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Crock, 11/18/08

You know, I’ve become accustomed to being unamused, irritated, or actively angered at the jokes in Crock; but I’m a little unsettled at being completely befuddled by the jokes in Crock, as I am today. Passing over the oddity of someone insulting an immobile desert plant for spending all day in the sun, what on earth are we to make of the cactus’s riposte? Is it meant to mock us for driving, as if the only way to get out of the sun is to drive to shade? Is “sitting all day at four bucks a gallon” a reference to all the time we sit in our cars, which is a choice we make, whereas a cactus must spend the day in the sun due to biological necessity? Is there a heretofore unexplored traffic problem around the Foreign Legion outposts in the Maghrebi desert?

Anyway, normally I’d see something like a giant orange cactus and think “Ha ha, another colorist screw-up!” But in this case, I think it might be an attempt to distract the reader from the nonsensical punchline.

Mark Trail, 11/18/08

Oh my God, if you work at a newspaper, and/or have access to newspaper layout software, and you can create a fake newspaper front page like the one in panel one — with FAMOUS CONSERVATIONIST RESCUES RACCOON screaming across six columns of type, and an enormous picture of Mark and Sneaky, and what appears to be some kind of sidebar story in the rightmost column (“Mysterious ‘Rabbit’ Unrepentant, Soggy”) — then you will be my personal hero. Well, one of my personal heroes, anyway, because right now my personal hero is Jack Elrod, for not letting this story end with a single punch but rather setting up further punching opportunities by having our two villains join forces. I’m particularly in love with the image of Charlie cruising around the rough part of town (or the local gas station, whatever) looking for a raccoonnapping yokel with a chip on his shoulder and a bruise on his jaw.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/18/08

The next two to four weeks of Funky Winkerbean, in a nutshell: HOLY CRAP GIRLS PLAY SPORTS NOW smirking, foreboding

Crankshaft, 11/18/08

The next two to four weeks of Crankshaft, in a nutshell: HOLY CRAP GIRLS DRIVE BUSES NOW smirking, terrible puns

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Mark Trail, 11/15/08

As a special gift to all of us, because we’ve been so good, Mark Trail is extending the Magical Moment of Fisticuffs for us for another day’s worth of punchy bliss. In today’s panel one, we seem to be seeing the same frozen-in-amber post-punch moment depicted in yesterday’s panel three, but from a different angle; however, Mark’s bellowed dialog has gone from passably bad-ass (“DOES THIS CONVINCE YOU?”) to stilted run-through-the-automated-translator-from-who-knows-what (“THIS LITTLE CONTEST OF YOURS IS UNLAWFUL”). The question is: did Mark have time to shout both of these things at Mr. Rabbit (or whatever his name is) as he tumbled slowly back into the murky swamp water? Or did Rabbit pop back up like a Weeble-Wobble sometime between yesterday and today, giving Mark a chance to lay down another punch and get in another awkward little bon mot?

The rest is no less delightful for being par for the course: Mark admonishes the gathered off-camera yokels, who sit by and do nothing, then breaks Sneaky’s chains with his bare hands and carries him off to safety. For the sake of Mark’s ego, I hope that the adorable raccoon waits until they’re out his backwoods tormentors’ sight before launching his entirely unprovoked attack on Mark’s eyes.

(Psst! This is a perfect time for you to pick up some Fist O’ Justice stuff from the Comics Curmudgeon store!)

Herb and Jamaal, 11/15/08

You know, every once in a while I say to myself, “Oh, the Herb-and-Jamaal-is-hilariously-nonspecific bit is getting old,” but then the strip goes and gets even more hilariously nonspecific. In today’s panel one, Jamaal ensures that those reading this strip in an anthology published in the middle of the 21st century will be able to relate the joke to their own experiences during the Great Disco Revival of the 2030s.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/08

Considering that this backwoods medico is asking our hero if he’s bothered by the sight of blood and advancing on him with what appears to be a scalpel, Snuffy Smith looks awfully chipper. My first guess was that the doctor assumes (correctly) that Snuffy would not be missed if he were to be sliced up and his organs harvested, but then I realized that nobody would want his moonshine-drenched kidneys or hog-fat-choked heart.

Apartment 3-G, 11/15/08

After a tragic romance with a brooding, no-talent, junkie urbanite, it’s not surprising that Lu Ann wants to hop into the arms of a fresh-faced Dakotan. Soon, though, she’ll learn that rural folk have drug problems too, with Cody addicted to trailer-made meth — or, as the locals call it, “prairie dope.”

For Better Or For Worse, 11/15/08

Yes, who said newspapers would become obsolete? Certainly nobody in the late ’70s, when this strip ostensibly takes place.

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Mark Trail, 11/14/08

Let’s imagine that you just started reading Mark Trail, say, nine days ago. Now, this supposition puts us firmly in the realm of the thought experiment, because nobody has “started” reading Mark Trail anytime in the last few decades, obviously, print is dying and the strip is coasting on nostalgia and will keep being drawn until its last reader dies, in 2019, but imagine that you started reading it nine days ago. You would say to yourself, “Good Lord, this strip is insanely action packed, with all the punching!” And then you’d be hooked, and willing to sit through eight to eleven months of mangled syntax and giant mutant animals and questionable ecological science and horribly misguided sexual advances and Mark’s eerie, soulless grin waiting for the next punch. But if you started reading this strip, say, twenty-three days ago, you would have inevitably given up on it before we got to this awesome Mark-Rabbit battle of fists.

What I’m trying to say is that this strip needs MORE PUNCHING, which will allow it to grow its audience and, eventually, be the only strip left in your daily paper (which, due to repeated cutbacks, will be only eight pages long, and will feature Mark Trail, obituaries, baseball box scores, and a single tire ad). BUT: will more Mark Trail punching diminish the awesomeness of each individual punch? Discuss.

Mark and Rabbit sure are striking iconic poses in the final panel, what with Mark’s fist swung up in a classic uppercut and his shirt collar mussed with exertion, and Rabbit’s hat flying off his now senseless head. It would be better if the two of them were even remotely near one another.

Dick Tracy, 11/14/08

Now, if you had just started reading Dick Tracy nine days ago, you’d think, “Gee! In this strip, robots both perpetrate and absorb all the violence! This must mean that actual humans never suffer any harm here.” And you would be so, so wrong. The only question is how Braces will be horribly dismembered; in true ironic fashion, it will involve his own robot, somehow, but it remains to be seen how many of his limbs will still be attached to his torso by the time he finally expires.

I admit to being charmed by “U R NEXT, POLICE PERSON!” Has Brute Force’s vocabulary chip been programmed to be carefully gender neutral, or can he simply not distinguish between the he-fleshling and she-fleshing varieties?

Apartment 3-G, 11/14/08

There are two reasons to love Lu Ann’s sassy Bea Arthur lookalike cousin Blaze: (1) he’s sassy, and (2) he mysteriously doesn’t look exactly like every other youngish male type in Apartment 3-G’s New York City. Today, we learn the reason for (2): instead, he looks exactly every other youngish male type in Apartment 3-G’s world outside New York City.