GORILLAGRIFT!
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Mark Trail, 6/9/26
The “Mark’s dad is getting romance-scammed” Mark Trail storyline has had some pleasing twists and turns: we learned Mark “Happy” Trail Sr. was sending money to a gorilla sanctuary due to the entreaties of young “Dreama,” who was hitting him up for money at said sanctuary where she claimed to work, but then it turned out that her pics were photoshopped/AI-enhanced images of Gail, the owner (?) of the sanctuary, and it turned out that Happy had also been sending AI-enyouthened pics of himself to Dreama, so it seemed like an embarrassing incident that would end with two older nature lovers finding love with each other. But today we learn that, nope, Gail is in fact evil, and has mostly been outsourcing all this catfishing to her dweeb-ass son anyway. You can tell she’s evil because she lets gorillas just wander aimlessly around the sanctuary parking lot, without any enrichment toys!
Crankshaft, 6/9/26
Oh, did you think that those pictures Eugene brought over were going to result in some emotionally affective revelations? No, sorry, we’re just learning about how the current Funkyverse cast has in fact been entangled with one another for multiple generations, in exactly the sort of plot development that everyone loved when Star Wars kept doing it. I like how the strip’s namesake has kind of wandered over from whatever it was he was doing to take in all this information. Maybe he’ll learn he’s Les Moore’s uncle or something! You never know!
Dennis the Menace, 6/9/26
Love the look of absolute delight on this woman’s face. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer at the National Potato Council and she’s here to confirm the rumors: the chosen one has arrived.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/9/26
Can you imagine a dog — a dog, mind you — that knows what lattes are and enjoys drinking them, but has never heard of pilates? Well, you don’t have to: that’s the joke in today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, printed in newspapers everywhere!
59 replies to “GORILLAGRIFT!”
DtM:
“Can I have one? Please!”
“It’s mashed potatoes.”
“Ugh”
MT: As a man with a college degree in journalism, I can testify that no mother has ever said the words “if only I had a journalist for a son.”
CS: I’ll be happy if this story doesn’t find an excuse to dig up Dead Lisa Who Died And Is Dead Now.
Luann: Yesterday, I didn’t even notice that Luann was screwing up the cheer. When something like that happens, it’s time for me to take a step back.
DTM: Well, when the rest of your dinner consists of a single slice of salami and a scraping of some kind of green and orange goo, you take what you can get.
MT: Gail can’t be all bad. She’s apparently working hard to save Bigfoot, after all.
MT: Say what you will about Dreama, but judging from that poster, she’s part of the “Save Bigfoot” movement, so she can’t be all bad.
@Guts Dozier: Beat me to it!
DtM Well, making carnival/fair food at home *is* a more frugal choice
Blondie How has it taken the writer *four* years to find out about the Proxima Twitter joke? Half your comic is crazy food! (But apparently not crazy enough to include chorizo??)
MT: One thing they should teach you at Villain School is, if your plans start to go awry or you suffer some kind of setback, don’t immediately yell, “NOOO!” It sends the wrong message to your henchmen and underlings.
‘shaft: Crankshaft is still theoretically a comic strip, emphasis on comic, so here’s how today’s episode could have incorporated a (mild) joke. “Was Larry Dinkle any relation?” “No … he was my father!” See, that adds a little chuckle, and it only took one extra word.
DTM: Meanwhile, Dennis couldn’t care less. He’s all, “I’m-a lick deez taters.”
MG&G: Ralph correctly intuits that Grimmy is angry here, but he just seems bored and disappointed to me. Like, I’ll bet he didn’t even growl in panel one. He just literally said, “GRRR!”
CSht: All I can think about when I see that photo is that scene from The Shining. “You’ve always been the bandleader, Mr Dinkle. I should know, I’ve always been here…”
RMMD: No, Mud! Don’t beat him to death! Just imagine a swing set on the moon!
Crankshaft: Can we just skip ahead to the strip when they discover that Jack Nicholson was in the photo the whole time?
Heathcliff: Are those wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men, or lemonade demons come to retrieve their stolen beverage? Like the big toe from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but with lemonade.
CShaft: Welp, the obvious next step is to organize an assassin squad with a time machine to take out Larry Dinkle before he reproduces.
DtM:
I see Mrs. Mitchell isn’t wearing her wedding ring. Hard to blame her.
MT:
Guyler is like an antimatter Jimmy Olsen, isn’t he.
