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Judge Parker, 8/24/12

Last seen tormenting Curtis, Cuss Skunk returns to her rural roots to divert Sam and Avery while the marijuana growers recover Avery’s incriminating photo. @★ω*!!

The outlines of the growers’ nefarious plan are now clear: rather than murder Sam and Avery or steal the camera, they intend to prank them into submission. Watch for the criminals to put makeup on our heroes as they sleep, cut off the toes of their socks, and hoist their underwear up the flagpole. They were going to short-sheet Avery’s bed, but it doesn’t seem to be in use tonight.

Mark Trail, 8/24/12

And in today’s other criminals ‘n’ cameras story, Cherry reveals that her plan to protect Rusty from the sheep-murderers is to hope nothing bad happens. The Game Warden’s plan is to hunker down and rely on Mark Trail. They have an equal probability of success!

Family Circus, 8/24/12

Billy’s decision to join the Hasidim will not sit well back at the Keane Kompound.

Gil Thorp, 8/24/12

Oh hey, another advantage of match play is that once a player is ahead by more holes than are left to play, the match is over — and who doesn’t love less golf? Steve’s delighted that his terrible performance gives him special alone time to pitch his miserable woo to Molly Kinsella: “Hey Molly, will you go out with me now that I’m a documented loser?

Pluggers, 8/24/12

Pluggers are slobs.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/24/12

“Sorry, Melissa — I engaged a lady once, and it didn’t work out well. Not well at all!”

Mary Worth, 8/24/12

Gaaaaaaaah — “Tell me AGAIN?” ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? People came together to help one another, and life is brutal — is that so freaking hard to understand? Sheesh.

Four hairs. There are always and forever exactly four hairs.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/12

Hey, Comic John — that was you whining to Funky about your sex life Monday, right? So maybe you could find some way to comfort your wife and assure her that in your eyes she’s no three-year-old, but a desirable, capable, undeniably adult woman? Perhaps some kind of cooperative adult activity, suitable for the place and time, that would help restore her confidence and could actually work out pretty well for you, too?

No? You’re going with the cheap putdown instead? OK, then — on with the glasses and down the hall: that copy of Power Girl #18 ain’t gonna stain itself, you know!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/18/12

This would be just another episode of “Rex exploits rich old ladies for stuff”, but for two things. First, this old lady is Melissa Claridge, for fifty years a straitlaced hypochondriac who berated Rex for his indifferent courtship of June. Here’s “old” Melissa schooling her lying niece Heidi, thanks to the careful scholarship of Lena Delle at In Search of Rex Morgan, M.D.:

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/16/1971

Yes, that’s old June, née Gale, in the first panel.

The second thing about today’s strip is that look on June’s face in the third panel — of what, exactly? Avarice, which passes for lust in her loveless, superficial life? Maybe, but I like to think it’s hope — of escape, of a normal vacation free from menacing floodwaters, shipboard plague, or psycho boyfriends just this once — or maybe for a return to those sweet old days when despite all Melissa’s prodding Rex stayed far, far away from her.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/18/12

And Grampy has had a long long life, wasted trying to dull the misery of his empty marriage with porn and likker. Everyone finds this hilarious.

Love Is, 8/18/12

Heh, heh — it’s funny because DEATH.

Hey, Josh is off-grid for the week at his Secret Writer’s Retreat in the Northern Part of the State. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net with site issues, spam alerts, etc.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 8/5/12

The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, it was at the tail end of a big Hitchock binge, and so one of the things I found most striking about it was that it was about half of a typical Hitchcock movie. Which is to say: As in most of his movies, we get a cast of quirky character trading snappy dialogue, and start to get a sense of dysfunction underlying their interpersonal dynamics. Usually, the story’s excitement would emerge from these relationships fairly early in the movie; but in The Birds, whatever plot you think is brewing is suddenly and violently pushed aside by an incomprehensible apocalypse, as (uh, spoilers, I guess) every bird in the world suddenly goes insane and starts attacking humanity. It’s well and truly shocking in particular if you’re a Hitchcock fan, because you watch one of his meticulously constructed universes suddenly shatter under assault from an external force that is never explained.

This is a long way of me saying that, if the current round of enjoyable but predictable Judge Parker antics were abruptly interrupted by a terrifying and bloody raccoon revolution, I for one would be fully in favor of such a development.

Mary Worth, 8/5/12

Guys, sorry I left you hanging on the Mary Worth boat-plot — metaphorically, I mean, not literally hanging off the side of a listing cruise boat, like these guys. Anyway, Wilbur didn’t fall to his death and it looks like our gang will be rescued by a helicopter instead? Which, call me a swimming-snob if you must, but is it really easier to pluck half a dozen terrified passengers from the tilted deck of a rapidly sinking ship than it is for those passengers to, say, swim the length of two swimming pools through warm coastal non-oceanic water to safety? Tell me I’m crazy! Am I crazy?

Rex Morgan, 8/5/12

I’ll probably get sick of “Rex Morgan smiles to himself while taking flack from sassy old people” plotlines at some point, but for now, I say bring ’em on! “Tell me something I don’t know!” Rex says to Melissa, trying to figure out how to get into the space suddenly left open in her will by her ungrateful niece.

Spider-Man, 8/5/12

As if you couldn’t tell from the entire run of Newspaper Spider-Man to this point, spider-sense can not predict or protect against public humiliation.