Don’t come between a man and his poorly drawn cat
Mark Trail, 10/13/04
I consider myself something of an expert on the subject, and I can say with a certain authority that the assemblage in the first panel of today’s Mark Trail is the funniest thing in that strip in the last two years. It’s funnier than Mark downing an airplane with a petrified cactus; it’s funnier than the golfer throwing away his clubs and fleeing in terror from the crocodile; it’s funnier than the burping cows. The totem-poll look to the whole thing, as Primrose balances on the baddie’s bald head and Otto cuts him off at the knees, is great, as is the stock of the rifle caught in mid-air. I guess that Otto’s cat-loving trumps his mustache-having, and presumably Mark will forgive and forget his past involvement in priceless-artifact-smuggling if he turns stool pigeon.
Back in the beginning of this storyline, it looked as if the meat of the conflict was going to come from Mark’s current and former girlfriends having to share space on the same tiny boat. Tension! Cat fights! Hilarity! But Mark Trail can’t turn away from a good Indian artifact yarn, and so we get cat fights of a somewhat different kind.
Tamex
October 15th, 2004 at 12:40 pm
I usually skip over Mark Trail, so I’ve just got to ask…what’s up with the ashy gray skin? Is this supposed to poorly identify some race or ethnicity, or is it supposed to show some sort of skin disease or condition? Even Mark Trail himself is gray! Maybe this strip was done by the same guy who did the green fall leaves for Family Circus below.
Strange how the cartoonist can draw all sorts of wild animals, but can’t draw a cat to save his life. Maybe he should have changed Primrose to a pet squirrel.
Annabelle
July 27th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
I in fact have a large print of the first panel on my wall, though it is edited to read, “As Mark overpowers the captain, kitty gets it done.”
PsychoPearl
August 15th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
See, I thought the yellow box in the first panel was shooting itself with the shotgun. Or holding it up and asking the cat to pull the trigger. That’s what I would do if condemned to live in a MarkTrail strip.