Pluggers have a seven second delay on their bathroom mirror. I have no other explanation for the reflection looking back at her while she looks down.
BG&SS loves gentle humor about the demographic death spiral America’s rural communities find themselves in.
H&L: Hiram Flagston: Important enough to have an office, not important enough to have a door. Foofram Industries is very au courant with employee surveillance techniques.
DtM:
“Why is it that all the moms like us in this strip look like Betty Crocker stand-ins?”
DtM: Nice Teal Blazer Lady is about to step outside, throw up, then go find a religion that doesn’t require door-to-door proselytizing.
H&L: Mr Foofram is plenty chinless enough to be a Chickweed Lane denizen. I wonder if he has a leggy, lascivious wife at home.
MW: The old woman is future Dawn, when she has finally finished relating all her stupid love life decisions. Tommy is represented by a pile of dust on the sidewalk at her feet.
Crankshaft : Well, mystery solved. Storyline over. Rest of the week is just throwaway filler gags. Hope you enjoyed “Crankshaft presents : In the Name of the Father!”
(Nah, but how wild would it be if the big conflict “Eugene is moving away” not only got overshadowed by the “Larry Dinkle was Harry Dinkle’s father!” non-revelation, that non-revelation didn’t amount to anything beyond a “yes, that’s correct.” ?)
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Dennis the Menace : has a future in advertising, since that’s how they make ice cream cones that don’t melt under studio lighting (or so I’ve heard).
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Dick Tracy : Hey, I just realised : B.B. Eyes and Double-Up have no way of knowing how much Solly Tare netted from this scheme; he can just give them whatever and CLAIM that’s 30 % of what he got.
Like, if he gives them 600 K$ to split between themselves, can they really go “No way you get only 2 M$ out of this, cough up the rest”?
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Hi and Lois : …really? Videoconferencing became ubiquituous and “OH NO IS THAT YOUR BOSS BEHIND YOU” is the best bit you can milk out of it?
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Mark Trail : “I didn’t say Happy Trail was an easy mark in the sense that he was an easily fooled dupe who wouldn’t cause problems. I said he was an easy Mark because his real first name is Mark, and he’s super easy, in the sense that you probably didn’t need to bother with the fake, youthful persona to get him horny for you.”
Trail vs Thorpe:
I KNOW there’s better artists out there than these pencil schmucks. Ive seen better work from High School student doodles. Certainly the pay isn’t what it used to be, but for the love of God just get some talent! These two strips don’t even have a flourish of style to make up for the abysmal art. We are one step away from stick figures here. I can handle a lame joke but lame art is an insult to the comic strip genre.
MT:
“When Happy’s muckraking son finds out what we’re up to, he’ll go ape! So to speak.”
JP: She was just about to, then your little passive-aggressive quip there gave her the last boost of confidence she needed to say ‘get out my life and don’t come back!’
Luann: Oh for the love of… this hippie dippy Magic Negro is going to be some relation to Dez, isn’t she??
MW: ‘Would it make you feel better if I shoved that old woman over there into traffic?’
DT: Chester Gould, frustrated humor cartoonist that he was, would have leaned into the shenanigans of the crooks trying to make an escape in an ice cream truck. Just sayin’…
Wrecks Moregone:
Sorry to disappoint anyone who imagined that Mud would beat Moustache to a Beetle Baileyesque pulp, but what’s going to happen is that he’s going to thank Moustache for making the diner a money making proposition by forcing Mae Mae to out herself. Moustache will be so relieved that he’ll go out and finally buy himself another shirt.
Murky Tail:
Ha ha, these morons actually imagine that Murk can even spell “journalist” correctly.
Luann: some poor woman lost a bet to the Evansii and her forfeit was to be a model for this new character.
What exactly is the medical condition the people in Dennis the Menace all suffer from to have red blotches on their cheeks? Also the deformed claw type hands are very distracting. I’m also wondering why this visiting woman has the skin color of a circus clown.
I really need to start actually following comics again because what do you MEAN the storyline with Rusty and the raccoon is over already, I wanted to see some shenanigans
At least the sanctuary’s name isn’t a lie, that is one glamorous gorilla. Look at how lovely her coif is!
***
Of course Harry Dinkle’s father’s name was Larry Dinkle. You don’t exist in the Funkyverse without there being a very good chance that your family does stupid naming conventions. There will also be a Barry, Garry, and the black sheep of the family, Perry.
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Alice is very nonchalant about this woman suffering from late stage jaundice appearing in her home. She’s clearly the parent that Dennis inherited his menacing from.
