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Mark Trail, 4/25/24

Mark, I don’t know if I’d trust a horse with my life in this scenario. Have you ever seen a horse race? They’re just running in circles, for our amusement! Do you think they know how to get out of the racetrack? Because they sure don’t act like it! They just keep running in circles!

Gearhead Gertie, 4/25/24

Speaking of racing around in circles for the amusement of others, these NASCAR drivers are especially brave, in my opinion. There’s a crazed blimpjacker on the loose! Probably she’s going to use that blimp for terrorism purposes! Has nobody here read or seen Black Sunday?

Mary Worth, 4/25/24

OK, sorry I ever thought we were in for some kind of Redemption of Wilbur Weston because of the way he accidentally saved a child. No, something much more morally complex is happening, as today in a similarly absent-minded state Wilbur accidentally manhandles an old man into the street. In a way, isn’t each and every one of us an anarchic, half-conscious presence in the world, doing good and ill by turns in ways that often barely register on us?

Shoe, 4/25/24

“Ariana Grande is 30 years old and her first album came out in 2013. What kind of idiot doesn’t know this?” you’re probably asking. The answer is: newspaper comics readers. They don’t know who she is and think her name sounds dumb! This strip is a public service.

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Gasoline Alley, 4/12/24

It’s not news exactly that conflict is the engine of good stories, but I have to say that Gasoline Alley feels like it’s rediscovering this for the first time in years. When it was just Walt and Sheezix on a quixotic quest to stop Electric Acres from happening? Snoozeville. But now that I know it’s turning brother against brother, and fiancé against fianceée? This is it. I’m all in. I hope it devolves very quickly into graphic and gratuitous violence, while Walt wanders around shouting “What’d you say? What’d she say?” until a hurled piece of debris finally puts him out of his misery. It’ll be the sort of thing where Rod Serling steps out of the shadows and explains that this world may be more like ours than we care to admit, until he too is killed in mid-sentence by a hurled piece of debris.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/12/24

And yeah, sure, that sounds like it would be a lot to process, emotionally, but don’t worry, if the anxiety gets too much you can always turn to Rex Morgan, M.D., which just started a storyline about little kids making brownies. It will be extremely uneventful and last six to fifteen weeks.

Mark Trail, 4/12/24

I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like it requires some kind of big investigation. Horses are big and pretty off-putting — they run fast, they have razor-sharp feet, their teeth are real nightmarish if you look too closely at them, and so forth. They’re nice to watch run around, I admit, but I don’t trust them, so why would I want them near my company? And why would it be bad to ask the Bureau of Land Management to help clear them out? The horses are on the dang land that they’re supposed to manage! What do I pay taxes for?

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Beetle Bailey, 3/13/24

I’m not a huge fan of “Miss Buxley is the only sexually available female at Camp Swampy and the men all line up in hopes of being chosen by her, for sex,” but I do like that Rocky has shown up with a six-pack. Take a risk! Might not be what she likes but it also just might be, and you’ve got stand out from the pack somehow!

Gil Thorp, 3/13/24

I don’t know if they actually do full-on suplexes (suplices?) like this in high school wrestling, and I’m not going to look into it, either, because I’m afraid that if I plug “girl’s high school wrestling” into Google Image Search I’m going to end up on a watchlist. But this does happen, I have to imagine that it’s among the most exciting things to happen in the course of a bout, which is why I think it’s kind of odd to cut away literally before Inma’s opponent hits the floor to check in with Marty Moon and hear what he has to say about, like, hockey or whatever.

Mark Trail, 3/13/24

All the market research shows it: what the people want is a soap opera newspaper comic strip about somebody shitting themselves in the context of a musical performance. But of course, the industry’s last few shreds of dignity are preventing the syndicate from really pulling the trigger. Rex Morgan got close with the tale of a guy pretending to shit himself so that he could bump himself up from opener to headliner. But can we get closer still? What if the musician … wasn’t a person at all? Exciting news possibilities await!