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Folks, extremely big news: Mark Trail has a new writer/artist, Jules Rivera, creator of the slice-of-life webcomic Love, Joolz, with new strips beginning October 12!

Will we be able to handle Mark with stubble, Rusty not being a hideous boy-thing, and Cherry with a job? We’re gonna find out, I guess! (Rivera also does action comics, so she knows how to draw a punch.) Also I have an inside scoop on a beloved former character coming back for the first plotline so stay tuned for that. Hopefully two more weeks of reruns will be long enough for us to find out if Andy survived and/or if Mark ever got that major award or not.

We’ll all be on tenterhooks for the next couple weeks, but until then, please enjoy your comment of this week that just happened!

“BROKE: Snake handling
WOKE: Snake trivia” –Ettorre

Plus your very funny runners up!

“Is that the normal Sunday strip look for Hi and Lois, or are the extra rosy cheeks meant to tell us that the entire family is mildly drunk? Is Thirsty having his influence on them?” –Remy

“Sure, having a COVID party is risky, but you know what else is risky? Being a couple of forty year olds who keep trying to pose as teenagers.” –Where’s Rocky?

“Chip thinks a Bob Dylan composition is folk music, a Led Zeppelin tune famously stolen from Willie Dixon is heavy metal, and the Eagles’ mellowest yacht rock is the blues. On the other hand, how much can we expect from a teenager who streams Gordon Lightfoot unironically?” –BigTed

“As much as I try to avoid clickbait church services like this, every so often I see the sign of my local parish advertising a sermon like, ‘The Top 15 Instant Karma Moments for Sinners Against Our Lord and Savior,’ and next thing I know I’ve been tricked into devoting my life to Jesus again.” –jroggs

“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, Sam, but instead of lecturing potential victims about their behavior, you might want to actually do something to stop the apparent roving packs of wild dogs that prey on your town’s beloved pets.” –Dread

“Normally Mark Trail’s dialogue panels show off the majesty of nature or the bloodthirstiness of the hunt, so I’m glad today they’re slowing down and showing us just the dumbest squirrel about to eat a rock.” –Schroduck

“‘LOOK AT THE WILDLIFE YOU’VE CONSERVED’ screams Mark, dumping Andy’s mangled corpse in front of a shocked crowd, before storming off with his award.” –DevOpsDad

“A plugger’s romantic dinner is accepting waiter service because the Ol’ Country Buffet is closed by the local health department.” –Rusty

“The scene where Buck and Mindy apply for a PPP loan was deemed too intense for the readers of this strip.” –TheDiva

“Anyone telling Mark Trail ‘Don’t be stupid!‘ is setting himself up for a four hour lecture on wildlife trivia.” –nescio

“Every time Dick Tracy comes up on the blog I feel like I learn something new about its weird world. Today it’s magazines: would you rather read Valyu Financial, the publication for those worried about thrift and copyright infringements, or AUTO ZINE, the red-hot car monthly with centrefolds of fuckable roadsters?” –pugfuggly

“Tommy, tell me more about your mother’s hot, rich, and sexually potent boyfriend. If something happened to Iris, would Zak want to start dating again right away? And how is your drug habit these days? I’ve heard there are some really powerful new pills on the streets. Almost irresistible, they say.” –GeoGreg

“Most people who don’t really care about pets have realized that they have to soft peddle it. Shouting NO DOG IS WORTH THIS just gets their hackles up. You gotta soft play it, like suggesting that it would be kinder to go ahead and just put the stupid dog down if it’s so close to death. It’s a loving gesture to euthanize the inconvenience so you can climb the ladder to the heights of conservation writing, a genre that William Faulkner once heard of.” –ArtistFKAtoxic

“You mean we’re not videoconferencing? Then what am I voguing with my chest thrust out for?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“‘I have some ideas about that.’ Two hour macroeconomics lecture ensues, involving multiple PowerPoint slides. Tommy’s date quietly slips away while he’s praising the Laffer curve.” –Voshkod

