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Judge Parker, 5/7/08

Hey, kids, welcome to Judge Parker, where nothing ever happens for months and months and months, but when it happens, it really happens! A sexy (admittedly, we can’t see her face, but this being Judge Parker, “sexy” is a good bet) lady terrorist hell-bent on revenge! A cancer-ridden old lady in a wheelchair transformed into an unwilling human bomb! A battle royal between an enraged woman and an ex-Navy SEAL with no legs! Enjoy your next several days of thrilling action before we get back to the boring. In panel two, Momma Steve’s creepy, flesh-colored gag makes her look like some kind of mouthless horror, which hopefully indicates that the denouement of this story will be as deviant as the one in this strip’s pervy trip to France.

Crock, 5/7/08

I’m sort of charmed by the phrase “marked-down polyester from Wal-Mart,” which implies that you can go into the world’s largest retailer and buy great bolts of cloth to take home to your wife, who will sew them into the clothes for you and your children. It reads like it’s been written by someone who’s heard second-hand about developments in retail since the 19th century, but has never actually been in a store per se.

Update: Uh, apparently you can buy fabric at Wal-Mart with which to make your own clothes, like they did in olden days. Ha ha! Josh is a moron!

Ziggy, 5/7/08

Ziggy is so sad and lonely that he’s turned to the bottle; but, far from forgetting his problems, in his drunken state he’s become even more maudlin, and is now just sitting at the table by himself weeping openly. The waiter, profoundly unsettled by the raw emotional pain on display, covers up his discomfort by cracking wise.

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Luann, 4/29/08

You know what? I like Gunther. You know, he’s dorky, and he’s even got some hobbies (like sewing) don’t seem cool even to other dorks, but he also seems totally comfortable with who he is, something I wish that my dorky high school self could have been. His little speech to Luann in panel two is both eminently sensible and very sweet.

…and then, of course, he pulls out the horrifying fetishistic pig head. You just know there’s a ball gag behind that snout. Next come the handcuffs.

Slylock Fox, 4/29/08

Yeah, laugh it up, birds! You know, poor Baldy McMustache has a dull office job that crushes his soul, and the only thing that keeps him going is his hobby watching the beautiful birds as they fly and sing in his yard. Maybe he just wanted to make the yard a little more inviting for you, to give a little something back for the hours of happiness he’s gotten from bird-watching. Sure, he doesn’t have particularly good carpentry skills, but it’s the thought that counts! The least you could do is coo politely. But no, you just have to humiliate him in front of his kid. Well, I hope you like poisoned birdseed, you ungrateful feathered bastards, because you’d better believe that’s what’s going into the feeder tomorrow morning.

Judge Parker, 4/29/08

I don’t mean to take anything away from No-Legged Steve’s awesome lawyering skills, but it’s easy to do a week’s worth of work in a day when you had your morning coffee a month ago. In fact, by my reckoning, Steve could have actually done four times as much legal eaglin’ as he actually pulled off! Way to go, slacker.

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Judge Parker, 4/27/08

Well, it’s been a few months since Sophie stopped being a pantsuit-wearing prematurely aged prepubescent and became a belly-baring tweenage fashion plate, and, heck, I guess that’s the sort of thing you expect from a girl that age. What’s much sadder is her transformation from a borderline-Asperger case, tethered to her laptop and constantly crunching climate change data, to someone who has fully bought into junior high’s draconian rules of social conformity. “Hey, Mr. Dickens is a weirdo! And everyone knows that people who deviate even slightly from the norm don’t deserve privacy or civil rights!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/27/08

We can already see the contours of the upcoming Rex Morgan storyline: the noble bureaucrats of the public health department versus the hate-filled harridans whose children died in an epidemic. “He must have been talking to the Wagners before their son even died!” Why, the Wagners probably deliberately infected their child with MRSA as part of an elaborate scheme to get a sweet financial settlement from the flush-with-cash county government! Monsters! Monsters with dead children!

Panel from Mary Worth, 4/27/08

“But she doesn’t deserve to see your hideous deformed and lumpy face, so please wear this paper bag, dear.”