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Hi and Lois, 5/14/12

An old standby in comics (or any other medium where corny jokes happen) is to have someone feign an inability to parse a completely standard turn of phrase any way but literally. Extremely minor kudos to Hi and Lois for at least portraying Lois reacting with wide-eyed bafflement and distress, exactly as an actual normal human would in this situation. “Wait, did … did Hi really not understand what I was getting at? Oh my God, is he having a stroke?”

Mark Trail, 5/14/12

“So I shot him! Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Just as individual Mark Trail strips are created by combining archival clip art, so too are whole plotlines now being generated by mashing previous plots together. In this case, we seem to be in for some combination of “Mark’s friend Johnny Malotte is not guilty of murder even though all the evidence is against him” (which ran from October 2007 to March 2008, and which among other things featured Mark getting this same sort of jailhouse interview, which is usually the privilege of lawyers and clergy) and “Competition between rival fishing camps turns violent” (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010, and in which two forest ruffians beat up a senator). These were of course two of the more awesome storylines of recent memory, so we can only hope that hybridization produces increased vigor so as to provide us with even more entertaining mayhem.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/14/12

Sadly, Snuffy only managed to inspire Li’l Tater with a passion for justice, racial equality, and human rights. Everyone in Hootin’ Holler was outraged.

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Mark Trail, 5/7/12

It looks like Mark is running out of excuses to avoid his oft-postponed fishing date with Rusty. Ha ha, “check my e-mail,” does Mark even know what e-mail is? He probably overheard some teens talking about it down at the general store once and is now using it as a desperate ploy to avoid spending quality time with his hideously ugly ward. “Uh, sorry Rusty, I talked to my e-mail and it told me that there’s some Indian artifacts being smuggled in the southern part of the state! I need to go find the smugglers, so I guess that fishing trip will have to wait until next month, or something.”

It’s pretty well known that current Mark Trail storylines are pieced together from old art, with dialogue spottily updated to reflect technological advances. This has given us such hilarious moments as Rusty claiming his old-timey camera used a “memory card,” so I look forward to Mark “checking his e-mail” with what is clearly a CB radio.

Hi and Lois, 5/7/12

“I thought it was just a whimsical name, but I can’t seem to hold down any food and I’ve lost 10 pounds in the last three days, so I guess it was made of some kind of deadly poison.”

Gil Thorp, 5/7/12

OK, this is the day when I finally manage to work myself up to get excited about the Gil Thorp spring storyline. Yay, we’ve got … a loss and a rainout? Aw, nuts.

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Mark Trail, 5/3/12

“Oh, man, why is Josh focusing so much attention on this Mark Trail storyline when there’s other things happening in the comics pages,” said absolutely nobody because this Mark Trail storyline is the greatest achievement in storytelling since the invention of writing. Today we have a classic Mark Trail trope in action, which is Just Leave The Bad Guys Tied Up. Ha ha, look at those guys, stone cold defeated by a good smack to the head/vicious dog attack, there’s literally no way they could wriggle out of those ropes (Ranger Tom was surely a Boy Scout) and definitely no way that they had any kind of accomplices helping them run the massive grow operation that Ranger Tom now realizes exists all over the forest he’s supposed to kind of be in charge of. Nope, they’ll be there when the “clean-up crew” arrives, and I’m just starting to consider that maybe the “clean-up crew” are not so much “trained marijuana disposal experts” as “guys I know who aren’t afraid to kill some drug growers execution-style and bury them in shallow forest graves, since any legal proceedings might bring to light evidence of neglect that would negatively reflect on my job performance.” But, better to not be there for that unpleasantness, blood stains are hard to get out of khaki, let’s just go back to Lost Forest and have some late-night pancakes instead. Mmmm, pancakes!

Hi and Lois, 5/3/12

Is it weird that I find this incredibly creepy? Lois has left her eyes all over the house … watching … ALWAYS WATCHING.