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Mark Trail, 9/3/08

This may look like just another denouement of just another moronic Mark Trail storyline, in which Kelly Welly attempts to force herself on a wide-eyed, terrified Mark right in front of his long-suffering wife — but take a good look at said wife in the third panel. Cherry appears to be vanishing into thin air right before our eyes! If I understand the Back To The Future saga correctly, this means that Kelly will have had gone back in time and prevented Cherry’s parents from ever meeting, resulting in a Mark that was going to be single and shall earlier be open to her lascivious advances. (Sorry if that was confusing, but verb tenses get convoluted when time travel is involved.)

Apartment 3-G, 9/3/08

So it seems that the long afternoon naps were just the beginning; desperate junkies Alan and Haley also have … oh, God, I can barely say it … tattered curtains! And it looks like they haven’t done the dishes for several days! MONSTERS! THIS IS YOUR MILDLY DINGY APARTMENT ON DRUGS, KIDS!!

Seriously, why on earth would a drug habit result in tattered curtains? Did Alan hock his old curtains so he could buy drugs, but then the shred of dignity he had left caused him to root through the garbage to find some rat-eaten fabric that he could hang over the windows to prevent the folks in the building across the street from seeing him in his low state? Or, when he runs out of dope, does he just start smoking the drapery in desperation?

Crankshaft, 9/3/08

In the second panel of this strip doesn’t make you recoil in horror, you probably aren’t a terrible person like I am.

Marmaduke, 9/3/08

Having tired of devouring the common people, Marmaduke appears to have killed and eaten a comical 19th-century plutocrat.

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Marvin, 8/19/08

The feature that brought you “Belly Laffs” now presents a running “gag” that’s even more recycled-art-a-riffic: “Ask Marvin,” in which not even the third panel contains any illustrative artwork! No, it’s just three panels of a terrible, typing baby, who urges his fellow infants to be so incredibly hateful that parents won’t just think twice about having more children, they’ll actually be physically unable to have sex because they’re so soul-blightingly exhausted!

Speaking of babies, faithful reader aquagirl2 fears that her youngest bears more than a passing resemblance to the terrible Marvin. What do you all think?

The haircut is a little uncanny, I think, but that’s easily fixed with scissors or clippers. Remember, a bald baby is better than a Marvin-resembling baby.

UPDATE: At aquagirl2’s request, I’m posting the other pic she sent me, in which her little Marvin-a-like looks happier and cuter. I didn’t put this up originally because he doesn’t look as much like Marvin here — in particular, his eyes aren’t let up with Satan’s hellfire — but he does seem to be thought-ballooning something, possibly about making his parents’ life miserable, or about crapping.

Gil Thorp, 8/19/08

Elmer’s too dumb to realize why “that job for [his] coach” involves painting a huge target in an open field and standing on the bulls-eye. Having already bombed Jimmy Hughes’ house with his deathplane, Gil is now flying to Michigan to eliminate Elmer as well, determined to put an end to these painfully boring summer storylines once and for all.

Mary Worth, 8/19/08

Dear Toby Cameron:

You probably think that we can’t see your thought balloons, and that you therefore are free to visualize your shirtless husband whenever you’d like. Well, we can, and you aren’t.

Sincerely,
The Mary Worth-reading public

Crankshaft, 8/19/08

Ho ho, the battle of the cranky old folks just keeps getting better! It’s pretty obvious that at the end of this trip to the cemetery somebody’s going to end up at the bottom of a shallow grave — but who? I’m on tenterhooks!

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Marmaduke, 8/18/08

Eagle-eyed readers have noted for the past few days that there have been two names at the bottom of Marmaduke’s panels — Paul and Brad Anderson, presumably indicating yet another cartoon property being passed down from father to son, like kingships and duchies were in Europe in days of yore. Today may be Paul’s first day really driving the pen, as there’s a distinct difference in style — the children look like recognizable humans instead of face-melted horror-things, for instance. But thankfully, the feature’s central Marmadukeness remains intact, as Marmaduke is cheerfully threatening to eat these little suburban moppets, or worse.

Mark Trail, 8/18/08

Cherry and Kelly are dumb girls, so obviously they’re not going to be able to get out of their Desperate Cat Cave Dilemma themselves. The question is, which male person or persons will end up saving them? Will it be, um, what’s-his-name and the other guy, the two losers who have been on their pointless expedition with them? Or will it be Mark, who is looking so handsome sitting on top of that pretty, pretty pony with the pretty mane? As with most questions involving Mark Trail, you’ll quickly figure it out if you ask yourself “How would a ten-year-old girl answer?”

Crankshaft, 8/18/08

I admit somewhat shamefacedly that I unironically laughed at today’s Crankshaft, and actually sort of look forward to the long-simmering battle of extremely awfulness that will crankily rage between these two until one of them dies. I do wonder why Crankshaft’s daughter’s mother-in-law (I refuse to look up her name) is decked out in black. Is she perpetually in mourning for her long-dead spouse, like Queen Victoria? Or is she just an inky singularity of hate, from which no light or joy can escape?