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Mark Trail, 4/3/10

Man, Moe and Joe Parker are really working overtime to prove that they are in fact the greatest comedy duo in the business today. They’re interrupted in the midst of ruminating business-wise on the complex reality of being cogs in the illegal wildlife meat supply chain when they spot a guy with a camera, causing them to burst out with possibly the most hilarious exclamation ever committed to newsprint: “HEY, IT’S THAT GUY WITH A CAMERA!” Sorry, Mark, it doesn’t matter if you switch up the camera you’re using — so long as you’re that guy, and you’ve got a camera you’re toting around with you, you’re that guy with a camera, and the Parker Brothers have your number.

Also, the Parkers are apparently so dumb that they can at any given time hold in their memory only the most recent incident of fisticuffs or near-fisticuffs that their family was involved in; otherwise they’d identify Mark not as “that guy with a camera” but rather “that guy we held back while we kicked that senator’s ass.” Of course, Mark didn’t have a camera back then, which is probably why they don’t recognize him.

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/10

Today’s Beetle Bailey demonstrates how tricky it can be to reconcile the rhythm necessary for snappy marital hate-repartee onto the need to have some visual variety in your comic strip. Obviously, if both panels in today’s strip took place in the doctor’s waiting room, we’d be denied that lovingly detailed and charming drawn depiction of the Halftracks’ car; but the chronology established by the scene shift creates a weird gap between Mrs. Halftrack’s cruel zingers. It’s possible that the General is still kind of stunned from learning that he needs major surgery, and so his wife is having to make her insults less and less subtle in order to get through to him:

GENERAL HALFTRACK: The doctor says I need a hip replacement!
MRS. HALFTRACK: That’s a good start.
[Five minutes later, as they drive home]
MRS. HALFTRACK: I can think of a lot of other parts that need replacing.
[Half an hour later, as they sit and watch TV]
MRS. HALFTRACK: I’m talking about your dick, and your face. Both of those. I wish you had new ones.

Mary Worth, 4/3/10

Mary needs to learn that desperation is never attractive, as she uses her suddenly hulking shoulders to pin Bonnie to the spot. “Think about what I said! Talking can help! It can help me! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET ME MEDDLE YOU! I NEED THIS.”

Family Circus, 4/3/10

Big Daddy Keane has of course been “dyeing” inside, by degrees, for the past seven years or so. Billy’s supposed to be seven, right?

Apartment 3-G, 4/3/10

I’m reasonably sure that there were any number of incidents in Margo’s childhood that played out more or less like this.

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Gil Thorp, 3/31/10

Oh, look, it’s another Milford team failing to win a title! Yes, there’s been a championship basketball game going on while the red-hot fisticuffs happen elsewhere. The Mudlarks losing again is of course utterly unremarkable at this point — presumably the whole loss exists just to set up the drama of faithless Cassie being shunned by her teammates for abandoning them — but today’s strip manages to offer an intriguing counterpoint to the concept of the uncanny valley — the slopes of the uncanny mountain, perhaps? Panel one disturbs and unsettles with the absence of details on the crowd in the background, as it appears that a tribe of identically black-garbed faceless, hairless automata have shown up to cheer on either Milford or Tilden; but panel three shows us that more detail isn’t necessarily any better, as we are confronted with more of Marty Moon than we ever wanted — the shine of his greasy goatee, the hollowness of his cheekbones, his glassy eyes, each and every one of his molars. We can practically smell his breath (Mr. Boston gin mingled with coffee from the AM/PM, not quite masked by the cloud of Axe Body Spray that hovers around him at all times).

Family Circus, 3/31/10

Ha ha, yes, this is a cartoon about how having four kids and a husband who doesn’t know how to iron would lead any woman to murder, but the thing I find most interesting is the fact that Billy is apparently dressed in a nice shirt and tie, for some reason. Perhaps Mommy can fashion Big Daddy Keane’s mushy, vaguely bunny-fur-like shirt into a makeshift rabbit costume and send him to school in it, and neatly dressed Billy can go into the office. Both problems solved, and we can move on to the question of why Dolly is attempting to brush her hair into the soup.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/31/10

It appears that Jamaal hasn’t quite gotten this “cruising for anonymous gay sex” thing down yet.

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FoxTrot, 3/21/10

Earlier this evening King Features had only released those color comics with names beginning “A” through “C”. It looked like I would be forced to serve up Crock to you fine folks again, and I felt shame. The mighty Houston Chronicle eventually came to my rescue, but in my early panic I steeled myself, went out, and bought a newspaper. Well, The San Francisco Chronicle, but you know what I mean. And there, in pale ink on flimsy translucent pulp, was Steve Jobs’s vision of the comics’ future. Along with proof positive that Jason Fox does not read newspaper Spider-Man.

Crankshaft, 3/21/10

Other than that, sad to say, the Sunday funnies are mostly a cavalcade of misery, alienation, and spite — and that’s leaving out Crock. Here’s mom Lillian rejecting son Jeff’s umpteenth feeble, doomed attempt to win her favor. Hey, Jeff — I bet your pharmacist will swap that talking pillbox for something that will shut the old pill up for good.

Family Circus, 3/21/10

Of course, the “Greatest Generation” has no monopoly on shabby disregard for the feelings of loved ones. Here, Bil’s simple dream of family harmony — lovingly documented in his cartoons for more than half a century — is revealed as a hollow sham. But take heart — I hear that in a week or two, they’ll be ignoring him in favor of comics on their shiny new iPads!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/21/10

Dysfunction abounds even in the bucolic Eden of Hootin’ Holler. In panel 5, Loweezy lets it slip that her fragile romantic life with husband Snuffy is held together by porn almost as much as moonshine.

Heh, heh — Grampy!

— Uncle Lumpy