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Mark Trail, 4/25/08

Here, let me recap for you everything that’s happened in this strip since I last mentioned it a month ago: little Madeline started letting her dog Bill just roam around the neighborhood, because she is a moron, and the evil dognappers dognapped him, leaving Madeline sad, which she deserves. Some might say that I’m being too hard on a little girl, and that her mother bears some of the blame for not letting her know that people don’t just let their dogs roam free through neat suburban neighborhoods because they tend to urinate and/or defecate on your (or the neighbors’) lawn, or run away, or get hit by cars, or, on planet Mark Trail, get stolen by dognappers and held for ransom, what the heck. But shouldn’t Madeline have noticed that when Mommy let Daddy roam free at night, eventually he never came back? C’mon, kid, you’ve got to learn from your family’s past mistakes.

Anyway, the reason I’m even bothering with this strip is that Mark Trail apparently now has a cell phone. The thought of him using any technology developed after 1955 confuses and terrifies me, which means that I’m glad to see that the actual illustration involves him talking on his motel’s black rotary phone, as God intended.

Gasoline Alley, 4/25/08

I’m not even going to pretend that I understand exactly what’s going on in Gasoline Alley — that’s what Going Antisane is for. All I can tell you is that it involves the dude with glasses, who is an over-the-top parody of some kind of wealthy college boy from the 1930s, marrying into a clan of sassy hillbillies — except that his fiancée is actually a blonde, not the brunette he’s smooching here mere moments before the ceremony begins; the kissee is actually his fiancée’s sister, or cousin, or … well, given the rustic setting of the action, I think we can safely file her under the category of “kin.” None of this is really important for my main point, though, which is SWEET JESUS THOSE SOULLESS BLACK CHITINOUS EYES ARE STARING DEEP INTO MY VERY SOUL ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Curtis, 4/25/08

I’d like to give a nod to faithful reader commodorejohn, who predicted this plot development a week and a half ago; watch him break down the signs with admirable precision. I’d also like to point out that young Randy Wagstaff from season four of The Wire was depicted with a similar in-school candy-selling operation; later, his story ended (SPOILERS!) with fire-bombing and group homes and brutalization, so this Curtis bit should be good.

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Hey, everybody! If you’ve enjoyed faithful reader Gold-Digging Nanny’s takes on Slylock Fox’s Six Differences, you no long have to hunt through the comments to find them. That’s because she now has her own blog dedicated to it! Behold, I Found All Six!

Also! I received yesterday an email from faithful reader Seth with a photo of him in his Molly the Bear shirt:

“I love this shirt,” says Seth, and who doesn’t. It’s probably the least in-jokey of all the Comics Curmudgeon merch, and anyone can enjoy it, so obviously you should buy eight or nine and give them to your whole family for Christmas.

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Gil Thorp, 3/24/08

Hooray, the A-Train and his moppet siblings won’t be whisked off to some Dickensian workhouse by Social Services after all! And it’s all thanks to local drunkard Marty Moon, who shook off his unwavering hatred of Milford athletics to heroically perpetrate fraud against the government agency that protects our children from situations just like this. I hope he didn’t smell too much like tequila and those pine-scented car air fresheners that he uses to try to cover up the tequila smell!

I’m a regular Gil Thorp reader, and I too don’t know why Marty Moon might owe Andrew a favor. It’s possible that I missed it in the strip’s usual frenzied storytelling, but I think the key is in Maureen (or whoever)’s rather precise formulation in panel three: not “He owed Andrew a favor” but “I told him he owed Andrew a favor!” Marty probably assumed that he would once again have to follow up on boasts he made during an alcohol-fueled blackout.

Mark Trail, 3/24/08

So, we already knew that the winner of Woods and Wildlife’s Win A Free Puppy From Mark Trail Wearing A Suit contest was “sick,” but we didn’t know that she was suffering from a broken heart (or, as the DSM-IV refers to it, “296.2x: Major Depressive Disorder, Single Episode”) due to her parents’ divorce. Fortunately, she’ll soon be getting just the cure for that: individual and family counseling under the care of a licensed therapist who specializes in working with children a free puppy! She will frolic and play with him all day, and name him “Zoloft.”

Actually, little Madeline has been lying there like that unmoving for the entire duration Mark’s conversation with her mother; her mom, not a trained medical professional, may have mistaken death for sadness (a common error). That would be something that not even a free puppy could cure, but maybe Mark could leave the puppy with Madeline’s mom to cheer her up a little.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/08

No matter what the medical crisis or the task force, Rex always volunteers to check out the high school locker rooms first. You can never be too careful!

Slylock Fox, 3/24/08

SCANDAL! Today, we learn that Slylock only maintains his reputation as the greatest detective on the force by reckless use of home-brewed and experimental performance-enhancing drugs. Is this the lesson we want to give our children: that if you want to be the smartest, you’ve got hit the books — and the needle?