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Mark Trail, 1/30/09

Uh-oh! Looks like we’re going to be getting to the punchery much sooner than anticipated! Obviously, the world of Mark Trail does not conform to our simple linear Earth-logic, but there are a few things going on here that are laughable even by this strip’s standards:

• It’s laughable that any adult human — even one as demonstrably dim as poor deerophilic Patty — would require photo-taking instructions so basic as to make it seem that she’s never encountered one of these so-called “cameras” before. “And you promise that this won’t actually put you and Bucky inside the little box, right?”
• It’s laughable that someone would be jealous at discovering Mark alone with his wife, as anyone who’s exchanged two sentences with the man would realize that sex baffles and terrifies him.
• It’s laughable that anyone would be able to clench his hand into a fist within half a mile of Mark without Mark hearing the tell-tale crinkling of palm-flesh and instantly being on the alert. WATCH OUT, KEN!

Marvin, 1/30/09

“Hmm, I seem to have written a joke that requires the grandfather character to be asleep without the reader realizing it until the third panel! This is tricky because, according to my research, most people close their eyes when they sleep, and eyes are something I draw when I do cartoons. Hmm, let me think, let me think … I could have him wear sunglasses, inside for some reason … no, that doesn’t make sense. Or, I could draw his regular eyeglasses such that you can’t see his pupils. That is at odds with how I’ve drawn him every other time he’s appeared in the strip, but, as I think I mentioned, I already came up with the joke, so it’ll have to do.”

Crankshaft, 1/30/09

If there’s one thing guaranteed to shock and disgust Crankshaft, it’s a sincere expression of human affection.

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/25/09

I’m having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what the idea is that sassy Montoni’s waitress Rachel is trying to get across in the final two panels. Is it “We cover up our anxiety about the quality of our food by aggressively insisting that you eat it at all and pretend to be enjoying it, even though you’ll probably suffer a massive heart attack about halfway through, because of the grease?”

I am not, however, having a hard time following what’s happening on this date. Apparently, earlier Cayla told Les, in a sultry voice and with hooded eyes, that she “didn’t want to be good anymore.” Naturally, he interpreted this as somehow relating to her diet, so he took her to his artery-busting place of part-time employment. The fact that he thinks he’s impressing her by throwing his weight around at the local fast-food place, where he took an afterschool job not because he needed the money but because he was lonely and wanted to spy on his teenage daughter, tells you everything you need to know the direction in which this date is going.

Phantom, 1/25/09

The current Sunday Phantom storyline has featured Kani, a juvenile delinquent from the mean streets of Mawitaan, being rehabilitated by the Phantom and his cheerful children. Today Kani learns a few lessons that will do him well in the tough, gang-ridden environment where he grew up: that punches with padded gloves will easily best men with guns (this coming from the only superhero I know who carries a pistol), and that when you land a particularly good punch your opponents will remark favorably on your pugilistic skills. Surely if the big purple guy just wanted Kani offed, he could do it more efficiently than this; presumably this is part of some elaborate reality-prank show, where Kani will get gunned down in an alley on his first day back home and then they’ll play a muted-horn wanh wanh WANNNNH.

Slylock Fox, 1/25/09

The main Slylock Fox mystery isn’t particularly interesting to me today (he’s going to eat the fortune? really?) but I am charmed by the puzzle in the strip’s top layer. Presumably, Grandpa has set up this elaborate brain-teaser to make his grandkids feel bad both about their intellectual limitations and about forgetting his birthday. “So you know the birthday cards you get every year with a $20 bill inside? Well, you can forget seeing any more of those. That’s now what I call ‘Grandpa’s bourbon fund.'”

Mark Trail, 1/25/09

Coloring madness during the week (and yes, I do intend to follow up with you nice people who contacted me about it, I swear) can at least be explained by the fact that the Monday-through-Saturday strips are drawn and colored by different people, who don’t necessarily speak to one another. That doesn’t help answer the question of why this Sunday strip features what appear to be pigeons bearing parakeet markings. Presumably next week’s nature lesson will be about wild mushrooms: which are OK to eat and which are OH MY GOD THE COLORS THE COLORS.

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Mark Trail, 1/24/09

A few days ago, we saw Patty get slapped around by her husband for the simple crime of letting a filthy, disease-ridden deer wander around in their house, pooping everywhere. I couldn’t bring myself to make a funny about domestic violence at the time, but I knew that Mark would eventually be called upon to deliver the righteous punches to Patty’s cruel spouse. And yet today, we see that Mark is in fact equally heartless, though the blows he lands won’t leave marks. “Say, I think it would be interesting to write an article about how bringing wild animals into your house is a terrible idea, for you and the animal! Let’s go take an extensive series of pictures of our idiot friend who did just that, and then run them in the article, with big captions that say ‘MORON’ and ‘ANIMAL ABUSER’! We won’t tell her what the article’s about until it’s published. I’m sure her husband will react positively to seeing her foolishness in print for everyone to see!” It’s about time this strip took on the power-hungry liberal media, represented by Mark Trail, who will stop at nothing to get his pointless stories for his stupid magazine read by nobody.

Gil Thorp, 1/24/09

I was in a creative writing class my senior year of college, and one of the my classmates wrote a story about a girl who was always looking in her bedroom mirror and thinking she was fat, and eventually she developed an eating disorder and died, and afterwards her mother realized that the mirror was bowed outward a bit in the middle, making her look fatter than she really was. We were not kind to that story when it came time for the peer review; and yet, when I moved out of my tiny studio apartment that summer, I discovered that my only full length mirror was in fact bowed outward just as the story described, and while I had not become a desperate bulimic or anything, I had been worried about what I perceived as my encroaching portliness.

My point is that young people are dumb and that this scheme, in which a perfectly healthy Bryce will be flimflammed into trying out for the basketball team against his wishes with Photoshop trickery, is actually halfway plausible. Bryce’s sister just wants him to join the team to make friends and get out of his funk, but I hope she’s happy when he commits himself to a grueling 18-hour-a-day workout schedule and limits his daily meals to a few pieces of diet bread. After he drops dead of starvation in mid-layup, his life story will be dramatized as the made-for-TV film Please, Bryce, Eat! presented as a special event on local public access cable, hosted by Marty Moon.

Dennis the Menace, 1/24/09

Good lord, look at Mr. Wilson’s pants — they’re obviously designed for a man at least six inches taller than he is now. The poor bastard isn’t sad about Dennis’s sub-menacing chicanery; he’s obviously realized that he’s shrinking rapidly, and will soon be no taller than his irritating houseguest, only to subsequently vanish altogether.