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Mark Trail, 6/30/17

Ha ha, today’s Mark Trail features not one but two hilarious revelations! Number one is that despite the ill-feelings arising from the infamous Water-World disaster, Mark apparently still calls Lesley Joyce on the regular, like whenever he encounters sea-wildlife of note (“Lesley! Yesterday a saw a shark and it made me think of Water-World! I’m still sorry about your car!”). And number two is that he decided that the best way to leave a breadcrumb trail that would lead law enforcement to his rescue would be to absolutely infuriate Lesley by implying that he worked for her. Actually, I guess the revelation that high-level WaterWorld executives still sport soul patches in the year of our lord 2017 is hilarious too, but that’s really more a “laughing at” than “laughing with” situation.

Judge Parker, 6/30/17

Wait a minute, are you telling me that Randy Parker spent months in a CIA black site in Macedonia enduring “stress positions,” waterboarding, and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques and we didn’t get to see it? I for one will be writing angry letters to King Features Syndicate and my Congressman about this.

Pluggers, 6/30/17

I for one am pretty surprised that pluggers took in some summer movie fare last year! Good for them for getting out!

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Judge Parker, 6/27/17

Oh, hey, good news: Abbey’s secret half-sister was trying to break Sophie’s will by keeping her in a pit and make Sophie hate Abbey too, but she didn’t! Everyone’s happy and they love each other again! So that problem is all solved and everything is all right in Parkerville … except whoops Randy’s beloved pregnant wife still hasn’t been found after she vanished doing One Last Job for the CIA, and he’s taking it pretty hard. Lots of takeout is to be expected, of course, but sitting on the couch staring at a teddy bear? That’s some high-quality lost-wife moping.

Fortunately, Judge Parker Senior is here to get his son to snap out of it. “Randy, you can’t live like this,” he pleads. “Someone’s gotta be the judge in this town, and I’m busy promoting my terrible, unreadable book full time! You’ve got to move on! Do you think I just stared at a damn stuffed animal all day when your mother mysteriously vanished? Of course not! I got a new, younger, hotter wife, just like I have every five years ever since! Pull yourself together, man!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/27/17

“So, Niki took me to this show the arts high kids put on … and they invited me to this weekly game night thing … and I just want to know … am I a nerd now? Remember how I used to be a sexy badass? Is there any going back, or am I stuck like this forever?”

Dick Tracy, 6/27/17

Sorry, comics creators carefully working on the perfect setup-punchline combination: nothing in the funny pages this week will possibly make me laugh more than “That music! Is it ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawamba?”

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Beetle Bailey, 6/25/17

This is an example of a strip that only really works with the top row of throwaway panels — so called because they’re often excised by papers looking to cram more into their comics section — in place. Without them, this is just a basic Beetle Bailey strip about General Halftrack giving a long, boring speech about himself. But those first panels drive home a pair of exquisite yet offsetting tragedies: that Halftrack, desperate for affirmation and yet wholly unloved, has arranged this ceremony for himself; and that Halftrack’s creeping dementia has caused him to forget that he’s done so, which might allow him to feel briefly good about his life during the ceremony. I assume that the award is small scale model of the pyramid in which he will soon be buried, along with his staff.

Dennis the Menace, 6/25/17

Wow, if I had to guess which Sunday strip was going to peel away our assumptions and get us talking about the hidden nature of uncompensated domestic labor, Dennis the Menace would not have been high on the list.

Judge Parker, 6/25/17

“You always ask that five minutes before it’s done. And you always ask me, as if I’m making dinner! Our paid servant is doing all the work! She’s right there, you could at least make eye contact with her.”