Indignant Sunday
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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/15/24
Geez, man, what kind of weird Slylock Fox-ass riddle-telling meteorologist do these Snuffy and Lukey listen to. “Frozen precipitation,” oh ho ho, you’ve really tricked all your listeners. Jerk. Oh, if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed, is that it? I guess I forgive these guys for living in a violent culture where civil society and independent information sources are regarded with suspicion and paranoia if this is the kind of shit they have to put up with.
Mark Trail, 12/15/24
Oh, not much to see here, just Mark and Cherry Trail urging you to go out and buy some GROW LIGHTS for your indoor “herb garden.” That’ll spice things up, will it??? This is clearly about DRUGS and you two should be ASHAMED.
127 replies to “Indignant Sunday”
Mary Worth Mashups: Do any of these make today’s strip entertaining?
MT:
“Know why we’re sporting these simpering grins? — because we’re pretty much constantly dosing on SSRIs!”
FC-“Will he do his ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ if we ask him?” I don’t think Mommy is up for that.
FC-Santa will hope Mommy sits on his face.
MW-“Never ignore us who are much more experienced,” Mary says.
MT. (Picture of Mark and Cherry drawn by Ed Dodd). “This is your brain.” (Same characters drawn in the new style). “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” Most effective PSA ever.
Mark Trail: Mint is an aggressive plant that will take over your yard if you’re not careful. Maybe that was Mark and Cherry’s plan all along? The writing business is in worse shape than ever, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re being sponsored by Big Julep.
Snuffy Smith: Snuffy and his friend were waiting for this day, just so they could run around yelling “hail!” and not get arrested for country-fied swearing.
MT:
“We’d have our son participate in today’s tutorial, but his conversational skills are a little Rusty!”
BGSS: I’m assuming here that ‘Weatherman’ is some local mystic divining rainfall with the entrails of pigeons or some such thing. Snuffy is probably right ti be a bit skeptical.
MW:
“I don’t want to say that perpetual student Dawn Weston is intellectually challenged, but she thinks that a stolen base is a purloined electric guitar with four strings that plays very low notes.”
— Jackie Robinson
@Baja Gaijin: I love it when I have to hit the button to say I’m at least 18 to see these images.
Next time show Dawn with her vibrator.
Come on, Mark Trail has never put a herb in his food in his life. He once used a mint toothpaste, but had to throw it away because it was too spicy.
Mark Trail Mix: Cherry is extra “chipper” because of her daily cup of “spice”. While Mark is happy because he bought Jim Backus’ eyebrows on eBay™ in a celebrity auction. Remember: if your ” area” grows “cold” and they outlaw “spice” again you may need to move your “stash” indoors.
@1 Baja Gaijin:
I gotta like you got to use Poncho and the (Wilbur) pig.
@9 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
I got no warning. I guess I’ve clicked so much on Baja‘s stuff Imgur knows who I am.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: @Baja Gaijin: I love it when I have to hit the button to say I’m at least 18 to see these images.
_______________________________________
“Scratchy, here, is 18. That’s 90 to you and me.”– Lorne Greene (adapted).
MW:
Don’t let petty bullshit get in the way of good screwing.
—Erica Jong
It’s time for Sunday’s JUNGLE JIM!
They have a bonus for you Flash Gordon fans!
I’m not mad that Mark and Cherry are talking about growing drugs. Let your freak flags fly! I’m mad that they keep slipping back and forth between saying “herbs” and “spices.” If there’s one comic strip I expect to teach me the difference between an herb and a spice, it’s Mark Trail, but noooooo.
BG&SS: Snuff has a reason to be skeptical. In a conclave as corrupt as Hootin’ Holler, even the weatherman is an unqualified political appointee.
Snuffy believes weather forecasts from a city a couple of hundred miles away.
Mary Worth: Doesn’t everyone Wilbur has met count as a disaster survivor?
MT: Yeah, pretty clearly about drugs. I thought the wink at the end from Mark was a rather heavy handed reveal …
Fred Basset Spanish to English (sort of).
