing them in once a decade or so when some great shift in society seems to demand it. The last such character introduced was actually computer nerd Chip Gizmo, which leads me to believe that “Donna” is actually Chip in fairly impressive drag.

Judge Parker, 11/12/10

In the latest in a long series of Judge Parker storylines to focus on the problems of the wealthy and attractive, it seems that ex-Judge Parker is chafing at the confines of his extremely comfortable retirement and wants to go back to his old job of deciding who lives and who dies. But now that his son has been declared Judge Parker for Life in accordance with Spencerville law and traditions, how will he get back into the courtroom? Will he start a whisper campaign impugning his son’s heterosexuality? Or will he settle for his own syndicated judge show on daytime television, where he’ll get to berate and insult defendants unrestrained by the niceties of judicial ethics?

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Your comments of the week in a moment, but first, an exciting photo of a reader wearing Comics Curmudgeon merch! I have been terribly remiss in keeping up my store — surely some t-shirt worthy catch phrase/publicly available clip art combo is out there for the making? — but that hasn’t stopped faithful readers from donning classic merch! For instance, faithful reader KarMann is here modeling a classic “Work them like a claw and call me Randy” t-shirt, made all the more appropriate by the fact that his non-Internet name is, in fact, Randy!

(Take a step into the wayback machine to research the origin of this phrase, though trust me, it doesn’t make that much more sense in context.)

And with that out of the way, brace yourself for your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“There’s still time for this to be the surprise uncovering of Milford’s largest underground oregano ring! ‘I just wanted to cook so that I could find someone that loves me!!’ THERE’S STILL TIME!” –Black Drazon

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Shouldn’t there be some kind of, I don’t know, italics or something to show that bird-momma is groaning and not actually saying ‘Groan’? Or maybe she is, and we learn that the birds who rule this upside down world may have learned the art of annoying clichés like ‘Y is the new X’, but they have yet to master the subtleties of the onomatopoeia.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“Given Marmaduke’s aggression and history of willful disobedience, I assume he was never neutered, which makes this image of two children staring up at his airborne scrotum even more disturbing.” –JC

“‘Hard to please and also gross’, huh? Well, welcome to the Internet!” –Tom Allen

“Explain to me again why Lucky has to go to some other forest when the Johnsons live in the very forest where Lucky is from, you know, the one where he lived with his mother until she stepped away for five minutes and he was stolen by a pair of pink-skinned bipeds? Are they worried about Frank seeking revenge? Leave it to Mark Trail to have witness protection for wild animals, but no local law enforcement to arrest people who trespass or commit assault.” –Mr. Goboto

“That independent thinking and competent decision making must stand Adrian in good stead as a doctor. ‘So, Mr. Harris, I was going to remove your gallbladder as planned, but the anesthesiologist told me that was considered passe nowadays, and so we were going to go for an appendectomy but the nurse said if she had to assist at another of those she would just die of boredom, and then your wife chimed in and well, you know how it is, getting everyone to agree on something, so, long story short: you now have a baboon heart and a smaller nose.'” –Violet

“Yes, only cowards don’t go with their heart. You don’t want me to think you’re a coward do you? DO you?” –TheTJ

“Thanks for pointing out the Tommie story lines. My brain has begun to tune her out. It’s like those Magic Eye things from the ’90s. I stare and squint at A3G for the longest time until you lean over and tell me, ‘It’s about Tommie. Her aunt is in town or something,’ and then I pretend to see it so we can move on to making fun of Crankshaft.” –Thinks He’s Brenda Starr

“I don’t really believe that Adrian is obsessed with the opinions of others, though: if that were true, how could she still have that haircut?” –Trilobite

“OH LOOK IT’S ANOTHER LUMPY-FACED WHITE LADY WITH ORANGE HAIR. Apartment 3G is turning into Being John Malkovich, but with lumpy-faced white ladies with orange hair. I guess this one has a double chin to indicate she’s not Ruby (whose distinguishing accessory is dorky bows) or Margo’s shooty stepmum (gun) or Aunty Iris (jaunty turtleneck and ‘That Girl’ flip) or the makeover lady (equally unappealing daughter) BUT JESUS CHRIST WHY DOES EVERYONE IN THIS STRIP HAVE TO BE A LUMPY-FACED WHITE LADY WITH ORANGE HAIR.” –JupiterPluvius

