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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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Slylock Fox, 5/11/15

It’s more than a little sad, really, that even after the animals achieved sapience, even after they adopted the worst aspects of the mostly vanished human race — wearing their clothes, living in their emptied buildings, stealing from and lying to each other, going to museums to gawk at the detritus of the dead — they still retain some dim memory of, and yearing for, their previous state. The government that employs Slylock may be based in the garbage-strewn cities that humanity left behind, but they still think of themselves as forest dwellers, and so their national museum is still the Forest Museum, even though there isn’t a tree in sight. Perhaps the state’s figurehead ruler lives in the forest part time, for ceremonial reasons, but the animals are civilized now, as disquieting as they find that fact. Those rats, though — those brutal, grim-faced enforcers Slylock’s brought in to show the security guard what happens to lawmen who turn — those rats have never seen a forest in their lives. They’re city folk through and through.

Mary Worth, 5/11/15

“Curiously excited!” is a really specific emotion, Toby, so congrats on your ability to distinguish it at a distance on the faces of people you don’t know very well. I guess they were curiously excited about seeing how Adam would do in the first of the several tests Terry is posing to him during his trial period to see if he’s worthy of her love. Can Adam operate a hot air balloon in what appears to be the absence of a certified balloonist? Or will he send the two of them careening to their deaths on the rocky, forbidding mountains that surround Santa Royale?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/11/15

I love that “working hard” for Rex means drinking coffee and reading the newspaper and answering his daughter’s questions in as few syllables as possible. Also, I’ve come to accept the idea that creepy adult-child Sarah is an artistic prodigy, but if she manages to settle the age-old philosophical question “What is art?” while she’s still in kindergarten, I’m gonna be pretty pissed.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 5/10/15

Slylock is of course the king of being a dick to everyone around him, including his supposed friends, but this seems like a particularly low blow. Like all the sapient animals in this strip, Max is still pretty new to using language, and is maybe a little sensitive and awkward about it. “Hey, Max,” says Slylock, “did you know that what you perceive as a self-directed ability to generate ideas ex nihilo is just putting words in order that someone else thought up? Guess you’re not as smart as you think!” Max dies a little inside. Is he still the tiny, unthinking rodent he once was? Do his hat and shorts count for nothing? He’ll get past this moment of self-doubt, probably; Slylock will wait until his self-confidence is built up a bit more before dropping the Library of Babel on him.

Panels from Judger Parker, 5/10/15

Oh, hey, remember that whole Rocky-and-Godiva-are-fighting plot that was ultimately resolved when Rocky and Godiva stopped fighting and skipped out on dinner, so they could have sex? Well, bad news: seems they had sex … to death.