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Mark Trail, 8/17/09

What we’re witnessing, as this Mark Trail storyline reaches its baffling denouement, is a master class in outdoorsmanship. Who once said “The pen is mightier than the sword”? Probably some wimpy writer type who got tired of being threatened by bullies with swords and then went home and bitterly scribbled that supposedly bad-ass saying in his little journal, with a pen. But what Mark Trail is showing us is that a level head and the ability to navigate your way out of an old-growth forest is mightier than a high-powered rifle. Mark’s steely pathfinding will lull the assassin into complacency, and once they see the light of day outside these accursed woods again, he will presumably be so grateful as to meekly submit to being punched in the jaw.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/17/09

I’m as surprised as anyone to discover that I have a “favorite” kind of Herb and Jamaal strip, but this is it: the kind where one of the strip’s bland supporting characters says something incredibly depressing that forces Herb and/or Jamaal to stop living in his happy-go-lucky dreamworld of nonspecific cultural references and confront his own mortality with wide-eyed horror. I’m not sure if it’s ever actually happened before, but I’d like it to happen more often in the future.

Marvin, 8/17/09

Please let that be a clean diaper. Please let that be a clean diaper.