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Thank you, Mother Goose and Grimm, for teaching all the boomers who read you how to mispronounce “pilates”.
Today’s Zits comic is about Jeremy and his fat horny friend going to the public pool to stare at the lifeguard’s ass but they don’t have the balls to show them awkwardly trying to conceal their very conspicuous hard-ons.
MT: Gail and boy hide in the closet and have one of the free roaming gorillas answer the door.
Papa Trail: “Hi Gail!” (Aside to Mark) “Hubba Hubba”
The old guy next door said this kid spends his whole day wandering the neighborhood unsupervised, thinks the social worker, but that’s clearly the least of it. What sort of sick psychosexual drama is this woman playing out, putting on an apron and fixing a full supper for a six-year-old in the middle of the day? Is this going on TikTok, or worse? Good thing he called me.
“No, thank you, Alice, was it? It’s a little early for sherry, don’t you think? Now let’s just take a quick look at this paperwork.”
MG&G — “There was no pie or lattes. Only this guy dressed in a toga who kept washing his hands.”
DtM — Now I know what we’re having for dinner tonight!
@CanuckDownSouth: The news was so exciting, Blondie looked over at the back side of the TV.
DtM: Jaundice without pain is one of the warning signs of late stage pancreatic cancer. Just saying don’t expect this new character to stick around much in the future.
@Schroduck: And if your only utensil is a ladle, it’s handy if the mashed potatoes are in a cone.
DtM:
“I scream
You scream
We all scream
For sour cream!
“No. Wait a minute. That’s not it.”
MW: I can’t decide if hearing about Dawn’s love life will push Tommy back into depression about his, or cheer him up as he mutters “I thought I had it bad.” Whichever way it goes, at least Tommy will learn the downside of sharing your feelings — reciprocity is expected.
Crankshaft-My god! I am shocked. Here I was thinking that Larry Dinkle was Harry Dinkle’s lover who something tragic happened to.
FC-“We don’t want God to smite us.”
RMMD-“Sorry, but I already took all the good stuff from this room.”
RMMD-“The hooker in that room was already dead.”
MW-“Here’s a copy of my book. Do you want an autograph?”
What is going on with Comics Kingdom and the Seattle Times comics section? This morning on my slightly out of date Firefox browser ‘Family Circus’ came up as a blank black box. Now on an up to date Microsoft Edge browser it did the same thing. I had to refresh the page on both browsers to see the comic.
Crankshaft-Oh and here’s a reminder of who the comic strip is named after.
MG&G: Trying to figure what US regional accent pronounces Pilates Pie-lattes. None, of course, but well-read shut-ins are known to mispronounce common words due to never having heard them spoken aloud which might help explain the general tone of this strip.
Happy Trail slumped in a corner, bleeding out from a gutshot. The boy lay among shards of shattered glass, spitting up teeth dislodged by Mark’s famous right hook. But now mother Gail had the gun, levelled at Mark’s forehead. Her eyes danced with flickering insanity as the refuge burned behind them. The backlit gorillas cast surreal loping Bigfoot shadows over the scene. Ma Gail’s finger twitched. “Time to end this, Trail,” she snarled before a giant paw closed around her hand, crushing it into paste. Gail screamed as the ape lifted her skyward and threw her into the growing fire.
Mark turned toward the camera. “Did you know the mountain gorilla is the strongest of all primates?” he asked over Happy’s death rattle and the howls of a burning woman.
MT: Wait… wait… she’s scamming Mark’s father and tells him she runs a gorilla sanctuary, and actually DOES run a gorilla sanctuary?
So when he finds out he gets scammed, they’ll know where she is (at a gorilla sanctuary)
To be fair, Happy’s money will presumably go towards funding this place? The gorillas will be happy. Mark will be happy, and Happy (who I presume loves animal welfare) probably would have given her the money either way if she was a legit “Help the Gorillas” charity.
Remember when the Mark Trail reboot was first released, and everyone was horrified at how ugly (and poorly written it was)
It seems Bianca Xunise and the Gil Thorp team realized “We can get paid by doing absolute shit effort? Hold our drinks…”
FC: Jeffy notices Dolly’s clenched fist and decides he’d better keep his thoughts to himself but even as an adult he’s too gracious to add his own thought balloon: “Jeez, even I’m not that stupid.”