Sunday Mary Worth quotevestigation: Confirmed, alas, from Chapter XXIV (Epilogue) of Jackie Robinson’s autobiography I Never Had It Made (which probably means that his coauthor Alfred Duckett said it but that’s not how quotevestigators roll). No thanks to the little Frequently Asked Questions box in the Google results which said he said it to teammates in 1947, an absurd proposition.
Mother Goose and Grimm: What dogs want for Christmas.
Lukey is evidently trying to appease the weather gods in the last pnel.
BG&SS – Even a stopped clock is right twice a day…I don’t think that tells us anything about a stuck in time comics strip….
MT – Is it just me or does Cherry like she’s just had a heapin’ heppin’ of her latest crop’a meth….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
BGSS: “HAIL!” “Yes, Lukey, we’re in Hail!”
MT: Yeah, Cherry talking about spicing up their meals is evidently proof the Trails are growing coca plants.
“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” — Jackie Robinson
“But if the life you’re impacting isn’t important either, what’s the point?” — Not Jackie Robinson
@matt w: The rule I’ve always heard is that a “herb” is the leaf or stem of a plant, whereas “spice” comes from other parts such as seeds, fruit or bark. So all the examples Cherry recommends for a “spice garden” are in fact herbs. But then again, the Trails are about as white as you can get, so maybe they do consider rosemary and dill to be “spicy.”
MT: I speak from experience: growing anything from seed is a bit of a skill check, especially for a novice gardener. You’d have better luck getting them to start an herb garden with seedlings. Or just plant a bit of mint in the corner of their yard where they won’t notice it; come summer it will have overrun half the neighborhood.
MW: “You’d think that after meeting disaster survivors and giving advice to the masses, that my Dad would have a better handle on his own life.”
That’s got to be the most perceptive thing any Weston has ever said.
RMMD: “We need to prove Buster bit the man *after* he stabbed you.”
“Jeez, you’re a real dick.”
Typical of traditional environmentalism is the idea of Food miles. Why should you import products from the other side of the world, when you can cultivate them close to home? Except, sustainability is often counter-intuitive. International transport by boat is extremely efficient — sometimes the drive from home to supermarket is the most polluting stretch! On the other hand, agriculture is extremely polluting without the appropriate climate and efficiency of scale. Thus “Mark Trail” must accomodate the aesthetics of environmentalism — “Grow your own food!” — with the reality of environmentalism — “Grow a local plant or you’ll spend a lot of power and water” Hell, stick to spices with a mass of few grams! Don’t bother growing more substantial food!”
Actually, weather forecasts are pretty good considering the great number of factors to weigh in. Whenever I hear jokes about weather forecasts, I always wonder whether they are a relic of bygone era, when forecasting was much less precise, or whether it is a generic “burn the witch/expert!”
C’shaft: Give it up, Pam. You’ll never get to your dad to agree to anything that would be more convenient and make everyone less miserable.
DT: Not telling your audience the crucial evidence until after the culprit is announced isn’t a mystery, it’s just bad writing.
Dustin: Shut up, it’s a delicious oxymoron.
JP: You can be a fugitive and still be innocent, Alan! Ever hear of Dr. Richard Kimble? Jesus, did your mind dump all its legal knowledge when you retired or were you always this bad at your job?
Luann: Bernice is a pill, but Luann annoys people because she thinks it’s “fun.” They’re like the Odd Couple of insufferablity.
MW: “Your father’s good at his craft…what? He is! I’ve said he’s good and that makes it true! STOP LAUGHING!!”
BGSS: Honeypot, eh? We should have known Loweezy would one day use her overpowering sexuality for sinister ends. What man could resist forking over his proprietary data and national security secrets in the face of that intoxicating gussied-up church lady energy? Snuffy doesn’t seem to mind Loweezy’s illicit extramarital activities, either, at least as long as it’s bringing in money and she always makes sure to use an, ahem, “umbrelly.”
