Post Content

I hope you will have a little patience before we get to this week’s COTW. I’ve been meaning for some time to share with you a fascinating item I received in the mail from faithful reader loudfan, and have only today gotten around to making some scans of. Behold, the glory and majesty of Mark Trail’s ® Book Of Animals (North American Mammals)!

The book was published in 1955 and written by Ed Dodd, Jack Elrod’s predecessor at the helm of all things Trail. It’s essentially like a Sunday strip, in book form, with Mark only making a single cameo appearance on the title page:

He sure looks pleased, doesn’t he? I wonder what’s in that pipe.

Anyway, the book contains lots of information on — and pretty nice black and white drawings of — animals (North American mammals). Here’s an example, selected particularly for faithful reader and goat fan True Fable:

As you can see, Mark Trail has never been shy about proclaiming the hard truths in life, using boldface to blow tiny little minds everywhere with information about the mountain goat’s non-goat status.

Humans are actually pretty scarce in the pages of this book, but this appearance of an elderly foppish cowboy is particularly amusing:

Wait, are there people who seriously accuse mountain lions of cowardice just because they don’t want to get shot? Who on earth could this page be defending their reputation from?

Maybe from wolverines, who, when confronted with the incursion of armed humans into their territory, respond not by skulking deeper into the woods, mountain lion-style, but by arming themselves. WOLVERINES!

Finally, you can see that this feature’s fascination with dog vs. raccoon fights has deep roots:

Oh, and Mark, maybe raccoons wash their food because dirty food is gross. This page tells me more than I ever wanted to know about dinnertime at the Trail household.

In totally unrelated news, here’s a tidbit from faithful reader RaJ:

I apologize for bringing this to your attention. I do it only because I thought it might shed some light on the obviously troubled Keane family. It’s a picture of Jeff, in hideous drag, pummeling some poor man to death.

If that linked sentence entices you, you’ll want to click forward to the 11th picture in the gallery (there’s no way to link to it directly, which is probably just as well).

And now! At long last! The comment of the week!

“Reeky regularly watches COPS; it’s like Facebook for his kind.” –gnemec

And the runners-up! Also funny!

“I’m fastidious enough to be a little concerned about Luann spilling her glass of soda in panel 3, but I suppose it’ll just end up mixed into the big puddle of Brad’s insecurity that’s already sloshing around the linoleum.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“Dagwood’s candidate is Lyndon LaRouche, who will have lunch with anyone. I assume Dagwood was buying.” –Jana C.H.

“My god, when did Mary Worth become the abode of the undead? Mary, the funeral make-up still fresh on her face, gazes blankly as Jeff vainly struggles to remember the taste of food. Soon they will lurch out into the sunlight, their unsolicited advice an ungodly gurgle in their throats, forcing Toby to shotgun them both.” –Idols of Mud

“Watching a sailboat race: boring. Watching boring people who are watching a sailboat race: thrilling excitement, Rex Morgan Style!!!” –ring around the collar

“I think that by making a sailboat race part of the plot, Rex Morgan, M.D., has joined the worldwide hunt for something less interesting than Rex Morgan, M.D. I wouldn’t be surprised if this week ends with Rex explaining the difference between different types of knots and how that knowledge helped him win.” –ESJ

“The best thing about today’s Mary Worth is how the colorist gave up on filling in half the background. It’s as if he thought, ‘Eh, who needs green trees or a colored table cloth when Mary Worth’s just going to suck the life out of them anyway?'” –kelsy

“The seemingly metal pizza pan bothers me. Is Thel trying to set her house on fire? Actually … she probably is. I would if I were her.” –Angry Kem

“Mark knows that women are only interested in one thing; he just doesn’t know what it is.” –boojum

“Daddy Keane has thrown himself diagonally across the bed, burying his face in a pillow in the classic posture of one overwhelmed by grief. I wish I knew what tragic event in the Keane household brought this on. So I could imagine it happening, over and over again in my mind.” –Joe Btfsplk

“I know you all have been hating on Big Time as something of an underwhelming villain, and not without reason. But today’s strip shows that he’s not just a large man who likes clocks. He’s a criminal mastermind! Parking the truck near, but not too near the rear door of the museum? Genius! Because if the truck were too far away, then they’d have to carry the loot all the way to the truck, which would take longer. But if the truck’s too close, then they couldn’t get the door open. It’s thinking through details like this that make Big Time a foe to be reckoned with.” –Spunde

“I like that Peter Parker is a regular ‘Joe Six-Pack/Plumber’ like me. Not at all like that elitist Jamaal who uses a ‘bed’ to sleep.” –Red Greenback

“Uh, Peter, if you’re losing consciousness and gripping your left arm, you aren’t falling asleep, you’re having a heart attack. So much for spidey sense.” –Bribaby

“Perhaps at some point she hobbled him a là the film Misery.” –Calico, on why Dr. Jeff now has a cane

“If Margo’s talking tears, they’re someone else’s, brought on by their sweet, sweet humiliation.” –willethompson

“I’m not an avid enough reader of Gil Thorp to know who Dr. Wally Lamb is but I assume he’s the strip’s resident mad scientist based on (A) the fact that he’s wearing a lab coat and glasses, and (B) in panel 2 he appears to have shrunk himself to about 6 inches tall. Judging by the total lack of surprise on his wife’s face, this happens all the time.” –Rachel K

