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Dennis the Menace, 10/22/10

Ha ha! It’s funny because Mr. Wilson’s life has been an endless series of disappointments, which is why he’s so angry all the time!

Mark Trail, 10/22/10

Oh, come on, Mark, you get a chance to punch an animal-hating baddie in the face two or three times a year. Don’t expect us to play along like this isn’t a thing that you do, constantly. (“Dear Punching Magazine: I never thought this would happen to me…”)

Pluggers, 10/22/10

I don’t see any DTV converter box anywhere in this panel, so I’m guessing that our poor plugger has been fiddling with the various knobs on that ol’ TV for about 14 months now. Not constantly, obviously; but every once in a while, when he’s feeling particularly bored and lonely, he turns on the old set, sees there’s still nothing but snow on the screen, and jiggers the buttons, thinking this time, maybe this time he’ll get his stories back. And the game. I just want to watch the game in peace, lord, is that so much to ask? Maybe it’s the horizontal. Did I try playing with the horizontal last time? Maybe I didn’t, and this time it’ll work.

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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.”