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Mark Trail, 7/16/11

You guys, Mark Trail is getting serious, for a minute! John Thrasher didn’t hide up in the hills because he hates people; he did because he has a problem — a problem called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, though that’s way too many syllables for a Mark Trail character to say. It’s really too bad that John’s father sent Mark Trail to extract him from his mountain lair, rather than, say, a trained and skilled mental health professional. Mark is the sort of guy who believes that the best thing to give a seriously depressed little girl is a puppy. Does he think he can similarly cure John’s PTSD by giving him a new pet? Because that would be ridicu … OH MY GOD OH MY GOD MARK TRAIL IS GOING TO RIP OFF THE FUNKY WINKERBEAN TRAINED DOGS HELPING TRAUMATIZED VETS STORYLINE!!!

Crankshaft, 7/16/11

I like the fact that Crankshaft is saying that he’s going to “break,” here. That’s the language of extreme interrogation methods, and it implies that this heat wave is actually God’s way of literally torturing Crankshaft, which I’m in favor of for obvious reasons.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/16/11

It’s also possible that Herb just has a really terrible sense of humor, which, considering he’s one of the protagonists of Herb and Jamaal, is probably the most likely scenario here.

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Baldo, 7/9/11

Does anyone remember a series of PSAs that ran during children’s programming in the late ’70s and early ’80s that tried to convince kids not to scarf down all the delicious-looking prescription medications their parents had in the medicine cabinet? They featured some vaguely Sid-and-Marty-Kroft-esque blue spherical felt puppets with little beady eyes that I guess were supposed to represent pills, and they sang a weird, warbling little tune called “We’re Not Candy,” the only lyrics to which I can remember are the end of the rhyming couplet, “fine and dandy.” They were of course horrifying and made you not want to take drugs, or even eat candy; I don’t watch a lot of kid’s TV anymore, but I’m assuming they’ve long gone off the air. At any rate, this is my roundabout way of getting to the fact that Gracie and her little friend are well on their way to becoming pill fiends.

Crankshaft, 7/9/11

I hate myself for having become even accidentally aware of the Funkyverse’s dark spiritual pantheon, but isn’t Le Chat Blue the talking cat-demon who appears to taunt Les when he’s hitting a low point of suicidal depression? I didn’t know that this monster had a band, but I’m guessing it didn’t take a lot of data mining for Amazon to suggest its brand of mope-jazz to everyone with a Westview address.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/9/11

Speaking of suicidal depression, based on Herb And Jamaal’s Nameless White Customer’s thousand-yard stare in the last panel, I’m guessing he’s confused “being haunted by one’s own mortality” with “a mature philosophy.”

Gil Thorp, 7/9/11

“As you can tell by my fashionable attire, I’m a caddie! It’s the summer job to have, if you’re a fan of staring at teenage boy ass.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/9/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because Dennis is taking joy in spending the day with his father, but all his dad cares about is his dumb golf score!

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Mark Trail, 6/12/11

Do you hear that, Young People? Mark Trail is on to you, and your inveterate littering. And he has hard data proving that today’s kids are the worst, supplied by independent scientific researchers who were not at all biased by the massive grant that they received from the Foundation For Extolling The Virtues Of The Elderly And Demonizing Anyone Born After 1968. Why, look at that young punk in the final panel, who, following the latest hip youth craze that he got from the Internet or FM radio or whatever, has driven out the forest just so he can dump garbage everywhere. Fortunately for justice, Mark learned from yesterday’s strip how to impale a man with a word balloon, and so that pile of trash will be the last thing this miscreant ever sees.

Beetle Bailey, 6/12/11

The throwaway panels from today’s strip contain material for a cheap “Beetle refuses to submit to Sarge’s advances on the Lord’s Day” joke, but I’m more intrigued by the action in the main sequence of the strip. Sgt. Lugg’s advice that Sarge use “a little humor” has failed spectacularly, mostly because Sarge, inhabiting as he does the laffs-free Beetle Bailey universe, has no idea what “humor” could possibly be like.

Crankshaft, 6/12/11

Oh, look, Crankshaft is an architectural critic now! Note the use of italics: Crankshaft the strip is cracking wise about post-modernist architecture; Crankshaft the character is just sitting sullenly on the couch watching the television trash Frank Gehry. Because much as the strip’s creators might want to criticize Gehry’s work, they realize that Crankshaft having an opinion that couldn’t be expressed as some wildly inappropriate pun would be way too out of character for the readers to handle.