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Mark Trail, 6/20/10

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the geometry teacher I had my freshman year of high school. She was an excellent teacher, but she had one quirk: she had a crazy underlining tic. Any word she wrote on the board that she felt had even the slightest importance would be underlined. Sometimes the word was “important” only in that it was a verb! Thus, in order to designate things that were actually important, she would double-underline, but she was pretty free with that, too, so it wasn’t unusual for our chalkboard to end up with certain words sitting atop three or four levels of underlines. (I eventually learned to just remove two layers when taking notes.)

Anyway, she may have been a middle-aged African-American math nerd living in a city, but I think she had a certain similarity to Mark Trail, outdoorsman extraordinaire. Mark is a serial abuser of boldface and exclamation points, so when he’s really worked up about something (like the dangers of sky-electricity — he’s already kept all electrical appliances out of his primitive home, but you can never escape these devilish electrons!), he has to turn the text-shouting up to utterly bizarre levels. ALL THUNDERSTORMS ARE DANGEROUS! DO YOU THINK THAT RUBBER-SOLED SHOES CAN PROTECT YOU? NO! THAT IS A MYTH! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! STAY AWAY FROM TREES! STAY AWAY FROM ALL FORMS OF METAL! STAY AWAY FROM WATER! HUDDLE IN A FETAL POSITION IN YOUR RUBBER-LINED ROOM, EVERY DAY, FOREVER! OTHERWISE LIGHTNING WILL KILL YOU AND YOU WILL DIE!

Mary Worth, 6/20/10

The transition of Dr. Roberts’s face from pleased to devastated in panels four through seven is a delight of visual storytelling. “What’s this, another head case for me to fix? KA-CHING! Oh, wait … she wants me to … I mean, with a woman … emotional intimacy … oh, God. Oh, God. Well, I guess I don’t really have any choice, do I? Oh, right, her e-mail address, Christ. Ugh ugh ugh.”

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/20/10

Loretta is ashamed because she and/or Leroy are addicted to prescription medication! But really, anyone who knows them wouldn’t be surprised at what they need to do to get through life married to one another.

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The Lockhorns, 6/18/10

After more than four decades of Lockhorns dinnertime spitefests depicted from a point of view more or less level with the tabletop, today’s panel attempts to play with perspective a bit, showing us what it would be like to cower on the floor about three feet away from Leroy and Loretta as they eat. (Obviously, they’ll ignore you, as their mutual loathing is far more interesting to them just about anything you can name.) In addition to adding a bit of visual flair, this new viewing angle really gives us a good look at their dining room chairs, which they’ve clearly had specially made with incredibly short legs to accommodate their freakishly stumpy frames.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/18/10

I have to say that if, back when Rex and June discovered Brook lurking in their house, you had asked me to predict how this story would turn out, I would have not have considered the possibility that she would end up using her martial arts skills to disarm a knife-wielding thug. In fact, I would not have made this prediction a mere three days ago. But to be fair, I don’t think we’d ever seen Brook’s ripped inner thigh muscles, a result of the long hours she puts in at the dojo keeping herself in peak physical shape.

Judge Parker, 6/18/10

Wow, so Judge Parker is really going to go through with this shoe business, huh? At least today’s strip accurately depicts what would happen if you got a lawyer involved in footwear manufacturing.

Mary Worth, 6/18/10

In a desperate, last-ditch effort to end this conversation with Mary, Jenna’s brain has just triggered a massive stroke.

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Some quick one-panel entries from the Sunday funnies to begin your week!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 6/13/10

In classic A3G Sunday style, today’s strip rehashed the last week’s worth of story and then gave us exactly five additional seconds of action — in this case confirming my guess form yesterday that this returnee was Gina. I’m feeling more than a little validated by this, because I am a sad and pathetic little man!

Panel from Curtis, 6/13/10

Today’s Curtis features the title character, who has been rockin’ exactly the same fly style since he first appeared on the comics page in 1988, offering a sneering discursis of the admittedly fairly goofy droopy-pants fashion epidemic that has been gripping America’s inner cities for the better part of the decade. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found this throwaway panel, in which our hero was dwarfed by a boxer-shorted ass looming menacingly in the foreground, fairly delightful.

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/13/10

One of my favorite Lockhorns tropes is when the titular pair manages to lure some other poor couple over for some kind of no doubt hellish double date. These people never appear in the strip more than once, since presumably a single evening spent with the Leroy and Loretta’s psychodrama is more than sufficient for an entire human lifetime; by the time we actually see them in the strip, the poor victims are generally sitting on the couch staring numbly ahead, waiting for the horror to be over. Today, though, the female half of the non-Lockhorns couple seems intrigued by Loretta’s fiery feminist talk. “Right on, sister!” she says, with her barely perceptible smile.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/13/10

I know I’ve been terribly neglectful in following the Rex Morgan drama of late, right when it’s gotten vaguely interesting (no doubt a manifestation of my recurring Rex Morgan Problem). Still, I felt it was important to update you all on the following fact: nobody calls Brook a bimbo and lives. Have any of you been calling Brook a bimbo, in the comments here, or just to your friends and family members, or even in what you assumed was the safety of your minds? Better make your peace with your God now, my friends.