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Judge Parker, 10/9/12

My goodness, I have been incredibly remiss in keeping you up to date on Judge Parker! Mostly because it’s been kind if enh. Quick summary of the last six weeks: after briefly skunking our boys out of their cabin, our nefarious marijuana farmers stole Avery’s camera, because it has pictures of marijuana, but also pictures of a fish that Avery thinks are more precious than life itself. We also learned that Bea is financially solvent only because she’s being paid off by Bubba and his growers; Sam expressed thin-lipped disapproval. And now Avery has gone off to demand his camera back from Bubba, which is bad for him, because he’s probably going to be beaten to death with a chain, but great for us, because it has led to the third panel of this comic, which is probably the greatest thing you will see today and maybe even this year. The overalls! The beard! The chain! The beads of sweat and/or boils, can’t really tell what those things on his face are supposed to be! Papa to Adam … bring in the slicker! BRING IN THE SLICKER!

Mark Trail, 10/9/12

Usually battling overalled rustics is more Mark Trail’s cup of tea, and maybe we’ll get to that later, but right now Mark has come home just long enough to pull out Rusty’s heart and stomp on it. Haha, Rusty, we know that your loneliness and feelings of abandonment — symbolized my Mark’s repeatedly broken promise to take you on a fishing trip — have left you with zero self-esteem and led you to reckless behavior, like trying to get photographs of dangerous sheep-killers. So how will you react when Mark once again bails on your trip — this time to go on a fishing trip with someone else? “It’s sort of a business and pleasure trip … but mostly pleasure. The pleasure comes from not seeing Rusty!”

If the main character in any other strip said he wanted to “get some good pictures of bonefish,” you know I’d be all over it, giggling like a 12-year-old. But this is Mark Trail talking, so let’s show some respect! (By “respect” I mean respect for whatever terrible neurological or psychological disorder leaves Mark unable to experience or even understand erotic feelings of any kind.)

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Mark Trail, 10/5/12

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Mark Trail, in which a heavily armed Cherry resolved the whole Rusty-napping situation without Mark ever needing to show up! Given the level of real danger that was involved with Rusty being kidnapped by criminals and threatened with death, I’m a bit puzzled as to what “exaggeration” she thinks Rusty will resort to in recounting the story to Mark. “Mark, I saw these men killing sheep from a plane, and then they kidnapped me, and they were going to turn me into a sheep and then shoot me from a plane, so they taught me sheep language, but I summoned all the other sheep, who ate the men! Plus there were aliens!”

Family Circus, 10/5/12

The Billy (age 7) Family Circuses are usually mostly interesting to me because of the layers of family-narrative artifice involved (Jeff Keane continuing his father’s tradition of pretending to draw as his brother), but today’s family psychodrama is much more straightforward: remember, if you don’t like your mother, your kids will notice.

Spider-Man, 10/5/12

Looks like all’s well that’s ended will in Spider-Man! And now you get to contemplate whether you’d rather make sex to a snake or a spider, yuck.

Shoe, 10/5/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Shoe is emotionally dead, unable to feel either joy or pain!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/5/12

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, the thingy came off and there’s water everywhere and June is pissed.

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Mark Trail, 9/24/12

I had almost forgotten that Rusty had blabbed to Cherry and Doc about the sheep-killing miscreants, which I think is understandable because it’s natural to assume that even Rusty’s adopted family would want to keep interactions with him to a minimum. But anyway, this explains my initial confusion at Cherry calling the men stealing away her ward as “poachers” rather than, say, “kidnappers.”

Though considering the Trails’ wildlife focus and their apparent refusal to legally adopt Rusty or send him off to school or anything one normally does with a child, perhaps poaching is a good word for what Cherry thinks is happening here. “Oh, no, those poachers have got the Rusty! It’s a particularly ugly specimen so it’s not much of a trophy, but its pelt and gallbladder could probably sell for good money on the black market.”

Gil Thorp, 9/24/12

Whoah, you guys, it turns out that Irish people don’t just call cookies “biscuits”; they also have different parenting styles! I see some cross-cultural misunderstanding hijinks in the making here. Is the lesson of this fall plot going to be “American teens have their souls crushed because their parents don’t want them to die” or “foreigners don’t love their children enough to smother them”? Or will we lose interest three quarters of the way through the season when the Mudlarks make a half-assed run at the playdowns?

Marmaduke, 9/24/12

I have to admit, I’ve been reading Marmaduke for years and never knew that the next-door neighbor guy’s name was “Snyder.” Do you think that’s always been the case or that the cartoonist finally decided to give him a distinct identity within the strip? Oh, also, the dark light of a thousand demons is about to start radiating out of Marmaduke’s skull, so all humans need to cower indoors if they want to survive.