Post Content

Hi and Lois, 5/14/12

An old standby in comics (or any other medium where corny jokes happen) is to have someone feign an inability to parse a completely standard turn of phrase any way but literally. Extremely minor kudos to Hi and Lois for at least portraying Lois reacting with wide-eyed bafflement and distress, exactly as an actual normal human would in this situation. “Wait, did … did Hi really not understand what I was getting at? Oh my God, is he having a stroke?”

Mark Trail, 5/14/12

“So I shot him! Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Just as individual Mark Trail strips are created by combining archival clip art, so too are whole plotlines now being generated by mashing previous plots together. In this case, we seem to be in for some combination of “Mark’s friend Johnny Malotte is not guilty of murder even though all the evidence is against him” (which ran from October 2007 to March 2008, and which among other things featured Mark getting this same sort of jailhouse interview, which is usually the privilege of lawyers and clergy) and “Competition between rival fishing camps turns violent” (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010, and in which two forest ruffians beat up a senator). These were of course two of the more awesome storylines of recent memory, so we can only hope that hybridization produces increased vigor so as to provide us with even more entertaining mayhem.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/14/12

Sadly, Snuffy only managed to inspire Li’l Tater with a passion for justice, racial equality, and human rights. Everyone in Hootin’ Holler was outraged.

Post Content

Judge Parker, 5/13/12

You know I’m a fan of people scowling sullenly in continuity strips, and today’s Judge Parker offers us a doozy! What’s the matter, Sam, are you sad because your once reputable law firm has suddenly become a literary agency for Judge Parker Emeritus’s terrible books and/or a wedding planning consultancy? Ha ha, just kidding, Sam’s law firm has never been “reputable.”

I am intrigued by our first glimpse of the Sam’s new antagonist, Avery Blackstone, who seems more than capable of holding his own in the coming effete-rich-guy-off. “Stewardess, your barbaric in-flight meal has caused minor discomfort to my digestive system! I demand that you vivisect one of the unfortunates in coach in order to fetch me a new one. Quickly now!”

Mark Trail, 5/13/12

I’m pretty sure Mark put all those boring snoresville facts about tuna in the throwaway panels just to make sure that his editors didn’t even bother to read past them to the part where he basically dared comics-reading children around the world to eat dangerous pufferfish. “Yeah, a bunch of nerd scientists are trying to make boring, safe fugu, the kind your mom would eat. What about you? Are you man enough to eat the real thing? The kind that might kill you? You’re not a little baby, are you? Baby want his bottle?”

Post Content

Judge Parker, 5/11/12

Whoops, Avery Blackstone isn’t some WASPy villain bringing danger and intrigue into our heroes’ lives! No, he’s going to inconvenience them, by bringing them money. People showing up unannounced to hand sizable checks to Judge Parker protagonists that they did nothing to earn are honestly one of the primary drivers of drama in this strip.

Dennis the Menace, 5/11/12

Mr. Wilson likes his nap time because that brief moment of obliteration of consciousness reminds him that someday he’ll finally enjoy death’s sweet embrace, and he enjoys Dennis’s because it reminds him that Dennis too will someday die.

Mark Trail, 5/11/12

Aw, now that Rusty knows that he’s been abandoned, again, he’s not even bothering trying to look halfway nonhideous anymore, but just going straight out with the “demonically possessed ventriloquist dummy” look, complete with hair stained red with the blood of his victims. Later, Mark goes and confers with an honest lawman whose job is to put people in prison if all the evidence is against them, unless they’re friends of Mark Trail, in which case he’ll just violate any and all confidentiality rules and spill his guts about everything!

Gasoline Alley, 5/11/12

Speaking of demons, what started out as a vaguely cute Gasoline Alley story about Slim and Clovia taking in a mischievous orphaned kitten has turned into a harrowing fable about good and evil and free will, with the cat being tormented by a sinister feline devil who is constantly forcing him to do awful things. Today, the cat begs to be absolved for the evil it’s done. But is the demon-cat a supernatural outside force, or just the representation of his own untrammeled id?

Marmaduke, 5/11/12

Speaking of demons, Marmaduke’s war against God isn’t going well.