Short but Sweet. And Nonsensical

In today's Judge Parker, Abbey and Godiva have a sexy-off, with Abbey flaunting her perky tits while Godiva shows she's got back. Then, Abbey suggests they take a walk with the recently traumatized Sultan the horse while Godiva wipes her tears on her bra.

Sunday Cavalcade of Goofiness

The Panel-by-Panel account:

1. I love the Battlefield Earth-style camera slant. I love even more that if you straighten it out in your mind, you'll notice that Sam is somehow standing in the most uncomfortable position possible.

2. I have no clue why Sam is so committed to kicking Rocky and Godiva out of his house or why it is of crucial importance that they never meet Neddy, but judging by the serious-as-a-stroke look on his face, I'm guessing there must be some dark secret about Neddy we may find out about in 7 months.

3. WHERE THE HELL DID GLORIA COME FROM?

4. This, this is Barreto at his best. There are 4 men in this panel, yet Barreto masterfully masks one with a speech balloon, then uses his patented "hot chick in the foreground" to block a second and give us a perspective that prevents him from drawing Sam and Steve again. If he could've somehow made it look like the short-haired hottie extra and Gloria were making out, it would've been Christmas 5 days early.

5. Hard to follow that last panel, but I do like how despondent Sam looks when it hits him that he's going home to his hated family and friends, and actively plans to do as little as possible to interact with them.

6 & 7. Meanwhile.... we are apparently ditching this boring, played out murder mystery drama for a much more exciting "ancillary characters who we might never see after this plot is finally played out talk about their problems." On the plus side, this means we'll get to see much more of everyone's favorite Judge Parker staple, Abbey Spencer's Bright Red Mullet. On the even bigger plus side, if we get to spend the next month staring at Godiva's insane purple striped sweater, well, who the hell cares who shot D'Vito?

Phantom Legs

Steve: Sam, I feel compelled to remind you that your theories are contradictory and don't make any form of sense whatsoever in regard to motive.

Sam: Well, as some poor schlub lawyer who toiled in poverty for Uncle Sam for cut-rate wages, I don't expect you to understand how being rich works. I, however, married into money, and if there's one thing it taught me, it's that you can never have too much money. At any rate, I have exhausted my ability to give a damn about this whole murder thing. I'm going home to hang out with my celebrity friends.

Steve: Before you do, would you mind opening your briefcase again? Apparently my prosthetic legs disappear when there's nothing to hide them behind.

Secret Agent Sanchez

Not much of interest happening today. Sam and Steve continue to talk about how it's unfathomable that someone could be killed by someone who was close to them and also hated them. But if not Stella, then who? None other than Joe Isaacs, the lawyer! Because in the Judge Parker Universe, lawyers have no respect for the law and care about nothing but money, as Sam Driver illustrates on a daily basis.

Much more interesting is the fact that Stella might be sending assassins after Joe Isaacs, the lawyer. It'll be like a race to see if Sam and Steve can get to Isaacs before Stella's assassin, who may or may not be Rico Polliti, to see who can violate the law quickest. Isaacs, meanwhile, should be in Barbados by now, setting up a confrontation between him and the Original Judge Parker, who has all but been written out of his own strip. Normally this would all be exciting plot material, but as this is Judge Parker, be assured it will not be.

Much more interesting than all this is that Gloria did not escape fast enough to prevent cutaways to her sexiness. Once she's out of the major metropolitan area, she might have better luck. Where is she going in the middle of her workday? I don't know. Hopefully to find that strip club she can take her Community College degree to. Much more likely: to conduct her own illegal investigation of Joe Isaacs, the lawyer.

Did she kill him? No! Are you sure? Yes!

Steve: So, the widow D'Vito hated her husband, and yet you're still convinced that she didn't do it?

Sam: Yes.

Steve: Good, that way our readers who missed yesterday, and the day before, would be caught up with these non-developments.

Sam: Now, I'm going to pretend to read this paper in order to look busy.

Steve: Whoa, careful Sam! It looks like the Nothing is attacking your face!

Sam: Considering we're in the middle of a neverending story, it's bound to happen once or twice. Anyway, by closing my eyes like this so it looks like I'm thinking really hard, I have deduced Stella did not kill him because she didn't have his money he was running off with. Even though by her own admission she hated his guts, the only reason she could possibly have to kill him is to steal his money, and since she is still here and doesn't have it, I figure she must be innocent.

Steve: That would explain why she's sitting around drinking champagne without a care: she's broke! Let me try that trick.

