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A sad note here before we launch into this week’s top comments: Eduardo Barreto, who took over the Judge Parker art duties from original artist Harold LeDoux, has passed away. His tenure at Judge Parker was cut short when he contracted meningitis a few years ago, and (unconfirmed) word is that his death was from complications from that disease. He had a fairly extensive comic book background, but to me he’ll always be the man who transformed Judge Parker from an odd-looking relic into a strip about hilarious sexy people doing hilariously boring things — and he got the better end of that team-up. Thanks, Eduardo.

And now, your comment of the week!

“A rolodex? Fancy elitist animal monsters! In my day we just scrawled the names of friends into the wall behind our letter-writin’ desks.” –bunivasal

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Dick Tracy puts a cunning plan into motion to learn the identity of his assailent. He waits until some bullets whistle past, then compares the grouping against his database of ‘Accuracy of Malformed Villain Attempts to Kill Dick Tracy’ (AMVAKDT). ‘Amateur’, he mutters, as he crafts a crude but gruesome death trap out of studio lights and gaffer tape.” –Lesser Whark

“If you’re like me — and I hope you’re not — you probably read that last panel as foreshadowing that Aunt May’s dessert would cause a gastrointestinal calamity to such a degree as could only be labeled ‘THUNDER OVER ASGARD!'” –Chareth Cutestory

“Pack of vicious eeevil wolves? Thousand-pound bear on the defensive? Mark Trail demands more carnage! Send in the housepets!” –Nate

“WTF is going on with Mary’s left hand in panel 2? Is she supposed to be whispering behind her hand? (If so, her hand is in the wrong place.) Is she pantomiming ‘phone’ because Bree’s not very bright? (If so, her hand is in the wrong place.) Is she trying to keep her brain from exploding and squirting out her ear? In that case, her hand might be in the right place.” –wossname

“The inter-species marriages have another impact on plugger mortality rates: diet. This can take several forms. Normally the carnivore-spouse attacks the herbivore spouse, eats her and then–because there is no one around to do the Heimlich maneuver–chokes to death on her bones. Marriages between competing species of herbivores are less dramatic in their lethality, but when it comes down to a grass versus grain diet, or leaves versus roots, usually one spouse crowds out the other out of the ecosystem, resulting in a slow death from starvation. Of course, when one spouse is an egg-layer death genarlly comes by spatula or skillet after the husband asks the wife to cook more of her own eggs. Pluggers do not believe in any form of birth control.” –Droopy Says

RMMD: “You go take care of Kelly! I’ll continue to commit felony assault!” –Cloudbuster

“Oh, Dolly. It’s PJ. Of course you need to tell him why. You’ve spent, what, four decades telling PJ why. ‘Why does Mommy cry some afternoons and drink cooking sherry?’ and ‘Why does Daddy sometimes look longingly over the fourth wall at Ted Forth?’ and ‘Why do I keep hitting myself?’ are probably a representative sample of all the whys Dolly has had to tell PJ over the years.” –Lily Sincere

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B.C., 12/16/11

A “bachelor party,” when brought up within a modern pseudo-humorous narrative, is invariably a euphemism for tawdry, regrettable erotic escapades. (This is not always true in real life; I’m sure yours was classy and not at all actionable.) Thus, I’m going to go ahead and assume that the bachelor ant here is planning on saddling this grasshopper as a prelude to some gross inter-species insect sex stuff. Whatever, let him have his fun, ants are one of those species where the males die right after mating, right? I was going to look that up, but I’ve never liked the ant characters in B.C. so I’m just going to go ahead and assume that it’s true.

Crankshaft, 12/16/11

I’m not sure why, but I find the retreating back of our Christmas Tree proprietor deeply unnerving. Maybe it’s the look of genuine horror on Crankshaft’s granddaughters face. It seems like he’s slowly and deliberately going to fetch his ax, and then, as predicted, he’s going take his payment in limbs.

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Crankshaft, 12/15/11

This would just be yet another Crankshaft in which the title character sits on the couch silently while the TV makes a terrible, terrible joke at him, if not for the carefully rendered expression of pure, incandescent rage on his face in that final panel. I mean, really, Crankshaft is always on the spectrum between dyspeptic and pissed off, but this looks like he’s finally snapped. It’s hard to say why, exactly — maybe he knows that he’s naughty and doesn’t want to be lumped in with the terrorists, maybe he’s insulted that the local news has stooped to this level of holiday jocularity, maybe he’s just finally worked out the grand conspiracy that everyone in the world is in on together, against him — but I’m assuming that he’s on the verge of filling his school bus with guns and ammunition and driving straight into a police station, just to see what’ll happen.

Family Circus, 12/15/11

Dolly is playing here with the lyrics to “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” lyrics that, if you live in the United States and have left your house to enter a retail establishment of any sort in the past three weeks, I’m assuming you have running unbidden through your brain. Still, I kind of wish that the Family Circus scheduling computer had accidentally spat out this panel sometime in June. If you read it then, you’d probably assume that Dolly is just enforcing false joyfulness on general principles and has had enough of PJ’s sullen, rebel-without-a-cause attitude, because in this house we sit up straight and smile even if we’re not happy, mister.