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Mark Trail, 7/17/24

Wow, it seems the Grungey Boys’ whole deal was a real “I learned it from watching you” situation, because it started when Ranger Shaw dumped a box of Twilight DVDs in the woods, and then Robbie saw him do it, and then [chain of events I forget the details of and don’t feel like looking up] breaking up fax machines with baseball bats in a National Park. Anyway, I’m pretty hung up on that box of DVDs. I feel like it’s way too large for a scenario where you just own the entire Twilight saga on DVD, but way too small if your goal was to amass so many copies of movies from the Twilight saga on DVD that your husband wouldn’t be able to dispose of all of them in the woods. Also, while I’m not a fan of Twilight’s whole deal, I do think this act of marital warfare is over the line and also counterproductive — it will simply lead to Ranger Shaw’s wife repeatedly paying $3.99 to rent the movies VOD via iTunes or Amazon Prime, further enriching Stephenie Meyer and the films’ producers with each purchase.

Judge Parker, 7/17/24

Oh, good, Sophie in fact did her due diligence on the whole “Is my dad dead or not?” question. Unfortunately, she must now contend with the “Am I in the grips of an acute form of gothic madness or not?” question, which is the sort of thing guaranteed to ruin any beach vacation.

Pluggers, 7/17/24

Pluggers are simply covered with oozing sores and open wounds. And not little ones, either!

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Six Chix, 7/10/24

Comics coloring errors have been a source of cruel mockery and speculation on this blog for decades now, but I think that the rate of these mistakes has dropped dramatically as the web has become the primary delivery system for these strips. Still, the possibility always lurks in the background, and can lead to situations like this, where the reader is left unsure whether they’re looking at a mistake or not. What I think is happening here is that this seagull is supposed to be shitting all over this guy’s head, but the colorist recoiled in disgust and instead used red to imply that the bird’s claws had torn the man’s scalp open and he was bleeding everywhere. Both are distasteful, and it’s interesting to think of which is “better”. I vote for shit myself because I’m a baby about pain. Anyway, I guess it’s a joke about a hat?

Family Circus, 7/10/24

Speaking of being a baby about pain, I’m a big softie and whenever I see a friendly, outgoing animal or a happy toddler, I often think about how they must live a good life where they’re loved and well treated. This strip takes that idea to the extreme: only someone who has never experienced pain at all could possibly propose such a horrifying idea in such a casual manner. Good for Jeffy now, but also: someday he’ll see that he’s about to step on a nail, and he’ll just not try to avoid it, because he won’t know why he should. “Now I’ll never lose my shoes again!” he’ll think, the moment before his fool’s paradise of a life dissolves forever.

Mark Trail, 7/10/24

Cherry, for the last time, just because Mark has a little stubble now, that does not make him a bear, plus you are heterosexuals, this is cultural appropriation

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Mark Trail, 7/2/24

You can make your old-school soap-opera comic character as hip and bestubblèd and “nu-look” as you want, but you will never be able to avoid the twin questions (which inevitably overlap, but do not necessarily have matching answers) of “How old is this person supposed to be?” and “What generational cohort is this person supposed to belong to?” The current Mark Trail involves Mark and Rusty encountering a group of ne’er-do wells-who are polluting Lost Forest by taking old electronic equipment like fax machines out into the woods and busting it up with baseball bats, for fun. They call themselves “The Grungey Boys,” and the fact that neither Mark nor the aforementioned Boys recognize that this is itself a perfectly serviceable insult (certainly more cutting than “scummy”) just tells us that they’re Gen Xer with fond memories of “grunge music,” which Rusty would only know about from the Nirvana t-shirts his little friends buy at Hot Topic. (I suppose the Grungey Boys are also inspired in their whole deal by Office Space, another Gen X touchstone about how having a job is bad and it’s fun to destroy electronic equipment, two sentiments that, as a Gen Xer myself, I agree with.)

Gil Thorp, 7/2/24

Oh, Gil, it wasn’t you holding her back. It was her job as Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp, guiding the Lady Mudlarks to mediocre results just like you did for the boys, and once she ditched out on that it was smooth sailing to golf glory for Ex-Coach Coach Thorp’s Ex! She’s apparently gone back to her maiden name now, and I think it’s funny that the local print newspaper got that piece of information so late in the layout process that when they switched the name in the headline they accidentally put it in the wrong font and didn’t have time to fix it.