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Gil Thorp, 12/22/16

Ah yes, at last we’ve finally learned the Trouble With Aaron Aagard: he can’t focus on basketball or even stereotypical teenage refrigerator-rummaging because he obsessively searches for entertainment options online and then goes to warehouse raves or whatever. Gil isn’t worried, though, because this is one of the biggest teams they’ve had! It’s an enormous team, so they can put ten, twelve, fifteen players on the court at a time, overwhelming opponents with sheer numbers. Not sure why nobody thought of this strategy before!

Judge Parker, 12/22/16

Never mind these petty human interest stories, ladies! Can’t you see your own newscrawl? The rotting corpse of President Gerald Ford has risen from the grave and roams the land on a fresh, living horse! This can only be the first portent of global armageddon!

Mary Worth, 12/22/16

Ahh, yes, Wilbur’s finished his writing for the day and now it’s time for him to engage his imagination and indulge in some solo erot[my keyboard, computer, and cable modem simultaneously melt down in a desperate attempt to prevent me from finishing that sentence]

[I sign in with my phone]Those fingerless gloves he had on in yesterday’s strip should make the whole thing eas[the entire cell network for southern California goes up in flames in an act of species preservation]

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Gil Thorp, 12/12/16

Whoops, looks like I almost completely failed to talk about Gil Thorp’s football season plot this year, didn’t I? In my defense, it was super boring, and here’s the quick summary: Heather Burns became a third-string tight end in addition to a unpaid coach, a potentially interesting development that resulted in no real conflict or drama whatsoever, and also Kevin Pelwecki got to live out his dream by becoming like the fifth-string quarterback or something, while obviously never taking a single snap all season. Then the team didn’t make the playdowns. Personally, I blame the failure to have a bonfire this year, which is why I’m very excited to see that basketball plot is starting with a warehouse rave! Let’s start a new orgiastic tradition to bring good luck and extra fertility for the coming season!

Judge Parker, 12/12/16

I’ve also been neglecting Judge Parker, mostly because the pieces of the plot have been slowly moved into place over the past few weeks and I’ve sort of been waiting for action and drama. But now: action! Drama! Sophie, after mysteriously disappearing from the car wreck, just as mysteriously reappeared! And finally, with this press conference, the Spencer-Drivers really get some use out of the ludicrous faux-classical columns they wedged onto the front of their exurban shitbox to “class it up a little,” as they provide a nice visual frame for the news cameras.

I’m glad I hunted down that old Gil Thorp strip I linked to above, because it reminds me that the dude glowering behind Sam and Abbey is the detective working the case, and not, as I first assumed, Spencer Farm’s hired muscle, there to hustle journalists off the property if they ask too many nosey questions. The green jacket, in my mind, indicated that he had won the Masters Tournament at least once. The Spender-Driver family only hires retainers of distinction.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/16

Welp, considering that she’s been written as cartoonishly jealous throughout this dumb plot about Mason and Marianne’s non-romance, Cindy actually bounced back from the publication of shocking photos of her kissing him on the cheek outside her parents’ house pretty quickly! Not so Marianne, it seems. I assume that we’ve once again switched to black and white to emphasize the noir-esque nature of this story, which has absolutely no resemblance to a noir film in any way except that it might involve an innocent woman trapped in a web of lies having a fatal car accident on the twisting roads in the Hollywood Hills.

Slylock Fox, 12/12/16

So hey, if you were wondering what happened to Australia after the animapocalypse: it became a massive slave compound in which sapient sheep are kept captive, generation after generation, and forcibly sheared to earn export dollars for the dominant species, which appear to be wolves. Slylock makes sure that when one of these wolf-slavers steals from another, he faces justice — but when will justice come for the uncounted enslaved sheep? These carnivores need to watch out for the revolution that will put them in the same ash-bin of history with Homo sapiens.

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Judge Parker, 11/28/16

The characters in Judge Parker, who have spent the last few decades as the unquestioned lords and masters of all they survey, with people just handing them money and power for no good reason, have now been abruptly brought low by a series of tragic events. Frankly, we’ve all been so focused on Neddy’s factory disaster and Sophie’s kidnapping that we’ve neglected another damsel in distress: April, Judge Parker Junior’s CIA assassin wife, who actually vanished before the change of writers, after being sent to do One Last Job in Belgrade.

Anyway, Randy’s been pretty broken up about it, obviously, and today’s strip reminds us of a reality of the newly grim Parkerburg: our heroes are so emotionally bereft as to be incapacitated, but they’re still in charge, which means that vital decisions are going unmade. Look at that huge stack of paperwork! Randy hasn’t heard a case in weeks, which means probably there are some people in jail who have no idea if they’ll ever get to trial, or maybe some businesses in limbo because lawsuits they’re involved in can’t move forward. Is Randy a criminal or civil judge? Who even knows? The point is, he’s sad about his wife, and the rest of you people will have to wait.

Curtis, 11/28/16

Curtis’s dad is giving his son a crash course on what life is like in this fallen world, where a constant stream of resources are needed to extend the lives of anything, from an advertising agency to an apartment building to a human body. Of course, all this effort still won’t stave off your inevitable death, but that’s a story for another day!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/28/16

“Shhh, June, no. I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t true. Sarah isn’t the way she is because you worked when she was a baby. She’s that way because we summoned her into existence via unholy, forbidden science! I swear to you we have the procedure refined now!”