Comment of the Week

My little friend is not so little anymore, Toby! In fact, she's quite large! Enormous, in fact! Nine foot six and getting taller by the day! It's actually quite alarming! We're getting into I'm a Virgo territory here! Did you watch that miniseries, by the way? It was on Amazon Prime a couple of years ago! Jharrel Jerome is a treasure! Some great performances by Elijah Wood and Walton Goggins as well, which reminds me that I need to start my Justified rewatch. Oh, Margo Martindale is another treasure, especially as a voice in BoJack Horseman. Anyway, Olive is a giant, is the point I'm trying to make.

els

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Judge Parker, 7/7/21

Ha ha, ever since Sam was supposed to be guarding Randy and Charlotte but got punched into unconsciousness and Randy and Charlotte subsequently got kidnapped, Judge Parker Senior has been mostly sulking and getting drunk, fuming mad at everyone but especially at Sam. So for the last few days Sam’s been building up to his proposal for a mission that will give them purpose again, which I’ve assumed was going to be that they go into the deepest jungle and do whatever terrible deeds are necessary in order to find and free Alan’s son and granddaughter. But haha, nope, Sam’s just antsy and wants to rack up some billable hours so he can keep in good standing with the local bar association. C’mon, Alan, ever since the Cellino & Barnes partnership ended in acrimony and tragedy, there’s room for some new ambulance chasers in town!

By the way, it’s wholly possible that I’m not remembering Randy’s daughter’s name correctly, but I don’t care that much and I made only an extremely half-assed attempt to look it up, discovering that the Judge Parker Wikipedia page doesn’t seem to have any updates to the “story and characters” section beyond 2009. So, no word on Randy’s daughter, but the article does note that when the strip launched Randy had a sister, Ann! So, I dunno, Alan, maybe spent some effort figuring out where she went if you need to focus your energy somewhere.

Blondie, 7/7/21

One interesting thing about the weird character design in Blondie is that Dagwood’s canonical outfit is the weird modified version of a tuxedo that you see here, a holdover from the strip’s 1930s origins, when he was a dissolute rich kid and this was the sort of thing it was normal for people of his social class to wear to parties. In 2021, of course, that would be a wholly insane thing for someone to wear, so Dagwood tends to wear polo shirts when lounging around at home, and his tuxedo is now his work uniform; his officemates generally go in for more normal work attire, but I digress. My point is that Dagwood has clearly pulled out his laptop immediately upon arriving home to fact-check the extremely backhanded compliment his boss gave him, and I think that’s sad! Blondie obviously does too, as that’s a pity kiss if I ever saw one.

Crankshaft, 7/7/21

You know what I’m not sad about? Crankshaft getting straight-up scammed by the garden product catalog he’s obsessed with. Good for them, I say!

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Hagar the Horrible, 7/6/21

Ha ha! It’s funny because Lucky Eddie has made this same silly dad joke repeatedly, every time Hagar’s warband comes to sack this tiny little village, which, again, has happened often enough for everyone to get sick of the joke. Can you imagine the horror? Can you imagine these defenseless villagers forced to give up whatever meager amounts of wealth they’ve been able to accumulate since the last raid or suffer ghastly, violent consequences? Can you imagine them hiding in the ruined castle, once a symbol of the Carolingian Empire that restored peace and order to Western Europe, but now just an empty shell as the grandsons and great-grandsons of Charlemagne squabble amongst themselves, leaving the periphery of the Empire to rot? I’m sure they too would see the humor in Eddie’s little jest, were they not cringing in terror in some dark hiding spot somewhere!

Marvin, 7/6/21

If you only knew about Marvin from my blog, you might have a slanted view of the strip as being primarily about pooping. That’s not true, though; it’s really about a smug nightmare baby who, among his many other bad qualities, can dish it out but can’t take it. (Both “it”s in that sentence, to be perfectly clear, refer to poop.)

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Family Circus, 7/5/21

Happy 4th of July (Observed), everybody! On this sacred holiday, I have some news for you: The Keane Kids are America. Jeffy, in particular, is America. Doing something the stupidest possible way, and initially everyone is horrified and embarrassed by you, but then you end up winning, even though you’ve broken all the rules and you don’t “technically” win and everyone things you’re an idiot, but you’ve still won in every way that matters? That’s America, to me, and I think it’s beautiful.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/12

OK, this is a twist that I did not see coming and I kind of love it? For Sarah, engaging in creative work wasn’t meant to be part of a path to fame and fortune! She merely hoped to egg others into creating their own work in a shared universe, producing a virtuous cycle in which we all have more content to enjoy! Thanks to the weird stasis of comic-book time, Sarah, who has been a child for literally decades, probably has a vague memory of the glory days of fanfic group blogs on LiveJournal or whatever, but now lives in a sterile world of hypermonetization that her old soul rejects.