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Beetle Bailey, 12/16/10

Good lord, this strip has presented few more nightmarish visions than today’s panel two (and this is a strip that earlier this week featured a disinterested Sarge feeding a bed full of blood-sucking parasites). I guess the point is that the soldiers have been eating so much pork that they’re pretending to turn into pigs (proving that Beetle Bailey is written for and possibly by eight-year-olds), but there’s something about the way they’re all throwing their heads back and closing their eyes making animalistic noises that implies to me an insular group that’s gone off the rails in a deeply creepy way. To avoid “cannibalism,” these self-proclaimed pigs will now spurn the smallish ham and fall upon their cook, tearing him limb from limb and consuming his flesh, oinking all the while.

The Jumble, 12/16/10

The Jumble is definitely one of those strips that I wish I could see as a larger-format image sometimes. Today, for instance, I am fascinated by the three hairs that constitute this horse racing guru’s combover. Rather than flopping greasily over his pate Wilbur Weston style, they hover over his head as if repulsed from his skin by a static charge, presumably barely being held in at the roots.

Mark Trail, 12/16/10

So here’s our villain Ben Smith, and, um, wow. In any visual storytelling medium, we’re supposed to get a read on a character via their appearance, but I have no idea what message the combination of bald, shaggy, mustache, cravat, open-collar dress shirt, and lime green v-neck sweater is supposed to signify. Is it supposed to be “gay” by way of “fussy fashionista”? Under normal circumstances of course one would not associate this outfit with “fashion” in any sense, but then again this is a strip in which Mark just throws an enormous brown jacket over his khaki jumpsuit and calls it “dressing up.”

Spider-Man, 12/16/10

Well, now that I see Spider-Man is planning on punching a dazed, unresisting Mole Man in the face, I guess I should apologize for calling him a coward.

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Mark Trail, 12/12/10

In today’s educational Sunday strip, we learn some crap about Santa and Druids but mostly get to see with our own eyes how uncomfortable Mark gets when his wife is kissing him. “When the last berry is picked, the kissing should end — it must end. Please, please, let it end. Good luck in enduring a lady’s mouth parts touching all of your mouth parts!”

Mary Worth, 12/12/10

Mary’s intrigued by Jill’s M.O. “Instead of bottling her emotions up deep inside, she just lets loose with stream of invective! What compels her to be so open about her negative thoughts? Could this technique be learned? Must … find out …”

Spider-Man, 12/12/10

If I’m ever involved in some kind of superhero team-up, I hope at some point I get to say “I figured you could handle him — while I looked after the ladies.” That’s because I’m a ladies man! And also a coward.

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Panel from Mark Trail, 12/10/10

Let’s cap off a hilarious week in Mark Trail with this hilarious panel! Longtime Trail readers know that the idea of Mark having sex with anyone is utterly laughable, but this panel pretty much seems to tease us with the concept of a Mark-Kelly tryst, as Mark tidies himself up and Kelly offers the first T&A cheesecake shot ever to involve a polo shirt and mom jeans. Our first clue that something is amiss is that Mark is combing his hair. Mark’s hair doesn’t require anything like “combing” for maintenance! It’s a single ink-black unit that hugs his head, needing only the occasional regreasing. Clearly we’ve slipped into some sort of parallel universe, or perhaps are seeing only the images in Kelly’s fevered imagination.

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/10/10

And let’s cap off a hilarious week in Mary Worth with this poignant panel, as two strong men attempt to drag Jill out to the back alley and she desperately pushes her face back into the reception hall, trying to get in one last cuss word. You have to admire her stamina, and her determination to save Adrian from herself. “*@^%$#!” she shouts, as if this is the “*@^%$#” that’s going to push Adrian over the edge and get her to realize that marriage really is all a scam. “Yeah, what am I doing, committing my life to this guy,” Adrian thinks. “*@^%$#ing A!”

Apartment 3-G, 12/10/10

Because of Apartment 3-G’s weird fashions, which seem to be representative of no particular era or cultural milieu, it’s hard to get a sense of exactly how old the main characters are supposed to be. Well, here’s your proof: they’re somewhere around 13.