Sam: No no no. That's all wrong, you've got to CLOSE your eyes. Then fold your lips in and scrunch your forehead. You still have much to learn about being a lawyer, Legless-san.

Tomorrow: Yesterday again.

The Plot Thinnens!

Today on the Judge:

Rather than continue Sam's tenuous argument that his trespassing and assault is different from Rocky's in a good way, our good friends Wilson and Barreto have decided to skip the rest of that conversation and jump to... a couple minutes later in the conversation. Granted, it's a completely stupid part of the conversation, but it's still a skip, even if only a small one.

Steve: So which one of D'Vito's cohorts might've killed him?

Sam: Beats the hell out of me.

Steve: What? I thought you told Lt. Jim that you already solved the case.

Sam: Right. I lied about that. I just like to chap his ass. Hence the interfering with his investigation, then calling him up and bragging about it.

Steve: Ok, well, who DIDN'T kill D'Vito then?

Sam: His wife. She said she wanted to, but somebody else did it first.

Steve: Oh, so she had an alibi?

Sam: No, she just said she didn't. In my years of lawyering, I have found that people who are capable of murder are incapable of lying.

Steve: Are we going to spend the next month or so talking about this, only to arrest the only other suspect who has been introduced, Rico Polliti, the Professional Wrestler-turned-Driver/Bodyguard?

Sam: Month, as in singular? Try 4.

Feel the Power of the Drivermaniacs

Now, on the surface, this is one of the least exciting strips in the past few weeks. But underneath?


Gloria: "Jesus H. Christ. If you guys want to have the exact same conversation we had last week, go right ahead, but I will not be around to provide cutaways to my sexiness."

Sam: "Fine by us. Maybe you'd prefer to put that community college degree to work at a strip club, if you hate this place so much."

Gloria: "Whatever. Maury's on. I'll be back in an hour (approximately 3 months, Judge Parker time)."

Steve: "Ok, so you decked the bodyguard?"

Sam: "He had me in a chokehold! I had no choice."

Steve: "Not the chokehold! It's a good thing you got out of there; he usually transitions straight from the choke into his trademarked slam, the D'Vito Driver."

Sam: "And then when I got out of it, his manager came in and hit me with a steel chair while the ref's back was turned! Too bad, because I was just about to win the Intercontinental Championship Belt."

Steve: "Man, wish I could've been there to help. You could have used one of my prostheses as a foreign object, then covered for an easy three count."

Sam: "Oh, do you still have no legs? The fact that you're drawn normally and never mention them ever made me unsure."

Steve: "Yeah, that's why I keep handy leg-obscuring objects like this desk in front of me at all times. Really, I'm a little unhappy that you and Rocky Ledge get to run around beating people up while the only thing I get to do is dig through people's trash."

Sam: "Please. I am a sophisticated and classy lawyer who only uses violence as a last resort, unlike that country music-singing piece of street trash Rocky. My actions were in self-defense."

Steve: "Ok, just so I have this straight: Papparrazzi trespass onto your property, create a disturbance which endangers the life of Rocky's wife and causes her serious injury. When Rocky gets over there, he's mad, and punches one of them in the face."

Sam: "Completely unjustified attack. Luckily my sweet lawyerin' skills were able to keep him out of prison."

Steve: "Whereas you committed fraud by pretending to be an insurance agent so you could snoop around in a murder victim's widow's house and try to find evidence to set her up for the crime, only to be discovered, at which point her bodyguard attempted to forcibly remove you from her property when you punched him in the face..."

Sam: "Completely justified. Obviously self-defense."

Steve: "I'm not sure I understand."

Sam: "Being a rich, well-connected lawyer means never having to say you're sorry."

Steve: "Wait, what's that sound? I think that's Mrs. D'Vito's Bodyguard's music! He's not even supposed to be at this venue!"

Tomorrow: Sam Driver challenges the Bodyguard to a Cage Match... or Sam and Steve continue talking.

Also, if you like, I could give you the whole exciting and as yet unresolved plot of Country Music Sensation / Environmentally Friendly Factory Owner Rocky Ledge and his psychotic German Supermodel Wife with a million adopted orphans Godiva Danube, or I could just keep dropping bits of backstory as I see fit. The important thing is that Godiva has gigantic knockers.

The Groundswell of Excitement Continues

12/12/09




"So you stole evidence from a crime scene and thus made it impermissible in trial?"

"Well, the important thing is that we used rubber gloves! And baggies!"

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? That makes all the difference! By the way, do you still have that hot secretary? If we could get a gratuitous close-up of her sexy eyelashes and hooker rings, that might make this episode halfway interesting."

