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Mark Trail, 9/9/13

Guys, it seems that those surveyors we heard about last week are looking for good spots to drill for oil in Lost Forest! They’re being backed by Senator Mason — a senator who Mark “supported,” which means that … he voted for him, or gave him money, or wrote a long puff piece about him in Woods and Wildlife Magazine, who can tell, but the point is that Mark owns this guy and how dare he sign off on fracking near Mark’s idyllic forest. I hope he doesn’t mind Mark stopping by unannounced! I’m sure he won’t. There’s literally nothing our elected officials like better than when random citizens ring their doorbell at dinner time to demand the advancement of their pet causes.

Mark has had some senatorial encounters before: he was pals with a senator who liked to pimp-slap sassy citizens, even if that meant that he got punched in return, triggering a near-fatal heart attack. Together, he and Mark exposed the sweaty corruption of his senatorial rival. But neither of those senators was named Mason, so I guess this is a third guy? Lost Forest has three senators? Sure, why not, makes as much sense as anything else in this strip.

Spider-Man, 9/9/13

Ha ha, Spider-Man is just kidding, except deep down inside where he’s totally not kidding. It’s almost as if being an unlikeable loser who literally nobody likes has hurt his self-esteem, somehow.

Apartment 3-G, 9/9/13

“Is that giggling I hear? Levity? At a time like this? Kids, the lieutenant governor just had a massive stroke, show some fucking respect.“

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Beetle Bailey, 9/4/13

I was going to say something snide here about how if you hear the phrase “3-D printing” on the news you can’t just panic and throw it into a comic at random, you have to do a few minutes of research about what 3-D printing actually is, but then I thought: what if Gizmo has one of those 3-D printers that can create living tissue and has decided to make another version of General Halftrack, piece by piece? If nothing else, this horrible 3-D-printed abomination of science will allow us to do some good nature vs. nurture studies about terrible, crippling alcoholism.

Mark Trail, 9/4/13

Now that Mark Trail’s gotten all the punching out of the way early, the strip is free to draw out the rest of this storyline as one long, dull anticlimax. “Thanks for the tip, Dusty … it turns out it was surveyors who had been damaging our fence! They had been leaning their equipment up against it. I explained to them why they shouldn’t do that, and they apologized and said they wouldn’t do it again. Anyway, good luck catching those poachers! I’m going to go get some pancakes.”

Apartment 3-G, 9/4/13

Oh my goodness, which character from Apartment 3-G will suddenly find themselves appointed the new Lieutenant Governor of New York? Probably Tommie, right? Lieutenant Governor is about the most boring political office America has to offer, Tommie’d be perfect.

B.C., 9/4/13

Wait, none of the ant-adults in B.C. have jobs? All the stories about their work ethic are just lies!

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Mark Trail, 9/3/13

Oh, man, this Mark Trail plotline is just getting started — it involves a mysteriously dead elk Mark found on Lost Forest property — and already there’s punching! Panel two is a true classic of the Trailian punching genre, with hat and gun flying in opposite directions as Mark interprets “turn around, mister … slowly” as “turn around mister … very quickly and then punch me in the face as hard as you can.” I guess it’s a little bit awkward that Mark ended up punching his friend Dusty, but that’s just the price you pay when you punch first and verify identities later! Everyone’s all smiles and there appears to be no permanent harm done, unless that parabola emanating from Dusty’s mouth in panel two is meant to be a trail of spittle following behind a dislodged tooth, which it almost certainly is.

Shoe, 9/3/13

I grudgingly respect the fact that Shoe follows the logic of at least one aspect of a society of bird-men to its logical conclusion and has a bird that feasts on the dead as the town undertaker. I do wonder how many casual Shoe readers know that Mort is a mortician-bird-man, which I’m pretty sure is a key piece of information for this joke. Not that it makes much sense anyway? Ha ha, did you enjoy your time at the opera … in a coffin? Because you’re a mortician-bird-man, and opera is a dying genre? Eh? Eh? Death?

Momma, 9/3/13

Well, it looks like I was right yesterday, and we are going to get a multi-day plot in Momma, a strip that never, ever does multi-day plots. So since we’re going into uncharted territory, I guess why not take a head-first leap into howling madness, with MaryLou walking up the aisle of an airplane, shoving big steaming spoonfuls of glop into the mouths of the weirdly compliant and passive passengers? I look forward to further airborne insanity over the rest of the week!