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Mark Trail, 1/19/08

That plane, for those of you not keeping up at home, is circling Mark because its passengers plan to kill him, and really, why wouldn’t they. Not only is he slowly making his way back to the nearby town that everyone keeps creepily referring to as “the community” (which makes it sound like some vaguely hippie-like cult compound) in order to drop a dime on the suddenly-not-dying-of-brain-cancer Luke Wilson, but he’s also annoying as hell, with his word balloon in panel two being representative of the sort of idiot patter he’s been keeping up for the benefit of nobody in particular. If Mark Trail were the sort of strip that provided animals with thought balloons, Andy’s would be saying “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP” right about now. He’ll no doubt come to Mark’s rescue anyway, but Luke Wilson’s henchmen (fun phrase you probably won’t see in People magazine anytime soon: “Luke Wilson’s henchmen”) would do well to try to make the enormous canine a better offer. Since we’ve had hints that their “hunting and fishing camp” is a cover operation for some kind of monstrous crime, perhaps Andy can be wooed with the promise of all the human flesh he can eat, starting with that of his erstwhile owner.

Phantom, 1/19/08

“…uh, who I just remembered has kind of a thing about remaining unknown! Don’t worry, girls, they’ll be able to identify your bodies from all the skull marks.”

Gil Thorp, 1/19/08

Oh, Andrew! I know you’re no Clambake — you’re not even a self-clubbing Tyler — but I am beginning to fall for you a little bit. Look, he even refers to himself as “the A-Train” in his own internal monologue! Mercy.

I think the text in panel two was accidentally left in Narration Box Italic. It’s kind of surprising that the rigorous Gil Thorp quality control team didn’t catch that.

Lockhorns, 1/19/08

I’m not sure what’s sadder: that Leroy and Loretta’s social life is based around a dollar-a-day DVD rental from the public library, or that she thinks that a three-dollars-a-day DVD from Blockbuster would be a sign that they had finally arrived.

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Gil Thorp, 1/15/08

I’m pretty sure this is the most effort ever put into painting some kind of psychological portrait of a Gil Thorp character. Usually these demented cubist weirdoes just do bizarre stuff like cut off their legs or hit themselves in the back of the head with a stick without any obvious motivation, but for some reason we’re getting the full backstory on what makes the A-Train tick. Sure, it’s nothing ground-breaking — oh my God, a star high school athlete is kind of competitive! — but I have to admit to really liking the final flashback panel, where Andrew savagely crumples up his own paper when he discovers that his girlfriend is smarter than he is. His twisted, angry face makes it look like this is the moment when Lex Luthor decided to become a genius supervillain. “I’ll show her who knows more about American history … when I rule America! MOO ha ha!”

Judge Parker, 1/15/08

This is a good example of how having different people writing and illustrating a strip can result in an amusing disconnect. Gloria is Sam’s longtime legal secretary or personal assistant or something non-lawyer-y, and it’s totally possible that the dialog as written is supposed to be taken at face value and Sam really does think of Gloria as his real partner in the lawyerin’ business. But his heavy-lidded smirky expression in the second panel pretty much makes him look like the most condescending citizen of Smugville, U.S.A., and Gloria’s little insert closeup seems to indicate that she isn’t buying it. “OK, he’s a prick, but at least I don’t have to worry about him sexually harassing me,” she seems to be thinking.

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Cathy, 1/10/08

Whenever anyone, usually a woman, in a comic strip, or some other narratively undemanding medium, declares, “I want to talk about us,” it only leads to one place: disputes, anger, tears, madness, and broken lives. The marriage of Cathy and Irving, solemnized in February of 2005, is thus almost certainly on its way out. Will Cathy become more readable (or, really, readable at all) if Cathy is ACK-ing not to her accountant, but to her divorce attorney? Will Irving’s bug-eyed manias be more acceptable if they involve an obsessive catalog of all the gadgets that he brought to the marriage that should by right be his after the divorce? Will I be able to derive sick pleasure from week after week of their bitter, heart-rending, and expensive court proceedings? Will Cathy finally be forced to testify, under oath and before a judge, about why exactly she doesn’t have a nose?

Apartment 3-G, 1/10/08

It’s not clear whether Blaze is actually paying to have his super-cool New Year’s bash catered by Magee Dangerous Emotional Mood Swing Event Planning LLC and Ruby is filling in so that Margo and Eric can have sex, or if he’s just conned Ruby, his sister/cousin/whatever (I believe where they’re from it just all falls under “kin”) into cooking for nothing so he can mingle with the hepcats. On the one hand, Blaze’s last professional dealing with Margo came several years ago, when she was a wildly unqualified publicist rather than a wildly unqualified event planner; he hired her to promote his play and she, like, forgot or something, so you’d think he’d be wary of throwing more money her way. On the other hand, there are some pink, green, and yellow balloons in the living room, and that’s just the sort of half-assed and aesthetically misguided touch we’ve come to expect from Margo’s crack team.

That plate of whole, unskinned potatoes sure looks to be piping hot! Thankfully, Ruby can just set it down on the bottom of panel two.

Gil Thorp, 1/10/08

I don’t really have a lot of dealings with teenagers — they made me anxious when I was a teenager, and I haven’t really seen anything since that’s made me change my mind about them — but the idea of Andrew Gregory desperately texting his ex-girlfriend to boast about his athletic achievements strikes me as a slightly more accurate depiction of the emotional contours of high school life than most things that happen in this strip. Not accurate, however, is the way Andrew’s Vulcan ex is holding her phone in the last panel. It’s like there was pre-existing drawing of her holding a dead fish, and it was reused with just a little redrawing.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/10/08

Say, if my records are right, “Patrick Duke” is none other than faithful reader captainswift! Congrats to you, Patrick — but did you send this one to Al by e-mail or real letter? Or by smoke signals?

Bonus Scadutoism: “Fumpher”.