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Pluggers, 4/23/14

I certainly don’t begrudge the Pluggers creative team their occasional week off to run Plugger Classics, as I’m sure depicting honest, hard-working Americans making do the best they can as freakish man-animals gets exhausting after a while. I am a little unsettled by today’s vague double entendre, which may be intended to dovetail with the whole “spring break” theme. However, if Friday’s installment is “PLUGGERS GONE WILD” and features the pluggers casting off their clothes, cars, and other anthropomorphic aspects and just straight up going at each other like predator and prey, I’ll be willing to forgive a lot.

Mark Trail, 4/23/14

Speaking of predators and prey, new-school Mark Trail not only loves his wife but engages in straight-up combat with enraged bears. ALL HAIL THE NEW ORDER.

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New-school Mark Trail: not only does he consort with geese but he also expresses the human emotion of affection for his wife? Bizarre. I mean, at least he’s doing it from a distance of several miles, so he won’t be expected to hug or kiss or touch or look at her. Seems relatively safe. Also, notice how he pairs up “being married to you” and “living here in Lost Forest”: if I have my LoFo lore right, the Trails’ cabin home is actually owned by Cherry’s father Doc. So, yes, this actually makes sense: every once in a while, Mark needs to placate Cherry’s intense, terrifying, incomprehensible feelings with an absolute minimum physical contact, so that he can continue to live rent-free in a cabin next to a forest, which is all he’s ever wanted in life. “I’ll be home later, honey!” he says. SPOILER ALERT: He’ll be home a lot later.

Better Half, 4/16/14

You know you’re a desperate pill addict when your mail-order prescriptions are delivered it feels exactly like your birthday and Christmas and every other holiday plus the day you got out of prison when you went away for mail fraud that one time combined.

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Six Chix, 4/14/14

One of my running jokes that at some level in my mind may not actually be a joke involves the disposal of my remains after my death: in accordance with my will, I will be taxidermied and mounted in a heroic pose — I’m thinking wearing a bearskin and wielding a spear, though of course I will leave room for the whims of the artist — and whichever of my heirs intends to inherit my no doubt vast fortune will be required to display me prominently in their living room. But upon seeing today’s Six Chix, I of course immediately imagined another funeral scenario: a life-sized, anatomically correct chocolate replica of my mortal form would be covered in gold foil and laid out on a bier; after paying their respects, the assembled mourners would be required to peel back the foil and eat the effigy before anyone would be permitted to leave. The best part? Since only the first idea involves my actual corpse, we could do both.

Mark Trail, 4/14/14

Congrats to James Allen, who comments here as The Real Mark Trail, and who has officially taken over for Jack Elrod as Mark Trail’s scribe, transforming the Elrod-ball into the Allen-orb! And he gives us a look at the much darker and edgier direction he’ll be taking the strip right away. Geese, as everyone who has ever lived near a body of water knows, are the worst. They poop everywhere, they’re mean to other birds, they can be extremely aggressive with people, and have huge, powerful wings with which they can impose their cruel will. And yet Mark is an ally with this particular goose-gang, even knowing their leader by name! Welcome to Mark Trail 2.0, where the title character is much more morally ambiguous. Consorting with geese! My word.

Judge Parker, 4/14/14

The parents of the happy couple have been getting on like gangbusters over the course of this wedding weekend, but today we’re learning the real difference between a privileged jurist who dabbles in spy novels and a hardened, amoral arms dealer. While Abbott assembles his own ad hoc army, Alan can only sputter indignantly at how gauche the attacking gang of rival mercenaries is being. “Don’t they know we’re having a wedding here? Don’t they know who I am?”