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Mark Trail, 11/18/09

Here’s a question for you: am I spoiled by Mark Trail? I mean, yes, this is the sort of wordless action strip that makes the feature worth reading, and yes, Mark has waded into the swamp to deliver a crushing blow to an alligator’s mouth, without regard for his personal safety, in order to save his mutant ward’s whiny little dog. I should just be able to sit back and enjoy it! And yet … well, he’s not using his fists, is he? He’s using a tool to do his fighting for him. Sure, for an ordinary human punching an alligator would be a recipe for certain death, but Mark is not ordinary, and may not even be human. When his violent righteousness turns on the poachers, as it inevitably will, will Mark think, “Hey, I am already holding this stick! It helped me beat the alligator — maybe it will help me defeat these men as well!” And once there’s an intermediary object between Mark and his targets, well, it’s all downhill from there. The next think you know, he’ll be suing them, or writing angry letters to the editor about their misdeeds.

Gil Thorp, 11/18/09

Today is the day that reveals the true shape of Gil Thorp’s football season B-plot: it’s Cyrano de Bergerac, if Cyrano were a band geek, and instead of feeding love poetry to Christian he just gave him recaps of high-school volleyball games, and while watching the whole drama you kept waiting for the action to switch back to Christian’s teammate’s brother in prison. Still, I have a feeling that Valerie will learn that the person who really enjoyed watching her play volleyball was a slightly cross-eyed clarinet player, and true love will blossom at last!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/18/09

You know, I really and truly would have been delighted if the whole Becka-Tim side story ended up being entirely tangental to the plot, with Cue successfully negotiating the return of the wayward oldsters with the crooked nursing home operator while Becka fended off Tim’s ham-handed advances. But now it appears that the two narrative threads will finally meet, so I’m hoping that the fisticuffs between the exceptionally dim small-time marijuana dealer and the socially awkward fishing magazine writer will at least be kind of hilarious.

Apartment 3-G, 11/18/09

“Kitchen staff” no doubt sets alarm bells off in Ari’s head. “Wait, she used to be rich, and now the only person she can afford to exploit to get her meds is me? Danger, danger!”

(By the way, if you’re trying woo a pill-popper with rice pudding in actual New York, might I suggest Rice to Riches at 37 Spring Street in Manhattan? YUMMY!)

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Apartment 3-G, 11/12/09

Dr. Pappagoras is cheerfully pressing on with his campaign to win the Most Unethical Therapist statuette at this years Psychie Awards! Most head-shrinkers I know (and I was raised by several) do not consider it a “nice surprise” when their goofball-addled patients show up at their office without an appointment and with some bullshit story about, you know, just being in the neighborhood, just wandering around the block seven or forty times in the rain and thinking about pills pills pills PILLS PILLS PILLS. I was originally going to come up with some joke here about transference and countertransference, but then I realized that strictly speaking those phenomena only arise in the course of actual patient/therapist relationships, and not in drug-seeker/quack-doctor-who-wants-to-bone-drug-seeker relationships.

Pluggers, 11/12/09

Speaking of pills, it’s nice to see that pluggers aren’t waiting for some government bailout to pull them out of their tough economic times. Police looking for the distributors bringing insane amounts of black-market oxycodone into the county will never suspect the simple, down-home chicken lady!

Dennis the Menace, 11/12/09

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” –Matthew 5:38-44

So, apparently Dennis has been sent to Earth by his Father to teach us about peace, and then die for our sins. This … this is not very menacing at all.

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Six Chix, 11/11/09

I suppose the joke of this strip is that our MC is admonishing not the audience but the actors on the necessity of turning of their cell phones, because HAW HAW THE KIDS TODAY AND THE CELL PHONES, amiright? But I’m frankly much more interested in the historic and dramaturgical significance of the largish cane being brandished by pilgrim #1 on the far left. Will he be swinging it about over the course of the show’s dance numbers, including “(The Church Ought To Be Organized On A) Congregationalist Model,” “My Goodness But I Am Very Hungry,” and “A Buckle On My Hat — What’s That About?” Or is it a vaudeville-style hook, to be used to drag off the lady pilgrim (for displaying the Sin of Pride by wearing whorish non-black-and-white clothes) or the Native American (for using all the good land)?

Apartment 3-G, 11/11/09

This is why you shouldn’t hire an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter as your PI, as he’s always trying to force the messiness of real life into his preconceptions of narrative entertainment. “Just think about it, Bobbie: what aging man doesn’t at some level yearn to recapture his lost youth via a tryst with a younger woman? And what wife doesn’t secretly worry that she won’t keep her husband’s attention as she gets older? The older, sophisticated audience we’re reaching for here will all be able to relate. And, I mean, check out the framing on these pics — see how the streetlamp serves as a spotlight on the secret lovers, isolating them in an island of illumination against a sea of darkness, symbolizing the way the whole world fades away when they’re together? It’s box office gold, baby! And once I figure out what the emotionally devastating denouement is going to be, I can guarantee that it’ll be Oscar time.” Instead, you should seek out experimental filmmakers in the tradition of Andrei Tarkovsky or Bela Tarr, who aren’t afraid to point their camera at the subject of investigation and just film his everyday activities for hours at a time.

Crock, 11/11/09

I was going to complain that Grossie’s comeback made little to no sense, but then I remembered that in the ever-shifting poorly drawn hell-world of Crock, one cannot count on one’s facial features or body parts remaining symmetrical, so it’s fully possible that “Sexy” Crock Lady Character Whose Name I Forget might from time to time have legs of wildly varying lengths or widths. But this is a universe where kneeless leg-stumps might be considered someone’s “best feature,” so I’m not sure if the punchline here is really an insult per se.