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Mary Worth, 8/19/12

As advertisers of electronic devices, apps, and Web services are learning, it’s tough to make a compelling image out of somebody staring at a screen. I mean, a CEO can feign rapture while eavesdropping on his sales team’s BS from his iPad, but when that ad runs on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, he’s just gonna look like an idiot.

So pity Mary and Toby, stuck on the couch watching Wilbur’s Italian Adventure this week. No amount of compulsive cheek-touching or sedative chit-chat can make them more than props in this turgid recap.

But what’s going on with Ian?

Mary Worth, 8/15–19/12 (excerpts)

Our Favorite Blowhard has been going through the changes all week — from smug confidence that somehow this will all work out well for him, through shock that it doesn’t seem to be going that way, to feigned indifference, alarm, then petulant dismay at the continued disregard of his Presence, and now RAGE that no one — NO ONE — is paying any attention to him at all! Toby’s in for a rough night.

Crankshaft, 8/19/12

Aw, look — it’s a charming and gently amusing Sunday Crankshaft! You gotta love Quad-Cane Guy at second, right? And nobody’s talking! Wait, I guess that’s not a coincidence, is it?

Mark Trail, 8/19/12

Oh, Aristotle my ass: animals that live in the water are fish. Deal with it.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Marvin, 8/7/12

So Marvin is celebrating its 30th anniversary by having baby Marvin travel to his own future with his 30-year-old grown-up self. The time-travel process caused baby Marvin to spontaneously become 30 years old himself, despite the fact that travelling back in time didn’t turn 30-year-old Marvin into a baby, and if there’s one thing that offends me almost as much as constantly gleeful poop jokes, it’s inconsistent rules for time travel within a fictional universe.

Also, if you’re curious, the next thirty years will be an unending grind of economic malaise, and babies born today will never have the financial independence that generations of Americans have taken for granted! I’m kind of missing the poop jokes now, actually.

Mark Trail, 8/7/12

In a shockingly non-predictable development, Rusty was not captured by the sheep killers, who will now presumably menace the entire Mark-less Trail clan with their sinister, looming foreheads. I was going to say that the worry that Rusty would head right to some prison warden to show off his pictures is kind of bizarre, but you know what, it’s not like the kid has any friends his own age, paling around with some mid-level bureaucrat in the local Department of Corrections makes as much sense as anything else.

Mary Worth, 8/7/12

A lifetime of disappointments has trained Wilbur to set his expectations very, very low. “Well, this vacation didn’t end in our deaths! I guess we can call it … mostly enjoyable?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/7/12

Haw haw, ladies sure be hatin’ their bodies, amiright fellas

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Judge Parker, 8/2/12

If you haven’t been following the storyline of Judge Parker — and let’s face it, you probably haven’t — it’s gone something like this: the mean people at the run-down fishing lodge suddenly became nice people, but it turns out it’s only because they’re secretly in league with (or perhaps secretly are the same people as) the owners of the marijuana field Avery accidentally fell into and they just wanted to get Sam and Avery out on the river so that they could steal Avery’s camera and get the marijuana pictures off of it, except that Avery took his camera fishing with him, foiling their evil plans. And now they’re presumably planning to lure Sam and Avery down into their cellar and imprison and/or murder them there. This is a good example of how Sam’s charmed life has dangerously lowered his defenses. “Why yes, I am wealthy and good-looking and well-connected, so it totally makes sense that you’re going to give me some luxury item for free. I’ll just trundle down into your dank basement and take my pick!”

Mark Trail, 8/2/12

Time in Mark Trail passes in a surreal, dream-like fashion, so who even knows how long ago it was that Rusty saw the poachers shoot that bighorn from a plane. Has it been days? It seems like it might have been days. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Rusty, is what you really want to do is get a good, stomach-turning picture of some rotting sheep-flesh, with the more flies the better, if you want any respect from the avant-garde art world. You should actually crop out the poachers’ faces if you want to emphasize life’s impersonal cruelty, as I assume you do.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/2/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Jamaal is farting constantly, and also because Herb is going to die of a massive heart attack!