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Six Chix, 7/29/11

I used to think that the life of a retired male thoroughbred horse — left to spend your time at leisure on a nice farm, with occasional sexy times with lady horses — seemed pretty sweet. Then I found out that thoroughbred horse semen is far too valuable to waste on a single lady horse per ejaculation, and so the studs have to get it on with a fake horse that encloses an elaborate semen-harvesting apparatus, with said semen shipped across the country to dozens of lady horses whom the male horses never get to meet. What I’m trying to say is that these two horses should probably count their blessings, unless the brown horse is in fact a particularly well designed piece of semen-harvesting apparatus.

Mark Trail, 7/29/11

Oh man, oh man. Is Mark going to punch a swan, more in sorrow than in anger? Is he going to get his pretty face all pecked? We’re only like two days into this plot and it’s already 20 times funnier than anything that’s happened in the last five years that didn’t involve Rusty getting trapped under a car.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/29/11

Your hilarious, whimsical comic of the day, everybody! I will cheerfully cop to being afraid of death, for whatever that’s worth.

Pluggers, 7/29/11

“Plugger Yelp” is when one plugger addresses another with awkward slang terms that nobody ever uses, and receives a reply that consists of unintelligible animal noises.

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Marvin, 7/28/11

Every once in a while, I question some of my comics obsessions and bêtes noires. Do the newspaper comics really have the horrible tendencies that I attribute to them, or am I just being uncharitable because of my own particular mission as a curmudgeonly comics commentator? Take Marvin; is this strip really the shit-stained horror that I make it out to be, or is it merely a whimsical take on infancy that happens to include the occasional joke about diaper-changing? When I’m wracked with self-doubt of this kind, it’s almost a relief to see strips like today’s, in which Marvin spasms uncontrollably while taking a huge dump in his pants, and then cracks wise about how gross it is, inside his pants. Thanks, Marvin, for reinforcing all my worst opinions about you!

Mark Trail, 7/28/11

Because Mark was able to convince mountain man John Thrasher to come down from the mountains and also no longer have PTSD, he’s now gotten cocky and believes that he can convince anyone or anything to do whatever he asks. If there’s a something more hilarious than Mark Trail wading towards a goose and bellowing “WAIT! RELAX!” at it, I’m not sure what it could possibly be.

Mary Worth, 7/28/11

Oh, wait, never mind, some poor waitress running away from Mary Worth and vomiting in terror and disgust is definitely funnier.

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Mark Trail, 7/16/11

You guys, Mark Trail is getting serious, for a minute! John Thrasher didn’t hide up in the hills because he hates people; he did because he has a problem — a problem called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, though that’s way too many syllables for a Mark Trail character to say. It’s really too bad that John’s father sent Mark Trail to extract him from his mountain lair, rather than, say, a trained and skilled mental health professional. Mark is the sort of guy who believes that the best thing to give a seriously depressed little girl is a puppy. Does he think he can similarly cure John’s PTSD by giving him a new pet? Because that would be ridicu … OH MY GOD OH MY GOD MARK TRAIL IS GOING TO RIP OFF THE FUNKY WINKERBEAN TRAINED DOGS HELPING TRAUMATIZED VETS STORYLINE!!!

Crankshaft, 7/16/11

I like the fact that Crankshaft is saying that he’s going to “break,” here. That’s the language of extreme interrogation methods, and it implies that this heat wave is actually God’s way of literally torturing Crankshaft, which I’m in favor of for obvious reasons.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/16/11

It’s also possible that Herb just has a really terrible sense of humor, which, considering he’s one of the protagonists of Herb and Jamaal, is probably the most likely scenario here.