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Mark Trail, 4/17/10

One of my favorite things about Mark Trail is that its plotting seems to demonstrate a complete lack of familiarity with how this country — or any other, for that matter — is actually in practice governed. Usually this ignorance is most obvious when it comes to law enforcement, which in this strip mostly consists of forest rangers who lead off ne’er-do-wells who Mark has punched into submission; but things tend to get extra hilarious when the plot’s focus moves to actual government bodies. Longtime readers will remember the exciting eminent domain plotline, in which a zoning hearing that would in real life have taken place in the course of some deathly dull meeting of the county legislature incomprehensibly took the form of a dramatic jury trial. And today, it looks like we’re going to see two wholly unrelated matters — a zoning proposal to restrict float planes and motorboats on a lake that may or may not be publicly owned, who knows, and a criminal complaint about a vicious gang of backwoods poachers who are holding the north end of said lake under a reign of terror — get resolved by some ill-defined gathering of white dudes in suits in some mahogany-paneled room. Who are these men? What power do they wield? Will they be putty in Mark’s hands once he shows him the shocking photos in that manila folder? One of these questions is easy to answer.

Of course, it’s wholly possible that Jack Elrod deliberately refuses to depict government realistically because he recognizes no political authority other than the NOAA as legitimate.

Archie, 4/17/10

Archie, the comics’ most notorious man-whore, is clearly trying to figure out if even he would fuck a small, disk-shaped robot.

Luann, 4/17/10

OH MY GOD TIFFANY AND GUNTHER ARE TOTALLY GOING TO LOSE THEIR VIRGINITY TO EACH OTHER EVERYBODY! I find this prospect distasteful, not least because their clashing grid-shirts will induce terrible headaches if they get any closer to each other.