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Mary Worth, 4/26/10

So I was talking to my mother about Mary Worth yesterday (AS IT’S TOTALLY NORMAL FOR A 35-YEAR-OLD MAN TO DO, RIGHT?) and we were discussing what the big reveal would be in this storyline. She thought it was just going to be some compulsive shopping with a little overspending thrown in for good measure; I was convinced that we were heading on to some full-on hoarding. Of course, it’s always awesome to be proven right, but I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the quality of the hoarding on display here. Yes, there are a lot of boxes and bags stacked up, but in fairly tidy piles, and even the occasional loose garment is neatly laid out on the couch or even hanging up on something conveniently off-panel. While it’s surely problematic, and in violation of Charterstone regulations (and don’t think Mary isn’t taking careful mental notes as she attempts to console Bonnie), it just doesn’t display the level of squalor that I was hoping for. Where are the six-foot-tall tangled piles of dresses, tags still on? The tunnels dug out through piles of newspaper to allow movement from room to room? The dead animals? Sorry, guys, you’re going to have get a lot more harrowing to reach “very special episode” status.

Mark Trail, 4/26/10

Actually, Mark, that’s not so much a “suggestion” as what looks to be as close as you could ever get to an erotic reverie. I dearly hope that ellipsis at the end of Mark’s word balloon in the final panel presages days or perhaps even weeks of our hero waxing rhapsodic about the awesomeness of nature in all of its quiet glory, including a graphic description of what fish guts sound like falling slimily to the bottom of a boat anchored in an otherwise silent cove, as his captive audience can only watch on in stunned silence.

Since this is Mark Trail, where your fortunes are almost entirely dependent whether Mark has taken a shine to you, I’m presuming his suggestion will be that float planes and “big motors” be banned all over the lake, except for around the camp where his friend and his sexy daughter live, since they need float planes and motorboats to keep their business alive. The Parker Brothers will of course be bankrupted as well as arrested. Another problem solved according to Arbitrary Trailian Justice, which can sting as badly as any fist!