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Judge Parker and Gil Thorp, 9/17/16

Saturday is a natural point for a mid-plot cliffhanger for a soap opera strip, and these two offer a great Goofus-and-Gallant-style class on how this effect can — and can’t — be achieved. Start with Judge Parker: we all thought Sophie was fine, but it looks we popped the cork on the champagne a little early, eh guys? Because it’s Honey who crawled living from the wreckage, and Sophie who’s apparently still dangling there, proving, if we needed further proof, that Honey was the steel-willed one all along. So is Sophie OK? Is the whole band dead? Does Honey think she’s Sophie? Have the Spencer-Drivers, who only got the call from the police in the first place due to the unseemly influence they have over the local government and services thanks to their wealth and power, bothered to contact the parents of anyone else in that car, who presumably are also worried about their missing children?

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp, a girl decided to quit the soccer team and become a student trainer. Forgive me if I say this doesn’t bring us to quite the same thrill level.

Crankshaft, 9/17/16

Shoutout to the Cleveland State Comics Club who, when tasked with coming up with a plot for Crankshaft, settled on “What if Crankshaft did ’shrooms?”

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Six Chix, 9/15/16

My favorite thing about this cartoon (or, more accurately, the thing I dislike the least about it) is that the hand emerging from the bottom of the panel could plausibly be assigned to either of the two characters. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to understand it as the blonde lady rubbing her chin thoughtfully as the brunette’s insane forehead tattoo causes her to completely rethink her opinions on the small conversational pleasantries that serve to lubricate our every day social interactions. But I’d like to believe that in fact tattoo-lady is resting her own fingers seductively on the chin on her interlocutor, as if to say, “Look, you and I both feel the energy between us, so let’s not waste our time with the conversational dance that normal humans use to build up levels of intimacy. Let’s make out. You ever made out with a woman with a bonkers personal philosophy tattooed on her forehead before?”

Judge Parker, 9/15/16

“People will line up for any job. Even if the job involves being locked up in a shipping container doing painful manual labor, even if the job is only open to old people in violation of any number of federal and state labor laws: if you post a job ad in the paper, dozens of desperate people will line up to apply for that job, no questions asked. There’s no story here! Covering this ghastly carnival of economic anxiety is a complete waste of our time as journalists. Ugh, why can’t we go film a war or something important like that?”

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Judge Parker, 9/14/16

Ever since Sophie and her friends went tumbling down that rain-slicked hillside, Neddy has been on tenterhooks waiting to find out if her dumb little sister managed to ruin her big day, by dying. Turns out she’s alive! Turns out it’s not incredibly inappropriate at all that Rocky lined up those three champaign flutes and held that bottle of bubbly at the ready, waiting for this call. Turns out we’ll never get to see him quietly returning the glasses to the cabinet and putting the bottle back into the fridge, unopened, while Neddy weeps over the terrible loss of publicity, not to mention all the money spent on jumbo cookies for the press, just gone to waste. I’m a little disappointed by this, honestly.

Marvin, 9/14/16

Considering how most babies and dogs actually have their temperature taken, I think we’re finally discovering the limits of what the normally scatologically-obsessed Marvin is allowed to get away with.