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Sally Forth, 7/26/14

It’s lonely being strange. Boyfriend Jon showed Hilary a way to escape the refuge and isolation of her family, leaving Sally to consider whether a life of surrealist Monopoly games, chocolate bunny ears, thwarted Paris vacations, and the Star Wars Holiday Special would be enough to sustain her, even if they did come with the love of a good — well, let’s go with “man.”

So she coaxed Ted to the neighborhood barbeque, even though parties are minefields for them — over the years, they have managed to offend the few neighbors whose names they know, share none of their interests or experiences, and always wind up in a corner numbly wisecracking to one another, trying not to drink too much and sneaking looks at the time.

Neighbor Tom Racine, a sensitive host and a decent man, sees, understands, and deftly relieves their discomfort, leaving Sally in stunned gratitude for the three seconds it takes Ted to fuck it all up.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/26/14

Herb congratulates himself for a jerk tactic that hasn’t worked in all of history.

Shoe, 7/26/14

The Perfessor’s butt is so big OSHA makes him wear a vehicle motion alarm.

Has anybody else seen A Thousand Clowns? What I mean is, I think Sally Forth is A Thousand Clowns, which means Sally herself is Barbara Harris and I need to rethink my life.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crankshaft, 7/16/14

Real Life: “Lillian, Ed was careless taking care of your plants and there was water damage. We brought in a crew to fix it, and added the wine cooler to thank you for being so understanding.”

Crankshaft: “Ed was an asshole, so now he and I are both going to be assholes, because comedy.”

Shoe, 7/16/14

Birds do not work like that, number eight hundred forty-three.

Skyler has a lifetime of this ahead of him; he knows it; and it shows.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/16/14

Most dogs sniff asses. Ralph kisses them.

Phantom, 7/16/14

Sanctimonious “No Kill” heroes like Batman, the Lone Ranger, and the Phantom talk themselves into knots trying to, y’know, KILL SOMEBODY without violating their precious “codes.” It makes you long for the moral clarity and no-nonsense efficiency of a Savarna, or an April Bowers-Parker, or … or … both of them together. Yup, long for them. Mmm …

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 7/6/14

Oh boy oh boy, we’ve reached the best part of any Judge Parker storyline: the part where the smug, upper-crust protagonists get paid. Remember last year when Neddy befriended do-gooders Ross and Thalia and also invested in their dubious water filtration scheme, and Ross supposedly got kidnapped in Niger and it looked like maybe it was all a scam, but it turned out it wasn’t and our heroes were able to call in some shadowy black-ops extraction team to save him? Well, Neddy just got her first check for her trouble. Plus interest! Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.

Speaking of gettin’ paid, remember how April’s dad Abbott had gone down to his heavily armed Yucatan jungle compound, to die? Well, apparently that’s for suckers, so he’s going to come back to the states and be Judge Parker Senior’s highly paid script consultant/the strip’s wacky neighbor instead. Come on board, Abbott! There’s room on this gravy train for everybody!

Shoe, 7/6/14

A good strategy for writing a comic strip is to take a joke your 10-year-old nephew heard in school, but then have one of your characters describe it, ashen-faced, as a terrible nightmare he had, to emphasize the intrinsic horror of the narrative.

Panel from Spider-Man, 7/6/14

Now that Spider-Man has been displaced from his super-heroic role by Doc Ock, Peter needs to find new employment — so why not as a mashgiach? “Wait, was this cow butchered improperly? My trayf-sense is tingling!”