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Mark Trail, 6/5/11

It’s not often that Mark Trail sends me on an etymological adventure, but now the hunt is on! I was very suspicious that the loon was the ultimate origin of the word “loony,” and sure enough, a quick trip to the dictionary shows that it’s actually a 19th century slang abbreviation for “lunatic,” which, as the spelling implies, is derived from the Latin luna, or moon, since it was once believed that the phases of the moon affected mental states. I had assumed that “loon” as a synonym for crazy person shared the same derivation, but that seems murkier; the dictionary says it is in fact derived from the name of the bird (though “perhaps influenced by loony”), but has the bird’s name’s etymology somewhat different from the one Mark offers, deriving it from an Old Norse word for diver. Anyway, you might not enjoy sleuthing after word origins as much as I do, but surely this trip through the English language’s past has distracted you from that white-headed loon’s terrifying searing red eye blazing out at you soullessly from the final panel of this strip.

Crock, 6/5/11

Oh, look, Crock is celebrating the anniversary of D-Day! Isn’t that nice! Apparently the French Legionnaires of Crock are actually Vichy collaborators fighting for the Nazis? And they’re stationed in some desert section of Northern France? Eh, sure, why not, makes as much sense as anything else.

Dennis the Menace, 6/5/11

If Dennis is trying to up his menacing quotient, I’d say that staring at the Wilsons’ house through a fence for hours in eerie silence is doing a pretty good job of it!

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Mary Worth, 5/23/11

There are a few signs that maybe you have spent too much of your life writing blog entries about the comics! One is when you get a mysterious email that says “How are you today? I see that you own the domain name: joshreads.com. I am writing to let you know that the domain name rhinospeed.com is for sale. I am contacting you to gauge possible interest in this exceptional domain name” and you think HOLY GOODNESS WHAT IS THIS ABOUT HAVE I DROPPED THROUGH THE RABBIT HOLE? but then you remember that you actually wrote a blog post about how fast a rhino can run, five years ago!

Another sign is when there’s a flashback in Mary Worth and you remember the events being flashed back to and then you think to yourself, “I don’t think this is an accurate depiction of this long-ago and hilarious episode,” and then you look it up, because of course you have this very comic, three and a half years old now, on your blog as well, like you’re running some sort of alternative to the microfiche machine down at the library (do they still have those?).

ANYWAY! Let’s pretend that flashback panel two in today’s strip isn’t just cobbled together from misty memory by the Mary Worth creative team (because that would mean that I have better recall of Mary Worth and/or better access to archives than they do, which is kind of horrifying to contemplate) but instead represents Dr. Drew’s memory of the events. If we think about it from that perspective, a side-by-side comparison becomes rather interesting!

You’ll note that Drew remembers rather precisely a number of minor details — what color shirts he and Dawn were wearing, and the colors of the coats of the horses, for instance. But there’s one quite striking difference, and that’s Drew’s face. One assumes that the earlier strip, on the right, shows how Drew would appear to an objective observer — with a rounded, boyish face — whereas the panel on the left shows his own self-image, in which he’s square-jawed and manly with impossibly sharp cheekbones. How vain we all are, in our minds!

It’s also worth nothing that, in Drew’s memory, his non-Dawn girlfriend Vera has terrifying melting nightmare eyes, but the less said about that the better.

Gil Thorp, 5/23/11

Over in Gil Thorp, the cuts to the school district’s budget are proceeding at high speed! But haven’t they already economized enough? The Chicago font on that sign indicates that it was probably printed on the district’s only computer, a Mac SE/30 purchased in 1991 or thereabouts.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/23/11

Oh, hey! Have you been wondering what’s up in Rex Morgan, M.D.? Well, what’s up is that Rex and June are apparently talking themselves into cashing in Berna’s lottery ticket and then fleeing the country.

Hi an Lois, 5/23/11

In non-soap news, today will be remembered as “the day Hi and Lois left Trixie outside to die of exposure.”

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On a more serious note, thanks to everyone who let me know about the death of Crock cartoonist Bill Rechin at age 80. I’ve been pretty savage with Crock here but he was by all accounts a really sweet guy and is a big loss to the comics community. In the grand tradition of syndicated cartooning, the strip will of course be carried on by Rechin’s son Kevin, a phenomenon that I can’t even work myself up to rage against anymore. It’ll be interesting to see what Crock 2.0 is like.

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Crock, 5/2/11

Ha ha, someone thought that underage scat porn used as an instrument of torture was a good theme for a comic strip! Sure, why not?

Crankshaft, 5/2/11

It sure makes Crankshaft’s half-assed attempts to sexually harass hapless customer service personnel seem positively quaint by comparison.

Spider-Man, 5/2/11

This whole “human vampire” business has worked itself out in even sillier fashion than I could have imagined, with Dr. Morbius’s fiancee accidentally becoming a real vampire in order to understand her beloved’s fake vampirism. The only logical hole out of many I’ll point out here: wouldn’t Dr. Morbius, wracked with guilt over his faux-vampirism, have noticed his fiancee’s vampiric tendencies? “Say, sweetie, would you like to go out for dinner? I’ve got 6 o’clock reservations!” “Let’s make it 9, so that I don’t have to leave the apartment when the sun’s still up. Also, they serve blood there, right? You know I subsist entirely on human blood now.”

Also, regarding the last panel’s NEXT box, it probably wouldn’t be so much a race against time if Peter had woken up when MJ first got into trouble, several hours ago.

Panel from Hi and Lois, 5/2/11

Was baby Trixie from Hi and Lois not on your list of characters who filled you with dread? Well, that’s changed forever now, I’ll say.