Dennis – Dennis also prefers his milk in a cylinder, his ham in a cube, and his chocolate in a frustrum. He’s Dennis the Menacing Geometer!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Your turn, Admiral”
“I don’t understand it. You seem to be playing much worse than usual”
“It’s my new coach!”
MW – “For example,” Dawn elaborates, “I once blew a guy for a sandwich. I should have held out long enough to get a milk shake thrown in.”
DT: The nature and complexity of the heist (money, jewelry, art work, etcs) makes any immediate dividing of the loot impossible. Why is Soly Tare even meeting this goons back at the same hideout? If Richard Stark’s Parker were around, he would have washed his hands of these amateurs.
RMMD: The would-be blackmailer has been trying to “break” the story by calling around offering his ‘exclusive’ story hoping to make a few bucks. By tomorrow the whole story will break about how he tried to blackmail Lorna Starr and the few die hard StarrWarriors will descend on him and wreak havoc on him over the internet.
Alternate MG&G punchline: “No one asked me if I was the King of the Jews!”
MG&G: This is essentially the same joke as yesterday’s Herb and Jamaal. Are the comics doing some sort of theme week?
Just continue cruising, Dagwood, and discuss your sudden complicated cravings for salami with your shrink later.
“Of course he was my father! How many Dinkles do you think made it past Ellis Island with that name? Either the immigration officer couldn’t stop laughing, or they changed their name afterwards. Would you want your last name to sound like a toddler’s word for peeing?”
C’shaft: Oh please, like Harry Dinkle, a man whose favorite subject is himself, wouldn’t have already expounded on his musical lineage to anyone who would listen (and anyone who couldn’t get away).
DtM: Oh come on, every parent knows that the easiest way to get your kids to eat their veggies is to dress them up a bit. Pour cheese over them, incorporate them into favorite dishes, serve them up in an ice cream cone, whatever works. Menacing level: playing right into Mom’s hand.
MT: This is starting to play like the “Treehouse of Horror” monkey paw segment from The Simpsons:
“A woman is catfishing your father, Mark.”
“That’s bad!”
“But she’s doing it to raise money for her gorilla sanctuary!”
“That’s good!”
“But the catfish images were generated using environmentally devastating AI technology.”
“That’s bad!”
“But she might still be ignorant about that, because her son was doing all the legwork.”
“That’s good!”
“The son dresses like an accountant from 1956 and was given the painfully faux-trendy name of ‘Guyler’.”
“…”
“That’s bad.”
“Can I go now?”
DT: Tare’s gangs stole cash, jewelry, and valuable art. “Give me a second to slice off 30% of this Vermeer…”
DtM: This is the official novelty food item of the Idaho State Fair. They also come in chocolate and strawberry.
Crank: ”His orchestra left him a few days later, because he got them a gig at the Starlight Ballroom in Chippewa Lake Park.”
@Voshkod: Actually the Ellis Island clerks modified the name from the original Welsh “Dynkwl,” meaning “a particularly annoying bard.”
Dennis the Menace:
Dennis’s drinking glass is also full of mashed potatoes, if the way that straw is sticking straight up is anything to go by.
@SabeHombre:
Unless there is some die hard fan of these strips, the artists are usually doing this as a temporary job or fill in work. Their focus is on their own creator IP or hoping for some design studio work. These all could pay a lot better, offer long term stability and more creative outlet.
Look at GT – a few months back they had some really good guest artists. There was dynamism in the scenes. Basics and proportions, depth of field, and story telling lay out were all clear and well done. The inking was sharp and not muddy. Of course those people quickly moved on to bigger and better things!
Maybe AI will used to help clean up and improve art in the future.
Watching the cartoonish Luann interact with her realistic colleagues is so jarring that it seems intentional. It’s almost like the art is trying to make the point that everyone else is far more adult and sophisticated than Luann is.
Phantom: We’ve got the asterisks but no narration box telling us which tribal language they are speaking. How are we supposed to interpret the dynamics this interchange if we don’t know if they are speaking Bandar, as if it’s some kind of tribal lingua franca, or is Phantom speaking Wambesi as a shallow concession to the people he basically forced into sheltering a dangerous terrorist mercenary?
Dustin: Please, Dustdad would love it if his son got into the toxic, misogynist, self-centered world of the manosphere. They’d finally have something in common!
JP: “It means I have no idea what your plans for the future are, and knowing you you probably don’t have any to begin with, so excuse me for actually wanting to do something with my life instead of tagging along with your dysfunction all the time!”
MW: No, don’t encourage her!