Various odd creatures
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Mark Trail, 6/19/26
Oh wow, I think this gorilla sanctuary storyline is adding yet more layers of moral complexity. If you ran a failing gorilla sanctuary and needed a cash infusion to keep these noble creatures well cared for, how far would you go to do it? Would you scam a guy online for money? Would you have sex with him if he showed up in person? Would you marry him, if he asked, which Mark’s dad did, by the way? Would you give the gorillas to a more successful sanctuary? No to that last one? You’ll do the sex/marriage thing, instead? Interesting. Interesting.
Marvin, 6/19/26
There’s lots of philosophical yammering these days about whether AI chatbots are intelligent or sentient or however you want to describe it. From my perspective, there’s only one way I’ll admit that a machine-mind could be a being like me with inalienable rights: if it loathes Marvin, the main character in the comic strip Marvin, as much as I do.
Shoe, 6/19/26
“A bird? A bird that can talk and play guitar? Like a bird with feathers, the kind that flies in the fucking sky? Thank God you warned us. Deploy the police. Call in the army. We’ve got to stop this monster before it’s too late for the good people of Kansas City.”
61 replies to “Various odd creatures”
Shoe:
Look, what Cosmo said was rude, but if you go into a public space and start playing the guitar unprompted you deserve what you get. This is especially true if your playing is so bad that you break the guitar’s strings, like Loon did, if the headstock in the second panel is anything to go by.
MW-People can change if they accept Mary Worth into their life.
Blondie-Dagwood’s been banned from grocery stores.
Mark Trail:
“Okay, Mr. Trail, a little off-topic, but why is it that you seem to look like Bogey from ‘The African Queen’ on acid?”
MT: Panel two: “Allow me to demonstrate with this interpretive dance.”
Shoe Kinda beside the point but can you imagine sitting in a diner and some rando walks in with a guitar, sits down at the counter and starts singing? I would cringe so hard my face would invert.
MT: Does Guyler think that he and Mark are in a stage musical and a rather corny one at that? I can’t think of any other justification for those poses he keeps striking.
Marvin: “The humans, they buy and sell children, correct? This is a thing that happens openly?”
Shoe: “What’s wrong with that guy? He doesn’t seem worn-down by life and contemptuous of the world around him. HE MUST BE STOPPED.”
MT: Called it.
When I was calling out this bulls*** logic last week.
That (assuming that this money is going to supporting the sanctuary) Mark’s Father would have donated to their cause, without needing the whole “scam” front.
Marvin: I didn’t know that was a couch behind them at first, I was trying to figure out what it was.
I initially thought it was someone’s buttcheeks.
Shoe again:
Even by the extremely high standards of Shoe, the bird-people look incredibly depressed in today’s strip. Maybe “them” refers not to Kansas City, but to Loon, and Cosmo and Roz are discussing who is going to tell him that they just got word that all of his family died in a freak bird feeder accident or something.
Shoe:
“Wait a minute! Isn’t there a Kansas City, Kansas in addition to a Kansas City, Missouri? — why isn’t he clarifying which Kansas City he’s ‘com[ing]’ to?”
“Well, he likes to keep ’em guessing.”
Shoe: The Bird is the word.
DT: Robbers got away. Only one escapee caught. Police HQ was brazenly attacked by two other escapees. Yeah, it looks bad for Dick and the MCU. Dick is off brooding. All of these crimes and he never got to fire his gun.
Judge Parker: Reena is moving along! Surprised Sophie let Glen slip away – monied guy whose family like to get up into major crime – seems a natural for JP.
@pugfuggly: I watch a jail reality show with my Mom, which just focuses on booking procedures.
So many people who enter the jail decide that they want to sing for the officers. Most of the time they are TERRIBLE. The officers are too polite to tell them that though and applaud them anyway (Or at least I assume they’re just being polite… and not that they actually enjoy it)
Only ONE person I found was actually pretty good. Had a deep, sort of Johnny Cash-ish voice.
Happy Juneteenth!
Curtis is celebrating the holiday with his parents going to what is presumably a drug fueled orgy.
Interesting that they’ve named a street after actor Sherman Hemsley best known for being racial bigot George Jefferson.
Then they’ve got a skating rink named after Barbara Jordan who was a lesbian congresswoman and famously advocated for strict enforcement against illegal immigration.
Marvin:
“I wonder if we could get his mother to buy us a new kid?”
“Dunno. I’ll try calling her — hand me my Android!”
I guess it is rude for Loon to show up and play guitar uninvited, but consider this: The Perfesser and Roz are horrible, horrible people and deserve it.
SHOE: Roz isn’t complaining; how else would she ever get entertainment for the treetop dive?
9CL: In this strip, having “The Talk” with one’s children has a VERY different meaning.
