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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/8/09

Must I take on the burden of keeping comics within the bounds of their self-constructed universes? Look, the chances of Loweezy’s Gossipy Friend Whose Name I Neither Know Nor Care About being acquainted with the still-popular-but-no-longer-red-hot-enough-to-merit-pop-culture-namechecks TV program Gray’s Anatomy are pretty low, seeing as her community’s only contact with the outside world comes from the town’s few lovingly maintained Hoover-era radios. I suppose its a possible that a few of Hootin’ Holler’s more successful moonshiners acquired fancy tee-vee sets back in the day to tune into the Dumont Network; fortunately, after the switchover to digital broadcasting next month, we will be spared any more attempts on the part of Snuffy Smith to engage with modern television programming.

Frankly, I’m more concerned at the sight of a doctor cramming with a basic anatomy textbook just before an appointment. “OK, the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connect to the … to the … damn it! I knew I shouldn’t have prescribed myself so many drugs during med school!”

Judge Parker, 1/8/09

Ah, so Sexy Heidi the Sexy Detective is turning to Sam not for sexy sex, but for emotional comfort. “Sam, I admire the way you just stood by bored and disinterested while we pumped that woman full of bullets. You’ve obviously learned to look death in the eye and not be touched by it, just as you’ve managed to remain detached from all other aspects of the human experience other than your own smug self-satisfaction. Can … can you teach me how not to feel?”

Mark Trail, 1/8/09

[INSERT PREDICTABLE AND DISTASTEFUL BUT COMPLETELY MANDATORY BESTIALITY JOKE HERE]

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Mark Trail, 1/5/09

With yet another Mark-spurns-a-pretty-non-wife-lady plotline behind us, it looks as if Mark Trail is finally going to touch the third rail of Mark Trail storytelling, by tackling the pretty wife-lady whose advances Mark also routinely spurns. Cherry is so worked up that she’s dispensed with her usual polo shirt and put on a sexy pink robe that’s allowing us to see her collarbone. “I hope he notices that I’ve changed my hair again!” she says, as she gingerly touches the vaguely rearranged curls perched upon her unnaturally large skull and stares at nothing in particular with her horrifying pink eyes. All the while, she’s thinking about her plans to fall on Mark and ravish him the moment he walks in the door, like an owl grabbing a mouse in its razor-sharp talons and tearing it to bits with its beak, only hotter, and with Mark maybe not being killed at the end.

Meanwhile, Doc is thinking “I hope he notices that I’ve paired up this baby blue cardigan with my orange shirt! I think the color combo really does wonders for me!” But he’s too shy to say this aloud, so he just stands there smoking his pipe, and waiting.

Beetle Bailey, 1/5/09

As you may or may not know, for the first six months of its 58-year existence, Beetle Bailey was actually a college strip, following the antics of Beetle and his fraternity brothers; then, one day in March of 1951, Beetle spotted the two girls he was dating both heading towards him simultaneously, ducked into an Army recruiting office to escape, and has been in the military ever since as the subject of some kind of terrifying black-ops time-freezing experiment. The draft has ended and he completed his term of service decades ago, so technically he can leave whenever he wants; however, as his totally neat and keen outfit today suggests, the still twenty-year-old Beetle is completely unequipped to deal with modern collegiate life, with its Facebooks and casual sex and kids wearing flip-flops in the dead of winter for some reason. He will no doubt go crawling back to his captors at the Defense Department’s Chrono-Retardation Corps soon enough.

Crock, 1/5/09

Today’s Crock is actually a philosophical masterpiece of metanarration. Poor Figowitz’s whole purpose for existence in the world of the strip is to be an unlovable sad sack; by deciding to abandon his deepest essence and force his features into a grin, he unravels the very fabric of his universe and brings everything in it — that is, the strip Crock — to an end, plunging his world into inky nothingness. This is intriguing from a metaphysical standpoint, and heartening in that it implies that Crock will cease to exist and we won’t have to read it anymore. If we’re really lucky, the universe-collapse will also occur along the time axis, eliminating the past of the strip and our memories of ever having read it.

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Hello, everybody! I’m back from my long journey northeastward, re-ensconced in my Baltimore lair, and ready for more comics mockery in 2009! I hope you all had good holiday celebrations of your choice. The question arises, as it does every year, as to just what soap strip offered the weirdest holiday greeting on Christmas day. The contenders:

Mary Worth, 12/25/08

Mary Worth shoehorned in a barely-readable one-line bit of good cheer into the second panel. This served as a depressing counterpoint to Mary’s turn as good cop to Frank’s bad cop in the determined effort to Keep Lynn Skating No Matter What.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/25/08

Rex Morgan, M.D., served up a heartfelt tribute to our troops serving overseas, a vanishingly small percentage of whom have the time or inclination to read Rex Morgan, M.D. Is that supposed to be Rex in the Santa hat in panel one, and if so, why is he so grim-faced? Shouldn’t the presence of all that hot man-meat in uniform cheer him up, just a little?

Gasoline Alley, 12/25/08

And finally, Gasoline Alley published an excellent template of a nice design that you can get tattooed across your chest or shoulders if you join a particularly festive and holiday-oriented gang.

But the real present came a couple of days later:

Mark Trail, 12/27/08

You know, too few vigilantes are willing to go the extra mile anymore by shouting “SURPRISE!” at their bearded prey while tackling them. The world is poorer for the loss of those sorts of details.

And hey, I’d be remiss if I ignored BIG DOINGS AFOOT IN SPIDER-MAN LAND!

Spider-Man, 12/31/08-1/1/09

OH MY GOODNESS WHAT COULD THE BIG CHANGES THIS WALL OF TEXT HAS PROMISED US BE??? Instead of watching TV and whining to his wife about how much money she makes, Peter is sleeping in and letting his aged aunt cater to his every need. SO THRILLING!!! I seem to recall some sort of thing in the Spidey comic books involving MJ and … a deal with the devil? Maybe? So they got retroactively satanic-divorced or something? I don’t actually read the Spider-Man comic books, but I recall a lot of people complaining about it, so I hope that bringing this thrilling plot development to the Spider-Man newspaper strip manages to make said comic strip even lamer, in ways I never dreamed possible.

Unlike Spider-Man, I promise you exactly nothing new for 2009. I’ve pretty much figured out my thing and you’ll keep reading it and liking it! As long as they still print newspapers and still print comic strips in those newspaper, I’ll be here, so, if current trends hold true, you should have a good 18 months of this site left to enjoy.

Oh, and finally: my site has been nominated for the Best Humor Blog category at the Weblog Awards! Holy crap! Don’t worry, I’ll be plastering links everywhere when voting starts in a few days. And Ces Marciuliano’s Medium Large was similarly nominated in the Best Comic Strip categories. Stretch your ballot-stuffing muscles!