DT: …Right then. Guess we’re finished here. Mike Curtis wasted so many days fanboying out over Dick Tracy’s utterly lame villains of yesteryear that there just wasn’t time to give the readers any clues to mull over prior to the conclusion. So yeah, here’s one extremely circumstantial and easily fabricated piece of maybe-evidence that gives one person a weak murder motive. Job done! No need to do anymore work! Just look at those neato costumes! Squeal!
JP: …Right then. Guess we’re finished here. Alan has been obsessively insisting on Ann’s innocence, but he seriously never did bother asking her what happened that day in all the days or weeks or months Ann has been hiding in his basement. Now that’s seemingly getting swept under the rug with Ann turning herself in after five minutes of scolding from some woman she’d never met before. Whatever. Marciuliano needed a short buffer story before Christmas, and as they say in Cavelton, all’s well that ends.
MT Ahh, isn’t that cute, some 12-year old won a contest and got their home ec project published in a syndicated comic strip.
@jroggs: I’m still hoping that April, having been awakened, will cut a bloody swath in pursuit of the one armed man. And then go after the guy in April’s case.
@matt w: I’m glad I am not the only one who noticed this.
Don Abundio, translated:
“It worked! My hand was shaking before but now it’s steady as a rock”
@Downpuppy: Ann’s case! Arrrrr.
@TheDiva: Well, at least dill can also be a spice (dill seeds).
Snuffy learned that dismissing the experts because they are a bunch of arrogant, elitist nerds and just do the opposite of what they suggest out of spite is a poor course of action. Unfortunately, he will not apply this lesson to politics, medicine, science, diet or any other field
MW: Mary, give it up! Dawn isn’t taking your hints, and she wouldn’t be interested anyway.
FC: Look at that line! The kids are going to get bored, and Bil is going to get cranky.
@matt w:
♪ Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson
Mary quotes you more than you will know
Wo, wo, wo…
Luann: At least the Sunday strip gives us a reprieve from Bernice going on about Phil. Unfortunately, she and Luann are still here. Anyway, it’s perfectly on-brand for Luann to spend a bunch of time using a bunch of resources to do something insignificant and produce a lot of future trash.
CS: Swoon! Two whole “jokes” in one strip. How lucky are we?!? Not lucky enough to have a tree fall on and crush Crankshaft, but I’ll take what I can get.
9CL: Amos shouldn’t follow Nancy Mace’s example.
Crock: I was going to ask where are the arabs standing if the whole place is flooded; but since they’re giants, I guess it doesn’t matter.
Mark Trail: This is the modern version of those grape juice bricks that wine companies sold during Prohibition with “warnings” on the back that literally told you how to make wine. “Be super careful cuz if you do this you could maybe accidentally grow weed and we wouldn’t want that wink wink.”
Who, except Josh, still reads Murky Tail?
Oglaf keeps getting worse and worse. Like I already did with Questionable Cobwebs, 9CL, and Mark Trail, I’m almost at the point of stopping wasting my time reading it.
DT – So, the Minit Mystery has wrapped up, and all I can say is that that two weeks would have been worth a single panel in Slylock Fox.
@Baja Gaijin:
It is impossible to make today’s strip entertaining, but I commend you for trying.
BGSS – Sorry, got stuck at the first panel where Snuffy calls Loweezy “Honeypot.” That’s more than I needed to know.
@Ukranazi Stepan: I do. It’s gotten to the point where I can accept it as good, dumb fun.
MT – Josh’s theory that Mark and Cherry are talking about drugs is confirmed by Mark’s wink in the final panel.
9CL- Finally, the man with the eggshell head we learned about in torts.
Zippy – Is Zippy implying that Tom Selleck is a ‘toon? Well, he does have that mustache…
MT: One night at work, a scruffy 20-something man came in with an older woman I assume is his mother.
He came over to ask me about grow lights and water tubing and pumps and stuff to hide the stuff he was growing.