“‘See, if I don’t spend my entire paycheck, I can accumulate savings, which I can occasionally tap into so that I can spend more than I earned in a given week.’ Just kidding, his idea is to do a crime.” –A Concerned Reader

“That was a different time for Tommy, he’s in a much better place now. He’s off the meth and high on blond hair dye.” –Dan

“I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows about undercover femme fatale assassins posing as housewives to read Thel’s body language here, and it’s saying she could flick that knife and plant it right between Jeffy’s eyes without even looking, if she wanted to, and boy does she want to! Alas, she has her orders: Keep the pumpkin heads safe until they ‘ripen’ and Control comes to collect them for Phase II.” –Effluvius Erratus

“At the local college. This is how humans speak to one another, yes? There is a college locally, therefore that is where I will take a sales course of training?” –Glycyrrhiza Glabra

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Dick Tracy, 9/23/20

You might remember that legitimate biologist/Dracula cosplayer Professor Stokes bragged of “collecting over a third of Faith’s blood volume in record time” (consensually, I guess?) and promised to “add her sisters’ blood to my collection as well.” I guess based on the names Hope and Charity these are the aforementioned sisters, and it’s pretty strong evidence of the uselessness of the scions of wealthy families that mere days after their sister was found exsanguinated in an alley somewhere, they’re busy squabbling over whether to buy cool cars or invest in mutual funds from extremely dubious-sounding brokerages, rather than getting the hell out of town before they too are tapped and drained like a keg at a frat party.

Mary Worth, 9/23/20

I regret to inform you that rather than the Saul romance plot we were promised, we’re getting some kind of Brandy-Tommy business. I do find it pretty funny that Iris’s attitude towards Brandy appears to be “I’m so very grateful you’re around to cater to the emotional needs of my ne’er-do-well son, because I’ve got a very busy schedule of sex with my much younger boyfriend lined up. See ya never!”

Mark Trail, 9/23/20

Oh, man, I hope the rest of the week is taken up by escalating authority figures — the mayor, the president, the Secretary-General of the UN, God himself — grabbing the phone and trying to browbeat Mark into getting on a plane, coming to New York, and receiving a tasteful engraved paperweight in front of a politely clapping audience of his peers. “Your dog’s gonna die whether you’re there or not, Mark!” says God. “Believe me, I know.”

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Mark Trail, 9/22/20

Oh man, Woods and Wildlife editor Bill Ellis is just having a fuckin’ meltdown that Mark would even consider tending to his wounded dog instead of flying into New York for the big Conservation Writer of the Year banquet at the Waldorf Astoria. Doesn’t Mark know how much is riding on this? The notoriously cutthroat Conservation Writers of America society will just not give you the award if you don’t show up in person to accept it, so they’ll hand it to the runner-up (some guy from Ranger Rick, probably?) and then Bill, Woods and Wildlife, and their publisher (a disreputable hedge fund that bought the W&W intellectual property at fire sale prices from the Hearst Corporation in 2015) can kiss all those sweet CWotY pageviews and subscription renewals goodbye.

Dick Tracy, 9/22/20

Ha ha, teen girls! This weird professor, who is literally wearing fangs right now, is definitely not into the vampire lifestyle, which he just brought up to see if you were as not into it as he was, even though, as he can’t emphasize enough, it’s all safe and consensual. Here, read these pamphlets and check out these websites! If your opinions about modern, progressive vampirism change, don’t hesitate to get back in touch.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/22/20

CONFIDENTIAL TO BUCK: If the lost revenue from your convention circuit sales is offset by the fact that you no longer have to pay the expenses associated with your convention circuit sales, your business may be, to use a technical term, “unprofitable.”

CONFIDENTIAL TO MINDY: The idea that someone would be glad to be stuck in the house with Buck is not believable. Is this a hostage situation? Are you in danger? Blink twice if you need help.

Pluggers, 9/22/20

A plugger romantic dinner is when a wife constantly begs to go eat somewhere that isn’t fast food, just this once, and her husband finally agrees but he’s really passive aggressive about it all evening.