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Hi and Lois, 6/6/12

There’s really something quite poignant about today’s Hi and Lois. I mean, don’t we all to various degrees believe that, if only we achieve a goal that’s within sight, everything in our lives will get better? If only I got that raise, I wouldn’t be in debt all the time (never mind that your spending tends to expand to match your salary). If only I would fall in love with someone, I wouldn’t be so unhappy (never mind that long-term relationships take work and aren’t just a “happily ever after” fairy-tale ending). If only I weren’t an infant, if only my neuromuscular systems were coordinated enough to allow walking, why, I would be like an all-powerful god! Nothing would be denied me! Never mind that once you know how to walk, you’re expected to walk, with your parents refusing to just carry you all over. Plus Australia is thousands of miles away and surrounded by water. Basically, walking’s for suckers, kid, enjoy infancy while it lasts.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/6/12

Here’s a fun fact: Despite the fact that the Huns ruled a huge empire that dominated central Europe for decades, the Hunnic language was never recorded; the illiterate Huns used Romans as secretaries, who corresponded with other states in Latin and Greek. All we have of Hunnic are personal names and three nouns — not enough to even firmly place what language family it belonged to, let alone translate complex concepts like “surrendering.” Another fun fact: the Huns themselves were a relatively elite group within a multi-ethnic state; in battle, the Huns would have ridden on horseback, as that was the skill that allowed them such military success, and any foot soldiers like the ones depicted here would probably have come from subject peoples, like the Goths or Slavs. Yet another fun fact: the Hunnic empire broke up hundreds and hundreds of years before the advent of the Viking age. Today’s Hagar the Horrible is less historically accurate than I would have liked, is what I’m getting at.

Beetle Bailey, 6/6/12

Apparently General Halftrack’s decades of senility and incompetence have just been a front, covering up his now successful plan to seize control of the U.S. in a bloody coup and rule as military dictator.

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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.