When mom came towards us, he ran off to talk to my coworker, a tall, taciturn recent Norwegian immigrant.
They left, and Mats and I met to compare notes.
I asked “Did you notice what question he DIDNT ask?”
“Ja. Where are your seeds?”
Mats sighed and said: “I don’t tink dat boy’s gonna be growin’ no turnips.”
MT: Yeah, my professional colleague, Plant Guy, scored big this week. Got nice placements for his legit “Herbs” and some green-washed payments for “additional talent”… though I hear he wasn’t too pleased that Mark and Cherry were giving out horticultural advice on cutting out the middleman!
But that’s between them… we’ll still call on Plant Guy occasionally to supply us with Catnip … strictly for medicinal purposes , of course!
AC: Preach it, Andy. Not everything has to be an app. It’s a good day when my phone lets me check the WhatsApp messages it’s incessently telling me about; I don’t want to have to fight with it in order to see a menu for the place I’m already at!
Crank: As always, I hate that I remember this stuff, but didn’t the Crankshafts get an artificial tree ages ago? Then Ed set fire to it, so I guess they don’t have it any more, but it still seems like something that would come up if Pam wants to get another one.
DT: Ah, now I know why I don’t remember this from last time. I must have been so enraged by the reveal that I subconciously wiped the whole thing from my mind, possibly after praying to the spirits of Dame Agatha and John Dickson Carr that Staton would be found dead in a locked room.
MT: “If you take enough ‘mint’, the Literal And Metaphorical Trainwreck Storyline starts to make sense!”
(Okay, if this was, like, Mary Worth, I’d be saying “Ha ha, poor, out-of-touch Karen Moy has no idea what this looks like!” But while I had to give up reading Mark Trail except when it appears here because of Jules Rivera’s poor fact-checking, I don’t think she’s that clueless. And last time I checked, her Cherry didn’t normally sport a manic grin and extra-wide eyes. I’m calling this one intentional.)
MW: Case in point, I don’t think the massive sapphic vibes here are intentional at all!
PV: Ironic that Arn’s skull was damaged trying to protect his father, since Val’s is clearly much, much thicker.
MT: Mark and Cherry are smiling because Gil Thorp makes them look like a viable strip again.
@Little Blue Bicycle: Mark and Cherry are smiling because they recorded today’s episode after sampling the poppy crop they harvested last fall.
@richardf8: I thought “honeypot” went with “Weatherman.” Like Snuffy just sits around saying “honeypot weatherman” because he thinks the weatherman is trying to seduce him into spying for the Communists with his meteorological blandishments? Honestly I didn’t think this through very well.
Archie:
Out flew the web and floated wide-
The windscreen crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Archie of Riverdale.
Andy Capp:
“What part of “hipster” do you not comprehend…sir?”
@Ukranazi Stepan: Who, except Josh, still reads Murky Tail?
I’d probably forget it was still published if not for its occasional appearances here. I hope the syndicate, or at least the writer, sends him a nice -ahem-herb basket for Christmas.
Now I’m curious if Monsanto has patented any cannabis variants to force growers to buy seeds for every new crop.
***
Huh. For a moment that Hootin’ Holler doesn’t have computers or the internet, making these hillbillies the least paranoid government paranoiacs in the US. Then I realized that could be talk radio they’re listening to, and never mind.
@Y179 Smokey Stover:
I can see why Walter Scharf was stressed out. He didn’t write it. Lalo Schifrin did.
MW: “Your father’s good at The Craft….many’s the time we’ve prowled together through coot and hern in search of liverworts, toad bladders, and adder’s tongue.”
Rex Morgan: Worst cop/geriatric cosplay foreplay ever.
@Bob Tice: “Does this ‘Dawn’ bitch knows that she’s stealing my bit?!” –Luann.
@Peanut Gallery: How come his hat pops off on the bumper blobs, but stays on when he’s upside down on the coaster?
@71 GarrisonSkunk: More information about centripetal force can be found on the Internet.
