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Judge Parker, 6/14/24

Hey, remember “Declan,” Neddy’s fiance, who in previous appearances on this blog gave the general vibe of “amiable enough” and “amiable enough, possibly a little mid-afternoon wine drunk“? Probably what you’ve been thinking about him is “Well, I don’t really have a sense of Declan, but he seems amiable enough. Certainly his attitude isn’t going to take a sudden, sour turn as he rants about his decade-old family estrangement over multiple days and we don’t even get to see any of the story in a flashback or anything but it’s OK because it’s all business stuff so probably it would mostly be people standing around talking and frowning aggressively, just like this.” Unfortunately for all of us, it turns out that you are incorrect on that score.

Hi and Lois, 6/14/24

I don’t know why it bothers me so much that these two have the exactly same configuration of freckles, but it really does! It makes them look too much alike as they stare into each other’s eyes in panel one. The fact that this annoys me so much more than a pair of teens cheerfully setting the ticking timer on their relationship probably says a lot about me, and none of it good.

Mary Worth, 6/14/24

“Wait, he’s going to talk to it the whole time? No. Absolutely not. I’m out.” –Dr. Jeff, right before he chucks the keys to his boat into the water and stalks up the pier to his car

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Dennis the Menace, 6/8/24

“Dennis shit-talks his mother’s cooking” isn’t my favorite trope in this strip, but I feel you at least have to respect the form: he should either be poking sullenly at his food, glowering at everyone, absolutely ruining the energy of the family meal, or he should be making some witty quip that emotionally devastates Alice while Henry barely conceals a smirk. But while the dialogue here works, the art is all off: Dennis looks extremely pleased by the high-nutrition meal that’s been prepared for him, and his parents are all smiles. This frankly is so un-menacing that it loops all the way around to menacing again because it’s so deeply uncanny.

Judge Parker, 6/8/24

OK, since I’m embracing being a cranky old man who hates change, I’m just going to say it: “eloping” is supposed to mean that you sneak off and get married without telling any of your friends and family, often without even being formally engaged first. But more and more people are just using it to mean “We’re going have a small wedding, actually, even though we told some people we were planning to have a big one at some point in the future,” and I hate it! The secrecy is the point! You don’t just wander in and announce it while your fiancee is in the middle of a Zoom call with her mother!

Blondie, 6/8/24

YES IT CERTAINLY IS ANNOYING WHEN A CHILD SHOWS UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE DOING OTHER STUFF YOU’RE EXPECTED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM

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Shoe, 5/7/24

A classic Shoe bit is to use the structure of a test question at Skyler’s school to deliver a bad joke, even though the result is a test question no teacher, no matter how outlandish their pedagogy, would ever write. Anyway, I appreciate that today’s strip is mixing it up by changing the bad joke delivery mechanism to a pub trivia event, which is a fun and exciting new concept, if you’re a Shoe reader. I love that Roz hasn’t bothered to actually hire a trivia host and is just kind of reading questions off her phone. She’s not really trying very hard, so why should this guy actually try to come up with the right answer, when he could just deliver a gag calculated to delight 80-year-olds everywhere?

Judge Parker, 5/7/24

Remember “Declan”? I barely do, having mentioned him on this blog exactly once, and while a wine-drunk Abbey hinted during that appearance that maybe someday he and Neddie would get married, apparently Sophie is less enthused. I’m excited that this might be how we get back cold, calculating Sophie, who’s crunched the numbers and determined that Neddie and Declan have not put in enough love-hours to adequately establish a pair-bond worthy of being validated by the state government.