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Spider-Man, 4/27/12

Here is me getting you up to speed on the current Spider-Man plot: Peter went with MJ to a cast meeting for her play, and her co-star showed up on crutches, and said he had a freak accident in which he fell down the stairs (“almost felt like someone pushed me!”). I half-expected Peter to be enlisted to replace him, but then the stuff you see above happened, which makes almost as little sense. Don’t Broadway productions as a rule have understudies for the major roles? Can anyone just wander in off the street and secure a part in a stage play if they’re desperate enough? Is MJ’s play actually a comedy? Would anyone with even a slight sense of what might make someone a bankable comedic actor use the name “Hardy Laurel”? Are we expected to be surprised when it turns out that Hardy Laurel is the guy who pushed MJ’s co-star down the stairs, using some kind of boring superpower, and that Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion?

Mark Trail, 4/27/12

Honestly, you can’t blame those “drug guys” for their violent anger at Ranger Tom. I mean, if you had spent a hot afternoon harvesting marijuana with a pirate cutlass and some fat-cat government bureaucrat who had been sitting on his ass all day started whining about being thirsty, you’d want him to shut up too.

Mary Worth, 4/27/12

I’m sure as a cabbie you get inured to the inane conversational stylings of your passengers, but I do find Mary’s choices here kind of puzzling. This “special announcement” is frankly the most interesting thing you’ve got in this anecdote, Mary! Why are you holding it in thought-balloon reserve?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/26/12

Poor Jughaid is grappling with the problem of living a righteous life in a world (and with a soul) indelibly marked with sin! “Parson sez my conscience keeps me from doin’ wrong, but it ain’t so” frankly sounds like it could have come straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. However, Loweezy’s simple-minded guffawing indicates that this dilemma won’t end with a harrowing but ultimately enlightening revelation; Jughaid’s just going to grow up to be a chicken thief, like everyone else in his family.

Mark Trail, 4/26/12

“If I can just do this without making any noise! If only there were a way for me to clarify my thoughts without speaking them aloud! I’ll just have to shout them as quietly as I possibly can!”

Marmaduke, 4/26/12

In order to cement his rule as demon-king of Earth, Marmaduke has savagely devoured all human politicians, regardless of their ideology or partisan affiliation, and has collected their campaign signs as grisly trophies.

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Mark Trail, 4/18/12

OK, guys, I know that what I’m about to type will sound like pure liquid madness, but: does anyone else think that the current series of Mark Trail events actually somewhat hold together logically? I’m thinking in particular about these two boys here, who, despite their cheery bravado, are not the brightest pair of underemployed mulletheads in the county, as their decision to grow pot on government land indicates, and have arrived at this place in their life because of their inability to clearly plan out the steps they need to reach their goals. Probably a lot of brutal killings that happen in the course of the illegal narcotics trade don’t happen because someone woke up one morning hoping to become an axe murderer; it’s just that someone stumbles upon your grow operation, and he’s seen your stuff and he’s seen your faces, and, well, murder’s a big deal, you probably don’t do it right away, but you can’t let him go, and the hours pass and you can’t think of other options, and, I mean, you’ve already got the axe. It’s right there, you know?

Beetle Bailey, 4/18/12

Everything in Beetle Bailey, meanwhile, only makes sense in a unsettling fugue state of underdeveloped eroticism. Beetle and Miss Buxley are in a field, and it’s the middle of the night, and suddenly she stubs her toe. “Hug me!” she demands, and the Beetle, who’s never shown anything other than platonic interest in her, suddenly becomes a sexually aggressive bear. It’s like what Freud must have thought sex was like, when he was nine.