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Judge Parker, 4/27/08

Well, it’s been a few months since Sophie stopped being a pantsuit-wearing prematurely aged prepubescent and became a belly-baring tweenage fashion plate, and, heck, I guess that’s the sort of thing you expect from a girl that age. What’s much sadder is her transformation from a borderline-Asperger case, tethered to her laptop and constantly crunching climate change data, to someone who has fully bought into junior high’s draconian rules of social conformity. “Hey, Mr. Dickens is a weirdo! And everyone knows that people who deviate even slightly from the norm don’t deserve privacy or civil rights!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/27/08

We can already see the contours of the upcoming Rex Morgan storyline: the noble bureaucrats of the public health department versus the hate-filled harridans whose children died in an epidemic. “He must have been talking to the Wagners before their son even died!” Why, the Wagners probably deliberately infected their child with MRSA as part of an elaborate scheme to get a sweet financial settlement from the flush-with-cash county government! Monsters! Monsters with dead children!

Panel from Mary Worth, 4/27/08

“But she doesn’t deserve to see your hideous deformed and lumpy face, so please wear this paper bag, dear.”

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Hey, it seems like a lot of the comics put out by King Features did an Earth Day tribute today! Let’s take a look at three of the strips that took this very nice day when we should be thinking about the environment and made it sick and wrong.

Mary Worth, 4/22/08

Mary Worth may actually be the strip that most successfully incorporated the holiday into its inner milieu, since it provides a perfect platform for Mary’s suffocating sanctimony. “So, what did you do, Toby? Oh, had dinner with some friends? Breathing the precious oxygen that the tree I planted is putting out? Well, that sounds nice, if frivolous.”

Beetle Bailey, 4/22/08

Beetle Bailey willfully and horrifyingly misconstrues the concept of tree-hugging, which is nothing new for this strip. Today we’re forced to contemplate repulsive man-on-tree sex of the sort usually reserved for the most depraved hentai comics.

Dennis the Menace, 4/22/08

Dennis the Menace actually just added a new, Earth Day-friendly caption to a pre-existing comic in which Dennis takes Joey to secluded forest clearing and forces him to dig a shallow grave for himself.

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Mary Worth, 4/17/08

Rex Morgan may have his Mass MRSA Hysteria going for him, but Mary Worth has her own groovy new storyline percolating on the stove: the Baddle of the Ugly Middle-Aged Momma’s Boys! (“Baddle” was originally a typo for “battle,” but now I’m keeping it because it looks like “battle” plus “meddle.”) If most of next week is spent in the hospital parking lot, as two doughy dudes huff and puff while they swing ineffectively at each other and Mary shouts “Ronald! Richard! You stop that at once!”, I’ll be a happy guy.

Blondie, 4/17/08

There’s something odd about Dagwood’s lackadaisical pose that I can’t quite put my finger on. Surely the credenza is not a particularly comfortable place to lounge while being electronically snubbed. Perhaps as a world-class layabout he’s become bored with loafing on obvious pieces of furniture, like the couch or recliner, and is trying to step up his game by branching out.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/17/08

You know, sometimes it seems that Helga is profoundly unhappy in her marriage, but it’s days like today when she remembers why she agreed to leave her parents’ hut, get into Hagar’s longboat, and sail down the fjord to his village: because he’s so good at murdering people and stealing their valuable possessions.