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Judge Parker, 6/21/10

While Sam and Neddy’s French boyfriend (about whom she has expressed ambivalence!) are back home writing elaborate legal disclaimers for fancy shoes, Neddy has slipped off to meet up with … the mysterious Mark! Is this the fellow that Neddy was doing the “tongue thing” with, when she was making her tearful goodbyes before heading off for her semester in France, four and a half years ago? No, that was apparently “Bob,” whose necking session with Neddy was spied upon by pretty much the entire Spencer-Driver household. (Click those links to check out the pre-Barreto Neddy and Abbey — rawr!) Anyway, this Mark fellow seems to just be some dude in an ugly green polo shirt with whom Neddy will apparently not be making out, yawn.

Luann, 6/21/10

I’m assuming that these screams of shock and horror are because Luann has accidentally walked in on Gunther changing and is seeing him in some extremely mild version of undress (i.e., without his omnipresent grid shirt), and this is going to set up another dumb “Tales of Ribaldry”-style sequence. Still, I’d like to imagine (for narrative interest, not sexual thrills, as all of these characters make my libido shrivel and die) that something truly “AHHH!” worthy is going on there: Gunther in a crotchless fursuit, Gunther in a crotchless fursuit humping a Luann-shaped pillow, etc.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/10

Well, it looks like Funky has stepped back from the precipice of full-on alcoholic relapse … for now. But what is the significance of our anachronistically attired barkeep’s decision to gulp down the cocktail Funky left behind? Perhaps the pall of gloom that seems to hover over the entire Funkyverse really only afflicts the main characters; the ancillary players live normal, happy lives in the background, until the day they come in contact with Les or Susan or whoever. As soon as Funky entered the bar, the awful aura of death and misery that surrounds him presumably chilled the bartender to his very core, leaving him very much in need of a stiff drink.

Mary Worth, 6/21/10

Dr. Roberts may be reluctant, but Jenna is insanely eager to get this Mary Worth-orchestrated romance off the ground. “Aww, yeah, here we go! I got my bowl of cottage cheese, my tall glass of Metamucil, and my laptop! Let’s get this party started!”

UPDATE: Good lord, i almost missed this:

One Big Happy, 6/21/10

The fellow in the first panel is, of course, wearing a Finger-Quotin’ Margo shirt! You can order your own and wear it with pride, whether or not you choose to sport goofy facial hair.

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Mark Trail, 6/20/10

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the geometry teacher I had my freshman year of high school. She was an excellent teacher, but she had one quirk: she had a crazy underlining tic. Any word she wrote on the board that she felt had even the slightest importance would be underlined. Sometimes the word was “important” only in that it was a verb! Thus, in order to designate things that were actually important, she would double-underline, but she was pretty free with that, too, so it wasn’t unusual for our chalkboard to end up with certain words sitting atop three or four levels of underlines. (I eventually learned to just remove two layers when taking notes.)

Anyway, she may have been a middle-aged African-American math nerd living in a city, but I think she had a certain similarity to Mark Trail, outdoorsman extraordinaire. Mark is a serial abuser of boldface and exclamation points, so when he’s really worked up about something (like the dangers of sky-electricity — he’s already kept all electrical appliances out of his primitive home, but you can never escape these devilish electrons!), he has to turn the text-shouting up to utterly bizarre levels. ALL THUNDERSTORMS ARE DANGEROUS! DO YOU THINK THAT RUBBER-SOLED SHOES CAN PROTECT YOU? NO! THAT IS A MYTH! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! STAY AWAY FROM TREES! STAY AWAY FROM ALL FORMS OF METAL! STAY AWAY FROM WATER! HUDDLE IN A FETAL POSITION IN YOUR RUBBER-LINED ROOM, EVERY DAY, FOREVER! OTHERWISE LIGHTNING WILL KILL YOU AND YOU WILL DIE!

Mary Worth, 6/20/10

The transition of Dr. Roberts’s face from pleased to devastated in panels four through seven is a delight of visual storytelling. “What’s this, another head case for me to fix? KA-CHING! Oh, wait … she wants me to … I mean, with a woman … emotional intimacy … oh, God. Oh, God. Well, I guess I don’t really have any choice, do I? Oh, right, her e-mail address, Christ. Ugh ugh ugh.”

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/20/10

Loretta is ashamed because she and/or Leroy are addicted to prescription medication! But really, anyone who knows them wouldn’t be surprised at what they need to do to get through life married to one another.

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The Lockhorns, 6/18/10

After more than four decades of Lockhorns dinnertime spitefests depicted from a point of view more or less level with the tabletop, today’s panel attempts to play with perspective a bit, showing us what it would be like to cower on the floor about three feet away from Leroy and Loretta as they eat. (Obviously, they’ll ignore you, as their mutual loathing is far more interesting to them just about anything you can name.) In addition to adding a bit of visual flair, this new viewing angle really gives us a good look at their dining room chairs, which they’ve clearly had specially made with incredibly short legs to accommodate their freakishly stumpy frames.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/18/10

I have to say that if, back when Rex and June discovered Brook lurking in their house, you had asked me to predict how this story would turn out, I would have not have considered the possibility that she would end up using her martial arts skills to disarm a knife-wielding thug. In fact, I would not have made this prediction a mere three days ago. But to be fair, I don’t think we’d ever seen Brook’s ripped inner thigh muscles, a result of the long hours she puts in at the dojo keeping herself in peak physical shape.

Judge Parker, 6/18/10

Wow, so Judge Parker is really going to go through with this shoe business, huh? At least today’s strip accurately depicts what would happen if you got a lawyer involved in footwear manufacturing.

Mary Worth, 6/18/10

In a desperate, last-ditch effort to end this conversation with Mary, Jenna’s brain has just triggered a massive stroke.