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Mark Trail, 12/6/10

Allow me to dabble in a little heresy here for a moment: could Kelly and Mark actually be perfect for one another? It’s been clear for some time that Cherry isn’t getting her needs met by her spouse: she expects “love” or “affection” or at least a husband who “understands” the “emotions” that motivate “humans.” On the other hand, Kelly, though ostensibly cast in the role of the strip’s sexpot, seems genuinely confused about why it would be inappropriate for her to walk into Mark’s hotel room while he’s showering and answer a phone call from his wife. I don’t think we’re intended to read her line in panel three as being delivered in some kind of sultry yet sarcastic mode; instead, she’s just gazing dumbfounded at the phone, wondering how something she said could possibly have caused such offense. You know who else demonstrates that sort of diagnosable inability to grasp the needs and inner lives of others? Mark Trail.

I’m sort of curious about exactly how Cherry’s posture translates into the massive SLAM we see in panel two. Did she suddenly go all faint at the thought of Kelly in Mark’s hotel room and lose her balance, with one hand catching herself on the table as she pitched forward and the other sending the phone careening back into the cradle almost by accident? Or did she firmly place right hand on the table for balance, so that she could smash the handset down with her left all the more vigorously?

Mary Worth, 12/6/10

A comic panel is, when you think about it, a curious way to convey narrative: although it’s tempting to think of it as a single frozen moment, panels with dialogue do depict a certain amount of time passing, and so each of the motionless characters must occupy a particular instant within the interval that the panel contains. In today’s panel two — which, I hope I don’t need to say, is the most wonderful thing anyone will show you today — Dr. Jeff still bears the beatific expression of a man in the midst of a good uninterrupted bloviation, whereas Mary and Adrian’s looks of stricken horror indicate that they’re living in the moment after Jill’s drunken interruption ruined everything good, forever.

I love virtually all of the details in today’s strips: Jill taking a big gulp of wine in panel one, for courage; the happy couple holding hands, oblivious to what’s about to happen; Mary bringing one hand up to her mouth in shock, while Adrian merely stares on dumbly, finally aware that the friend she’s coddled all this time really, truly doesn’t like any of this crap. But mostly I love Jill’s inexplicable rage, which I’ve loved from the moment it became apparent that it would be the driving force behind this storyline. Jill won’t put up with Jeff’s pablum. God? Don’t talk to Jill about God. Jill knows there’s no heaven above us, just a grid of hideous drop ceiling panels that never end.

Gil Thorp, 12/6/10

With Milford’s star player kicked off the team for dealing drugs, Gil needs to pull some clever coaching out of his coaching hat at the end of the season if he wants to salvage his playdown hopes. “They’ll be looking for the wildcat formation — but not this wildcat!” he says, revealing the the mountain lion he plans to release into his opponents’ backfield on key plays. “Who wants to volunteer to sneak into Valley Tech’s locker room and rub raw meat all over their jock straps?”

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Shoe, 12/3/10

I’m a little embarrassed by how much information about the world of Shoe I carry around in my head, but it took today’s strip to make me notice a gaping hole in its bird-person society. The denizens of Treetops, East Virginia (that is the name of the town where the bird-people live — one of the many things I am embarrassed to know) are, as we see today, represented by an elected bird-official; their society also features dying print media, a medical system and associated pharmaceutical industry, institutions for disposing of their dead honorably, and sexually deviant auto mechanics. But where do these birds go for spiritual comfort? I can’t think of any appearance of the sort of stereotypical priest-bird-man that one might expect from the strip; the resulting need for divine guidance explains the weird sway that Madame Zoo Doo has over her customers. Look at how desperate the Senator appears for news of his soul’s fate in panel one, and how relieved he is in panel two! Yet the Madame never offers any guidelines for living, never creates the foundation for a system of ethics that might transform her superstitious mummery into a great moral belief system; instead, she merely uses her mystical connection to the “other side” as a source of power and control here on earth (or whatever the hell the freaky bird-planet these creatures live on.)

Mark Trail, 12/3/10

Oh my goodness, the hilarious sitcom-style misunderstanding hijinks are already getting underway, and Mark’s not even out of the shower. Kelly playing idly with the phone cord in panel three is a delight — is in fact so delightful that it almost seems to indicate that the strip is becoming aware of its own ludicrousness, which would of course ruin everything. But Kelly’s weird innocence salvages things. She’s not trying to scheme here; her spoken motivations in panel two are completely honest (and why wouldn’t they be, as they’re spoken aloud to no one in particular?). She really does want to make sure Mark doesn’t miss an important call! She’s helping!

