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Mark Trail, 11/9/13

New adventure in Mark Trail, everyone! This week we’ve seen that it’ll revolve around the most hoary Mark Trail MacGuffin — Indian artifacts, and the stealing thereof, a staple of this strip that I’ve been detailing since the very earliest days of this blog. Still, I’m enjoying the pleasingly noirish setup here: two ex-cons, one literally just hours out of prison, drinking frosty mugs of beer, discussing their Last Big Score. The sad faces and the five o’clock shadow and the hunched shoulders make for nice atmosphere and maybe we’re even getting some foreshadowing that Jared will turn away from a life of artifact-napping before it’s too late (seriously, can you really believe anyone named “Jared” would be an unredeemable hardened criminal), but personally it’s the frosty mugs of beer that I’m fixated on here. I’m all the more fixated because a colorist’s error in panel two has made Jeff’s sleeve blue instead of brown, which makes it look like Jared’s arm is twisted around at an impossible angle, all the better to slosh beer foam everywhere, I guess.

Dennis the Menace, 11/9/13

Dennis and his awful band of child thieves are going to seal Mr. Wilson’s gold teeth right out of his head.

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Spider-Man, 11/7/13

I mean … yes, he is? Everyone saw him? J. Jonah Jameson, you old rascal, I think you’ve finally found away to defeat Spider-Man: by just asking absurd counterfactual questions whenever anyone defends him. “In case you didn’t notice, there hasn’t been anyone reporting that their children have been kidnapped, so Spider-Man is innocent of your charge that he’s eaten thousands of New York City babies!” “But is he, Robbie? Is he??”

Dennis the Menace, 11/7/13

Dennis’s mounting anxiety over his future dreamscape combines with his mother’s crafty expression to make this panel one of the most chilling things I’ve seen today. We can never know exactly what she said to him during storytime tonight, but we now know that Alice wears the Mitchell family menacing crown.

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Here is a brief unpaid, unsolicited endorsement: Conor Lastowka, who writes for Rifftrax and co-curates the [Citation Needed] Tumblr with me and is generally hilarious, has, (unlike certain [Citation Needed] Tumblr co-curators who are still wrangling with book-length prose) finished a novel! It’s called Gone Whalin’ is about whaling, and time travel, and other exciting topics. You can check out the webpage or download the first three chapters or watch the book trailer or just buy it already!

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Lockhorns, 10/23/12

Never let it be said that long-running legacy strips don’t occasionally enjoy innovating! For instance, today’s Lockhorns brings us a new perspective on Leroy and Loretta — specifically, a perspective about nine inches above their bedroom floor, for some reason. Normally I think of the Lockhorns as being fairly short and squat, but today we experience what it would be like to be a tiny, tiny creature over whom they loom menacingly!

Family Circus, 10/23/13

I can’t even tell you how happy I am that Jeffy has a sweatshirt (t-shirt? it’s hard to tell, given his freakishly stumpy arms) that just says “JEFFY” across the front in big letters. Do you think it’s so that in case he forgets who he is, he can look down and be reminded, both by his name written there and by all the chicken grease stains?

Dennis the Menace, 10/23/12

“Drowning, that’s how I’d kill a man,” Mr. Wilson had said. “No fuss, no muss, not a lot of messy blood,” Mr. Wilson had said.

Pluggers, 10/23/12

Danger, Pluggers, danger! The only reason anyone from fancy-pants New York City would write into you would be to make fun of your readers and their horrible fashion sense! Do not use their suggestions in your comic! Also, you have terrible crippling osteoporosis.