Post Content

The Phantom, 10/11/16

You know what you should be calling your dad about, Heloise? The fact that he’s paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition at this fancy pants private high school (risking exposure by selling bits and pieces of his ancient artifact collection on the black market to get the cash needed to do so) and you’re sitting here bored in a giant lecture hall. What’s the student-teacher ratio at this place, anyway? And is the teacher really just gesturing at a six-foot-tall PowerPoint slide that consists entire of three lines of text? Text written in some extremely basic font? What is that, Adrianna? Gross!

Mark Trail, 10/11/16

Hey, remember seven months ago, when Mark urged his shapely female companion to overcome her sense of anxiety and cross a rickety natural bridge? At the time, I claimed that since this was Mark we’re talking about there couldn’t be anything sexual to it, but I’m starting to think that we’ve at last discovered what turns this weirdo on.

Blondie, 10/11/16

I can’t stop looking at the phrase “I didn’t realize you were into shining shoes!” and thinking about how strange and hilarious it is. Honestly, this is exactly the sort of awkward thing that I would blurt out to a child in a desperate attempt to relate to them. I’ve said it before, but Dagwood could save himself a lot of mental energy and frustration just by changing the locks on his doors.

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 10/10/16

Thank goodness Dick Tracy is brave enough to blow the lid off the real shape of political corruption in modern-day America: members of Congress misusing their Capitol office phones to illegally solicit cash donations from little old ladies who are eager to see human-alien hybrids put into internment camps.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/10/16

Welp, Funky Winkerbean is in color again, which no doubt heralds a big shift in the storyline we’re following and … wait, what’s that? It’s literally the exact same thing from last week, where Frankie is going to use the power of his gossip site to ruin his son’s life, for some reason, alienating his readership in the process? I see.

Mary Worth, 10/10/16

“A meeting? That sounds like a fascinating thing that you were deliberately vague about for me to pry into. I just got back from a stay at a cosmetic surgery facility myself. They tightened my face another two notches! My nose is approaching Full Voldemort but my skin hasn’t been this firm and unlined since the Nixon Administration!”

Beetle Bailey, 10/10/16

Welp, looks like Sarge finally just straight-up murdered Beetle! I guess this strip is over now. Looking forward to seeing what new comic they replace it with, or maybe just enjoying the soothing blank space left over when they don’t bother!

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 10/9/16

“Yes, Hagar, I found this mermaid tangled in a fisherman’s net, and yes, she promised me any price to free her. And so I took what was my due: her daughter, who I’m going to bring to the zoo to sell to the zookeeper. Don’t judge! I’m tired of the dangerous world of being a Viking. Do you know how many gold pieces I can make from selling her? Enough to never live in hunger or fear again! She said I could have anything if I freed her! Anything! I kept my end of the bargain!”

Judge Parker, 10/9/16

Years ago, I went on a date with a woman who picked the movie we would see: My Best Friend’s Wedding. The plot, if you’ve never seen it, involves Julia Roberts realizing she’s in love with her best friend, Dermot Mulroney, right as he’s about to marry Cameron Diaz, and she decides to sabotage their relationship. The date was unsuccessful, in part, because of our wildly differing reactions to the movie. She wanted Julia Roberts’ character to be more sympathetic, when in fact she becomes less so over the course of the movie. I, on the other hand, had fallen in love with the movie at a particular turning point, when everything I knew about conventional movie narratives taught me that Julia Roberts was about to confess the truth of her evil plotting to Dermot Mulroney and they would start growing closer; instead, she decides to double down on the madness. I thought about my dad describing to me the first time he saw the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining; towards the climax of that movie, Scatman Crothers arrives at the Overlook Hotel to rescue the protagonist, only to be immediately murdered by Jack Nicholson. This doesn’t happen in the book, and my dad, who had read the book before seeing the movie, told me that when he saw this he thought, “Oh my God — anything could happen now.” That’s what I thought during My Best Friend’s Wedding (it’s the scene where Julia Roberts starts telling people Rupert Everett is her fiancé), and it’s a narrative high I’ve been chasing, and aspiring to in my own writing, ever since.

Anyway, there’s been a distinct shift in narrative tone in Judge Parker since Ces Marciuliano took over writing duties a few weeks ago, but I hadn’t experienced that feeling until now, looking at the next to last panel, when those shipping containers — containers Neddy browbeat her engineer/lover-to-be into using as the building blocks of her factory, then browbeat some poor sap into selling her below cost — collapsing in an awful ballet of twisted metal and, I hope, shattered bodies. Anything can happen now, you guys. Anything can happen.