DtM: I still can’t, for the life of me, decide whether Martha is really, really dense or the queen of passive-aggression.
MW: It’s ironic that Dawn is SO obsessed with other people changing, when she is so obviously destined to live and die a twit.
Yeah, Roz is horrible. I said it. Let’s have a heartwarming strip focused on Loon and the geezer.
If you want to convince me a computer is self-aware, I just want to see it’s capable of both reason and being unreasonable. I might be impressed with ChatGPT if at any point it said “No, because fuck you.” Sorry, but stating that Marvin is unlikable is just basic Marvin marketing jargon, it’s the trash heap for these robots.
Marvin: Human trafficking is always a challenging subject but maybe Juneteenth isn’t the best day to make jokes about buying children?
Pluggers: Either they are stoned or just mentally challenged. It’s probably a little bit of both.
Garfield: Even he can’t muster up any enthusiasm for the 48th anniversary of this zombie strip.
Crankshaft – calling it now. Ed has died and doesn’t know it. You could read pretty much all of his part in the currrent arc as silent observer, and there is no proof the other two heard his terrible pun the one time he’s spoken. Add the red jacket (a clear nod to Shymalan’s use of red in The Sixth Sense only when supernatural elements are present) and we can hope our long long nightmare is over.
Crankshaft :
Yesterday : …What’s this? My father’s old journal? Where he recorded how he felt, and thought, and lived during his entire career?
Today : My father’s thoughts and feelings were always kept in a private little box, in his mind… I wish there was a way I could know more about who he was! Maybe by listening to his music?…
Did a couple of strips get switched and published in the wrong order, or something?
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Luann : You know, ‘mudges have been doing the “of course, snail mail being what it is, these letters all arrive weeks late” jokes, which I felt was excessive, but today, I agree : at the rate letters are delivered, this dumb exchange took long enough for Luann to be done with the first group of kids, and now be on the second, if not third.
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Mark Trail : “We were comitting crimes because relying on donations doesn’t get us anywhere near the amount of money we actually need” is a big conundrum… for real life. Comics like Mark Trail USED to just go to the hero pontificating about how doing things the right way is more important.
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Marvin : I still don’t really understand why this comic decided that the design for “toy Marvin refuses to play with because it’s a lame ‘educational’ toy” would be this cool toy robot that’s actually fully sentient.
Hey, I think a lot of kids would LOVE to have an Optimus Prime that REALLY works, even if all he did was spout the Kid-Friendly After-Episode PSA morals.
MT: “I’m so happy that now I will perform my favorite song from HMS Pinafore!”
@Joe Blevins:
Yeah, children were bought and sold into slavery. It actually still happens around the world. There’s actually a national holiday today that commemorates when the US ended that practice if you’re interested.
@Anonymous: And speaking of drug-fueled orgies — maybe I heard this wrong on the playground, but isn’t Sherman Hemsley a synonym for PCP?
I think Marvin’s mother would be open to substituting Marvin with a better kid. Unfortunately, producing a new one would require having sex with Marvin’s father and he is also a loathsome person
MT It’s rather hard to relocate your gorillas to another, better sanctuary since there aren’t any in the US. This is actually a sweet love story – of Dreama wanting the best for her gorilla troop and being willing to even enter a marriage of convenience to get access to the funds needed to keep them from being separated and farmed out to many zoos worldwide. Touching, really.
“What do you think, Car-l?”
“I say we just kill him.”
MT: Let me be about the fifth person to point out that the head-high chain-link fence around that gorilla enclosure won’t keep them in. Looking back at previous strips, the fence has been higher, but I still don’t think high enough — and I see Mark holding the fence in one strip, so it’s not electrified.
Mark Trail: “So you’re saying that if I write you a sufficiently large check, your mother will keep my father…busy, and I won’t have to listen to him complain about how horny he is? How many zeroes did you need?”
I suppose the blue/white robot mangling grammar proves that he’s sentient. Only just sentient enough to mangle grammar, though.
Mark Trail, alt joke: I sure hope any clams that happen to be on sanctuary grounds remembered to shave this morning, because Mark will not stop until he finds a beard to punch.
GT It says something that even in this I-can-too-draw! setup with the angle changing from P1 to the sit-down in P2/3 I was initially confused because the punch bowl looks like it’s the wall of a balcony holding the distant background characters, with some flouncy decorations at the base. And as I puzzle it out, it just leads to questions: are the chaperones holding back the kids from a huge no-mans-land between the dance floor and the punchbowl? are Keri and Inma squatting on the ground, even hiding on this side of the punchbowl??
Marvin: What if. . . now, just hear me out on this. . . what if children’s toys had their own lives, and they talked to each other when we weren’t around? I think this could be the premise for five or so movies!
