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Mark Trail, 12/22/06

Damn you, O cruel gods of Mark Trail! Can’t you let our beaver friends maintain their newlywed bliss at least through Christmas? Must our orange-teethed rodents be face uncomprehendingly with hostility on the day the Prince of Peace was born to redeem the original sins of irate property owners and furry tree-gnawing beasts alike? Is there no justice in this world?

Is Lucky and/or Mrs. Lucky holding a rock in his/her adorable little paws in panel one? Because I’m, um, pretty sure that never actually happens.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 12/22/06

OK, I’m going to pass lightly over the fact that the “parent can’t put together kid’s toy” joke is passed beyond “classic” and “dated” status and gone right on to “musty,” and the fact that little Loopie’s “space ship” looks like a roller skate wearing the Tin Man’s scalp as a hat. What mostly amazes me here is that this TDIET was published on December 22, and yet the ground-based UFO in question is portrayed as a birthday present, rather than the more obvious Christmas gift. Did we need the urgency of the party being tomorrow to really bring home the stress of dad’s “living on the edge” lifestyle, but there’s already something lined up for the 12/24 panel? Or is TDIET in the vanguard in the liberal media’s implacable War On Christmas?

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/22/06

The first use of “playing the cello” to describe this position that I’ve encountered was in Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan: Homicidal lesbian terrorist comic series from the early ’90s. Sadly, since Mother Goose and Grimm appears in family-friendly publications, this strip had to be censored, since the phrase clearly refers to a cat licking its ass. If a child saw a feline applying a tongue to that part of its body in a cartoon, that child would obviously go blind and insane, so it’s a good thing that this bowdlerized version was used instead.

One Big Happy, 12/22/06

Part of Ruthie’s charm is that she straddles the line between “imaginative” and “delusional,” but the phrase “I know the smoke detector is really one of your hidden cameras” is clearly the product of the mind of a budding paranoid schizophrenic. This kid will be in a straight jacket in a rubber room by the age of 13. Presumably she’ll have a heart-warming malapropism ready for the situation.

The Phantom, 12/22/06

In case you’re wondering, Undersecretary Denton’s extrajudicial beatdown has now entered its eighth day. It’s been pretty rough going, though I suppose more so for Denton than for me; today President Luaga manages to get three POK!s out of a single left hook somehow. Anyway, this comic amuses me mostly because of panel three, in which Denton’s administrative assistant gets to live out every white-collar underling’s dream by punching her boss in the face.

Apartment 3-G, 12/22/06

Drunk, jilted Margo + lonely, emotionally needy Gina = SEXIEST CHRISTMAS EVER.

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Mary Worth, 12/21/06

So a mustachioed malcontent has a beef with Charterstone’s power clique. After a confrontation in which he is humiliated by them, he stalks off, despite one of their number’s feeble attempt to end things on a good note. I think we all know where this is going: The liquor store. The road. The cliff. The end.

This is what Aldomania hath wrought, everybody: every Mary Worth plot from here on in is going to end with the meddling condo creeps driving some new character to a self-inflicted death. There’ll be an awkward funeral visit, some murmured platitudes, and then on to the next victim. They aren’t just murderers; they’re serial killers. I sure hope you’re happy.

Apartment 3-G, 12/21/06

You should not, however, harbor similar worries about our girl Magee as she prepares to rock Christmas the way only an angry, drunken, jilted young woman can. Margo is no danger of harming herself. Margo will only harm others. Many, many others.

Mark Trail, 12/21/06

As an antidote to the above, I offer you the continuing love story of Lucky the Beaver and his mate. I’m not a biologist, but I’m pretty sure that beavers do not actually put their paws tenderly on one another’s shoulder; still, I can’t deny how heartwarmingly adorable it all is. In the larger scheme of things, though, this whole thing is starting to freak me out. I’m a relative Mark Trail newbie, having only read it for the last four years or so; can any longtime Trailheads tell me if the strip has ever dropped its boring, stilted humans before to focus on the improbable anthropomorphized antics of adorable forest creatures? My guess about the current scenario: the word came down from King Features that a heart-warming Christmas episode was required, and Jack Elrod realized that, since nobody has any emotional involvement in any of the oddly shaped human characters, someone appealing was required, stat.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/21/06

Awwww, look at how sad June is in panel three. She just wanted her garage painted, Rex; is that so much to ask? Shouldn’t the lengths she’ll go to achieve that end trouble you at least a little?

Crock, 12/21/06

I’m pretty sure this comic strip is about masturbation. Me is the gift I can give myself all year long!

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Beetle Bailey, 12/20/06

And Beetle Bailey’s queasy, uncomfortable treatment of sexuality continues apace. (See here, here, and here for more of it, if you dare.) There’s an increasingly disturbing undercurrent of sexual mismatch in the strip, as various desperate plays for intimacy are parried by hostility, apathy, or restrictive military regulations against sexual harassment and/or gayness. Since they’re denied by their cruel overlords the Walkers either the right to get it on with one another or to experience the catharsis of combat, it’s no wonder the denizens of Camp Swampy are such emotional wrecks.

Apartment 3-G, 12/20/06

Worry not, friends: we are only privy to these uncharacteristically humble meanderings through the cartoon magic of thought balloons; no other A3G character will ever learn of them, since Margo shuns human intimacy and all other forms of weakness. I’m just charmed to find out that she refers to herself by her last name in her negative self-talk.

Gil Thorp, 12/20/06

With Stormy Hicks and Stumpy Ritter bundled safely off to the Naval Academy Prep School and the Paralympics, respectively, it’s time for a new storyline in Gil Thorp. This of course inevitably involves confusion and chaos, since it can take days or weeks before anyone can tell what the hell is going on. At first I thought that our Syracuse-branded sweatshirt fan was ex-hobo Ted Pearse, but it’s actually the noted “Lisa Wyche.” Perhaps we’ll get an intriguing plot involving same-sex loving on the girl’s basketball team, or at least parental disapproval of tomboyishness. No matter what, though, I need to see as much of Lisa’s terrifying space alien mother as humanly possible.

Luann, 12/20/06

Allow me to translate, Puddles: you aren’t getting jack for Christmas. It’s a good thing you have some biped friends, or else you’d be in a burlap sack at the bottom of a river. Capisce? Now leave Santa the hell alone.