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Mark Trail, 4/11/10

Man, for once, I want more educational information out of my Sunday educational Mark Trail! I would like Mark to answer the following questions:

  • Is “the drug [hemp] yields” actually at all potent?
  • If not, why are filthy hippies always extolling hemp’s industrial purposes like some kind of unshowered white-guy-with-dreadlocks blanket-and-rope PAC? If so, since said dirty hippies no doubt also support marijuana legalization, why don’t they just come out and say that they want to grow hemp to get high?
  • Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson get high together?
  • If you rolled up the Declaration of Independence and smoked it, would you get a buzz?
  • If growing hemp is illegal, where the hell is the hemp in birdseed coming from? Is that bird in the final panel some kind of tiny, feathered trafficker?
  • Do birds get high by eating birdseed?
  • Is Mark high right now? Is that what the yellow word balloon indicates?
  • Will King Features be held legally liable when the factoid at the bottom right causes particularly dim tokers to attempt to smoke nylon?

Blondie, 4/11/10

Dagwood has never been shown to have any actual friends other than Herb; thus, in order to pad this gag out to Sunday-strip length, we have to watch him hear paltry excuses from two funny-looking characters who have never appeared in the strip before to my knowledge. It would have been depressing but truer to this feature’s established universe if, after being turned down by Herb, Dagwood spent the final three panels weeping alone about his lack of meaningful social relationships.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/11/10 (rotated 90 degrees for your convenience!)

Montoni’s may not be shutting down completely, but at least we now know that the drive to establish Montoni’s New York was all that was keeping Funky off the sauce, so that’s something. Also, we know that Funky’s DT-fueled fever dreams involve getting into knife fights with sexy jungle ladies and baboons, which is frankly more than I wanted to know.

Crock, 4/11/10

Wow, Vern, your standards for desolate and perilous neighborhoods are pretty high if you aren’t impressed by a desert urchin whose only friend is a sinister vulture. Admittedly, the vulture looks less sinister wearing a baseball cap turned backwards at a jaunty angle, but consider the fact that it probably scavenged it off of a bloated corpse it just ate.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/11/10

I’m sort of torn about the way the Lockhorns deals with its expanded Sunday real estate, which is to just cram in five disconnected panels, any one of which could run on its own during the week. On the one hand, I do feel that artists ought to make visually interesting use of all that extra room they get in the Sunday papers; on the other hand, I suppose the Lockhorns deserves kudos for essentially producing eleven panels a week when they only really need to do seven. Anyway, this particular panel reveals that Leroy, and the creators of the Lockhorns, are familiar with the concept of a “safe word,” so, you know, HORROR HORROR HORROR.