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Judge Parker, 3/30/13

Judge Parker storylines are generally months long and unpredictably aimless, but I have to say that I’m surprised at how quickly “Judge Parker Junior’s elopement doesn’t go as planned” has morphed into “Judge Parker Senior is looking for a way out of his loveless second marriage.”

Blondie, 3/30/31

On a possibly related note, the Bumsteads are pretty much done with each other sexually, as are the Woodleys.

Mark Trail, 3/30/31

Later: “Mark, did you have a chance to get rid of Rusty forever and screw it up? I do not like hearing about this!”

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Mark Trail, 3/29/13

The current Mark Trail plot has ended as most of them do, in violence, so let us take a moment to pause and acknowledge that fact. Yes, Mark has yet to unleash his Fists o’ Justice™, and perhaps they will remain sheathed for the duration of this storyline, but the Flying Tackle of Fury® is also a venerable Trailian tradition, and respect must be paid, even if “tradition” might kind of be code for “there is one ancient original Mark Trail drawing of someone tackling someone else at the waist, and it’s just been endlessly photocopied and traced over the course of the decades.”

Mary Worth, 3/29/13

Meanwhile, what in the name of all that is holy is happening to Elinor’s face — nay, her whole head — in panel one? It’s like she can’t be satisfied with just faking some ailment to nip her daughter’s chances of romantic happiness in the bud; she’s going to actually will herself into a stroke using the power of sheer hatred, with the unsettling resulting skull distortion we can all see, much to our horror.

Family Circus, 3/29/13

Aww, isn’t that cute! The Keanes are using Billy to run a Social Security disability benefits scam!

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Shoe and B.C., 3/26/13

Elementary school test questions as setups to jokes in comic strips: most played out cliché on the comics page, or mostest played out cliché on the comics page? I guess I shouldn’t complain about accuracy when the students being tested are anthropomorphic bird-people and/or sentient ants, but I do question the quality of instruction in the bird and ant educational systems. In Shoe, Skyler’s cynical, heavy-lidded expression in panel two shows that he understands what a bizarrely open-ended and unanswerable question he’s been presented with, presumably by whatever over-eager art teacher also thought that art puns based on a catchphrase from a 17-year-old movie would get elementary school kids enthusiastic about learning. The ant-child, meanwhile, in an act of defiance over what appears to be a test of his knowledge of old sayings that are actively incorrect, fills in the blanks with a plea for death. Frankly, these questions are both making a good case for a uniform, standardized testing regime with questions developed by government bureaucrats, if these are the locally-directed alternatives.

Mark Trail, 3/26/13

Maybe Mark does love Rusty after all? In order to perpetrate his completely misguided rescue scheme, he’s been forced to not verbalize a sentence he’s formed in his mind and confine it to a thought balloon instead, in what must be a superhuman effort on his part.

Spider-Man, 3/26/13

DAREDEVIL: “And that’s where attorney Matt Murdock comes in!”

SPIDER-MAN: “Wow! This I gotta see!”

[SEVEN HOURS AND HUNDREDS OF LEXISNEXIS SEARCHES LATER]

SPIDER-MAN: “Oh, man, was I ever wrong about this.”