@Sequitur: I can see why Walter Scharf was stressed out.
____________________________________
Is that that new Muppet no one likes?
Now that Neil Rubin isn’t doing Gil Thorp anymore and has more free time, he did a story about a guy I know from the Society for American Baseball Research who tried to return a library book 50 years later:
An overdue book comes home to Warren after 50 years. What’s the late fee?
Too bad Rubin can no longer work this in as a story. I’m guessing that the narc that he was under Rubin, Gil would treat this guy more harshly than Mr. Bookman from Seinfeld.
RMMD: Man, things look dire for Buster! How will they *prove* that he bit the thug after the stabbing? And wouldn’t biting him *before* when he saw him brandishing a knife be considered an act of protecting his master?
You can see how we’re gonna need your help with #justiceforBuster. T-shirts and tote bags are available now! Help us with Buster’s legal defense fund! Where’s Voshkod when ya need him?
Truthfully, everyone should be worried about the Trails’ “spice” garden. All that sand is pretty disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem, and the less that is said about the gigantic worms, the better.
DT: All this proves is that Roche and Zoot Suit were embezzling company funds. Yes, certainly a motive for murder but without physical evidence connecting Zootie to the murder it’s just circumstantial.
H&L: You’d think that a company would make it well known what it was going to serve at its Christmas party ahead of time. Then again, maybe Thirsty was passed out drunk during that meeting.
DT, topper panels: You know, we make a lot of fun of Sam Catchem’s sartorial choices here, but give the guy some credit for style: he’s the only cop in neoChicago who buffs and polishes his handcuffs.
MT: “Planting herbs that grow local to your area will save on water!” Um, WHAT?? No matter what message Cherry is trying to convey, that’s not the way to convey it. In future, don’t over-indulge in the wacky weed before talking to your readers, Cherry. It seldom works well.
@Horace Broon: Re PV, what you said!!!
@Poteet: Wacky weed is right up there with Horseless carriage.
JP: I am genuinely unnerved by the portrayal of Alan in this story. I worked in a nursing home long ago, and it’s good that Alan has someone living with him, because his reasoning and facial expressions do not seem to bode well for his future.
@Nobody: Yep. It’s groovy.
PV: Say, Maeve. You’d better start shopping around for a good nursing home, preferably one that specializes in people with brain damage. By the way, how are you at changing adult diapers?
@Ettorre: Actually, as a former meteorologist, I can tell you that numerical weather prediction techniques haven’t changed since the Richardson Equation as developed in 1921. What’s changed is the amount of usable data and computing power to process it all. I don’t envy the heroes that had to do all that calculus by hand back in the pre-computer world.
Marvin: I hope Eugene the Monster likes to eat a bag of shit.
@Poteet: JP: I am genuinely unnerved by the portrayal of Alan in this story. I worked in a nursing home long ago, and it’s good that Alan has someone living with him, because his reasoning and facial expressions do not seem to bode well for his future.
If Marciuliano cared about anything other dashing off a story to collect his paycheck and trying to figure out how to finally change the name of the strip to “Apt 3-G, Cavelton,” he could try giving us a poignant storyline about Alan, once a respected jurist with a sharp mind, slowing succumbing to dementia and possibly even passing the torch to another Judge Parker NOT named Randy (since Marciuliano completely destroyed Randy’s viability as a character, let alone a judge). But instead we’ll just get this drek until, I suspect, Manley finally retires or moves on and the syndicate decides to kill the strip off and give Walker/Browne Inc. a raise with the saved money.
Betty: Has anyone heard of fitness gum? It seems that it’s a thing.
Marvin: A species of monster who feed on soiled diapers might seem like gross idea, but it could be very beneficial to society in significantly decreasing the amount in landfills. Also as an added bonus maybe it will also eat Marvin.
Family Circus: Real Question, do parents have to explain to their children that in real life little persons are not elves or dwarves with names like Dopey, Grumpy, and Sneezy? How does that conversation go?
