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Mark Trail, 8/3/10

Well, this is a disappointment: Mark successfully rescued Sassy from her mustachioed kidnapper without even bothering to clench his fists. Now Sassy is safe and Rusty is happy and Sally and her stray dogs have a new home, but we didn’t get any pleasing cathartic violence to mark the transition to the next story. In fact, when it comes right down to it, our bad guy got off remarkably easy: sure, he didn’t get that big reward he was angling for, but he also didn’t get a fist to the face, and his original goal — to get rid of the old lady next door and her smelly collection of dogs — has actually been achieved!

The real question is: will Sally really be happy out on the farm? Sure, there’s lots of room for her pups to run and play, but it’ll be harder for her to haunt alleyways and compulsively find stray animals to hoard. Plus, once she’s out in the sticks, she can forget about getting Indian food delivered.

Beetle Bailey, 8/3/10

Considering how anachronistic most of the uniforms and equipment are in this strip, it’s fairly realistic to depict Beetle as gazing upon a fairly modern weapon (the M-249 was introduced in 1984!) with a mixture of awe and reverence. Sarge had better hope that Private Bailey doesn’t decide, once he has his hands on an actual killing machine, to turn it on his nearest tormentor — namely, Sarge himself.

Luann, 8/3/10

After last week’s Toni-smelling horror, I’ve never been more glad to see this foursome of losers and their harmless antics. Say, Knute, perhaps it would be best not to draw attention to Gunther, as he attempts to surreptitiously masturbate over by the ladies’ dressing room!

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Dick Tracy, 7/28/10

I have to admit that I enjoy Dick’s second panel dialogue: “His movies can be viewed in 3-D without glasses — thus his riches.” Part of it is that I of course wish that someone would use “thus his riches” to end a sentence outlining one of my achievements (“He created the #1 Mary Worth fan site on the Internet — thus his riches”). But I also just like the rhythm of it. I’d call it poetry, but poetry and the decadent so-called “artists” who produce it are loathed by Dick with a righteous passion.

I am a little disappointed by panel three, though; traditionally the strip never misses a chance to translate police jargon like “lifted” for the civilians in the audience.

Judge Parker, 7/28/10

At last we learn why Sam is so fond of Jules, despite his previous outrage over the young man having the sex relations with his adult daughter: he recognizes in him a kindred spirit, an artiste crushed by parental disapproval! The fact that Sam was forced into law when his true passion lay elsewhere might explains his overall emotional numbness and inability to love. He pushed his musical past down so deeply into his soul that this is apparently the first his own wife has heard about it, and he’s apparently required two beers just to work up the nerve to broach the subject.

Luann, 7/28/10

Oh, look, Brad and Toni are going to a restaurant called Something Stone, or perhaps the Stone Somethingry, so named because the building that houses it is of stone construction. See, these are the things you focus on, to avoid thinking about the sex banter. Maybe all the food on the menu is made of stones! Ha ha! Then they’ll eat them and die, and the banter will stop.

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Blondie, 7/27/10

I can’t tell you how tickled I am by the phrase “Whoa! Slow down, Edison!” It seems very anachronistic, somehow. When exactly did Edison stop being a typical metonym for “genius”? Probably right around the time that his electric light and phonograph started looking pretty feeble next to the awesome majesty of the atomic bomb, and he was forever displaced in most people’s minds by Albert Einstein. Considering the strip’s legacy status, it’s quite appropriate that Dagwood is talking to an IT staffer using a pre-World War II vocabulary.

Luann, 7/27/10

So, uh, Brad is hoping that Toni will absorb his no doubt formidable B.O., just by being a girl in his immediate proximity? Or is this supposed to imply something sexuNNNGGGHG DON’T THINK IT DON’T THINK IT

Panel from Mary Worth, 7/27/10

Ha ha, I honestly believe that this is one of the best Mary Worth moments of the past year. Look at how angry and confused Dr. Mike is. “Grr! So angry and confused! I want to punch something or someone, but I don’t know who or what!”

Crankshaft, 7/27/10

Crankshaft forgot to feed his cat, so it ran away.