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Mark Trail, 3/14/06

“OK, Josh, we get it,” you’re saying. “Rex Morgan and Doctor Troy are gayer than two cowboys who have surreptitious man-on-man sex with each other in a tent, then move to Massachusetts, get married to one another, open an interior design firm, and serve on the board of directors of the local chapter of GLAAD! But what I really want to know is, what’s going on in Mark Trail?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. When last we checked in on this plotline, “You’re My Lawyer” Blake had been charged with figuring out a way to get the local government to use its power of eminent domain to allow a shady developer to build a road through Lost Forest to his shady casino. What with the Supreme Court’s recent decision about the potential scope of eminent domain, it seems that Blake should be getting to work wining and dining local officials, making sure backs are scratched, and lining up votes, maybe with the help of a kickback or two from his bald-headed boss’s deep pockets.

Instead, he’s placing calls to explosives-wielding miscreants seeking to hire them to blow up the existing road, which, in the it-totally-makes-sense-until-you-think-about-it-for-thirty-seconds world of Mark Trail, will force the government to build an entirely new road to the casino. The flaws in this scheme are too numerous and glaring for me to bother going into, so I’ll content myself with asking the following: did the Bald Baddie really need a lawyer to do this? Surely he has any number of (no doubt bearded and/or sideburned) thugs on retainer who would make the necessary illicit road-demolition arrangements. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching mob movies, it’s that even the boldest criminal enterprise tries to keep its lawyers from actively participating in criminal acts.

The person to watch in this drama (such as it is) is clearly Baldo’s creepy, affectless grandson Tony. We’ve been told that he’s been “having a hard time” since his parents died in an auto accident, yet he’s showing an unseemly interest in watching the road get blown up — just the sort of thing that could make more little boys and girls wards of their sinister grandfathers. Clearly Tony’s loss has destroyed whatever sense of right and wrong he once had. I’m looking forward to finding out just what it is that’s going to make him snap and turn into an unstoppable pint-sized, tousle-haired killing machine.

Meanwhile, here’s a few other things of note that happened in today’s funnies:

Spider-Man, Family Circus, and panels from Curtis, One Big Happy, Get Fuzzy, 3/14/06

As the drama of the fake Spider-Man grinds on, we learn that the Spider-Suit does carry with it one Spider-Power: Spider-Self-Narrative! The relative inability not to verbalize one’s thoughts of a spider!

This panel is noteworthy because, as Curtis’ dad heckles Curtis, his fingertips (or possibly forehead) actually emit the sound effect (stage direction?) “Heckle!” I find this technique pretty charming (much more so here than the last time it was used).

I should also make it clear to all of you that the today’s Curtis is nowhere near as filthy as the dialogue in this panel might lead you to believe.

Also, today’s One Big Happy, Family Circus, and Get Fuzzy are about vomiting, urinating, and eating something unidentified that is almost certainly vomit or feces, respectively:

Actually, now that I think about it, the Family Circus is vaguely about vomit as well, since it reminds us that the family dog is named “Barfy”, which strikes me as the sort of name you earn, if you know what I’m saying.

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OK, so I skipped a day yesterday … so, to make it up, here’s a big mishmosh of stuff from the last couple of days, arright?

Get Fuzzy, 3/7/06

When I was a little kid, I used to think that white people were pink, in the sense that, if I were coloring and I wanted to color in a person who was supposed to be white, I’d reach for the pink crayon. Kinda weird, I know, but I also thought my father was black. (Hey, he has kinky hair and is really swarthy and I didn’t understand genetics, alright?) One day in first grade, this little girl who I had a crush on (to the extent that a six-year-old can understand what a crush is) decided she wanted to color with me, and we were coloring together and then she asked to borrow a pink crayon, and I assumed it was to color one of the people we had drawn, but she started using it to color in the background instead, and then I got upset yelled at her that she wasn’t doing it right, and so she left in a huff. First in a long series of relationships I managed to sabotage from the start. In retrospect, the fact the she herself was black might have had something to do with it. Interracial romance is tough, don’t let anybody tell you different.

Anyway, this may be why my all-time favorite Bucky-deployed anti-Rob slur is “Pinky.” This strip gets special props from me because it manages to use three different variants of the term in four panels.

Gil Thorp, 3/7/06

God damn, but Gil Thorp is awesome. I don’t know what’s wrong with you all that you can’t appreciate it. Where else would you see a high school basketball fan taunt a homeless teen by dressing up as a hobo? North Bend must have a strong drama department, with an emphasis on the Theater of Cruelty.

Mary Worth, 3/8/06

Yeah, she’s a pilot of sorts … the “sort” of pilot who knows how to “fly a plane.” Which is pretty much the usual “sort.” There’s only two possible motivations for Salty Cal’s ripped-from-an-infomercial line in panel two: either he thinks “pilot of sorts” is code for something kinky (and is thus in for a bitter, bitter disappointment) or he’s the first character in the history of Mary Worth who knows how to correctly use sarcasm.

Also, that little sign at the bottom left of panel one, which appears to depict a giant fish playing pinball, is the single greatest bit of incidental art ever to appear in this strip.

Dick Tracy, 3/8/06

I have no idea why this horse is dragging an unconscious German infantry mime through the snow here. I just think it’s funny that Dick Tracy has finally come to terms with the fact that his wrist-phone is no longer cutting-edge technology.

Marvin, 3/8/06

Ha, ha! Marvin’s grandmother thinks Marvin’s grandfather is fat! Oh, that kills me. Really kills me. It makes me feel dead inside. Is this what you have to look forward to after forty years or so of marriage? I can’t wait. The best part is the contrast between her smug smile and his look of utter mortification. I’m surprised she isn’t extending the weigh station metaphor and charging him.

Meanwhile, in Judge Parker, Ned has been weeping one slow-motion, gelatinous tear after another for five straight days:

Also, Rex Morgan? Still gay.

Oh yes, let’s.

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Get Fuzzy, 1/18/06

It has come to my attention that some of my readers do not find Get Fuzzy amusing. These people are, for lack of a more subtle word, wrong. Let us count the things that made me laugh about today’s installment:

1. The phrase “he would reject it as being unrealistically squalid.”
2. Rob’s spindly legs.
3. Bucky’s palms-up outspread paws.
4. Bucky’s pot belly.
5. Bucky’s sly look. Imagine if Sally Forth used the phrase “shoebox full of dead rats” when she deployed her sly look. That feature would be improved thereby.
6. The phrase “a shoebox full dead rats.”

If you are not convinced, there is no hope for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, my cat is demanding to be let in from the back porch. Hopefully she doesn’t have another rat to add to the shoebox.