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Judge Parker, 4/20/21

Hey, kids, it’s 4/20, and you know what that means: time to get high (IF THAT’S LEGAL IN YOUR JURISDICTION, CAN’T EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH, DEFINITELY NOT ENCOURAGING ANYONE TO DO CRIMES HERE) and think to yourself “Whoa, dude, what’s going on in, like, Judge Parker?” Last we checked in, you might recall that Randy was having a meltdown because his daughter reported to him that she had spotted her mother April (estranged from Randy, ex-assassin on the lam) lurking outside. But now April is in the house, insisting that that other, lurking April isn’t the real April, but their daughter insists that this April, the one in the house yelling at Randy, isn’t her real mother! Who is right? Will we see some red-hot real-April-on-fake-April fisticuffs? If you’re already high and are thinking “Whoa, dude, I can’t follow any of this,” let me reassure you that I’m not high at all and I can’t really follow it either.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/20/21

Speaking of stoners, probably we’re not supposed to think of this kid at Funky’s pandemic-swollen AA meeting as a stoner, I guess? Just dumb, like all of today’s dumb kids who take video games seriously. I honestly kind of love that he’s specifically put here to point out the fact that the first name “Funky” would in fact sound insane to a normal person, but as soon as he was assigned the “knows about video games” attribute he immediately had to be rendered as a slack-jawed dope, those are just the rules of the Funkyverse, maybe go research the differences between Golden and Silver Age Flash comics if you want to better yourself, buddy.

Mary Worth, 4/20/21

Oh hell yes, Dr. Drew is an Instagram influencer and I am extremely here for it! I certainly hope that his handle is “tha__naturedoc” and all the pictures he posts tomorrow consist of a few California wildflowers that you can see here and there if you look to the side of his prominent shirtless torso.

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Mary Worth, 4/19/21

Oh, wow, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dr. Jeff’s distinguished McMansion before, have we? Generally, Mary prefers her cozy condo to the echoing, (emotionally) empty halls of Chez Cory; she might occasionally stop by with an enormous bowl of brown nutrient goo to ensure that her beau doesn’t starve to death before she deigns to go to the Bum Boat with him ten to fifteen business days hence, but my guess is she tends not to linger.

Anyway, is Dr. Drew also just briefly stopping by to make sure his father hasn’t fallen and broken his hip, or are we meant to understand that he still lives with his dad, despite being well into his 30s? That might explain his dissatisfaction, considering that if he tried to bring home one of the ladies who’s smitten with him for a little action, Dr. Jeff would probably be there in the kitchen, smiling and offering to ladle out some “delicious” “turkey” “stew” for her.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/19/21

Among the other things that the coronavirus pandemic destroyed is the barely comprehensible logic of the time gap between Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft. It’s simple, really: the events in the current Crankshaft strips are definitely taking place ten years before the events of Funky Winkerbean, except that both strips are emerging from the pandemic at the same time. Makes a ton of sense! Maybe we’re meant to understand that Funky Winkerbean takes place ten years from now after an even worse plague that’s displaced coronavirus from our discourse as “the [unnamed] pandemic.” Anyway, whatever’s going on over there, it’s sure making everyone miserable!

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Mary Worth, 4/16/21

Oh, now we’re getting to what Dr. Jeff really means when he says Dr. Drew seems “dissatisfied with life” even though he hasn’t actually expressed any dissatisfaction: he’s not safely paired up in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, the way his happily married sister Adrian is. You remember Adrian, right? She used to occasionally get the romantic sad-sack storylines to take some of the burden off Dawn once in a while. She was engaged to a con artist at one point, then was in love with a cop but couldn’t commit to loving him until he was gunned down during a drug raid, so she agreed to marry him on what she assumed was his death bed, but he survived so she had to go through with it. Later, her bitter man-hating best friend Jill pulled out all the stops to ruin their wedding until Mary fixed her emotional problems. And then we really haven’t heard much from Adrian since! Maybe the reason Dr. Drew isn’t so eager to be married is that he knows that means banishment to a drama-free life, which in turn means he’ll never take center stage in this strip again. Or maybe it’s the endless casual sexual possibilities currently open to him as a handsome young doctor, who can say.

Hi and Lois, 4/16/21

Anyway, marriage leads to parenthood and parenthood leads to disillusionment and disillusionment leads to telling your kid, who still thinks that love and beauty are possible and enduring, that vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.