Hi and Lois: Thirsty doesn’t think anything is worthwhile if it doesn’t feed his raging alcoholism. Maybe there’s a very good reason he didn’t get a pay raise.
Mother Goose and Grimm: Just want to point out that Mike Peters the creator of this comic about a dog who humps Santa’s leg has won a Pulitzer Prize.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Awww. I bet you’d look great with an eyeshade and a slide rule.
@UncleJeffers: My children are 34 and 29 and they still leave out a bowl of milk every night to stay on their good side. I taught them NOT TO FUCK with them elves and gnomes and boggarts and tomtens.
The Duplex: So, now we know Santa wires his elves to go out to bars and entrap idiots.
Upon the first second of viewing Mark Trail, my attention was directed to the sign, which I assumed was some sort of makeshift epitaph for Mark’s grave, indicating the end of the comic.
@92 Ukulele Ike:
Your poor misled children.
@94 Giant Pondering Otter:
If only.
@Sequitur: I never heard of this comic, and before reading, assumed that Betty Cooper got her own spin-off comic.
It would actually be nice for her to leave the cheater, the rich bitch, the moocher and the jerk and move somewhere far away and start a new story.
@GarrisonSkunk: Invisible springs. That’s the only way cartoon characters avoid permanently losing their hats.
(Every so often I notice that Don Abundio’s hat is way too small for him, the way it’s precariously balanced on the top of his head, and it bugs me.)
@Sequitur: When you wake up tomorrow to four of your chickens dead, don’t come crying to me. Hey! Somebody mended my butter churn overnight!
@Ukulele Ike: Do the elves actually take/drink/do anything with the milk? Or is it just the act of kindness itself that appeases them?
@Ukulele Ike: Because I have items vanish in my house all of the time, like ice scrapers in the trunk, the trunk is suddenly empty, so we go out and buy new ice scrapers and suddenly the original ones are back in the trunk where they belong.
It’s only if we replace them, do the whatevers bring them back…
@97 Giant Pondering Otter:
You can read this to find out more of this Canadian strip. It can be found at GoComics with over 32,000 daily readers.
@Baja Gaijin: On any day, they all make Mary Worth entertaining, the only things that do. For that, I appreciate your efforts.
@99 Ukulele Ike:
Good thing I don’t own any chickens.
Baja? You around here anywhere? Go ahead and mess with this.
It’s the last Dawn/Mary for a while. Tuesday, Dawn goes shopping with her friend Cathy.
I’m not a phycisist, but I’m pretty sure plants gaining any healthy amount of mass from low-energy lights breaks some basic laws of thermodynamics. Gotta do crimes somehow now that pot is basically legal anywhere, right Mark?
“Oh, if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed, is that it?”
Has somebody been reading the Moon & Serpent Bumper Book of Magic? ?
@TheDiva: on DT: Earlier in the week, Sam told Tracy about the pad of blank paper. “Oh, no,” says I, “It’s the old ‘impressions left by writing instrument on the next page’ trick, one that makes its way into almost every detective novel no matter the century. Surely they’re not going there.”
FC: Bil and Thel are wading into the mass of children hoping their four melonheads either A-get mixed up and they go home with an entirely new set of bright, personable children, or B-theirs just get lost in the general chaos and are never seen again, making their Christmas a joyous one. Either A or B will do, they’re not too particular.
MT: Don’t need to see Mark winking while Cherry talks about spicing things up. Nope, definitely did not ask for that.
@Baja Gaijin: I’ll take #3, thanks much. Yes.
9CL: Foul! Amos wasn’t holding a grocery bag with celery and a baguette! Not that it would have helped, but it would at least be formally correct.
AC: Yeah, sure, Hi and Lois got there, but Reg Smythe was really the OG of the no-punchline school.
HotC: It took long enough for a syndicated comic to try tapping that sweet, sweet Juggalo market.
