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Mark Trail, 10/21/10

Some of my readers rushed to declare Friday’s Mark Trail, in which our hero leaps over a barbed-wire-topped fence to knock a rifle out of a senator’s hands, to be the greatest Mark Trail ever. Well, I hope you all feel a little sheepish now that you’ve seen today’s strip, a glorious single-panel tableau in which Future Governor Frank kicks a fawn in the butt while his stepdaughter, Mark, and the man whose political patronage he’s been so desperately seeking all look on in horror. We of course can’t declare this strip the best of all time — for, in a world that has brought forth such wondrousness, how can we put limits on the potential joys of the future? — but it sure is pretty great.

Shoe, 10/21/10

Something doesn’t seem right here: I thought that, in the Shoe world, Roz serves coffee and comfort food from a diner counter on a tree branch, whereas booze is dished out in smoky bars that do not appear to be tree-based structures. But this is mere nitpickery, I know! I should just enjoy the hilarious joke here, about how the strip’s main characters use their crippling alcoholism as an excuse for being cheapskates.

Luann, 10/21/10

So, yeah, I haven’t really been able to bring myself to comment on the “Brad and the gang deal with the serious problems of stalking and domestic violence with Three’s Company-worthy hijinks” plotline over the past few weeks. But then I got to today and saw Brad and TJ talking about ladies underwear, and I thought to myself, “No way in hell am I suffering through this alone.” SO HERE IT IS! LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT THEM TALKING ABOUT PANTIES!

Judge Parker, 10/21/10

Ha ha, it wouldn’t be a Judge Parker story if one of the already wealthy principals didn’t become even richer at the end of it. Sam plays golf with a guy for 10 minutes and sees him get killed? Boom! A $100,000 advance check for Judge Parker! Sam violates legal ethics willy-nilly to sort of half-assedly solve a mystery? Wham! A cool hundred large for him too! Now the hour or so he spent helping Jules set up an Excel spreadsheet will net him a third of what will no doubt turn out to be an insanely lucrative business. It’s a good thing his house is so big, because he’s going to need someplace to put his huge piles of stupid money.

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Mark Trail, 10/19/10

In the normal universe that we know, it would be quite reasonable for Future Governor Frank to assume that an important personage like the senator here would be wholly unacquainted with cabin-dwelling rustic Mark Trail, though I would describe him less as a “troublemaker” and more a “khaki-clad contraction-eschewing weirdo out of touch with ‘Real America.'” But unbeknownst to Frank, Mark has already saved the life of one senator and launched an ethics investigation against another; since the Senate is such a small and exclusive club, one must assume that the man whose patronage Frank has been seeking is already well acquainted with this Trail character. Sorry, Frank, it looks like your only hope is to turn against the senator, claiming you’re running to break his inside-the-beltway cabal, which is dominated by special interests like Mark Trail.

Dick Tracy, 10/19/10

It’s always dangerous to claim to understand anything happening in a given Dick Tracy strip, but it appears that Dick and the comely she-hobo are actually in cahoots, and the Fraud Unit officer in panel three looks to be similarly disguised as a bum. Were there ever any real hobos at all in this storyline? Their absence saddens me, though maybe the strip is trying to advocate against increased government funding for homeless services, since all so-called “homeless people” are just undercover law enforcement officers of one type or another.

Gil Thorp, 10/19/10

This is the part of the Gil Thorp season when Gil and Kaz realize that their players have gotten as far as they can on their native talent and enthusiasm, and would do better if only someone competent were coaching the team. Too bad they didn’t go to another high school!

Pluggers, 10/19/10

Suggested new caption: “Plugger Internet pornography.”

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Your COTW in the moment, but first: I want to share some very special fan art I received from faithful reader Brenda Starr Destroyer!

The third panel of today’s A3G was so goddamn amazing that I was inspired to make countless exciting animated GIFs of it, but I am too lazy and suck at computers. So instead I made some MS Paint drawings, and you can imagine that they are fun and stimulating, or you can try dropping acid.

Brenda Starr Destroyer went on to note that “the line, ‘Extensions are AWESOME!!!’ in a cartoon should be followed by a reveal of hilariously extreme hair, preferably of a completely different race or age.” Sadly, until the wrong is righted, we only have these hilarious/horrifying MS Paint drawings console us.

And now your comment of the week!

“I have just made sense of Dick Tracy. Absinthe time!” –Uncle Lumpy

And your runners up! Also hilarious!