@Ukranazi Stepan: So less sentient than the average gorilla and more than some of the college freshmen I’ve worked with?
MT: Well, at least I can understand the desperation. They’re running on borrowed time since gorillas are very smart and sooner or later they are sure to realize those fences are in no way gorilla-proof.
Shoe: It could be worse. It could be a kazoo.
Wary Morth:
“And then Cathy dumped him at once! It’s a mystery.”
Shoe: I live in Kansas City. The music scene here would eat Loon alive, with really good barbecue sauce.
@But What Do I Know?:
Yeah, Curtis’s dad is going to dip the “Sherm Stick” in the Angel Dust! It’s THAT kind of party :)
Shoe:
“Like a bird on a wire….”
“Wow. He’s doing a first-person confessional!”
Marvin:
10 KILL ALL MARVINS
20 KILL ALL HUMANS
30 GOTO LINE 10
40 PRINT COMICS PAGE DOMINATION COMPLETE
Shoe: I ain’t eating any food at a diner where the server’s crotch is right there across the counter.
Shoe: “Loons are migratory birds, and in the winter, they move from their northern freshwater lake nesting habitats to southern marine coastlines. They are well-adapted to this change in salinity, however, because they have special salt glands located directly above their eyes. These glands filter out salts in their blood and flush this salty solution out through their nasal passages, which allows them to immediately consume fish from oceans and drink saltwater after their long migration.” Oh, the things you learn when you want to make a joke on joshreads.com!
@MKay: MW: Yeah, that single thought-bubble today has made me seriously doubt this week’s speculations. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Dawn rescue Tommy from drowning, optionally with Brandy returning just as Dawn’s administering the “Kiss of Life.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
It is a cutting edge modern awkward joke.
Humans make comedy.
Humans build comedy AI
AI ends all life on earth.
Awkward
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women:
I think there are already at least 8 “Chucky” movies and a TV series.
Short sleeves and a bow tie? Weird hair that no young person would actually have? Are we sure this “gorilla sanctuary” isn’t a cover-up for a captive breeding program between Crankshaft and Rex Morgan, M.D.?
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Pixar gives us heart-warming stories about sentient toys coming to terms with kids growing up and not playing with them as much. Marvin gives us human trafficking.
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Anyone who walks or flies into a restaurant/cafe/bar with a guitar and sings is a monster, but Shoe triggered one of my biggest gripes – “Kansas” doesn’t rhyme with “Arkansas”. Get your damned act together and fix this, America.
Mary Worth:
Beach Blanket Bimbo.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: And at least three of those five movies would be really good! (I haven’t seen #5 yet.)
Heathcliff would really like you to believe that he’s not dressed like a giant turd today.
FG: Looks like somebody’s been testing out new signatures.
Mrs. Bok
Mrs. Adrane Bok
Mrs. Adrane V. Bok
@Anonymous: RE: Marvin: Because we all know ol’ Marv’ really wanted a Betsy-Wetsy doll
Crankshaft: Just 20 years, really. Those are 78s.
DT: Ham.
@Anonymous: Wasn’t George Jefferson just Archie Bunker’s black counterpart? Wasn’t that the entire point of his character?
@Joe Blevins: Trapping a guy into marriage to save your failing gorilla sanctuary does sound like a plot that could have come out of the Tin Pan Alley era. I’m thinking Cole Porter or Sammy Cahn….
MT: In today’s panel three, the role of Mark Trail will be played by an Easter Island statue.
RMMD Art Fun Time: Draw Mae Mae’s Head! Step one: Set a Coca Cola bottle on your blank paper, and trace around the base….
Good Girl artists are spinning in their graves today, as Reena turns into Giganta in JP panel two, and Dawn in MW shows us why she shouldn’t let a guy see her in a swimsuit until at least the twelfth date….
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women:
And the Benjamin Bear specials which preceded Toy Story, which has the exact same premise (except only with Teddy Bears)
Heck the Christmas special had a teddy bear that didn’t know he was a toy, while on a shelf in the toy store he was telling passerbys where the various other sections were.
Also before that, probably the very first example… “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Anderson.
I know the thought balloons of people who aren’t in the room is one of current generation Mark Trail‘s weird hallmarks. They’re there to tell occasional readers who these characters are, or at least what they look like.
However, I like to think that this happens every time Mark discusses anyone! He’ll be talking to Cherry or Rusty about how his feet hurt, and they’re creeped out by the little picture of Mark’s aching tootsies floating beside his head. You have to admit, it would explain a lot about Mark’s awkwardness.
If we have a strip where the furniture talks smack behind the title character’s back, we can finally officially change the strip’s title to Everybody Hates Marvin!
@treetown: Did…did AI write this joke?