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Mark Trail, 4/17/10

One of my favorite things about Mark Trail is that its plotting seems to demonstrate a complete lack of familiarity with how this country — or any other, for that matter — is actually in practice governed. Usually this ignorance is most obvious when it comes to law enforcement, which in this strip mostly consists of forest rangers who lead off ne’er-do-wells who Mark has punched into submission; but things tend to get extra hilarious when the plot’s focus moves to actual government bodies. Longtime readers will remember the exciting eminent domain plotline, in which a zoning hearing that would in real life have taken place in the course of some deathly dull meeting of the county legislature incomprehensibly took the form of a dramatic jury trial. And today, it looks like we’re going to see two wholly unrelated matters — a zoning proposal to restrict float planes and motorboats on a lake that may or may not be publicly owned, who knows, and a criminal complaint about a vicious gang of backwoods poachers who are holding the north end of said lake under a reign of terror — get resolved by some ill-defined gathering of white dudes in suits in some mahogany-paneled room. Who are these men? What power do they wield? Will they be putty in Mark’s hands once he shows him the shocking photos in that manila folder? One of these questions is easy to answer.

Of course, it’s wholly possible that Jack Elrod deliberately refuses to depict government realistically because he recognizes no political authority other than the NOAA as legitimate.

Archie, 4/17/10

Archie, the comics’ most notorious man-whore, is clearly trying to figure out if even he would fuck a small, disk-shaped robot.

Luann, 4/17/10

OH MY GOD TIFFANY AND GUNTHER ARE TOTALLY GOING TO LOSE THEIR VIRGINITY TO EACH OTHER EVERYBODY! I find this prospect distasteful, not least because their clashing grid-shirts will induce terrible headaches if they get any closer to each other.

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Mary Worth, 4/14/10

Oh ho, compulsive shopping, everybody! That’s what this Mary Worth storyline is about! Compulsive shopping at comically misspelled stores like “Maisie’s” (which is totally not at all related to Macy★s Department Stores, a brand that would never encourage its customers to spend beyond their means, ha ha, please don’t sue us). When all is said and done here, Mary might look back on this shopping expedition with a bit of guilt, but probably won’t because she lacks self-awareness of any kind.

By the way, Bonnie, I recommend that you take Mary up on her offer and formulate your own ideas on how she can help you break out of your terrible shopoholism. Any treatment plan she designs on her own will involve gathering her friends to berate and insult you until you kill yourself out of shame.

Apartment 3-G, 4/14/10

Sad as I am that this plotline will apparently end without a single shot being fired, I do sort of like the casual way Martin has taken advantage of Bobbie’s distraction to disarm her, almost as if this is a scenario that played out dozens of times during their marriage. In fact, it would be extra hilarious if he went upstairs and informed Gabriella that he and his wife had rediscovered the spark in their relationship and that his proposal to her was hereby retracted.

Margo, meanwhile, has presumably dozed off on the floor, just as she did as a kid when Roberta would get all pill-happy and gun-crazy. Doesn’t hanging out with our parents always bring us back to our childhood behaviors?

Mark Trail, 4/14/10

So not only has former blond Adonis Buzz Miller been turned prematurely white-haired, but now Senator Pimphand, who once sported a dignified grey mane that belied his propensity for violence, has now subsequently rediscovered the russet locks of his youth! I think that we may be onto something very big here: Senator Slaps-a-Lot is actually stealing the life-energy of his constituents, like poor Ranger Miller. This vampiristic misdeed will make Senator Other Senator’s little Endangered Species Steakhouse operation look like small potatoes.

Crankshaft, 4/14/10

I have no idea what Jeff’s terrible lopsided facial expression in the final panel is supposed to denote. I’m guessing it’s “Oh my God, I am physically incapable of not making terrible unfunny puns, please, somebody stop me, I hate myself so much,” but it may also be “I am so high on prescription drugs — which were, uh, ‘in the water supply’ — that I cannot feel my face.”

Pluggers, 4/14/10

Deep down, pluggers know that they cannot replace their long-lost intimate life with their spouses with eating, endless eating, but that won’t stop them from trying.

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Mark Trail, 4/13/10

I can’t remember what task it was that Mark assigned to Ranger Miller while he took on the more dangerous and exciting job of tracking the Parker Brothers to their sinister poaching lair, but I’m reasonably sure that it wasn’t romancing bathing beauty Jan Harris. (As you can see from that previous strip, whatever sort of encounter the two had was so shocking that it turned the good ranger’s hair white.) And we can tell from Miller’s besotted blather that Jan is in turn just using her nubile body to influence the politically powerful ranger corps and keep the lake open for float-planing business. And then Mark has the nerve to suggest “a solution that will make everyone happy!” These people all disgust me, and they make the Parker Brothers, who just want everyone to be able to enjoy a delicious moose steak without Big Government getting in the way, look like heroes.

Apartment 3-G, 4/13/10

Wow, this is some serious anti-climax right here; even as he gently eases the gun from her hand, Martin can’t believe that he’s going to survive only because his estranged pill-crazed wife has been briefly distracted by a cell phone call from her boyfriend. This is extremely weak, and, just as many U.S. state legislatures are making it illegal to talk on a handheld cell phone while driving, so too should deranged would-be murderers everywhere make a pact to set their own mobile phones to vibrate, lest they lose their focus on writing a tale of vengeance using the blood of their enemies as ink.

Panels from 9 Chickweed Lane, 4/12/10, and Spider-Man, 4/13/10

There was a certain buzz in yesterday’s comments on the gape-mouth toothy horror in yesterday’s 9 Chickweed Lane, but for my money the looming, gnashy teeth of J. Jonah Jameson are much, much more terrifying. Maybe it’s a contest among comics artists? Whose teeth are you keen on not seeing? June Morgan’s? Les Moore’s? TJ’s? OH OH GOD TJ’S TEETH OH GOD OH GOD