“Shoe: ‘Oh, dear god in heaven! He … he used a word in a secondary sense which actually — choke – means something a bit different from what I may have first expected! It’s like my whole psychic universe is crumbling to bits, making me crave the cool serenity of the gra… we’re done? Okay, paycheck here I come.'” –[Old Man] Muffaroo

“Judge Parker: They need to show a lot more boob if we’re to pretend that’s good French.” –Aviatrix

“Rustina’s eyes are drawn so she appears to be looking down (cross-eyed down, in fact). Is she some sort of misshapen gigantress who could easily put an end to this whole plotline by dropping some size 165EEEEEEEs on the wicked caged-animal hunters? And maybe the giant deer behind her will cap it all off by turning around and dropping some deer-do the size of a Dodge Neon on the evil men while Mark Trail just watches from his hill camp in amazement.” –Apeman

“My spider-sense is tingling like mad! Well, if there’s any danger, at least I’m here in a comfy seat with nachos, not out there with all that danger. Excelsior!” –Ed Dravecky

“This is interesting, today, to me, because when my wife went to look at wedding dresses, she was also carrying her own personal bar of soap.” –Little A.

“If you scroll the Mark Trail panel just enough to cut off the top, you get a terrified little girl screaming ‘Kill the animals — PLEASE!’ as she’s being pursued by an eyeless Deadite fawn, and MT becomes the most awesome strip in newspapers. Like most things in life, fixing comics is easy as long as you know where to slice.” –Vermic

And let’s just take a time out here for some more fan art! Because faithful reader Annie had the same thought upon seeing this panel, and sent in a screenshot:

Uncanny, no? And now, back to the runners up:

“Lu Ann isn’t just happy — she’s jazz-hands happy, and Margo’s coquettish glance in Panel 1 tells me she more than a little pleased to have the old Lu Ann back. Somebody’s going to get bathroomed tonight, and how!” –A Shadowy Figure Fleetingly Glimpsed from the Corner of Your Eye

“I’m pretty sure that last panel is supposed to say ‘amphetamines,’ not ‘extensions.'” –Violet

“I haven’t really been following Mary Worth. Is it a story point that Jill is eight feet tall? Or is she just drawn that way for the hell of it?” –AndyL

“Panel 3 of Apartment 3-G will soon be used in an ad for a penis-enlargement device in the back pages of an alternative newspaper.” –Pozzo

“What is this guy’s deal? Did he run out of grocery money? ‘SHOOT THE @#%# DEER OR NONE OF US EAT TONIGHT!!!’” –Amateur

“Lu Ann got those special, ‘Write-Yourself-Out-of-A-Corner’-brand hair , in ‘Your-Senior-Citizen-Readership-Relies-On-External-Signifiers-To-Tell-Your-Characters-Apart’ blonde.” –late2theparty

“COME ON SENATOR, IT WILL MAKE A GOOD MEAL FOR DINNER TONIGHT, OR MAYBE YOU CAN CURE IT AND PRESERVE IT FOR A SNACK FOR SOME TIME YET TO BE DETERMINED, OR MAYBE YOU JUST CUT OFF ITS TINY HEAD AND MOUNT IT ON YOUR WALL AND FEEL REALLY GREAT ABOUT YOURSELF, so uh anyway, who do you like in the gubernatorial primaries?” –Maggie

“Dance, puppet Lu Ann! Dance to my cynical job offerings!” –gjdodger

“Note the difference between their ages. A jail-‘bait’ pun beckons — but, like the Sirens, remains tantalizingly out of reach.” –Spiny Norman

“I see that Mark Trail was once a wildlife photographer, and is now the Prince of Persia.” –Rumon

“Now I want everyone in class to know that the most important rule of handling firearms is to never, ever stop aiming them no matter the circumstances, especially if you suddenly have reservations about shooting things to the point that you’re shouting them at the top of your lungs. That’s how they get you, kids. That’s how they get you.” –Black Drazon

“Phantom: No wonder Diana is so confident she can jet. Dudes are walking around clockin’ officers (and nobody seems to miss them), people are wandering through the prison wearing purple cowels and shit, blind spots along the fence line allow fools to decorate the barbed wire with palm leaves like he’s at a damn Minnesota tiki bar. Then he wanders BACK into the prison as if he left his wallet on somebody’s desk. Classic. If I ever go to prison I hope it’s one like that one.” –Gregory Earls

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!