When little old ladies in generic two-dimensional ur-suburbs are abducted in their living rooms by she-mujahid and strapped into their wheelchairs with a government office building's worth of C-4...is there any sanctuary left?
Above is the scene in today's Judge Parker (named after a character who, this being one of those daily comic strip plot lines that has been in continuous development since 1952, actually appears in the strip about once a year). The weeks leading up to this uncharacteristically dramatic moment have involved the recruiting of an ex-Navy SEAL JAG lawyer (if only the GWOT were in fact being fought with such posable action lawyers) to join the boutique law firm run by Sam Driver and Randy Parker (son of the Judge, and regular date of a hot young platinum-haired CIA recruit). The new partner lost both legs to an Afghan IED, and infects the strip with a nice Jake Barnes melancholy that is rare to find between The Wizard of Id and the daily Jumble. The office manager, Gloria (back from last year's bizarro anachronistic Mexican sojourn), has the hots for him, and readers have been enduring about a month of non-stop prosthetic entendre (you know, on the days when Sam's hot wife Abby isn't busy investigating the geezer farmers next door that have been secretly growing industrial quantities of pot in gigantic hydroponic silos -- seriously -- Abby even unwittingly ate a hash brownie earlier in the year). So here they were, about to enter his home for a romantic/familial dinner when they open the door and -- Samira, daughter of Abul Hakim, in maximum birka! With Grannie ready for elderhostel martyrdom!
You laugh? Let's see you try to evoke a moment of real drama within the confines of three soy ink-and-pulp panels and an excruciatingly wooden cast of characters that have been playing out their time-stopped live in continuous continuity for 56 (!) years...
You know, I may start reading Judge Parker.
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