"Not a problem!"

Also, there's a Sunday Strip:



Since some papers don't carry the Sunday strip, they can't run anything important that they don't recap the next day, so you can actually skip the Sunday strip and not miss anything. Sort of like every other day in Judge Parker. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Sam's new strategy of wearing reading glasses and going through a stack of yellowish papers to make him look more legit as a lawyer. Also, I'd be severely remiss if I didn't mention ANDROGYNOUS COP PERSON in the penultimate panel.

Oh, and Sam has apparently already solved the case, based on one scuffle with a bodyguard and the "public records" Gloria downloaded off of TMZ.

And Today's exciting episode:



Sam: Gloria, make sure Lt. Yelich's stooge signs for this. If we're going to participate in this level of corruption, we're going to at least make sure to leave an extensive paper trail documenting all of our misdeeds.

Gloria: Right-o. I'll just lounge around sexily while I wait. Maybe I'll even search for more "public records" while I'm at it.

Steve: Hey, I was mostly in the room for the majority of your conversation last week about the widow D'Vito and her rasslin' bodyguard, but could you go over it again? If there's one thing our readers can't get enough of, it's lawyers recapping the same conversation repeatedly in their office.

Sam: No problemo. Maybe we can call Lt. Yelich and tell him we stole some evidence while we're at it!

Tomorrow: Sam and Steve continue talking.

On a Personal Level

Previously on Judge Parker...

Sam called the chief of police, found out that the gunpowder residue results were negative, coyingly led on that he has even more evidence in an ultra-manly "I know something you don't know!" way.

Now, I hate to make today's Judge all about me, but I relate very deeply to our troubled police guy in the third panel. One of my primary job duties is making sure everything on the unit is up to code. One day, while I was particularly unsuccessful at this part of my job, my supervisor, who jokes about relying on me to keep him out of trouble, invited me out for lunch. We went to McDonald's. When we got there, there were not only no close parking spots, but the two fake parking spots he invented in front were somehow taken too. Rather than just park a little ways away, he decided to park in a clearly marked No Parking Zone whle saying, "Maybe if I cover up those lines with my car, nobody will notice," at which point I officially gave up my quest to keep him out of trouble.

And so, I understand how Face-Palming Police Lieutenant Jim feels as Sam brazenly brags about interfering with a police investigation. Eventually you just have to roll with the incompetence.

More back story:

This story is about Frank D'vito's murder. D'vito was convicted of stealing his investor's money sort of exactly like Bernie Madoff. Judge Randy Parker threw him in jail with no bond, but an appeals judge overturned it and let him out on bond. While Randy and Sam were out at dinner, Henry Sarber introduced himself to them, told Randy he did the right thing because if D'vito were released, Henry would've killed him. Randy orders police protection on D'vito, but he apparently (This happened off panel) slipped away during the night and was murdered in the park, where police found Henry. Sam decided something was 'fishy' and decided he was defending Henry without Henry ever actually hiring him, but procedures like that just don't bother Sam too much. Sam suspected his widow, so he disguised himself as an insurance agent to get into her estate, had his cover blown, got into a fight with a professional wrestler, and then somehow decided that it wasn't the widow because she said she didn't do it, but would if she had the chance, maybe? I'm a little fuzzy on that part. The important thing is that the widow is a scantily clad blonde with big boobs.

The Day It All Began

Sam: What a bunch of Crooks and Shysters! Any one of them could've murdered D'Vito. If I had known this was going to be difficult and time-consuming, I would've blown it off and chased some ambulances today instead.

Gloria: My money's on the lawyer, because as you and your gimpy sidekick have demonstrated this morning/past two weeks, lawyers have absolutely no principles or respect for the law at all. Also, have you noticed my boobs? Making them look perky at all times is completely worth the pain of keeping my back arched like this every second of the day.

Sam: Sorry, no I haven't. I've been temporarily blinded by my law partner's intriguing choice of suit today. Who knew black shirts and brown jackets would go so well together?

Steve: Thanks for noticing. I found the piece of evidence that could potentially clear our client's name and absolve him of guilt, but rather than turning it over to the proper authorities, I thought I'd shove it into my sandwich bag from lunch and smuggle it back here.

Sam: Nice work! Now let's work on retrieving the gunpowder residue test results. If we can keep that from the police too, then we'll be one step closer to keeping Henry locked up for a few more weeks. Not like he's dying of cancer or anything.

Tomorrow: Sam impersonates the chief of police and has the gunpowder results destroyed. Henry remains in custody.