Post Content

Gil Thorp, 11/26/09

Greetings, faithful readers! I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving did so with your real friends, a whole bunch of beer bottles, and celebrated as our Pilgrim forefathers did, at a picnic table in some dark, lonely park somewhere.

Mark Trail, 11/26/09

Those of you who are criminals have a lot to be thankful for! Specifically, you can be thankful that in America’s forgiving justice system, you can go from being a law-breaker to being law-enforcement official simply by choosing exactly the right time to kick one of your erstwhile criminal associates in the face.

Dick Tracy, 11/27/09

As for me, I’m mostly thankful that Dick Tracy refers to any concert not performed by the U.S. Marine Corps Band or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as “long hair stuff.”

Mark Trail, 11/29/09

And I’m also pleased that Mark Trail decided to pass over more obvious animals on Thanksgiving weekend and go for the deep’s more terrifying tentacled monsters, offering us in the process a lovely image of a nervous human approaching the rotting corpse of 50-foot-long giant squid and a giant depiction of a living squid of indeterminate size regarding us inscrutably from his watery lair. And, sure, the bottom left panel is a repeat of one from a previous squid-themed Mark Trail installment, but what of it? If I had produced an awesome drawing of dozens of squids flying through the air like a barrage of betentacled missiles, I’d run it every damn day if I could.

Post Content

Mark Trail, 11/24/09

Rusty may be intensely stupid and hideously deformed, but he knows how the world — specifically, the world of Mark Trail — works. Having literally swung into action to defend an irritating puppy, Bob will have all of his past transgressions forgiven. Anyway, he was only killing and skinning gators to feed his family, as opposed to his more hirsute co-poachers, who were probably using the money to feed themselves, and whatever other non-related individuals they might share their backwoods shacks with, the greedy bastards. Rusty obviously doesn’t want Bob to labor under the misapprehension that there will be consequences for his actions, which is why he’s stage-whispering to Mark well within earshot in panel three.

Still, the point is largely moot, because nobody’s going to jail. Obviously there are no such things as “courts” or “police” or a “criminal justice system” or “institutions of government with a monopoly on legitimate violence” in Mark’s universe. There are only Mark’s fists and the righteous punishment they dish out. This explains why the poachers are just glumly sitting around the swamp; having been punched, their villainy has been drained away, and they are hollow of motivation and await further instructions.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/09

Cue may be intensely stupid and have dumb piercings, but give him this: he is a total fanatic about referring to his sad little trailer as his “crib.” Here, he almost seems to be using the word as an act of defiance: “Yeah, all you squares might look down your nose at ol’ Cue, just because I deal weed and hold old people for ransom. Well, you know what? I won’t use some bourgeois term for a dwelling, you hear me? I won’t! You can put me in jail, but you can’t stop me from calling my cell a ‘crib.'”

Apartment 3-G, 11/24/09

Well, it looks like the staff of I Dressed In The Dark met with complete and total failure in their attempt to gussy up Tommie. I visualize wave after wave of highly trained makeover artists charging at her, only to watch their best efforts vanish beyond Tommie’s event horizon of blandness. At least they convinced Ruby that her ridiculous hair ribbons should complement her outfit, rather than being the exact same color as everything else she has on.

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/22/09

Wow, that big-eyed grinning severed teddy bear head in the third panel is certainly one of the more horrifying things I’ve seen today, yet it’s worth noting that, as the first panel shows, it’s only slightly less frightening while dangling detached from a dog’s jaws than it was when firmly attached to its original body. I can’t imagine ever giving such a nightmare-fueling monstrosity to a child, but I suppose that Li’l Tater will see worse things in the cesspool of incest and clan feuds that is Hootin’ Holler, so one might as well accustom the lad to horror from the get-go. And so why not attach the teddy bear head to what I assume is the skin of a real bear in some sort of unsettling hybrid? (The question of whatever became of the real head originally attached to the bearskin rug is best not thought about at any length.)

I do have to admit that the fifth panel, in which Loweezy holds the bear head gingerly by the ears and regards it dubiously while her useless husband cheerfully wanders off to get drunk on corn likker and then shoot at things, is a little masterpiece.

Mary Worth, 11/22/09

Well, it looks like Delilah’s sudden and discombobulating reappearance this week is really just meant to serve as a sort of a coda to Adrian and Scott’s story, the relevance of which I’d have an easier time parsing if I could remember what exactly the point of Delilah’s story was in the first place. Uh, true love triumphs over adversity, given enough time? Yeah, let’s go with that. Mostly I just feel bad that poor Leonard Cohen had to get dragged into this; he, along with Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and Daniel Johnston, are victims of this strip’s ongoing attempt to destroy the reputation of various hipster indie musicians by associating them with Mary Worth.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 11/22/09

A man tries to relax by rediscovering his favorite music, only to receive an unwelcome reminder of his own mortality; another man suffers from recurring stress nightmares, years after being forced to retire from the job that prompted them, and wonders when they’ll finally stop haunting him. A relaxing Sunday afternoon in the Funkyverse, everybody!

Mark Trail, 11/22/09

“The ocean without kelp is like the Earth without trees. That’s why we’re harvesting all the kelp for chemical and industrial purposes. Soon there will be no more kelp, just like there will soon be no more trees!”

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/22/09

I thought that those of you who don’t read Rex Morgan except when I mention it here might enjoy this panel, which features Tim throttling the hapless Cue, who soon provided the requested information. See, torture works! Specifically, Cue told Tim that Henry and Pearl had wandered off, which means that we’ll have to endure yet more oldster pursuit across various waterlogged golf courses.