“Luann is steadily becoming a race to see which couple will not have sex first.” –Anonymous

“Don’t hold your breath for diversity in this comic. There aren’t even any characters with brown eyes.” –Charlene, on the prospects of a gay character in Mary Worth

“Of course pluggers don’t have flowers. They can barely care for themselves.” –tj

Unlike the mountain lions, many were brave enough to put money in my tip jar! And our advertisers are as formidable as a wolverine:

• Don’t stop at the top! Go all the way on Novermber 4th: Vote the entire California ballot, including the propositions. Text DONTSTOP to 41411. Tell your friends and win a Wii!
• Doritos crash the Superbowl: It’s time to take down the ad pros with a commercial written, directed, and produced by you. Enter Doritos Crash The Super Bowl for a chance at $1,000,000!
• Josh teams up with MST3K alums! Enjoy MST3K-style ribbing of the weepiest Spider-Man ever — with Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and your very own Comics Curmudgeon!

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

Post Content

Family Circus, 10/24/08

So, the constant mental and emotional abuse of Jeffy has been a long-standing theme of this strip, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that his physical abuse is starting to come to the fore. Attempts to shut him up by doping him up — “Mommy says that if I take all these pills, I won’t feel anything anymore!” — are doomed to failure, as nothing can stop Jeffy’s relentlessly adorable malapropisms. This thing’s only going to get uglier, with either Ma and Pa Keane dragged off to jail, or Jeffy burning the house down, then blaming his vengeance on “Ida Know”.

Mary Worth, 10/24/08

Having been browbeaten by Mary into not visiting his beloved son Drew in Vietnam (where, I might add, Drew is doing the charity work that his father wants to be doing), Dr. Jeff is trying to salvage some pretense of autonomy by blaming his homebody ways on his bad knees, which I’m reasonably sure have never once been mentioned in this strip to this point (though there is a cane floating aimlessly next to him in panel one). Mary then mocks him by claiming that going through airport security is just sooooo irritating; it’s almost as bad as having pretend knee arthritis! The truth is that kindly old lady Mary always breezes through the security lines, with the TSA none the wiser about all the heroin she keeps tucked into the waistband of her support hose.

Apartment 3-G, 10/24/08

Noooo Margo, you’re beginning to feel empathy for another human being! Admittedly, it’s a dead human being, but that’s how it starts. You need to gulp down some of that ink-black soul-destroying devil’s milk, before it’s too late!

Shoe, 10/24/08

This is today’s Shoe. It’s about urinating on things!

Post Content

Apartment 3-G and Judge Parker, 10/22/08

Today we have an object lesson on how two comic strip characters can be in remarkably similar scenarios and yet evoke very different reactions from their audience. Both Sam and Margo are talking about what a “tough day” they’ve had because they’ve been minorly inconvenienced as a result of being on the periphery of the brutal murder of somebody else’s loved one; yet Margo is of course loved and adored by millions of fans, whereas if anyone thinks about Sam at all, it’s something along the lines of “Oh, look, it’s that smug dick in the sunglasses.” That’s because Margo has the good sense to take things really, really over the top — bad-mouthing her bereaved roommate, deliberately dropping inappropriate metaphors, making it all about HER HER HER, just like everything else that happens within a ten-mile radius of her or anybody that she knows — whereas Sam is, well, just being a smug dick in sunglasses, as per usual. Sunglasses and a stupid vest.

Crock, 10/22/08

Let’s say that you run a major syndicate that, among other things, produces hilarious and engaging comic strips. And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have reason to hire people to color said comic strips who are for some reason not the same people who draw those comic strips in the first place. Now, because your strips are so hilarious and engaging, those professional colorists may well be wont to read them and be amused and/or engaged by them in the course of their duties. But if they take a few seconds to chortle under their breath or nod knowingly while on the clock, they are literally stealing from you, obviously, because you’re paying them while they’re engaged in what’s clearly a leisure-time activity. What to do, then? The solution is plainly to only hire colorists who (a) hate comics so much that they refuse to read them, (b) don’t speak English, or (c) are illiterate. And if that means that sometimes blatant in-strip color cues go ignored, well, that’s just the price you pay for running a tight ship, you know?

Herb and Jamaal, 10/22/08

So, are Internet service providers the new post office, not only in the sense of “organizations that deliver information from your home anywhere else in the world for a mere pittance”, but in the sense of “and can you believe how slow it is! Ha ha! And how about that airline food, ladies and gentlemen, am I right?”

I know that the back of this weird panda-faced dude’s cab is just one of the eight or so Places In Herb And Jamaal Where Jokes Occur, and the beauty of the strip’s setup is that any joke can plugged into any of those places, but might I be so bold as to suggest that perhaps the punchline might have been better if it involved the slow pace of the cab’s journey to Herb’s destination? Or, you know, Internet providers, whatever, and hey, men and women, they sure have different views on relationships, don’t they? Ha! Boy howdy!

Family Circus, 10/22/08

“Or are you dead? Mommy says that if you’re dead, we can have gin and ice cream for dinner every night, forever!”