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Mark Trail, 2/13/12

It’s well known that in the moral universe of Mark Trail, kindness to animals is the highest value. So, let’s ask ourselves: who are the real villains in this story? Mark and Tommy, who left poor Butch the blind dog alone in a field with only a jacket for company, and who have gone back to Tommy’s comfortable home to plot how to exploit Butch for big-time TV money? Or Jeff and Jamie, who, despite being on the run from the law and hiding out in some rustic cabin, are prepared to take pity on a poor hungry dog they’ve never even met before? I certainly hope that, instead of punching, this storyline ends with Mark taking a long, hard look at what he’s become.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/13/12

Starting with a punchline (even a good one, which this is not) and working your way back to create the set-up is always a terrible, terrible idea in comics. I mean, can you figure out any context in which it would make sense for Snuffy, Parson Tuttle, and a quartet of nameless Hootin’ Holler elder ladies to be gathered around one of the community’s few working TV sets to try to pick up the Grammys on its bunny ears? I guess it’s possible that inveterate lawbreaker Snuffy and notorious grifter/fraud Tuttle lured the town’s grandmothers to this viewing as a cruel prank, knowing that they’d be embarrassed and horrified by the flatlanders’ outlandish music and whorish outfits. So, yeah, actually, this totally makes sense in the strip’s milieu, forget I said anything.

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Family Circus, 2/1/12

[Insert joke about Jeffy assaulting his father with a hammer here]

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/12

[Insert joke about how the impoverished residents of Hootin’ Holler are on the brink of starvation here]

Marmaduke, 2/1/12

[Insert joke about Marmaduke’s owners being terrified of him, and about how his ear looks like it’s about to unspool into a horrible tentacle that will soon wrap around their throats, here]

Beetle Bailey, 2/1/12

[Insert joke about General Halftrack’s weird infantilizing sex fetishes here]

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/31/12

Nobody should be at all surprised that virulent anti-intellectualism makes good grades a romantic liability in Hootin’ Holler. However, I think we should take note of the variant of the common rhyme in panel two. Usually you hear “Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,” but this isn’t the local version of the saying — and with good reason! Having long been isolated from flatlander optometry, Hootin’ Holler residents must make do with the few pairs of eyeglasses that have managed to come into the community via extended trading networks. Girls who wear glasses, far from being considered undesirable as mates, are viewed in awe for their ability to see at a distance or at night, and in some circumstances even read.

Apartment 3-G, 1/31/12

Well, being a nurse midwife is really more of a specialization you decide on when you’re getting your graduate degree in nursing, rather than just a course you take online from the University of Phoenix or whatever, but, uh, sure, Tommie, why don’t you go to it? “Are you serious? I’m going to get to pull people out of ladies’ hoo-hoos? Oh boy!”

Mark Trail, 1/31/12

“Yes, Mark, I too was on the verge of a violent life of crime! I’ve got a gun and everything. So your friend better come through with this TV movie deal or else I’ll probably have to kidnap you and hold you for ransom, ha ha! No, but seriously, get down in the crawlspace.”

Luann, 1/31/12

So, the past week in Luann has been dominated by an eternal teenage conflict: Gunther likes Rosa and Rosa likes Gunther and, uh, what now? Today we learn the answer. No couple in Luann can come together until a man defeats a romantic rival in passive-aggressive combat.