Ever since The Comics Curmudgeon became one of my daily reads (by "reads" I mean "addictions") on the interweb, I've found myself following newspaper comic strips on a regular basis. Some of these I genuinely like (particularly Pearls Before Swine and especially Mutts), but most of them, in true Curmudgeonly fashion, I read ironically.
I mean--Mary Worth? Does anybody read the adventures of that meddlin' old biddy because they like it? Of course not. Mad magazine used to make fun of it when I was a kid, and Mark Trail, too. These are enjoyably stupid, and whatever their actual content, they always have the pleasant feeling that they could have been written and drawn twenty years ago.
There are strips I actively hate (don't get me started on Mallard Fillmore), strips I read because they're fun to riff on (For Better Or For Worse), then--inevitably--there are strips that convince me the universe is a cruel, formless void, bereft of a loving God.
Which brings us to Judge Parker.
Never in my life have I encountered anything as mind-numbingly dull as the current storyline in Judge Parker. This is a strip, famously, in which little of excitement or interest ever happens, where characters talk about interesting things that have happened to them rather than letting us experience them. But even by those standards, the current scenario is a Sominex Special. If something does happen, nothing will happen.
The horror began with the eponymous (but rarely-seen) judge summoning dashing attorney Sam Driver into his chambers. The judge wrote a soon-to-be-published novel, but he wants a bigger advance, and expects Sam to negotiate it for him.
Okay, right away, we have a character of wealth and privilege whining that he's not making enough money from his little sideline. Assuming that readers care about the avarice of the rich in the current economy, sadly, won't be the dumbest thing author Woody Wilson does.
Next, the judge mentions his book is being published by a firm called Cheatham House, run by somone named Dewy Cheaham. Dewy Cheatham! Get it? Well, if you don't, Wilson will explain the joke over and over and over again, characters endlessly repeating slight variations on the same dialogue. It's like a Beckett play, except it sucks.
Then Parker informs Sam he's flying out Phoenix--this Cheatham person loves golf, so Sam's negotiations will take place mostly on the green. Holy crap! A storyline combining the raw power of a contract dispute with the visual excitement of golf! Can this get any better?
Of course! Sam spends several days whining about how much he hates golf, which causes his partner Steve--Steve the one-legged, much-decorated ex-Navy SEAL, whose heroism we have to take as a given because we've certainly never been shown any of it--to start lecturing him on how he needs to adjust his "attitude" if he wants to get better at the game. Clearly, Steve is the Yoda of the golf course, and now we're going to have to endure his wise counsel before we finally get to the storyline we don't even want to resume.
In fairness, artist Eduardo Barreto, tries his best to give some visual interest to all this--Sam's secretary Gloria, who took part in the interminable "His name's really Dewey Cheatham?" week, has ginormous breasts and ridiculously long legs--but it's no use. This storyline is so brutally uninteresting, it's like staring at an empty page, and worse, it makes Rex Morgan look exciting.