“Apparently Thel was on the phone with Blondie, signing off with ‘Who’s got the most improbable bust-to-waist ratio now, bitch?'” –Uncle Ritzy Fritz

“I’m taking the laughable popularity of Les’s book — I’ve seen shorter lines for Saul Bellow — as an indication of just how awful life in Westview is. ‘Lisa Moore? She’s one of the lucky few who made it out of here, right? What’s her secret?'” –Spunde

“What’s sad with Apartment 3-G is the lost opportunity. You have the perfect setup — ‘Who is Prissy, Mrs. Bloom?’ — and then no punchline at all. Mrs. Bloom could have at least responded, ‘Why, Margo, of course!’ before launching into how she’s actually referring to her cat, who, like Margo, drinks milk from a saucer and frequently bathes and sleeps.” –Dood

“This is why Frank in Mark Trail would be a great governor: complete transparency. Every shady deal or legislative malfeasance would be shouted out an open window to the waiting press below.” –ArchieNemesis

“I’m OK with Frank’s pro-homicide platform, but how’s his prostate?” –Walker of Dog

“I particularly like the way The Greg & Mort Walker Amalgamated Humor Corporation, LLC decided to put ‘doggie bag’ in quotes, as though it’s some obscure, industry-specific phrase that the rest of us who aren’t ‘in the biz’ might not recognize, which could, in turn, lead us to mistakenly assume that Sarge has simply given up all pretense of dignity and is now blatantly raiding Otto’s food bowl in broad daylight.” –Ringo Beaumont III

“That’s the shittiest looking weed ever. Those are totally XXL Chalupas from Taco Bell.” –Hamsterpants

“Dennis appears to be stealing his dialogue from Family Circus. This is a good move for him — few things are as menacing as Jeffy’s dead eyes.” –Master Mahan

“I think the reason Crankshaft is complaining about the local Cleveland football team in the most generic sense is that someone must have realized how bad it would look to have a comic strip with an angry old white man complaining relentlessly about ‘the Browns.'” –Lorne

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!

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Mark Trail, 10/21/10

Some of my readers rushed to declare Friday’s Mark Trail, in which our hero leaps over a barbed-wire-topped fence to knock a rifle out of a senator’s hands, to be the greatest Mark Trail ever. Well, I hope you all feel a little sheepish now that you’ve seen today’s strip, a glorious single-panel tableau in which Future Governor Frank kicks a fawn in the butt while his stepdaughter, Mark, and the man whose political patronage he’s been so desperately seeking all look on in horror. We of course can’t declare this strip the best of all time — for, in a world that has brought forth such wondrousness, how can we put limits on the potential joys of the future? — but it sure is pretty great.

Shoe, 10/21/10

Something doesn’t seem right here: I thought that, in the Shoe world, Roz serves coffee and comfort food from a diner counter on a tree branch, whereas booze is dished out in smoky bars that do not appear to be tree-based structures. But this is mere nitpickery, I know! I should just enjoy the hilarious joke here, about how the strip’s main characters use their crippling alcoholism as an excuse for being cheapskates.

Luann, 10/21/10

So, yeah, I haven’t really been able to bring myself to comment on the “Brad and the gang deal with the serious problems of stalking and domestic violence with Three’s Company-worthy hijinks” plotline over the past few weeks. But then I got to today and saw Brad and TJ talking about ladies underwear, and I thought to myself, “No way in hell am I suffering through this alone.” SO HERE IT IS! LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT THEM TALKING ABOUT PANTIES!

Judge Parker, 10/21/10

Ha ha, it wouldn’t be a Judge Parker story if one of the already wealthy principals didn’t become even richer at the end of it. Sam plays golf with a guy for 10 minutes and sees him get killed? Boom! A $100,000 advance check for Judge Parker! Sam violates legal ethics willy-nilly to sort of half-assedly solve a mystery? Wham! A cool hundred large for him too! Now the hour or so he spent helping Jules set up an Excel spreadsheet will net him a third of what will no doubt turn out to be an insanely lucrative business. It’s a good thing his house is so big, because he’s going to need someplace to put his huge piles of stupid money.