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Mark Trail, 3/18/09

Thank goodness Mark Trail has given up on its attempts to depict all-too-realistic and depressing human behavior and is going back to its bread and butter: attempting to depict hilarious and completely incomprehensible human behavior. Because the following list of activities is in order of increasing conspicuousness, obviously:

• Two dudes hanging around in a restaurant in broad daylight, drinking coffee and wearing hideously colored shirts.
• Two adults accosting a child they don’t know and offering obscene sums of money buy his camera.
• Two random people appearing in the background of a terribly composed picture, which will be printed automatically from a machine and put into a sad little scrapbook by a neglected orphan who lives in the woods and has no friends.

Luann, 3/18/09

OK, so Luann is clearly never going to give us less of … this, so from here on in, I want more. More, do you hear me? The only way this strip’s never-ending stream of queasy sexuality will become palatable to me is if it just goes completely over the top, turning the whole thing into some ludicrously repulsive French sex farce. I want to see Mrs. DeGroot seducing TJ for information (“TJ, I can’t stop thinking about the other day in the bathroom … but my fantasies would be so much hotter if I knew what you did for a living!”). I want to see Brad accidentally invite Toni to dinner at an S&M club (“Gosh, I thought that meant they served salad and macaroni!”). I want to see Bernice arrange a tryst between her soldier brother and Delta — and then retreat back to her room to watch via the hidden cameras and masturbate furiously. I want to see Gunther at the San Diego FurCon ’09 after-party, grinning bashfully while being serviced by dozens of obedient piggies. I want to see Luann and Elwood … no, wait, never mind, even I have my limits.

Hi and Lois, 3/18/09

Sunday’s neglect-o-thon made the case for a Child Protective Services visit to the Flagston residence, and today that case just got a little bit stronger. As Trixie sits alone in the middle of the floor, surrounded by scattered toys, she notes that her family “disappears” every day, but doesn’t mention anything about anyone coming to her house in their place.

Curtis, 3/18/09

Barry is right to be concerned. Curtis does not have the right attitude to find much financial success as a prostitute.

Ziggy, 3/18/09

Even Ziggy’s computer is repulsed by his sexual advances.

Pluggers, 3/18/09

Sure, they eventually put on the belt, go to their soul-killing jobs, then come home and eat pizza and drink beer in front of the TV until they doze off; but for most pluggers, that moment in the morning when they contemplate suicide is, perversely, the high point of their day.

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Dick Tracy, 3/12/09

The just-started Dick Tracy storyline involves not hideous villains embarking on a difficult-to-follow crime spree, but rather Dick intervening with one of his loser friends who has a gambling problem. I’m not certain exactly how this will lead to a graphically violent denouement, but surely our hero will find a way. In the meantime, for everyone who feels the comics should be more educational, I submit for your approval panel three, which shows us what would have happened if famed abolitionist John Brown had lived long enough to join Devo, then star as Scrooge in a community theater version of A Christmas Carol.

Luann, 3/12/09

Oh, look, it’s more tales of ribaldry in Luann! For most of this week TJ has been impressing (and arousing?) Luann with his pointless trivia knowledge about Argentine and Italian exports. (No, really.) Yet today’s oops-I-“accidentally”-walked-in-you-in-the-bath-Mrs.-D. might lead to our boy’s fancy settling on the older Ms. Degroot, setting up a possible mother-daughter-boarder romantic triangle! And wouldn’t that be delightfully ribald? And by “delightfully ribald” I mean “repulsive.”

Mary Worth, 3/12/09

WRONG MOVE, CONFEY! You probably thought that “identity theft” was a good sob story that would cover your inability to pick up a restaurant check until you and your Queenie were legally wed and what’s hers was yours. But upon hearing the very phrase, Adrian no doubt is thinking, “Oh my God, he’s no smarter than that idiot blonde Tobey that Mary’s always palling around with, and mocking behind her back! I can’t be tied to such an obvious dimwit! MUST … ESCAPE …”

I like Ted’s rust-colored suit jacket/black turtleneck combo, but I love the dude in the background’s black-and-white checked pullover/baby blue cardigan outfit.

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Apartment 3-G, 2/26/09

While this week’s Apartment 3-G has been mostly a nonstop stream of exposition, it has me almost embarrassingly excited. A few years back, a faithful reader who had been following the Apartment 3-G girls much longer than I had filled me in on Margo’s origin story: her mother Gabriella was a young immigrant maid who got knocked up during an affair with her rich boss, and gave the baby up to said boss and his horrified wife to raise as their own; when Margo found out (as an adult), she cut off contact with her father and his wife and started building a relationship with Gabriella (who may or may not have been the family maid growing up — I hope we find out). I love this story because its details — the icy mother who harbored a grudge against little Margo nobody could explain; the father who insisted on bending others to his plans but exercised no control over his own appetites; the girl raised in wealth who now must navigate a world without it — explains so much about Margo’s personality, and I’m glad to see it actually confirmed in in-strip dialogue. Even more exciting is the prospect of Margo’s father actually appearing in the strip. No doubt he’ll look exactly like Eric, which in other contexts would be FULL OF SYMBOLISM but in Apartment 3-G will just indicate that he is male and not related to Lu Ann.

Luann, 2/26/09

Things it’s fun to imagine TJ doing while masturbating: shouting “Whoa! Luann’s nailin’ it! 98%!!”

Things it’s disturbing to imagine TJ doing while masturbating: shouting “Whoa! Luann’s nailin’ it! 98%!!” while making that horrifying face.

Oh, and hey, remember how I said that I am egocentric enough to mention your comic if you mention me by name in it? Well, check out the installment from a few days ago from Rabbits Against Magic!

Rabbits Against Magic, 2/24/09

Sorry that I’m, uh, a little late.