Head trauma? He laughs off head trauma!
Mark Trail, 1/27/05
Obviously I couldn’t let yesterday’s jive-talkin’ For Better Or For Worse go unremarked, but it was actually kind of a tough call, as it’s been quite a fascinating week around the serial comics. In Mary Worth, Dr. Brian’s ex-wife announced her intention of effecting a reconciliation with him by any means necessary, possibly involving somehow conniving him into impregnating her. In Apartment 3-G, Margo stormed out of dinner with FBI Pete after he asked her if she had “personal relationship” (that is, whether she had “gone there”) with her evil captor Mr. Eldon. And in Mark Trail, Birdie whacked Mark in the back of the head with a bottle.
I had always sort of thought that the mountain of circumstantial evidence against Birdie and Barracuda would turn out to be not what it seemed: after all, Birdie loves animals, and Barracuda doesn’t have facial hair, which all seems to point to “good” in the Mark Trail universe. And sure, they seem like nice people: after all, they don’t like turning from drug dealing to murder; they only do it when they have no choice. In an earlier strip this week, they talked about dumping “the body” in the bay, and I thought it would be interesting if every Mark Trail strip for the next three years were just three panels of his waterlogged corpse, decaying imperceptibly day by day until eventually there’s nothing left but a barnacle-encrusted skeleton. But the authorial voice here lets us know that Mark is only unconscious, and to be sure we (and Birdie and Barracuda) should have known that it takes more than a single blow to the head to finish off America’s premier nature journalist/adventurer. I mean, he’s been hit in the head before. Often. The only question left in my mind whether or not we’ll get to see him hit a woman.
I like the pelican close-up in panel two. Of course, random foreground animals are one of Mark Trail’s stocks in trade, but this bird seems to be keeping a beady little eye on things. Maybe Mark’s myriad feathered friends will save him, descending on his drug-dealing enemies and pecking them to death. Then, with an army of killer birds at his back, he will march forth and take over the world! He will rule us all as our king, with a harem of dark-haired women dressed in pink polo shirts, which is how he likes them! I mean, that probably won’t happen, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
Pookie
January 27th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
Is it just me, or does that pelican have two eyes on one side of his head? Is it a flounder pelican? Do Birdie and Barry live near a nuclear reactor?
Josh
January 28th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Panel two is bordering on the grotesque. Never has dumping a body been more soothingly pastoral.
Isaac B2
January 28th, 2005 at 12:53 am
Yeach, facial hair is usually a good indicator of evil intentions in a comic strip character (also of an evil twin). But lack thereof does not a hero make.
Jiggles
January 28th, 2005 at 1:11 am
As far as I’m concerned, Mark Trail holds dominion over us now. I’m not worried – he’s gonna wakeup in the boat with a big ol’ WHAT TH’? and spear Barracuda with a passing swordfish he caught with his bare hands and everything’s gonna be swell and Birdie is going to get a break, too.
P. A. Phelps
January 28th, 2005 at 1:57 am
Don’t tell me these two are planning to dump Mark in a ditch or sink him to the bottom of the lake. You’d think that a pair of coked up taxidermists could be more creative.
Semi
January 28th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Why dump the body at all?
Stay with me on this, a taxidermized(sp?) Mark, labeled, on an oak stand in the living room. With a little compartment in his stomach to hide the all the cocaine.
Hey, where are you guys going?
WG
January 28th, 2005 at 10:50 am
Barracuda may not have facial hair, but note the “bad guy” nose visible in panel 1. A sure sign of a nogoodnik.
Can’t wait to see how MT escapes. Somebody’s going to end up floundering helplessly in the water, for sure. An oar may be involved.
lefty von righty
January 28th, 2005 at 11:43 am
Hide the body in the mouth pouch of the giant pelican.
Hubris
January 28th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Not only are they drug dealers and soon-to-be killers, but I’m fairly sure that Birdie is in violation of the Eyeglasses Fashion Update Act of 1983.
Tom M
January 28th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
An interesting development, as you said, would be: Panel 1, MT’s bloated, waterlogged corpse floating in the currents. Panel 2, a scene featuring a seagull or some other type of scavenger. Panel 3, said scavenger picking at MT’s rotting, empty eye sockets. Whaddaya think? Of course, it would be kind of hard to hit the reset button after that.
Rick C
January 28th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Remember recently Non Sequitur dissing webcomics? And Pearls Before Swine taking potshots at Cathy? Feast yer eyes on this: today’s Ozy and Millie
Brucker
January 28th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Why is it that everyone who comments on this blog is so down on large or small animals shown in questionable perspective? It’s not like the limited space available to a comic strip artist is going to allow for the sort of subtle shading needed to pull that off well. And yet while picking on poor perspective, nobody comments on Mark’s left leg appearing to be protruding from the right side of his body in the first panel. Surely *that* could have been drawn better…
Hubris
January 28th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
That’s no leg. Remember: Mark was sired by a wild mustang.
Jiggles
January 28th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Wow, you’re right. It’s like a Mark Trail Optical Illusion…sort of like Elrod’s drawings of cats.
Nutella
January 28th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
What is that strange object in the sky in the second panel? It looks suspiciously like one of the those unmanned drones used by the military. Alternatively, maybe Elrod believes that a giant mutant pelican in the foreground will lead us to see the other image as a beautiful pelican in flight?
let's think about this
January 29th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Dear Birdie,
What choice do you have indeed? How about:
1: Take off for Borneo.
2: Turn state’s evidence against your drug dealing husband.
3: Promise Mark that all the proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund.
4: Run away to the big city where you will find a room in an apartment with three other women and your life will take on a meaningless, crushingly slow repetitiveness about it.
No, you’re right. Murder IS better.
Pam
January 31st, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Are you familiar with the comic, “Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman?” The future you envision for the “Dead Mark Trail” comic sounds virtually identical to what happened on the soap opera to which Reid was addicted, “The Perils of Ivan,” after Ivan was unfortunately killed.
rachel
February 4th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Oh dear God…that last paragraph just kills me. Hilarious!
doolz
November 18th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I also was reminded of ‘The Perils of Ivan’.