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Crock, 10/11/10

It shames me to admit this, but I recognized the hideous mutant bird-thing in Crock today more or less right away. It made a previous appearance taunting Figowitz about a year ago, only back then it was blue and I assumed it was meant to represent the bluebird of happiness. Is it meaningful that the bluebird of happiness in this blighted, soul-crushing strip is now a drab brown color? Probably!

Mark Trail, 10/11/10

Good news for Mark! He definitely won’t have any trouble selling that story he’s working on when it stops being about political insiders shooting semi-tame animals in a caged hunt and starts being about political insiders shooting a little girl. Admittedly, he’ll have to find another future mate for Rusty, but there seems to be a pretty much endless supply of mutant child-things in the Mark Trail universe, so presumably that won’t be a problem.

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Mark Trail, 10/2/10

So it turns out the Joe has, in fact, refused to participate in any and all cage-hunting activities, and has quit his job with Future Governor Frank in disgust. Presumably he was permitted to sleep out in the horse stables as part of his compensation, because now he’s celebrated quitting by simply cramming his worldly possessions into a rucksack and walking out into the woods to see where life will take him. As you would expect for someone who would regard such a course of action as totally normal, Joe is good friends with local nature weirdo Mark Trail, whose idea of a good time is bellowing out greetings from behind bushes.

I sort of assumed that Joe’s baby blue work shirt and matching hat were a workman’s uniform of some sort, but apparently he chooses to wear them on his own accord. Certainly had they been assigned to him by his previous employer, he would have been forced to hand them over to his hopefully more compliant successor.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/10

Believe it or not, we’re only seeing two-thirds of Loweezy and Elviney’s emotional roller-coaster ride. First they think their husbands are ogling other gals; then they realize they’re just assessing some photos of pack animals, in a bit of healthy backwoods fun. But take a good look at the picture of the “horse” on the back of that magazine: it has prominent buttons on its chest, indicating that it’s actually two (or more?) people wearing a horse suit, and that “Horse Trader Weekly” is a very, very different kind of magazine than you might expect.

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Mark Trail, 9/29/10

Not for the first time, I’m completely flummoxed by the moral and legal universe that Mark Trail inhabits. We’ve had plenty of wholly understandable righteous indignation about Future Governor Frank’s semi-caged hunting of semi-wild animals scheme, but no mention of any actual laws that it might break. What, then, does Mark hope to achieve with his telescopic-lens photos? Career-wrecking shame? But Frank seems to believe that this hunt will improve his popularity, not harm it. But maybe we’re meant to believe that honest ordinary voters would be repulsed by caged hunts, and only the twisted, effete elites would take joy in this vile pastime. Perhaps Mark wants to reveal Frank in the midst of clubby scenes like panel one, with its “gentlemen, let’s toast to evil!” vibe, and destroy the common-man cred that we haven’t seen him doing any kind of work to build up. Today, however, we become privy to immorality within immorality, with the already farcical hunt’s outcome being fixed in advance to curry favor with some influential lawmaker. Where does the rabbit hole of depravity end?

I’m pretty numb to bizarre Elrod-ball placement at this point, but I do find panel two particularly charming. Ol’ Joe isn’t too bright, apparently, as he needs to be reminded that he is in fact Frank’s ranch foreman. Frank carefully outlines the details of his scheme, but Joe can only look on numbly and mutter “Jack Elrod” in response. Perhaps simple Joe will be this story’s moral center, refusing to fulfill his odious duties and instead revealing the sins of his employer to the world. “Jack Elrod!” he’ll shout, in triumph.

Ziggy, 9/29/10

Ha ha, Ziggy, don’t worry! Nobody actually wants to buy your body parts. In fact, most people, upon discovering that your liver or one of your kidneys was inside them, would probably try to remove the offending organ with whatever sharp implement was at hand.