Post Content

You’ve had plenty of opportunities to read Mark Trail on this site. But you’ve probably said to yourself, “I wish I could see this comic strip stiffly acted out by amateurs! Nothing too long — only five or ten minutes, say — and perhaps in the context of a larger variety show setting.”

Well, sir or madam, if you live in the Baltimore area, or are willing to travel to same, your dreams are about to come true.

No, Mark, not even you and your flying fists can stop it! On Friday, November 9, and Saturday, November 10, some friends and I will be putting on Mark Trail Theater! Thrill as actual Mark Trail dialog and action is rendered into live performance on the stage! Marvel at the incredible resemblance between at least some of our actors and the characters that they will portray! Laugh at the deadpan irony as you try to sort out whether our performance is an homage, a parody, or something in between! One of us will be wearing a real live bear suit! DON’T MISS IT!

Mark Trail Theater will be but a single act within Glitterama!, a variety show put on by the Fluid Movement performance art group. If you live in or near Baltimore, you really ought to know about Fluid Movement by now, but if you don’t, Glitterama will be an excellent introduction. Other acts with which we will be sharing the stage include (but are not limited to) lion taming, torch song singing, gender bending, and black-lit poi swinging! (I have no idea what that last one means.) This is the third Glitterama show and the previous two were awesome — and they didn’t even have me in them, so this will clearly be all the better! The shows tend to be a bit racy; probably best not to bring the younger kids.

The performances will be at the Load of Fun Studios at the corner of Howard St. and North Ave. in Baltimore. The Friday show is a 8 p.m.; Saturday shows are at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are $10; you can buy online at Brown Paper Tickets or at the door (if you want to risk them being sold out, which you don’t, obviously).

More updates and reminders to you to attend this fabulous performance will be upcoming. Possibly including a picture of a guy in a bear suit.

Speaking of upcoming events, those of you who are going to Small Press Expo in Bethesda tomorrow (Saturday), don’t forget that I’m moderating a panel on comics stripping with Keith Knight, Ted Rall, Bill Griffith, and Nicholas Gurewitch at 12:30 p.m. Don’t miss it!

Finally, on a totally unrelated note: as you may or may not know, one of my freelance clients is a tech-related site named ITworld.com. They’re doing a gadget giveaway over there in which you can win a Swiss Army Knife with a USB flash drive built in. All you gotta do to enter is give them your e-mail address. Somebody’s got to win; why not one of you?

Post Content

Crankshaft, 10/6/07

Wow, most comics characters at least make some sort of pretense of respecting religion and some vague concept of a Supreme Being, but Ed Crankshaft has officially added to his Most Cantankerous Comics Character Ever cred by sneering at the notion that any sort of just deity might respond to our pleas. Since he lives in a universe shared with Funky Winkerbean, in which characters are visited by afflictions both arbitrary (cancer, alcoholism) and ironic (hearing loss, limb loss) at a much higher than average rate, he’s obviously decided that begging his Creator for some droplet of mercy will only intensify the punishment to come. Still, the fact that he’s doling out his atheistic opinions to his fellow oldster, reading a book about prayer in a doctor’s waiting room and desperately trying to hold on to some thread of possibility for continued survival, reinforces the ’Shaft’s hardcore crank status.

Hi and Lois, 10/6/07

Of course, Crankshaft’s religious impulses may have been cynically flattened by cartoons like this. Remember, kids, if your congregation is large and wealthy enough to build an enormous, Medieval Times-inspired faux-castle for its church, its members must be one step closer to salvation! It just stands to reason!

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/07

Oh man, oh man, I am so looking forward to Lu Ann’s Adventures In Unrealistically Specific Memory Loss! Does she even remember that she’s an artist? Doesn’t she wonder why she’s an elementary school art teacher if not? Wait a minute — did she somehow manage to hold on to her art teacher job despite the fact the she presumably didn’t come to work in the weeks and weeks she spent barricaded in her carbon monoxide-filled art studio? Does she even remember what a “job” is? Is that why in the first panel she looks so baffled when Alan claims to have one?

Speaking of carbon monoxide poisoning — did anyone ever have words with the kindly studio landlord about the incredibly unsafe status of his building? I’m not up on New York landlord-tenant law, but surely the right to not be suffocated is at least implied in most commercial leases, yes?

Dick Tracy, 10/6/07

Good lord, I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to look at the hideous visage of Dick’s commie nemesis anymore. But then I saw his weird, weird ass. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Dennis the Menace, 10/6/07

Dennis reducing his only friend to a urine-soaked lump of fear is pretty much par for the course for this strip, but I’m kind of intrigued by Henry’s little smile at the psychological hold his son has over his playmate. Presumably the Mitchells will spend this camping trip gaslighting Joey until he’s only fit for a locked mental ward. The only question: is there some financial gain spurring their cruelty on, or is it mere sadistic sport?

Mark Trail, 10/6/07

I haven’t been discussing Mark Trail much because it’s been so painfully moronic, but here’s the gist: Shirley the duck and her chicks, who have been saved first from bulldozers and then from (no, really) rain by Homer the construction foreman, Mark Trail, and some other chumps I refuse to go into the archive to identify, are now about to be eaten by this rather awesomely rendered fish. What lesson will we learn in the end?

• Sometimes nature itself can be crueler than the most rapacious developer.
• There’s no point in trying to protect the weak or care about anything; might as well give up and start drinking!
• Ducks are delicious, and baby ducks are especially delicious.
• Not even fish are safe from Mark’s patented Right Hook O’ Justice!

Discuss.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 9/28/07

Panel four: “…a very drunk tiger. Mmm, sweet highbrow hooch…”

Curtis, 9/28/07

Panel five: “Yeah, I should have killed and dismembered my brother years ago! At last, I might actually get a second helping at mealtimes!”

Mark Trail, 9/28/07

Panel four, narration box: “One year later, the horrible giant man-eating duck-beast that was incubating in Shirley’s nest continues its reign of terror!”

Fleeing human number one: “Why didn’t Thomas Construction destroy this monster in its egg when it had a chance?”

Fleeing human number two: “Curses upon you, Thomas Construction! Humanity will remember you as another Judas, if we aren’t all destroyed!”

Horrible giant man-eating duck-beast: “QUACK! AAAAHHH!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/28/07

Panel four: “So I guess I don’t have any excuse not to have unenthusiastic sex with you tonight! You go into the bedroom and turn the lights off … I’m going to start drinking!”

Ziggy, 9/28/07

Panel two: “…and my genitals just caught a virus from a prostitute!”

Mary Worth, 9/28/07

Panel three: [ceaseless, violent, and uncontrollable retching from everyone everywhere]