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Judge Parker, 2/14/20

Well, it looks like Judge Parker is about to descend into meta-narrative as our soap-opera-strip town becomes the backdrop to an in-universe soap opera TV show, at least until April gets mad about lack of creative control and emerges from hiding to murder everybody. Mostly I’m excited because I’ve just realized that the Netflix exec in charge of all this looks uncannily like Amy Klobuchar, which makes sense considering her main role in the story so far has been to be mean to everyone around her.

Family Circus, 2/14/20

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that these kids have only sort of vaguely touched Ma Keane’s Valentine’s Day chocolates with their teeth. Does anyone think these two melonheads have the self-control and discipline necessary to not gobble down the candy as soon as they put it in their mouths? I definitely don’t, and you expect me to believe that Jeffy does? Jeffy? Please.

Blondie, 2/14/20

I don’t know, man, stopping in mid conversation to put on a coat, walk outside, and then engage in a performative display of affection for a specific audience doesn’t say “spontaneity” or “pizazz” to me so much as “desperately trying to prove something to others, and maybe in so doing proving something … to yourself.”

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Mark Trail, 2/8/20

Oh my god, “Harvey completely made up the story of a yeti ripping his leg off and actually he just had juvenile diabetes” is a so much better ending (?) to this story than I could have possibly imagined. I don’t know what I want more for Monday: Harvey digging his way out of the avalanche and yell-growling “The yeti was a METAPHOR! … a metaphor for JUVENILE DIABETES, my greatest foe!” or just a smash cut back to the cabin in Lost Forest with Mark saying “Yes, Rusty, I did see some unusual animals in Nepal!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/8/20

Oh my god, I had forgotten that June mentioned Aunt Tildy had been married to a man “she called the Count, but he didn’t seem to be rich.” Shoutout to Rex Morgan for surprising me for the first time in literally years: “Andrzej and Tildy are destined to be together” seemed so obviously set up that I entirely missed “Andrzej and Tildy were together once and will be in the future, time is a flat circle, all of this has happened before and will happen again.”

Judge Parker, 2/8/20

Oh my god, what if Sophie decides to not run the campaign of her old family friend but instead puts her considerable political skills to the service of one of his rivals? From what we’ve seen of it, Alan’s campaign is focused on prison abolition and left-leaning NIMBYISM from a perspective of noblesse oblige, and I’m interested to see if his opponent, aided by Sophie’s inside information and all-around smarts, attacks him from the left (“Alan Parker should be put in jail as a class enemy”) or the right (“Alan Parker should be put in jail as an actual criminal, who broke several laws”).

Crock, 2/8/20

Not to be all “poor me” over here, as making fun of comics is something I obviously enjoy and I appreciate getting to earn part of my income from it, but let me just tell you that I read this strip and thought “Huh, I bet conditions on the plantations where they grow pepper are pretty dire, I wonder if there’s some joke to be made out of that,” and ended up opening multiple browser tabs, learning that, for instance, the bottom has fallen out of the Vietnamese pepper market, and that India attempts to protect its native pepper industry with tariffs and price controls but this has led to a a pepper smuggling pipeline from Vietnam via Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, big American companies like McCormick are investing in sustainable pepper operations, at least according to this advertorial “hosted by” The Guardian. I wasn’t really able to mine a lot of laffs out of all that, unless you count the meta-explanation of it I’m doing in this post, but I 100% guarantee that I put a lot more thought into this than was put into this joke.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/8/20

The Smifs have lost track of their baby as he crawls through the knee-deep trash that completely covers the floor of their filthy hovel! Ha … ha?

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Judge Parker, 2/6/20

“You ever see the movie Bulworth?”

Mary Worth, 2/6/20

Is … is that a threat, Hugo

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/6/20

WE GET IT, REX MORGAN, M.D., HUMAN BODIES ARE FRAIL, MORTAL MACHINES AND NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO TO THEM, THEY WILL EVENTUALLY BREAK DOWN AND DIE