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Mark Trail, 6/19/09

Who has the greatest hair in Mark Trail history? This guy! Panel two offers us a close-up of its jellied texture, but I’m more intrigued by panels one and three, in which the backflap appears to be hanging stiffly down the back of the skull, presumably attached by some sort of hinge mechanism to the top panel. When it comes time for punching, we’re apparently going to learn that it isn’t just facial hair Mark hates; it’s abnormal hair of all stripes.

Gil Thorp, 6/19/09

Wow, I never thought I’d be pleased to see Jeff “The ’Czak” Ponczak and Matt the Hatt and their stupid public access show, and I certainly never thought I’d be pleased to see them mostly naked, but I have to admit that panel three is something of a breath of fresh air. It’s not as good as Gil urging a parent to sue his employers in panel two, but it’s pretty close.

Beetle Bailey, 6/19/09

When General Halftrack finally decides to end it all, he’s not going out alone. The folks who work in his office can only pray that when he reaches that moment of despair, his fingers will be so palsied from drink that he’ll lack the fine motor control skills necessary to pull out the pin.

Marmaduke, 6/19/09

Vasectomy?

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Gil Thorp, 6/18/09

I’m kind of shocked that the word “sexting” has actually made an appearance in a Gil Thorp word balloon, but I’m not at all shocked by the context, in which Dr. Pearl (is this her first appearance under the new artist?) appears to be half-assedly principaling, since she presides over Milford High, America’s most half-assedly educated school. “But Dr. Pearl, I’m pretty sure this doesn’t constitute sext–” “I’m sorry, didn’t you hear what I said? This term appeared in major newsweeklies that my doctor leaves in his waiting room! I just learned the word last week and I’m going to use it, by God.”

Meanwhile, the prospect of Bill Hawkins being charged with a felony for not actually forwarding a totally non-revealing picture of his girlfriend in a cardboard bikini made me confront how little I actually like him. The problem with this story is that it revolves around the battle for the baseball team’s soul between Shep Trumbo, who is an unlikeable douchebag, and Bill Hawkins, who is noble and upright and good and also wholly unlikeable. I suppose if I had to choose which one I’d rather see go to jail, it would be Shep, but really if the whole team could just be dragged off by Milford’s jackbooted thugs and thrown in a dark hole where none of us would ever have to see them again, I’d be a happy guy.

Slylock Fox, 6/18/09

This is definitely the most intriguing Six Difference drama I’ve seen in some time. Let’s start with the obvious: the fellow in the chair has a charming mustache, the sinister lunatic in the child’s drawing does not. This implies two separate potential background narratives. Either chair-baldy is the kid’s stepfather, and, just in time for father’s day, he’s being passive-aggressively presented with a drawing of the absent bio-father; or the child has decided that the terrible voice in his head, the one that tells him to burn and kill, is his “real” father, and has drawn a picture of what he thinks this demonic force would look like: something like the man everyone says is his father, but with an evil grin and a glazed, murderous look in his eyes. Either way, the kid’s vacant smile and stab-ready crayon are things to worry about.

Family Circus, 6/18/09

Speaking of multiple wonderful possibilities, are we meant here to believe that Big Daddy Keane is actually trying to offer a skateboarding clinic, only to fail utterly and humiliate himself? Or has Billy just left his skateboard out in the middle of the floor, resulting in an accidental tumble, spun as “look, Daddy’s showing me how to skateboard!” in the usual self-serving darnedest-things-saying way of the Keane Kids? Either way, Daddy is going to be terribly injured, and this is pretty much the greatest Family Circus week ever.

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Mark Trail, 6/12/09

Oh ho! It looks like this Mark Trail dialogue will be serving up some crackling dialogue and verbal jousting covering up underlying sexual tension, just like the best screwball comedies of the ’30s! If, once you’ve forced your way into the head office of a major corporation, there’s a better opening gambit than “I live on a wildlife preserve called Lost Forest!” then I don’t want to know about. And frankly I’d like to see virtually every insane, improperly emphasized sentence out of Mark’s mouth dismissed with a quick “Good for you.”

Gil Thorp, 6/12/09

Hey there Mr. Fancy Artist Man, it’s just Gil Thorp, and within Gil Thorp it’s just Shep Trumbo, so there’s no need to bust out the super-emphasized perspective as you have in panel one, mmmkay? What with the bobble lines around Shep’s head and his severe foreshortening, it looks like he’s going through some kind of mutant-growth spurt that will leave him twenty feet tall, a monstrously huge prankster jerk. The splayed fingers poking out of the left side of the panel look like a floppy mass of tentacles, adding to the freakishness. Meanwhile, panel two features more nostril than anyone wants out of this feature.