JP: Never entirely got the Dracula thing before but wow. There’s no way to look at Alan today and not hear what he’s saying in a “Lenny Bruce does Bela Lugosi” accent.
MW: Yes, Mary, you said all that on Thursday, which is supposed to be five minutes ago. You’re starting to sound desperate. For company. Dawn’s company. Please have some pride.
RMMD: That doesn’t actually sound like a thing? If somebody points a knife at you they’re already committing assault. It makes no sense to say the dog is at fault unless the knife-wielder actually pierced your flesh. Merle and Olympia Dukakis should just demand their dog back on pain of an embarrassing lawsuit.
Shoe: When the Perfesser hears the news talking about feathers being down he thinks they’re talking about him and well he might.
@Horace Broon:
In fairness it’s Curtis who was responsible for the idiocy of the plot. So maybe he’d be found dead in a locked room wearing a perfect latex Joe Staton mask.
@Dr. Pill: Judge Dee was probably reading brush stroke impressions on the second page of the papyrus back during the T’ang Dynasty. See my upcoming series of novels about Ook, Caveman Detective, in which he examines impressions on the second rock.
I was hoping Staton was going to go with my brilliant deduction about no silencers on revolvers, unless you’re packing an 1800s Russian handgun. No, it was the fucking notepad.
@matt w: #17
Jules has peppered today’s strip with her ignorance…maybe it’s thyme she did some research…
@113 Ukulele Ike:
Never trust a butler with a notepad.
@Sequitur: #16
LOVE THE FG PAPER DOLL!!!
@Nobody: There are billboards all over the township warning us not to operate our horseless carriages while under the influence of that wacky weed! We need all our wits about us wgen we’re runnin’ moonshine!
@114 Daisy:
I never read the “new” Mark Trail, not even when Josh posts it, but judging by comments on this site, that seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
@Sequitur: #16: I wonder how many kids in the 1930s actually cut those out and made paper dolls of them? Maybe next week we’ll get a half naked Dale to dress up though I don’t look forward to seeing Ming the Merciless in his skivvies.
The old Mark Trail would have punched the new Mark over less.
@Sequitur: #118
It seems to me that “Mark Trail” and “Gil Thorp” both suffer from a similar narrative sloppiness, not to mention an artistic style that, to me at least, is visually jarring. Neither strip is fun to read.
@119 Guillermo el chiclero:
I can see kids cutting them out and getting in trouble with their dads because the sports section was on the back.
@121 Daisy:
That’s part if the reason I don’t read either one of them.
@Guillermo el chiclero: #119
I was a little kid in the 1950s and *loved* paper dolls! Still do, actually! I almost got my scissors to cut out the “Flash Gordon” costume until I realized I was trying to slice my phone, ha ha ha! Ha ha! Eh heh…
*sigh*
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith – The Newnited States government, in attempts to educate their most illiterate communities, have been injecting PBS style lessons into local news and radio broadcasts in far flung areas like Hootin’ Holler.
While this same programming managed to boost science and math scores in many struggling urban schools, it’s never really taken root in the proud region of Hootin’ Holler, where throbbing pain in joints from old injuries are held up as most accurate predictors of changes in the weather.
Mark Trail – Many the last holdouts reading newspapers are people in far flung areas with poor internet connections, and who live in rural food deserts. Mark Trail is being used by the USDA and Health and Human Services to attempt to get these populations back to growing food after generations of becoming reliant on ultraprocessed foods that are the only sustenance sold at gas stations and Dollar General stores. Despite the people’s love of wearing John Deere ballcaps, getting them to actually farm is a going to be a tall order. Even the joys of natural seasoning can’t compete with food engineered with addictive levels of transfats, high fructose corn syrup, and sodium.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Don’t you also have access to more data due to easier transmission and satellites?
@Daisy: @Guillermo el chiclero: Paper doll Flash Gordon has….no pants. Two tops are offered, two hats. No pants. Not even a little tunic to cover up his balls. Did Alex Raymond have a Brooke-style leg fetish?