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Judge Parker, 5/2/12

Just to keep you Judge Parker non-obsessives in the loop, Katherine is actually Randy’s stepmom, a sexy lady (because this is Judge Parker, natch) who appears to be roughly Randy’s age but who nevertheless does in fact consider him to be her beloved son, so her momzilla intervention in his upcoming nuptials are sure to be super creepy on a number of levels. But, while I am always here to keep you up to date the quasi-Oedipal goings on in the continuity strips, I can’t offer any coherent explanation as to why Randy has chosen to decorate his judge’s chambers with an enormous bust of Homer. I mean, I’m not a miracle worker.

Mark Trail, 5/2/12

“It was these drug plants that got me excited!” Ha ha, some days this blog just writes itself. I’ll bet the drug-destroying team is going to be super-excited too!

Apartment 3-G, 5/2/12

Hey, if you ever find yourself working in the Pentagon’s PR department and need to write a press release that says something along the lines of “We had to destroy that village in order to save it,” why not try “As usual, our kindness was totally misunderstood”?

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Hagar the Horrible, 5/1/12

You know, I’ve been reading Hagar the Horrible for most of my literate life, and like most people, I had always assumed that the recurring strips where Hagar and Lucky Eddie crack wise on a tiny desert island just served as a place for desert-island gags rejected by the New Yorker. It’s only at this moment — as Hagar wistfully thinks about his wife, who’s thousands of miles away, who has no idea where he is, who he’ll probably never see again — that it occurred to me to try to fit these scenes into the larger narrative of the strip. Now that this conceptual shift has taken place, here’s my first question: what happened to the rest of the crew? Did Hagar and Eddie eat them?

Six Chix, 5/1/12

When I first scanned this strip I thought it was some miracle of life nonsense, but seeing the exhausted expression on momma bird and the frankly terrified look on papa bird, my guess is the real point is that spring made these birds horny and so they had some bird-sex and forgot to use birth control. Or should that be … BIRDTH CONTROL?? Because they’re birds, you see! Ha ha! Anyway, long story short, they have a bunch of children they don’t want now.

Spider-Man, 5/1/12

Oh, man, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but MJ’s supposedly funny play is terrible. Unless maybe the quote marks around all the dialogue indicate that the cast is in on the joke about how terrible the play is, and are playing the entire thing for meta-comedic laughs at the meta-awfulness of it all? That sounds like something that would play in Brooklyn rather than on Broadway, and anyway it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that nobody in the Spider-Man newspaper strip is even a tiny bit self-aware, because if they were they would immediately stalk away in disgust.

Mark Trail, 5/1/12

Just wanted to keep you up to date with the Mark Trail action. Today’s action: a bad guy lets loose with a WHAT TH’, which is always awesome. Also, apparently Andy’s kill switch is hard to turn off! Man, look at that slavering maw in panel two! He’s got a taste for human flesh now!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/12

“He used to joke about it, but it’s not a joke anymore. It’s completely true! My father can’t feel any human emotion or grasp ordinary, everyday experience unless it’s mediated through a recording device of some kind. In this way, he has become the archetype of a 21st century human being.”

Beetle Bailey, 5/1/12

Hey, remember back in the ’90s when Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC made a big deal about sending General Halftrack to sensitivity training, because of his constant, actionable sexual harassment of his secretary? Well, it didn’t take

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Mark Trail, 4/30/12

I would like to hereby apologize for disparaging the quality of the violence in the current Mark Trail storyline last week. The lackluster bludgeoning on Friday was clearly just a set-up for this fully awesome scene of Andy suddenly transforming from a cheerful, happy companion to a slavering vicious attack hound at Mark’s command. Do you think Mark saw that the marijuana grower was growing marijuana with a gun in his hand? If so, we must assume that he knows that any bullet fired from such a feeble pistol would simply bounce harmlessly off Andy’s massive skull. It’s not like he would ever put his best friend in danger, after all!

Family Circus, 4/30/12

The key to understanding this panel is Jeffy’s expression of heavy-lidded boredom. “Mommy always looks great, and yet society’s crushingly unrealistic expectations about female body types can cause her to spiral into an emotional tailspin when that cheap scale tells here she’s gained only a few pounds. I’d rage against the patriarchy, but I’m just too exhausted by the efforts I make to comfort her, efforts that always fall short.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/30/12

Kudos to Apartment 3-G for being so sensitive as to keep all intimate, interesting details about the death of Nina’s mother off-panel. Sure, letting us in on this information would have made the storyline more engaging, but at what emotional cost to its fictional characters?