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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.

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Judge Parker, 7/31/16

Finally, everyone Sam and Abbey live with is gone for the night, having sex responsibly somewhere, so now they can have sex, responsibly! Remember, the Spencer-Drivers live a palatial horse-breeding compound and everyone’s bedroom is at least a half a mile away from everyone else’s, so obviously thre is a lot of special pleading going on here on the importance of having everyone out of their hair. I think they’re worried about the last time they tried to have sex, when this horror-nightmare happened, and they want to make sure it never happens again.

Crankshaft, 7/31/16

I like the vigorous wink Crankshaft is giving Pam in the final panel here. He knows he’s making a little joke! He knows this jersey is an inanimate object, and can’t actually collect Social Security! Since this is the first time I’ve ever seen him do this, I have to assume that with every other mangled wordplay-chunk he comes up with — the punchlines of about 75% of Crankshaft strips, in other words — he has no idea how dumb he sounds.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/16

The first row of throwaway panels at the top of the strip, which don’t appear in every newspaper depending on how they lay out their Sunday comics, completely change the content here. Without them, we just have a harmless, sappy series of nicknames. With them, we have Loweezy stalling a Barlow, the hated enemy of her clan in a feud that’s stained the hills with blood for generations, until her husband can show up with his shotgun.

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Judge Parker, 7/21/16

INT. – MONSTER BEVERAGE CORP. – DAY

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: You wanted to see me, sir?

CEO: What the hell is this?

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: Uh, I think it’s a … newspaper? I don’t subscribe to one myself, but…

CEO: No, this comic strip. What in the name of God are we doing in this thing?

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: Oh, that! That’s part of our big spend on native content for the quarter, sir.

CEO: So we paid for this. To reach out to … teens?

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: Yes, sir! You can see from the characters that it’s a teen-oriented strip.

CEO: …

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: I mean, just look at the characters! A multi-ethnic group, engaging in drama. If there’s one thing our research shows that teens love, it’s drama.

CEO: …

DIRECTOR OF YOUTH MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS: Just a group of diverse teens, in a band, participating in drama, enjoying Monster Energy beverages. Well worth the $450,000 we spent for the placement!

CEO: [presses button on desk] Security, please come to my office.

Lockhorns, 7/21/16

Man, if I knew someone who sent out paper invitations to parties instead of just creating Facebook events for them, I probably wouldn’t visit their Facebook page either. If they don’t use Facebook even for one of its most popular and useful features, then their Facebook page is probably hella boring.