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Judge Parker, 12/13/05

There have been plenty of vile romances in the soap opera strips over the past few years, but the clumsy flirting in this strip is ickier than most. The ape-faced Judge Parker Jr. clearly believes that his clever chopstick gambit marks him out as a definite señor smoothie. Meanwhile, I can’t decide if April in panel three is supposed to be gazing dreamily at our crimson-oversized-sweatshirted lothario (and setting him up for the weird eye-gouging fetish he’s going to have to deal with in their inevitable post-married life) or just bored beyond comprehension (and thinking of jabbing herself with pointy things just to stay awake).

Incidentally, I know it’s just terrifically overdone shadowing, but the poor girl looks like she has more hair on her hands than Wilbur Weston.

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Mary Worth, 12/12/05

Just checking in briefly with what’s going on over at Divorce, Charterstone Style. Mary and Wilbur’s platitudinous smackdown has thankfully been replaced by catty underling innuendo. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that if any of your minions come in and taunt you about your ex-husband’s financial success, nobody over at the EEOC or the Labor Relations Board is going to say anything if you brain them with your fetching purple-and-maize desk lamp.

Do the Mary Worth artists have some sort of thing for women whose eyes don’t point in the same direction?

On second thought, I don’t want to know the answer to that question.

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Mark Trail, 12/9-10/05

I never would have pegged Jack Elrod as part of the chardonnay-swilling liberal real-American-hating elite, what with his love of the outdoors and camping and hatred of swarthy people with facial hair. Still, this latest plotline has managed to indulge in just about every vicious stereotype about the proud, overall-wearing rural folk that make up the moral backbone of this great country: that they’re stupid, they’re lazy, they wear overalls all the time, they’re by and large hideously unattractive (except for the young womenfolk), they refuse to give up pet-napping for honest work, etc. Just about the only slander that we’ve avoided has been the one about incest and sexual depravity … until now. Yuck. Thanks, Mark Trail, thanks a lot. Still, I have to admit that I like the wordless tableau in the last panel of the second strip: Andy the hero dog valiantly comes to the aid of our blue-haired heroine, with Scrawny Hillbilly Dude stumbling backwards, his dumb hat falling off of his stupid head. Meanwhile, No-Neck Hillbilly Dude is lumbering into action in the background, afraid that his dreams of “over a thousand bucks!” are going to vanish in a fit of intrafamilial squabbling.

Meanwhile, Sunday’s nature lesson takes us to chilly Arctic:

Mark Trail, 12/11/05

Yes, I’m sure that, when choosing the beasts that would pull his sleigh, Santa gave careful consideration to reindeer’s endurance, their special heat-spreading circulatory system, their “unique hair” … and also the fact that they can goddamn fly. Sheesh, Mark, for a naturalist, you’re sure leaving out some important details.