Post Content

Family Circus, 8/13/16

“Am I practicing flat-out nihilism, or some godless esoteric discipline — ha ha I’m agnostic on the question! Oh, I learned so much at Heresy Camp, Dolly, you have no idea ….”

Judge Parker, 8/13/16

Oh man, that’s some sub-Mary Worth-level advice Abbey is pitching right there, but in fairness, why would she engage seriously the efforts to “find and hold onto a man” of somebody whose 10-year romantic history reads like this:

• Hometown squeeze Bob — he of the front-porch “tongue thing”. Neddy dumped him.
• Julian “Beautiful Shoes Jules” Edgemont, Neddy’s “live-in boyfriend” from Paris. Neddy dumped him.
• “Retcon Mark,” Neddy’s newly-divorced former boyfriend, home from Harvard. Neddy dumped him.
• Mark again, back from Hong Kong and proposing marriage. Neddy dumped him again, and somehow everybody was supposed to feel sorry for her about it.

So maybe the reason you can’t hold onto men, Neddy, is that you keep dumping them? Just spitballin’ here.

Phantom, 8/13/16

Mr. Walker (for Ghost Who Walks don’tcha know) drops his son off at school. I hope this branches the story into three: Heloise and sometimes Diana in New York, mother/daughter bonding and daughter/roomie hijinking under the sinister eye of Eric Sahara (the Nomad!); Kit Jr. learning Phantomry from the monks; and Kit Sr. and sometimes Diana going through the trials of empty-cave syndrome.

But I wouldn’t get too sure about that “You’re a Phantom” thing quite yet – the strip has been dropping hints for a long time:

Phantom, 4/5/06

Since Heloise routinely bests young Kit in athletic contests, maybe some kind of sibling duel-to-the-death scenario is in the offing? I’ll pop some corn.

–Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Six Chix, 8/9/16

Freed from the demands of writing Apartment 3-G, Margaret Shulock tries out for that sweet Funky Winkerbean gig.

Love the art, btw: I haven’t done a rebus in years.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/9/16

Apparently we’re just talking about hazing this week? With no actual hazing in evidence, is that it? Or maybe Forehead Girl and Horn Boy are just stone-cold hazing the crap out of one another right this instant, except they’re bonded so tightly from Stockholm Syndrome that it feels to them like the giddy throes of First Love? Sure, makes as much sense as anything.

Gil Thorp, 8/9/16

Welp, Barry “Darth” Bader, ditched at last by the teammates he’s dissed all season, has his final little locker-room sad, then it’s onward to “Somebody’s Mom is Sick.” After all the operatic hard-drinking, drive-drunking, hang-judging, Boo-murdering, funeral-going action this summer I was expecting a bigger close, but hey — there’s only a month left ’til football, and that time’s not gonna waste itself!

Judge Parker, 8/9/16

Sam and Abbey have grown so emotionally and sexually anesthetized toward one another that the only flashes of feeling they experience come from spying on and meddling in their children’s relationships. Knowing this, Sophie and Neddy stage little Facebook dramas to spark up their parents’ lives. Now playing are “Hank is leaving,” “Who hates Honey Ballenger?,” and “Neddy starts a business.”

In reality, Sophie’s the B-student treasurer of her public high school’s Future Farmers of America, and Neddy’s a Carmelite nun. Nobody tell Sam and Abbey — and especially not the strip’s new writer, who’s going to be terribly disappointed when he shows up for work at Spencer Farms on the 22^nd and sees how things really are.

PS. Abbey looks nothing like that, chews tobacco, and is wearing a parka.

–Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Judge Parker, 8/5/16

Ooh, we’ve arrived at the pivotal moment in any Judge Parker storyline: when a large sum of money appears! Usually the large sum of money resolves all the conflicts, but in this case, unusually, it’s the cause of more drama. Why won’t Hank give up his offer of a solid job in a field he loves for the vague promise of partnership Neddy’s crackpot elder-sweatshop scheme? Actually, Hank is almost certainly right to get out while the getting’s good: longtime strip writer Woody Wilson, having handed over the reigns of Rex Morgan, M.D., to Terry Beatty a few months ago, is now getting completely out of the soap opera game, so the endless gravy train might be grinding to a halt! In all seriousness, I obviously have great affection for the work Wilson’s done with both strips and they were a big part of why I started this blog, so I want to thank him and wish him a happy retirement.

Meanwhile, the new Judge Parker writer will be … Sally Forth writer and friend-of-the-blog Ces Marciuliano! This is a secret I’ve known for a few weeks and have been eagerly waiting for you all to find out! Ces’s strips start August 22nd, and I’m excited to see them, and to see how much free money gets handed out in the meantime.

Marvin, 8/5/16

Ha, yes, it’s Marvin talking about pooping, but when it comes right down to it, isn’t this really all of our lives, stripped down to their essence? Makes you think, doesn’t it? It’s no surprise that the colorist changed Marvin’s hair from orange to deep red in that last panel; after all, you don’t expect the protagonist of this strip to be that self-reflective, so they probably assumed it was a different baby.

Beetle Bailey, 8/5/16

The best thing about this strip is how completely devastated the buffet employee in the background looks. “But … we allow ‘all you can eat’ based on certain realistic assumptions about the human appetite! The whole economics of this business relies on nobody doing what he just did! We’ll be ruined! Ruined!”

Dennis the Menace, 8/5/16

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Food Service Worker Emotional Spectrum, that guy overhearing Dennis extolling the virtues of eating processed meat tubes at the beach looks like he just saw his daughter take her first steps. Dial it back, dude.