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Panel from Mark Trail, 12/10/10

Let’s cap off a hilarious week in Mark Trail with this hilarious panel! Longtime Trail readers know that the idea of Mark having sex with anyone is utterly laughable, but this panel pretty much seems to tease us with the concept of a Mark-Kelly tryst, as Mark tidies himself up and Kelly offers the first T&A cheesecake shot ever to involve a polo shirt and mom jeans. Our first clue that something is amiss is that Mark is combing his hair. Mark’s hair doesn’t require anything like “combing” for maintenance! It’s a single ink-black unit that hugs his head, needing only the occasional regreasing. Clearly we’ve slipped into some sort of parallel universe, or perhaps are seeing only the images in Kelly’s fevered imagination.

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/10/10

And let’s cap off a hilarious week in Mary Worth with this poignant panel, as two strong men attempt to drag Jill out to the back alley and she desperately pushes her face back into the reception hall, trying to get in one last cuss word. You have to admire her stamina, and her determination to save Adrian from herself. “*@^%$#!” she shouts, as if this is the “*@^%$#” that’s going to push Adrian over the edge and get her to realize that marriage really is all a scam. “Yeah, what am I doing, committing my life to this guy,” Adrian thinks. “*@^%$#ing A!”

Apartment 3-G, 12/10/10

Because of Apartment 3-G’s weird fashions, which seem to be representative of no particular era or cultural milieu, it’s hard to get a sense of exactly how old the main characters are supposed to be. Well, here’s your proof: they’re somewhere around 13.

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Luann, 12/7/10

Oh my gosh, long-despised villain Dirk is suddenly going to become a hero! Some might find this to be a shocking turn of events, but it’s the logical conclusion of the same process by which the strip’s ostensible protagonists have become completely unbearable.

Mary Worth, 12/7/10

You thought that Mary Worth couldn’t get any better. You thought wrong. Panel one is a delight: I love the fact that Mary has escalated from a single hand to the mouth to two, and I’m practically hypnotized by the droplet of ketchup-wine suspended in mid-air within Jill’s glass. And then she gets out of her chair and karate chops Scott in the face.

Apartment 3-G, 12/7/10

“Yes, architecture, the practice of designing the buildings we live in every day with a modicum of art and grace … I’m sure it bores a bohemian like yourself to tears, as it does me. Oh, I’ve tried to really express my innermost self through my hobby, clothing design, but it’s about time I admitted to myself that my combination scarf-cravat — or ‘scarfat,’ as I dreamed of hearing it called on the runways in Paris and Milan — is never going to catch on.”

Judge Parker, 12/7/10

Ha ha, that classic Sam Driver smugness is still in full effect. “Some poor crazed woman out there who pines for me but can never, ever have me? That’s more intoxicating than this extremely expensive wine!”

Mark Trail, 12/7/10

Faced by the sudden and terrifying prospect of a woman in his room, Mark covers his genitals the only way he can: by bellowing out the largest word balloon his lungs can muster.

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Luann, 12/2/10

When it comes to Brad/Toni slash fiction — oh, sorry, I mean, when it comes to the actual Brad/Toni comic strips that appear in newspapers across America — I’ve gone through some kind of abbreviated Kübler-Ross cycle of grief. First game the visceral disgust, of course. Then came the anger. So much anger! But now I’ve settled into just a sort of bafflement. Is there an audience out there who finds these characters compelling, and, more specifically, who finds their glacial trajectory towards physical intimacy arousing, or at least interesting? Is today’s strip blatantly pandering to America’s small but intense calf-massage-fetish community, possibly as a result of a bribe or a lost bet? Has anyone read Luann this week with a feeling more positive than mild distaste? I honestly want to know the answers to these questions, for real!

Mark Trail, 12/2/10

However, I feel confident that the comics-reading public is regarding this week’s Mark Trail with excitement and anticipation. Just as Kelly Welly is leaning back in that chair, gripping the armrests and waiting eagerly to see Mark naked, so too are we sitting back in our respective sitting-oriented-pieces of furniture, waiting eagerly to see Kelly see Mark naked.

Apartment 3-G, 12/2/10

Comics readers are also intrigued to see how this beret-wearing cab driver’s honest masculine advice will help Aunt Iris bed the bicyclist that she, in some way that I never properly understood, caused to be hit by a car. Under the cabbie’s tutelage, she’ll show up at the cyclist’s apartment with something that’s still alive, like a puppy or a stripper.

Gil Thorp, 12/2/10

Comics readers are somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of people being loaded onto buses and interned in camps far from their homes, but for the Milford football team, they’ll allow it.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/10

Ha ha, Jamaal, that chat room is full of other people trying to live out their fantasies! You’re just there to, uh, find out how to get away from there. Due to this strip’s trademark nonspecificity, we have no way of knowing exactly what perverse text-based lusts are being expressed in this online sin den. It’s probably a hot Brad/Toni calf-massage slash fiction site.