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Mark Trail, 4/11/10

Man, for once, I want more educational information out of my Sunday educational Mark Trail! I would like Mark to answer the following questions:

• Is “the drug [hemp] yields” actually at all potent?
• If not, why are filthy hippies always extolling hemp’s industrial purposes like some kind of unshowered white-guy-with-dreadlocks blanket-and-rope PAC? If so, since said dirty hippies no doubt also support marijuana legalization, why don’t they just come out and say that they want to grow hemp to get high?
• Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson get high together?
• If you rolled up the Declaration of Independence and smoked it, would you get a buzz?
• If growing hemp is illegal, where the hell is the hemp in birdseed coming from? Is that bird in the final panel some kind of tiny, feathered trafficker?
• Do birds get high by eating birdseed?
• Is Mark high right now? Is that what the yellow word balloon indicates?
• Will King Features be held legally liable when the factoid at the bottom right causes particularly dim tokers to attempt to smoke nylon?

Blondie, 4/11/10

Dagwood has never been shown to have any actual friends other than Herb; thus, in order to pad this gag out to Sunday-strip length, we have to watch him hear paltry excuses from two funny-looking characters who have never appeared in the strip before to my knowledge. It would have been depressing but truer to this feature’s established universe if, after being turned down by Herb, Dagwood spent the final three panels weeping alone about his lack of meaningful social relationships.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/11/10 (rotated 90 degrees for your convenience!)

Montoni’s may not be shutting down completely, but at least we now know that the drive to establish Montoni’s New York was all that was keeping Funky off the sauce, so that’s something. Also, we know that Funky’s DT-fueled fever dreams involve getting into knife fights with sexy jungle ladies and baboons, which is frankly more than I wanted to know.

Crock, 4/11/10

Wow, Vern, your standards for desolate and perilous neighborhoods are pretty high if you aren’t impressed by a desert urchin whose only friend is a sinister vulture. Admittedly, the vulture looks less sinister wearing a baseball cap turned backwards at a jaunty angle, but consider the fact that it probably scavenged it off of a bloated corpse it just ate.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/11/10

I’m sort of torn about the way the Lockhorns deals with its expanded Sunday real estate, which is to just cram in five disconnected panels, any one of which could run on its own during the week. On the one hand, I do feel that artists ought to make visually interesting use of all that extra room they get in the Sunday papers; on the other hand, I suppose the Lockhorns deserves kudos for essentially producing eleven panels a week when they only really need to do seven. Anyway, this particular panel reveals that Leroy, and the creators of the Lockhorns, are familiar with the concept of a “safe word,” so, you know, HORROR HORROR HORROR.

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Apartment 3-G, 3/2/10

YES YES YES OUR GREATEST MOST AWESOME SUSPICIONS HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED! Margo’s father’s wife, the one she believed was her mother for some unspecified stretch of her childhood and adolescence, the one Margo calls “Roberta,” is, as predicted, none other than our beloved shrink-schtupping manic-depressive Bobbie! Even this initial exchange between the two provides evidence of the fraught family history, as our pill-crazed avenging angel has, in her pharmaceutical haze, mistaken the changeling she raised for the once-young immigrant maid her husband cheated on her with. If only Bobbie knew that Margo was as disgusted by Martin and Gabriella’s gross love for one another as she is! They should be joining forces in their joint battle against all genuine human affection, not fighting amongst themselves!

The only question is: why is Bobbie lurking invisibly in the shadows at the bottom of the staircase? Presumably it’s to build suspense for those who haven’t figured this all out yet. But maybe it’s because there’s something even more horrific in the works — like, maybe she’s wearing the bloody, severed face of her mugger-turned-firearms-supplier as a hat.

Mary Worth, 4/2/10

Meanwhile, Mary, having been unwillingly pushed to the peripheries of the great Wilbur-Kurt-Dawn sandwich/frolic-off, is making sure to cement her place in this new storyline from the get-go. “Oh, your husband’s a terrible lout, is he? If you ever need a sympathetic ear, I’m here for you … listening … nodding thoughtfully … drinking your pain, your darkest emotional pain, like the sweet, sweet divine nectar that it is … oh, God, tell me, tell me, TELL ME…”

I also like the way Mary is somewhat ostentatiously gesturing towards the calendar in the first panel. It’s as if she’s saying, “Look at this, bitches, it’s 2010 and I’m still being published! So long as there are nursing homes that subscribe to newspaper print editions as a courtesy to their residents, I will live on!”

Mark Trail, 4/2/10

Good lord, is there no end to the Parker Brothers’ depravity? Even Ma Parker seems unsettled by whatever “processing” they have in mind for their captured geese; presumably they’ll be using the wood chipper to convert them into goose slurry, which they’ll attempt to pass off as foie gras at Senator Sinister’s restaurant, TGI McPoachers. These foul ruffians are so far beyond the limits of decency that the blue-shirted one (Joe? Moe? Jake? Snake? Who can keep the names straight?) probably began his sentence in the third panel with some kind of terrible curse word, which the upstanding narration box thoughtfully blocked for us with a well-placed “Meanwhile.”

While the goose-netting longhairs are obviously this piece’s villains, I think it’s notable that Mark is just taking pictures of the captured birds rather than attempting to free them. This is because geese are well known to be the meanest birds alive; Mark might be willing to take on an shotgun-toting rustic armed with nothing but a Holga, but even he knows better than to unleash a flock of angry geese.

Garfield, 4/2/10

Speaking of well-placed text, Garfield’s third-panel thought balloon allows today’s strip to neatly sidestep a key problem with the gag: Wouldn’t Garfield need to cross out the apostrophe as well to make the joke work? And if so, how would he do it? Doesn’t a crossed-out apostrophe just look like a messy apostrophe? Kudos to Paws, Inc., for their quick thinking!

Blondie, 4/2/10

On Good Friday, Dagwood makes the risen Christ weep with his horrifying rabbit fursuit. 85 percent of the people in the “furfans” and “Blondie fans” Venn diagram overlap are now writing clarifying letters to King Features, emphasizing that Dagwood was not the character they wanted to see dressed in a sexy bunny outfit.

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So ends the Spring 2010 Comics Curmudgeon Fundraiser. Thank you, generous readers!

Sally Forth, 3/27/10

Panel 1: The Sallies have arranged a pleasant evening for you, Ted. Do not distract them.
Panel 2: See? You scared one off. Also, Jackie will now marry Ralph. It’s the universe, Ted. Don’t toy with it.

Apartment 3-G, 3/27/10

Dr. Bryant, because he is an idiot, will trust Dr. Papagoras’s professional discretion in this matter.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/27/10

Cucumbers … what?!! Pickle relish? A cooling summer salad? Rejuvenation of delicate skin around the eyes? God damn you, Jughaid!

Dick Tracy, 3/27/10

Dick will not get his peace and quiet, and the caller is, in fact, quite serious. But the call is not for him. Dick Tracy is a web of lies.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/10

I dunno — looks to me like he’s playing defense there in panel three. This sports action is so confusing. But then —

Blondie, 3/27/10

Hey, that’s a pretty good look for Dagwood. Blondie, not so much.

That’s it for me; Josh will be back Sunday unless he gets waylaid or, y’know, tired or something. I had a really fun week – thanks, everybody!

— Uncle Lumpy