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Mark Trail, 12/22/13

Thank goodness Mark Trail has reversed its earlier hate crime and is now putting Our Lord God front and center in its Christmas installment. Or, at least, adorable animals that have been created by Our Lord God. Did you know sometimes God creates too many adorable animals? Why don’t you adopt some of them, you ingrates? How about a camel? Baby Jesus loved camels!

Crock, 12/22/13

Speaking of the Almighty, Crock is debasing himself before Him in a manner more fitting in tone to Lent than Christmas. And sure, Crock is an awful war criminal, but we’re just now finding out that God is going to start charging us for lightning services that have been free since time began, so who’s the real monster here?

AND ON THAT NOTE, this is your Comics Curmudgeon signing off for 2013! My wife and I will be making our usual three-way trip of Family Togetherness for the holiday, and I’ll be back blogging here on the 1st or 2nd of January, depending on how the mood strikes. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you all! I look forward to an exciting Curtis Kwanzaa Madness recap when I get back.

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Mark Trail, 12/17/13

Holy crap, things are getting dark for our hero, who thought he was slickly and silently sneaking up on not-Jared Jeff to take his gun, only to get a roundhouse kick right to the face. It occurs to me: we all know that Mark is the implacable enemy of all forms of nonstandard facial and head-hair; but is it possible that, in facing a nemesis like not-Jared Jeff, who has no hair to speak of, he is powerless? Lost Forest’s criminal element has finally discovered that ultimate power was only a quick shave away all along!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/17/13

Meanwhile, over in Hootin’ Holler, the Smith family is starving to death, what with the lack of economic opportunity in the region and Snuffy’s refusal to do any kind of paying work, forcing Loweezy to go door to door begging for sustenance from her almost as impoverished neighbors. This … this is not the hilarious hillbilly laughfest I ordered, guys :(

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Mark Trail, 12/12/13

So Jeff and Jared’s Sinister Artifact-Napping Plan is going something like this: they woke Mark up at gunpoint and Jeff took him off with the artifacts by canoe, with Jared left behind fake-tied-up claiming that Mark is the one doing the kidnapping! I have literally no idea why they think this will work out any better for them than just fleeing with the artifacts — wouldn’t the police have a bit more urgency in tracking down a kidnapping victim than they would in looking for some stolen property? — but I’m super glad things are playing out like this, because we finally get to see Cherry explode into the violent rage that we all knew was lurking just below her placid/heavily medicated surface.

Judge Parker, 12/12/13

Say, remember when Judge Parker Senior’s terrible airport-bookstore thriller got a bad review from a snooty academic, and he raged about it for days and days in a way that reaffirmed that he was thin-skinned and unpleasant, and then by crazy coincidence he and Katherine were seated with said snooty academic at dinner, and he lied about his name so he could glower at her in secret? Kind of the sort of behavior that might make you think, “This man is an awful person and not a strip protagonist that we want to see rewarded,” right? Well, screw you, loser. Judge Parker Senior has now revealed his identity to this lady and has publicly humiliated her and prompted her husband to do so as well! So all’s well that ends well, for assholes!

Heathcliff, 12/12/13

Soooo … is Heathcliff driving off to get more milk, or abandoning these non-milk-having chumps in a huff and finding a new family that knows the importance of keeping the refrigerator properly stocked? I’m guessing the latter, based on the don’t-give-a-damn vibe radiated by the cat and the car, which are both wearing sunglasses, in the middle of the night.