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Judge Parker, 5/20/16

We joke about the fact that the intricate details of Judge Parker’s plotlines tend to shift in the narrative wind, with the only constant being that the protagonists are going to get paid in the end, but I am very sad that the strip seems to be abandoning the #1 best and most hilarious thing about Neddy’s garment factory: that she was planning to exclusively hire old people, so that she didn’t have to pay for their health insurance or pensions. The whole idea was almost certainly illegal on a number of levels, but at least it acknowledged that clothes manufacturing almost never happens in the U.S. anymore for a variety of structural economic reasons. It also gave the venture a “hook” to get positive press coverage, though that’s mainly what Godiva is for, I suppose. Anyway, now that they’re just hiring ex-cons and other people of any age, most of whom are going to expect “salaries above minimum wage” and “safe working conditions,” look for Godiva’s business manager to move the whole operation to Bangladesh within a month, while Godiva is distracted by Rocky and his sex steaks. Don’t worry, our protagonists will get paid in the end.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/20/16

If you want to learn about how subcultures and isolated communities can become so alienated from the values of the state that rejection of that state’s laws and their enforcement apparatus becomes approved behavior, you could do worse than read Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.

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Mary Worth, 5/19/16

So we all know who that could be — it’s Dawn, ready to berate Mary because she took her advice to achieve in-person connecting by making a bolder personal effort and all it got her was a weirdly all-consuming not-relationship with a contingent faculty member and the hatred of all her peers. I’m more interested in the banner DEBATE SCANDAL headline in the Santa Royale News, which appears to be an sixteen-page tabloid. Was one of the candidates for Santa Royale City Council getting illegal advice through an earpiece while debating his opponent down at the old VFW hall? Or did the local high school debate team get busted for using performance-enhancing drugs, which, having been a high school debater myself, I’m not sure what that would even entail. Coffee, maybe?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/19/16

With new writer Terry Beatty in place, Sarah seems destined to do less creepy adult-child stuff, like being groomed for greatness by a mobster and her pet artist, and more normal-child stuff, like frolicking in the yard with her pet dog! I thought maybe this would be setting off another adventure, like when Abbey found a bunch of human skeletons that one time, but nope, just a skunk. I guess we’re going also going to see Sarah doing less succeeding, like when she became a best-selling author and skipped the first grade, and more failing, like when her new classmates at her fancy private school call her “Stinky Sarah” for the next six to ten years.

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Pluggers, 5/18/16

I have very mixed feelings about this caption/cartoon combination. In general, I sneer at shortcuts that allow the artist to pair up an extremely generic cartoon that can be endlessly reused, such as “Chicken Lady dyspeptically looks at a calendar while talking on a landline,” with an extremely specific caption, such as “Chicken Lady has gone past whatever the equivalent of menopause is for monstrous human-avian hybrids.” In this case, though, I’m pretty glad that we haven’t been presented with a visual depiction of, say, Chicken Lady about to get it on with her spouse and gleefully announcing that contraception won’t be necessary, or, conversely, Chicken Lady weeping sadly to herself because she can never have children.

Dennis the Menace, 5/18/16

“Get it, wreck-creation? Like they’re creating wrecks? Wuh-recks. It’s a silent w. I realize now I should’ve thought this through better.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/18/16

I’m so excited to casually drop the phrase “Mistopher Drama” into everyday conversation that I’m almost willing to overlook the fact that the plot of this strip is basically “The Boy Who Cried Child Abuse.”