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Mark Trail, 11/18/14

Did Mark almost get eaten by a bull shark last week? Yep! Did I completely ignore it? Sure did! Am I only revisiting today’s strip because Mark and Cherry are again lounging around sexily in sexy bathing suits? Heck yeah! Guess who has several beautiful areas? Mark and Cherry Trail, that’s who! Sure wouldn’t want to do any mining near them and spoil their “natural beauty,” nudge wink. This a Chastely Erotic Mark Trail Fanblog until further notice. (Further notice will come when Mark punches somebody.)

Mary Worth, 11/18/14

Mary Worth, meanwhile, is not so much chastely erotic as frankly erotic. This elderly pair sure aren’t wasting any time! Why bother going out and wasting precious oxygen and Social Security money at some fancy restaurant when you could just go right to Sean’s apartment and have him “make you a mean tuna sandwich,” if you know what I mean? I mean he’s going to make her a tuna sandwich, you perverts. Old people love tuna sandwiches, they’re nutritious and they don’t take much chewing. They’re totally gonna have crazy sex after they eat, though.

Apartment 3-G, 11/18/14

Margo’s free! Free to do whatever she wants, without interference or emotional entanglements of any sort! I certainly hope that one of the many things her assistant Sam has on his plate is the role of pretending to be Margo when talking to Gabriella, presumably by wearing a bun-wig and talking in a falsetto.

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The Phantom, 11/15/14

Oh my gosh, you guys, the Phantom! When we last saw our hero, he had been bitten by a snake while planting evidence on a guy; after pumping himself full of various antivenoms, he emerged from a painful ordeal physically healthy but with full-on amnesia (is this a thing? I don’t think this is a thing) and then wandered into the nearest Jungle Patrol camp. There my low opinions of this paramilitary organization were confirmed, because instead of trying to help him figure out his identity, the local commanders just put him in uniform and are having him do odd jobs around the compound.

But! Now this has set up the return of some beloved characters of yesteryear! You might recall that way back in 2008 a couple of Bangallan women, a lady cop and a waitress, decided to quit their boring day jobs and join the Jungle Patrol, despite its previously all-male makeup. (You can still buy the t-shirts based on their hilarious catchphrases!) They proved their worth by gunning some dude down in the dead of night, but retained their essential femininity in the sense that they had constant sexual fantasies about the Patrol’s “Unknown Commander” (who is, you guessed it, the Phantom himself). Later, the lady ex-cop half of this duo tried and failed to get a glimpse of this hunky he-hunk’s face while aiding and abetting some mild crimes against humanity.

Anyway! These two gals are still at it, if by “it” in you mean “serving in the Jungle Patrol” and “forming inappropriate sexual attractions to people that they don’t know are the Phantom!” Today they grace our amnesiac hero with a sexier new name, so they don’t feel like necrophiliacs when thinking hott thoughts about him.

Apartment 3-G, 11/15/14

Speaking of beloved characters of yesteryear, remember Sam, Margo’s wedding-planning assistant, who we last saw in 2007? I think he appeared in all of two strips, though that didn’t stop readers from rooting for them to get together (faithful reader Missy declared herself a “Sargo shipper”, a phrase that I have never forgotten). Anyway, looks like Sam’s going to emerge from whatever Bed-Stuy flophouse Margo banished him to seven years ago and save the day by planning her mother’s wedding for her. Will this finally be the act of heroism that wins her heart? Ha ha, of course not, you fools, Margo has no “heart” to “win.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/15/14

This doesn’t involve any sort of flashback or anything, but it does nicely demonstrate that joy is so rare in the Funkyverse that people have no idea what it looks like when it’s happening. “Is he … is he having some kind of seizure?”

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Family Circus, 11/6/14

The idea that one is constantly being closely observed and assessed by others is known within psychology circles as the “imaginary audience”. It’s common in children, but if it lingers into adolescence it’s generally considered a variety of diagnosable narcissism. Frankly, I think it’s about time for Billy to grow out of it; instead, his own inborn egotism, fed by a steady diet of for-profit media, has led him to the delusion that not only is his dull life fascinating to the faceless millions watching his every move, but that his antics are somehow amusing enough for someone to actually buy ad time against them.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/6/14

I mean, sure, if you’re going to predicate your strip on the idea that dogs are sapient to the extent that they talk and hire psychotherapists, why stop there? Why only dogs? Why not the fleas that live on the talking dog’s skin and feast on its blood — why can’t these parasitic creatures also think and reason and talk, their incessant chatter banging around the edges of Grimm’s consciousness? And why stop at the fleas? What about the microbes that live on the fleas? Why shouldn’t all the individual cells making up the fleas and the dogs and the therapists have their own thoughts and feelings and opinions? Why shouldn’t be the world be a baffling, terrifying blur of murmuring consciousness, a quicksand of souls pulling us into whirling chaos?

Momma, 11/6/14

Ugh, that got a little heavy, didn’t it? Here’s today’s Momma as a palate-cleanser. Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma and her sons are literally the last people in America who don’t have a calling plan with unlimited voice minutes!

Pluggers, 11/6/14

Desperate to maintain readership, Pluggers will now only offer comic panels that can be easily misconstrued as something so horrifying that you have to read the caption to reassure yourself that the world is still a sane place.

Apartment 3-G, 11/6/14

This is gasp-worthy news! On the one hand, Margo loves her mother and wants to do right by her; on the other hand, Margo is not very good at planning weddings, just like she’s not very good at all the other glamorous-sounding consulting businesses she’s set up and abandoned over the years. Fortunately, if this week’s strips are any indication, Margo can just arrange to have the wedding inside some dowdy apartment and tell her parents it’s New York’s most fashionable restaurant.