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Six Chix, 3/21/14

Comic Sans: Origins

I always knew it went something like this. The grinning, disfigured jester, seducing his unsuspecting queen into forcing her court monks to create a new font, an abomination whose every blasphemous curve traces the foul arc of Baphomet’s own horn. The trembling monk, sighing “Yes, Majesty” as he struggles to ignore far-off laughter and the whiff of sulfur rising from his quill where it scratches the parchment.

B.C., 3/21/14

The original joke, “I don’t need to outrun him, I just need to outrun you” is at least as old as the human race, which, if you read Genesis 1:31 literally, is just six days less than the age of the universe. The implication is that if dinosaurs existed at all, they must have coexisted with humans — though not for long, if that determined-looking velociraptor has anything to say about it.

Marvin, 3/21/14

Wow, Marvin’s callous abuse of his family is even more repulsive viewed through the lens of post-Edwardian British class structures. And you can bet Team Marvin is right now putting the finishing touches on their next miniseries, Slavemaster Marvin: a Tale of the Old South.

Pluggers, 3/21/14

Pluggers are beyond shame, and no longer even try to hide their depravity. Please, if you know the first thirteen Plugger Theories, in the name of everything holy keep them to yourself.

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P.S. Comments of the Week will appear Monday, when Josh gets back.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 3/20/14

The Bowers/Abbotts père et fille share a private moment and a little shop talk. The thought of simply declaring her Dad’s gift and paying import duties and taxes on it never crossed April’s mind. “Can money even move in that direction — ‘away’?”, she muses. Somehow it doesn’t seem physically possible!

Welcome to the family, girlfriend – a true Parker at last!

Or maybe not? Long-running strips need to be really careful about irrevocable steps like marriages, graduations, and deaths. They upset a strip’s balance, limiting the ways characters can contribute. And if there’s one constant in Judge Parker over the last fifty years, it’s that Randy Parker is a clueless, self-satisfied tool, perpetually used and discarded by women. This principle is so much a part of the strip’s bedrock that even on the eve of his wedding, I can’t believe they’ll go through with it. I fully expect that April will die in a hail of gunfire or (more likely) disappear into the jungle at the last possible moment. Anyway, stay tuned — we’ll know in mere months!

Luann, 3/20/14

That said, what on earth is going on in Luann? Everybody’s been moving through middle-school and high school over the strip’s 29 years, and now they’re seniors announcing college plans for the fall. Ethnic ciphers Rosa and Delta are off to Yale and Howard, most of the cast to nearby “Moony Uni” (OK sure, some kind of Unification Church outfit, I guess), and Luann to the local Community College.

Is Luann really just six months away from becoming a “college hijinks” strip, or a soaper about declining academic standards and unsustainable student debt? Is inert, self-absorbed, academically dishonest Luann even remotely plausible as a college student? All these questions will have to wait, because: OMG YOU GUYS PROM!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/20/14

Yet another newspaper drops Herb and Jamaal, and Herb blames his son for it.

Spider-Man, 3/20/14

“I was going to save those men — but their plight has flushed Spider-Man out of hiding! Now they can just die for all I care, for putting that stink on my beloved city!”

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— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/14

Mary Beth announces her plans t’ butcher and wed Jughaid based on wildly inaccurate folk anatomy. Upside: plenty of sausage t’ serve at th’ reception!

Crankshaft, 3/19/14

Hey, remember that one summer we rented a lake cottage but it rained all week so we scoured the bookstores and sat at the kitchen table passing around Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks and eating popcorn? And I had to explain to my sister how Ice-9 worked, and felt vaguely uncomfortable watching my Mom read Welcome to the Monkey House?

You DON’T? You mean it wasn’t part of your experience, and hearing some jackass narrate his private recollections isn’t compelling entertainment? Wow, somebody explain that to Jeff here, wouldja?

Mary Worth, 3/19/14

Or maybe these three things are actually just one thing? Hey, I know! Tell him if he had a job he could buy one of those adorable flat cars with the greywall tires!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/19/14

In Westview, smoking is an aspirational vice — the stylish path to a miserable death. The losers who can’t afford $5.67 a pack have to chug contaminated groundwater or huff radon.

Curtis, 3/19/14

Sorry, Greg — once those quotes go up on your “cool,” they never come down.

Edge City, 3/19/14

Hey, Len — that’s pretty “cool”!

Words to live by: “Life is just too damn short to go around carrying store-brand tote bags.”

— Uncle Lumpy