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Judge Parker, 5/12/15

Oh hey, remember when Rocky and Godiva got into a big fight, and made up, by sexing into the next morning? Well, surprise, they weren’t doing anything as hedonistic and human as sex, silly. Nope, they’ve been working hard on Rocky’s book, shaping a lurid narrative that will exploit their tabloid fame and further line their pockets! Presumably this book will rocket up the nonfiction best-seller list and stay there for as long as the Chambers Affair tops the fiction list, i.e., roughly until the heat death of the universe. Neddy is smiling because she knows that, as the representative of the Spencer-Driver clan in closest physical proximity to this profitable enterprise, she’s the one they’re going to hand the undeservedly large check to.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/15

Meanwhile, in Judge Parker’s sister strip, little Sarah has figured out what art is for: profit! The sad truth is that Sarah’s paintings of horsies or school buses or whatever the hell it is she ends up actually producing are probably going to sell better than 95% of the work of contemporary serious artists. So, you know, get it while you can, kid!

Mark Trail, 5/12/15

Oh, goodie! It looks like one of Mark and Wally’s problems (tree-devouring beetles) is about to be solved by another one of their problems (an out-of-control forest fire)! But — who will Mark punch? He’s gotta punch someone, right? Can he punch the O. Henrician dramatic irony that has left him without an antagonist?

Phantom, 5/12/15

Huh, the family that’s the end result of 21 generations of racially pure inbreeding and dedicated to enforcing its own version of morality, eschewing the authority of any state and creating its own mythic cult, isn’t super big on democracy! IMAGINE THAT.

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Mary Worth, 4/15/15

Nice to see that the “Adam is a stalker who just straight-up moved into his ex’s apartment complex without telling her to woo her back” aspect of this storyline hasn’t been dropped! Adam has room for only one creepy, all-consuming emotional attachment in his life at a time, people. Now that he’s physically incapable of foiling the many, many assassination attempts against Congressman McDugal, all that energy will be directed at loving Terry with a laser-focused, un-asked-for intensity that makes all other loves look like a pile of hot garbage by comparison. BRACE YOURSELF FOR THE LOVING, TERRY.

Phantom, 4/15/15

So it looks like the Phantom’s long bout of amnesia is finally going to be cured by … hearing a bunch of people say “walker”? As in “Ghost-Who-Walks?” This just makes Bangalla’s outdated state-run television service’s failure to acquire rights to AMC’s hit show The Walking Dead all the more tragic.

Beetle Bailey, 4/15/15

Not one crude drawing of a woman must be allowed to remain unsexualized! Not on Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industry LLC’s watch!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/15/15

Surely Cuzzin Irvin is aware that he (or at least his cuzzin) lives in an enclave of violent anti-government extremists? This is like one of those tragic stories where someone who happens to like wearing blue bandanas wanders into the wrong gang’s territory.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/15/15

“And none of us ever saw him again.”

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Phantom, 3/3/15

How much of our day-to-day life is driven by conscious decision-making based on the sum of our life history, and how much by instinct? That is the question the current Phantom amnesiac storyline asks. The Phantom already has assumed many of his old Phantom-habits — crime fighting, journaling — and now he takes on one of the most important: the urge to reproduce himself! Didn’t realize how much the quest for a suitable mate was part of the Phantom mythos, did you? How many of those volumes in the Skull Cave are just full of drawings of various ladies, surrounded by little hearts and “MRS. THE PHANTOM” and “GOOD BREEDING STOCK” written over and over again?

Hey, remember when Chatu kidnapped the Phantom’s wife but let the Phantom believe she was dead, and then the Phantom got all flirty with sexy anti-pirate high seas vigilante Captain Savarna? This strip finds a lot of contrived ways to set up doomed love stories, is what I’m saying.

Spider-Man, 3/3/15

Ha ha, whoops, looks like Spider-Man’s secret identity has been revealed, revealed by some jerk with a bowl cut who used extremely basic observations of Spider-Man’s day-to-day routine to figure it out, in a way that really anyone who cared probably could’ve years ago. How’s our hero going to get out of this one? Maybe everyone is so distracted by the fact (suddenly very obvious in panel three) that Mysterio’s costume leaves nothing to the imagination that they haven’t been listening to anything he’s said for a while now.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/3/15

A corny play on words? That’s not a well-written comic strip punchline. A corny play on words, followed by another character acknowledging how corny that play on words is, followed by some depressing talk that trails off with an ellipsis? That’s a well-written comic strip punchline!