What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Who is this ‘Ann Parker’? November 2023- February 2024

Ann Parker, who entered the strip the last day of 2023 and has been the focus since, is in fact part of Nicholas P Dallis’s original cast of the strip! Mark Carlson’s excellent listing of major characters describes her as “[ often ] engaged in ill-advised romances. She graduated with a nursing degree but is rarely shown utilizing it”. Carlson offers examples, including romances to a man with “criminal connections”, being stalked by a psychopath who later takes her hostage, being engaged to a jewel thief, and finally deciding between a penniless two-timing playboy and a struggling young attorney. She last appeared in the strip in 1968, around the time of Judge Alan Parker’s wedding to Katherine, and the strip’s transition to being about Sam Driver and Abbey ParkerSpencer.

After 55 years she’s back and ready to compete for the Ham Gravy Trophy for Formerly Important Characters Forgotten By Their Comic Strip. If that doesn’t sound anything like what you’re reading in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker that’s probably because you’re reading these words after around May 2024. If you are in that distant future, there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Otherwise, or if you’re looking for how we got to Ann Parker running for mayor of Cavelton, read on here.

And to answer your other question: the last several months Bret Blevins has been doing the art, in place of the ill Mike Manley. I don’t know why Blevins isn’t putting his name in the credit box. My guess is a contractual obligation, possibly something relating to health care, as the deranged United States model of employer-based health care causes many goofy results. But Blevins’s filling in is why the art looks different. Also the suddenness with which Blevins had to step up may explain some of the art panel reuse, like from the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th of January this year.

Judge Parker.

26 November 2023 – 17 February 2024.

After resolving more assassin stuff the Judge Parker cast was looking forward to a quiet holiday season. That got disrupted with April and Randy Parker’s house being swarmed by CIA agents again. It turns out April’s mother Helena Bowen Or Bowers is dead. Or believed dead. At least, her body was found dead. But the truck carrying her body to autopsy was stopped, the driver and security detail killed, and the body stolen. April, offended by the suggestion she might know something about the woman she lived with secretly for years, declares she’s had enough of the CIA suspecting her of knowing something and quits the agency.

Francesco Marciuliano and Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 28th of December, 2023. I’m glad April is taking this all so well. It’d be easy to handle the secret death of a parent badly. (And speaking of reused artwork: the 29th and with a zoom in 30th of December can be disorienting to look at in rapid succession.)

After some Christmas family moments of happiness, New Year’s Eve arrives and some fresh family moments of awkwardness. Ann Parker is back, Randy understating things by explaining to April that they haven’t seen her in “over twenty years”. While April is on full double red alert, Alan Parker is happy to hear his prodigal daughter’s tale. She’s married — not to David, the guy she was with when last seen, before Lyndon Johnson quit the presidential race — but someone else. And she needs money, a lot of it.

She doesn’t get it from Alan Parker, not with a story like that. Also, while she was in the bathroom, he checked her purse and found an ID for “Doris Lachlan”. April surmises that Ann is doing identity frauds, and that there must be serious trouble if she’s going to her father now. She suspects blackmail. Also that she’s now killed the “Doris Lachlan” persona.

Which is what brings Don Barnes to the law detective offices of Sam Driver and company. He was married-ish to Doris Lachlan, who ran off with a lot of money they were supposed to split. Detective (suspended) Yelich is happy to go searching, figuring there’s a chance to find her before she flees or someone finds her.

Francesco Marciuliano and Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 4th of February 2024. So what do you think the big score Don made with Ann/Doris/Cheryl/a-name-to-be-named-later was? Do you think her nursing expertise was used for it?

Finding her at the train station is someone named Harrison, who’s angry about “Cheryl” and the money she owes him. She swears several times she’s saving to pay him back. His better idea is to go find this one house she visited while in this town “Cheryl” has no reason to visit, and get the money out of “old friend” Alan Parker. Yelich is close enough to find out about this abduction and warns Randy Parker to get his father out of there. Alan Parker refuses to leave, and Rene Belluso takes notes, wrong.

Next Week!

We got supernatural beings trapped on this side of the great beyond! We got Popeye trapped on the other side of the great bubble! Who will win? Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye gets some attention next week, all going to plan.