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Mark Trail, 9/20/14

Hey, remember when this whole storyline started off, with Woods and Wildlife Magazine sending Mark off to Africa to hook up with anti-poaching activist Jacob Hickman, but then Mark got to Africa and Jacob Hickman had vanished, apparently under suspicious circumstances, so he just invited himself on Chris and Lori’s safari instead? Well, anyway, it turns out Jacob Hickman was fine, mostly, except that he had been delayed and forced to walk back to civilization … forced by rhinos. Ironic, isn’t it Jacob? You do so much for these ungrateful beasts, and yet they still try to kill you. Maybe you’ll lighten up a little on the whole poaching thing now, ha ha! Anyway, seems like Jacob’s working pretty fast to take credit for a whole lot of things that Mark did while he was busy taking his scenic little stroll.

Family Circus, 9/20/14

How much do I love mustache-dude just standing there with his hands behind his back watching Mommy Keane trying to parallel park? This is clearly his favorite form of entertainment. Probably he lurks around smallish parking spaces just waiting for something this exciting to happen. “Oh boy, this lady’s got a station wagon and a little kid in the car! I could get a solid three or four minutes out of this!”

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Mark Trail, 9/18/14

Oh my, I guess Mark Trail rescuing his antagonists from fiery car crashes to show his dominance over them is a story element of the past! Under Mark Trail’s new management, Mark pulls you from a fiery car crash to show his magnanimity, rushes you to a hospital … and then you die, from your animal-poaching sins, after which Mark stoically consoles the woman who couldn’t bring herself to return your romantic affections. I deem this a tough but fair punishment of an unpleasant fictional character for rhino-murder.

I would have very much enjoyed hearing this doctor (who bears an uncanny resemblance to former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher) explain to Mark and Lori exactly why Chris died. “His injuries didn’t seem life-threatening at first, but despite our best efforts his wounds became infected almost immediately. It’s as if no matter how much we cleaned him, he was always … dirty.”

Beetle Bailey, 9/18/14

I used to think that Beetle Bailey rarely did strips where Sarge and Cookie hang out together because it would make it clear how similar their character designs were to one another. But now I think it’s because such strips would inevitably devolve into unsettlingly child-like violent food-play.

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Mark Trail, 9/16/14

When you think of Mark Trail besting his enemies, you obviously think about punching. There is however a lesser known but still very effective Mark Trail Power Move, and that’s when he rescues his enemies from mortal danger, thus humiliating them. This mortal danger generally takes the form of fiery car destruction caused by the very sort of animal the villain wronged. In this case, Ol’ “Dirty”’s truck was forced off a cliff by a herd of rhinos, no doubt in revenge for all the vicious horn-poaching he dished out on their kin. Mark’s melodramatic pleas for Chris to not die are frankly just metaphorical salt in his metaphorical wounds (as opposed to his actual wounds, which are no doubt plentiful but probably more rubbed with burning motor oil and dirt than salt).

Gil Thorp, 9/16/14

Meanwhile, over in Gil Thorp it’s time for the annual bonfire! God, if there’s one thing we can count on in this crazy mixed-up world, it’s the annual Mudlark bonfire, where players are presented to the screaming multitude, where the masses bay incoherently in their lust for blood, where fists are raised in ritualistic threats of violence, where players stake their very souls on promises of victory, where Coach Thorp basks in the otherworldly glow, where foreigners become citizens of Mudlark Nation, where young women are hurtled into the air to resemble the wrathful Valkyries of old. Anyway, this year someone who I’m pretty sure is “Jarrod,” still tenuously holding onto the starting quarterback job, is trying to cement his leadership role with a crazy-eyed rant in which he promises to crush Milford’s traditional rival. True Standish is more mellow. “Probably some EPA regulation,” he says, explaining why his previous school didn’t burn a massive pile of perfectly good timber in order to propitiate the worship-hungry Gods of Victory. Of course, the EPA is a federal agency and its regulations apply to the entire country, but it’s likely that the U.S. government long ago declared Milford a “purge zone” where laws don’t apply, in hopes that its inhabitants would finish each other off with violence and/or pollution and not trouble the rest of us.

Pluggers, 9/16/14

Meanwhile, today’s Pluggers shows us what happens when a population voluntarily cuts itself off from the recreational habits and cultural output of society at large without having the numbers or creative capacity to come up with an alternative entertainment industry. Once you’ve rejected recreational drugs as scary and bad, books as fit only for snobs, and all television and movies produced since 1975 as devilment, how else are you supposed to keep yourself entertained?

Mary Worth, 9/16/14

The Mary Worth creative team knows you need a breather between the excitement of “Mary and Toby talk about Olive” and whatever thrill ride is coming up next, so they’ve provided today’s strip, in which you can read the dullest conversation ever included in an ostensible entertainment product and just relax a bit. Mary is so bored that she looks like she’s trying out a little plugger-style eyeball fun in panel one.

Heathcliff, 9/16/14

Hey, remember when vuvuzelas were a thing people made jokes about, four years ago?