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Shoe and B.C., 3/26/13

Elementary school test questions as setups to jokes in comic strips: most played out cliché on the comics page, or mostest played out cliché on the comics page? I guess I shouldn’t complain about accuracy when the students being tested are anthropomorphic bird-people and/or sentient ants, but I do question the quality of instruction in the bird and ant educational systems. In Shoe, Skyler’s cynical, heavy-lidded expression in panel two shows that he understands what a bizarrely open-ended and unanswerable question he’s been presented with, presumably by whatever over-eager art teacher also thought that art puns based on a catchphrase from a 17-year-old movie would get elementary school kids enthusiastic about learning. The ant-child, meanwhile, in an act of defiance over what appears to be a test of his knowledge of old sayings that are actively incorrect, fills in the blanks with a plea for death. Frankly, these questions are both making a good case for a uniform, standardized testing regime with questions developed by government bureaucrats, if these are the locally-directed alternatives.

Mark Trail, 3/26/13

Maybe Mark does love Rusty after all? In order to perpetrate his completely misguided rescue scheme, he’s been forced to not verbalize a sentence he’s formed in his mind and confine it to a thought balloon instead, in what must be a superhuman effort on his part.

Spider-Man, 3/26/13

DAREDEVIL: “And that’s where attorney Matt Murdock comes in!”

SPIDER-MAN: “Wow! This I gotta see!”

[SEVEN HOURS AND HUNDREDS OF LEXISNEXIS SEARCHES LATER]

SPIDER-MAN: “Oh, man, was I ever wrong about this.”

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Better Half, 3/25/13

Hello, and welcome to this journey I’m on, which is called “Josh learns that the Better Half is so, so much more harrowing than the Lockhorns will ever be.” Remember: Leroy doesn’t mind when Loretta criticizes him because he’s a loveless shell of a man who can’t feel emotions anymore. Stanley doesn’t mind when Harriet criticizes him because he desperately craves her attention, and he may not know how to fix the sad dysfunction that his marriage has become, but he at least knows that if he screws up Harriet will acknowledge his existence, and maybe even make eye contact with him and oh my God I’m crying right now pretty much.

Mark Trail, 3/25/13

There was a minute where I thought this was one of those things where the antagonist and protagonist have a stand-off and they both know a secret and they each know the other knows, but everyone pretends not to know, to heighten dramatic tension. Then I remembered that Mark and Rod Bassy were both extremely dumb and also Mark Trail doesn’t really do dramatic tension, so I guess Rod thinks he’s being pretty slick here. Remember, Rod thinks that blurting out “Are you saying that I’m doing something illegal” with no provocation is “slick,” so it makes sense that his instinct is to totally downplay a child being missing for … hours? days? Who even knows at this point. You know, kids today, so lazy that they just wander off away from their families, just going somewhere to be lazy and also have no way of acquiring food and shelter, amiright?

Herb and Jamaal, 3/25/13

By the way, Kopi Luwak is so expensive and famous because it’s been pooped out by civets. So I guess kudos to Herb and Jamaal for not going for the poop joke, though also I guess this joke isn’t very funny, so, I dunno, maybe we should’ve tried out a poop joke and seen how it went.

Spider-Man, 3/25/13

“I mean, how could a lawyer help defeat a villain with no superpowers who runs a large criminal organization? It makes no sense!”

Crankshaft, 3/25/13

Haha, that Crankshaft, he sure literally sucks the joy out of the life of everyone he knows!

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Dick Tracy, 3/20/13

Sure, Dick Tracy isn’t in favor of puzzle-fixated weirdos robbing the Ren Faire in broad daylight and otherwise hassling the law-abiding citizens of his fair city. But there’s always a bright side to everything! For instance, since The Daily pays a syndicate to run the Jumbler’s daily puzzle, Dick and Sam are well within their legal rights to march down to the newspaper office, smash up all the computers with billy clubs, and then dynamite the presses. This will prevent this criminal from making any further profit from his sinister Jumbles, and if in the process it stops the liberal media from running constant biased crybaby stories about an out-of-control police force running roughshod over due process, well, that’s just an added bonus.

Mark Trail, 3/20/13

Yes, Rod Bassy’s van will be very difficult to find among the literally tens of vehicles parked in this tiny fishing hamlet, considering his name is pained on the side in giant letters and all. Still, it’s fun to watch Mark and Bluegill work themselves up into a frenzy imagining the vigilante violence they’ll perpetrate to cover up their joy at Rusty’s demise.

Apartment 3-G, 3/20/13

My mistake! I thought this guy’s thing was that he hit on emotionally vulnerable war widows, but it turns out he just likes to drop his pants and wave his dick at them.