Marvin, 12/3/10

I’m not sure why Marvin and Marvin’s dad (Jeff, Marvin’s dad’s name is Jeff, another thing I’m embarrassed to know) have such looks of numb horror in panel three. Maybe Roy’s misjudged modern mores and “you bet your sweet bippy” is still an incredibly shocking and profane thing to say. “Who is this monster,” thinks Jeff, “and how can I keep my poor son away from him?”

Mary Worth, 12/3/10

Dr. Jeff is usually closely aligned with Mary on Team Destroy Anyone Acting Even Slightly At Variance With Acceptable Norms, so it’s rather touching that he’s showing a little softness towards Jill’s human frailty here. “It happens, Mary! I mean, in my day I occasionally got blotto and lunged at someone inappropriate; if I hadn’t, Adrian wouldn’t be here today! Whoops, I’ve said too much.”

Adrian is taking good care of her boozy friend; based on the look of Jill’s hair, I’m guessing that the bride-to-be dunked her bridesmaid’s hair in a bucket of ice water, to shock the drunk out of her. I’d say that Scott is being awful kind to allow Jill to take his seat at the sweetheart table, but I’ve seen no evidence so far that the future groom even bothered to show up for his own rehearsal dinner.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/3/10

Oh, right, Rex Morgan, remember that? As usual, a promisingly hilarious storyline has wrapped up dumbly, with everyone loving Mayor Dalton because they read about his prostate on Pacebook, and with the mayor convincing his rival to drop out of the election by agreeing to give the man’s wife a volunteer job at the museum. Still, I’m amused by today’s strip, in which Dalton decides that unsolicited cheer from a middle-aged mustachioed gentleman is a good opportunity to talk “street.” “Thanks, man! Wait up! That’s how the kids talk on the Pacebook, right?”

Hi and Lois, 12/3/10

Cyclists often set up white-painted ghost bikes as memorials on the spot where someone riding a bicycle was killed by a car, which makes Ditto’s spectral white bicycle extremely creepy to me. Perhaps Lois ran over Ditto months ago on that very spot; driven mad with grief, she can’t remember that her youngest son is dead, and every evening she comes home from work, expecting him to come out and move the bike-memorial out of the way. Dot can no longer bring herself to shatter her mother anew every day, and now just feeds her comforting lies. “Ditto’s, um, not here right now, but he wants a new bike, mom! I’m sure you’re going to give him one, real soon, and he’ll be so happy!”

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Luann, 12/2/10

When it comes to Brad/Toni slash fiction — oh, sorry, I mean, when it comes to the actual Brad/Toni comic strips that appear in newspapers across America — I’ve gone through some kind of abbreviated Kübler-Ross cycle of grief. First game the visceral disgust, of course. Then came the anger. So much anger! But now I’ve settled into just a sort of bafflement. Is there an audience out there who finds these characters compelling, and, more specifically, who finds their glacial trajectory towards physical intimacy arousing, or at least interesting? Is today’s strip blatantly pandering to America’s small but intense calf-massage-fetish community, possibly as a result of a bribe or a lost bet? Has anyone read Luann this week with a feeling more positive than mild distaste? I honestly want to know the answers to these questions, for real!

Mark Trail, 12/2/10

However, I feel confident that the comics-reading public is regarding this week’s Mark Trail with excitement and anticipation. Just as Kelly Welly is leaning back in that chair, gripping the armrests and waiting eagerly to see Mark naked, so too are we sitting back in our respective sitting-oriented-pieces of furniture, waiting eagerly to see Kelly see Mark naked.

Apartment 3-G, 12/2/10

Comics readers are also intrigued to see how this beret-wearing cab driver’s honest masculine advice will help Aunt Iris bed the bicyclist that she, in some way that I never properly understood, caused to be hit by a car. Under the cabbie’s tutelage, she’ll show up at the cyclist’s apartment with something that’s still alive, like a puppy or a stripper.

Gil Thorp, 12/2/10

Comics readers are somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of people being loaded onto buses and interned in camps far from their homes, but for the Milford football team, they’ll allow it.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/10

Ha ha, Jamaal, that chat room is full of other people trying to live out their fantasies! You’re just there to, uh, find out how to get away from there. Due to this strip’s trademark nonspecificity, we have no way of knowing exactly what perverse text-based lusts are being expressed in this online sin den. It’s probably a hot Brad/Toni calf-massage slash fiction site.