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Judge Parker, 8/27/11

The Judge Parker cast is so uniformly and repulsively wealthy — look, Sam and Abbey are walking past the enormous pillars on the front of their house, built to a scale previously only seen on the palaces of the most decadent Roman emperors, and are trying to figure out something pointless they can buy with the yet more money that’s being thrown at them — that the only reason I can keep from hating them utterly is because I’m amused by their sexlessness. Oh, it may look as if Abbey is going to successfully woo Sam up her giant dominatrix staircase and have her way with him, but don’t worry, someone will pass out or something, maybe because of the fumes coming off all the freshly printed $100 bills that they have lying around.

Mary Worth, 8/27/11

Mary of course hates and fears the Internet, which will stop her from offering Gina the most obvious piece of advice for her situation, which is of course that she should look her dumb old childhood sweetheart up on the Internet to find out if he’s single or not. “That certainly is a tragic story, dear. Say, why don’t you call up that gentleman who gave you his phone number the other day? He doesn’t seem like an unrepentant sex offender.”

Pluggers, 8/27/11

Pluggers wouldn’t dare disobey their corporate masters, but they sure seem to piss off their wives a lot.

Hey, everyone, I’m out of town for a brief break — Sunday and Monday comics will go up Monday evening sometime.

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Family Circus, 8/21/11

OBVIOUSLY there’s no child’s suffering that delights me so much as a Keane Kid’s suffering, and so I’m overjoyed to see Billy’s comically overwrought expression of crushing despair as his mother drapes that suit jacket over his shoulders. It’s as if he’s won the Masters, only instead of a green jacket he’s getting a blue jacket, and instead of winning the Masters he’s going to be executed wearing a blue jacket.

Dennis the Menace, 8/21/11

Kudos to Dennis and/or the current hired hands churning out “Hank Ketchum’s Dennis the Menace” for avoiding the obvious wordplay response to “Margaret’s goin’ places” (“Goin’ too many places, if you ask me!”) and instead heading into much creepier territory. Dennis suddenly steps into the shoes of his greatest enemy; now that he realizes that Mr. Wilson is a human being with feelings like himself, his life will never be the same. This sudden act of empathy comes with a physical manifestation: Dennis is emitting a Mr. Wilson-style single bead of sweat in the final panel, indicating a simmering, child-hating rage, though the fact that it appears to be flowing down the outside of his hair is a little confusing.

Mary Worth, 8/21/11

“I knew I had to see Bobby before I left! In my mind, I could already imagine him after our family vanished into the witness protection program, his arms raised as he begged the mob thugs hot on our trail for his life.”

Gasoline Alley, 8/21/11

Slim’s suffering still counts for this post because he’s an idiot man-child, which is a type of child, right? Anyway, I’m not sure this comic has a punchline beyond “Slim is a simpleton,” but then, it probably doesn’t really need one.

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Mary Worth, 8/19/11

Gruesome mob-related killing, everyone! That … that’s why Gina can’t truly love? Because of the mob? Not because of some kind of freak skateboard accident or anything. Mobsters! This is … I gotta say, it’s pretty disappointing. I admit that for most of my life if you had said to me “gruesome mob killing in Mary Worth!” I’d have been intrigued, but the strip already did a drive-by killing last year, and frankly it needs to up its weirdness quotient if it intends to keep my attention. Are you sure there wasn’t any synchronized skateboarding involved in this gruesome mob killing, Gina?

Archie, 8/19/11

I’ve always kind of enjoyed the comics convention whereby flying droplets of sweat represent a character’s surprise/bafflement/disbelief (at least in non-Cathy contexts). The fact that Betty is completely out of our field of vision, leaving only her three sweatballs to fly into the frame in the final panel to indicate her bemusement, charms me all the more.