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Mark Trail, 1/9/12

There’s so much I have to learn about the dog-training biz, apparently. For instance, having a hunting dog that can see is crucial to the whole operation, somehow! It draws in the customers! Is a blind dog considered a bad omen? When people bring their cockapoo or Havanese or whatever down to Tommy’s Dog Training Service to make sure it doesn’t poop on the rug any more or try to eat the baby, do they see ol’ blind Butch and think “Jeez, Tommy trains his dogs to be blind, that’s what he trains them to do,” and then head elsewhere? Truly Mark is the only one who can help Tommy finally realize his dog-training dream and avoid gainful employment once and for all.

Gil Thorp, 1/9/12

Huh, so it turns out that last week’s off-hand “Sheilas” wasn’t a misguided attempt at hip slang but was actually supposed to indicate that Ransom Hale (wait, what?) hails from the Antipodes. Do people from New Zealand actually say “Sheilas”? Do people from Australia actually say this? Feel free to discuss that amongst ourselves while I try to figure out which of these young ladies is about to have a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio’s frozen corpse tattooed onto her lower back.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/9/12

Never mind the hilarious golf joke: I’m trying to figure out why exactly Truman Capote is impersonating a substitute rural doctor.

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Gil Thorp, 1/7/12

Oh, man, this tattoo guy is something else. Not only is he evilly providing tattooing services to people who come and ask for them and pay him money; not only is he performing other forms of body modification that were shocking in 1995; but he’s also causing tingling sensations in the lady parts of innocent teenage girls, with his sexiness. Add in the fact that he’s apparently a filthy foreigner from Australia (or, worse, that he’s adopted the Aussies’ un-American slang) and we can all really get behind the inevitable threats of violence, and perhaps even actual implementations of violence, that Kaz will dish out to him sometime in March.

Garfield, 1/7/12

Speaking of threats of violence, once Jon accidentally stepped on Garfield’s tail, and Garfield responded by breaking Jon’s leg so savagely that it still causes him pain, years later! So, yeah, Garfield is a widely-syndicated comic that a lot of people enjoy.

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Gasoline Alley, 1/5/12

I won’t waste my time or yours trying to explain the Gasoline Alley plot that led up to this — it’s all summarized in the first two panels here, and it took months, and Slim and Clovia were very angry with each other about it — but I do think it’s worth pointing out that all this drama has very suddenly been resolved with no action on the characters’ part, and with enough time left over to slip in a joke about toilets to boot. It’s kind of disorienting to see it all end so abruptly, and on a Thursday too. I’m thinking that the original ending, which involved yelling and knives, was nixed by the syndicate at the last minute. The remaining three days until the next plotline starts will just consist of Slim and Clovia standing around awkwardly.

For Better Or For Worse, 1/5/12

Ha ha, For Better Or For Worse, remember that thing? When it stopped with the ongoing storylines and became mostly reruns of young versions of the Pattersons talking in weird fake cute-speak it stopped being all that interesting to me, but I still feel compelled to read it daily. I also feel compelled to try to figure out, based on the art, whether we’re seeing old strips or new ones injected into the old continuity, and I think these are the latter, and I’m thinking: what if Lynn Johnston suddenly feels compelled to seize the reins and start aging the characters all over again, only this time John and Elly have a contentious divorce, leaving April to vanish in a limbo of never-was and Michael and Elizabeth with terrible emotional scars? Except look how they turned out when their parents stayed married, maybe they’ll be healthy, functional adults this way, who can say. Michael’s already showing a streak of self-loathing that, with years of therapy, might serve as a counterweight to his unbearable smugness.

Gil Thorp, 1/5/12

I’m extremely amused by the low-key Mudlark reaction in panel two, though you know that deep down they’re thinking that a Pokémon tattoo would be kind of awesome. They’re also playing it cool so as not to anger the disembodied claw-thing that’s casually draped itself on Punisher t-shirt dude’s shoulder.

Mark Trail, 1/5/12

“Yes, why don’t I come and hang out with you and Sally and your blind dog for a few days? Sweet Christ, I’d do anything to get away from my wife and adopted son.”

Beetle Bailey, 1/5/12

After billions of dollars were spent, the Defense Department began to suspect that Camp Swampy may not have been the best test site for its robotic supersoldier experiment.