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Mark Trail, 4/19/07

“Josh,” people ask me, “Why do you waste your time on Mark Trail? Why do you wade through week after week of stilted dialogue, nonsensical plots, and freakishly enormous animals?” Well, folks, this is why. When Mark Trail starts punching people, there’s a little warm glow you get in your gut that tells you that everything is right in the world. Sure, it’s only happened twice in the last fifteen months (Mark punches Snake, or maybe Jake, I forget; Mark punches a lecherous, petnapping hillbilly; the installment in which Mark knocks over a trio of bumpkins with a booby-trap is awesome but not a punch per se); but the long waits make the payoffs all the sweeter.

Actual, not-made-up quote in the Wikipedia article on Mark Trail: “His assignments inevitably lead him to discover environmental misdeeds, most often solved with a crushing right cross.” This sort of whimsy almost always gets purged from Wikipedia by killjoy editors, but this sentence cannot be removed because it is demonstrably true.

In this strip, Mark even gives his erstwhile buddy the chance to throw the first punch, which he hilariously botches despite the fact that Mark is standing about six inches away from him. SORRY DAN, MARK DOESN’T GET PUNCHED, HE PUNCHES! Mark’s own steely blow proves to be stronger than even professional-grade spirit gum. It is of course laughable that Dan would skulk around a hotel wearing a cheap wig and fake beard when he could have simply purchased hair dye and grown real facial hair (Dan, did you know that if you stop shaving hair will grow right out of your cheeks?). Another wonderful possibility is that Dan did in fact dye his hair and grow a beard but Mark’s fists are so powerful that they are capable of punching the lies and deceit right off of Dan’s face.

B.C., 4/19/07

This may be a sensitive subject, but: it appears that when the syndicate said that B.C. would be taken over by “the Hart family” they meant that it would be taken over by “an elaborate computer program that almost, but not quite, understands humor and jokes.” Yes, it looks like Archie’s in for a little competition … from the B.C. Laugh Generating Unit 4000! THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

Apartment 3-G, 4/19/07

You know, I make fun of Margo a lot on this blog, but it’s only because of my deep affection for her. She’s being so very, very obviously set up for a fall here — note to Margo: usually if a dude is thinking of marrying you, he’d at least let his immediate family know that you aren’t the hired help — that you can’t help but feel bad for her. Still, the coming rage and subsequent bloody revenge will be exquisite to watch.

Possible things running through the horrified mind of Sam the Assistant in panel three:

• “Margo, no! Didn’t you see Blood Diamond? How many African children must die to keep you in trinkets?”
• “Jesus, all a ring is going to do is draw attention to your hideous claw-hand.”

Also, is Sam actually packing up already-inflated helium balloons to take to their next party? Margo is an awful thrifty party planner.

Family Circus, 4/19/07

Since grown-up Jeffy is now drawing this thing, I don’t think it’s possible to pack more self-loathing into a single panel than he does here. Perhaps he knows that “Moronic Children = Comedy Gold” but is afraid of lawsuits from his siblings, and so is forced to humiliate his four-year-old self repeatedly in newspapers across the world to earn a living.

Judge Parker, 4/19/07

God damn, is Cedric going to off these punks execution-style in a dark alley? BADDEST. BUTLER. EVER.

By the way, I can’t conceive of an even remotely plausible chain of events that would end with me holding two actual punk rockers at gunpoint, but if I found myself in that situation, the temptation to say “Do you feel lucky, punk?” would probably be unbearable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 4/19/07

OK, “The Halves Of Restaurant Sandwiches Are Sometimes Not Adequately Separated” is officially the pettiest TDIET gripe in the history of humanity. Still, the narration posits that “Howcum” and “Why, oh, why” might actually be different questions, which is a philosophical conundrum that will haunt me for days.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/17/07

It’s easy to feel like you don’t make a difference in this cruel world, but every once in a while you realize that concentrated effort can effect change. For instance, lately I think I’ve detected a modest but measurable uptick in menacing on the part of Dennis Mitchell, and I’m more than willing to credit that to the hectoring from this site. Today’s installment is particularly delicious, as Dennis manages to emasculate his father on two levels: by revealing to a third party that his wife openly flirts with other men, and by suggesting that he make a pass at this strappling officer of the law. The look of barely internalized rage on Henry’s face might suggest savage beatings down the road, but the Mitchells are a civilized clan: presumably some act of psychological warfare will be perpetrated against his son instead.

Mark Trail, 4/17/07

Speaking of savage beatings, I can’t wait to see the epic fisticuffs that will soon break out in this dingy hotel room, reducing the cheap furniture to so much kindling. In the second panel, the reason for Mark’s tie becomes obvious: for a brief moment, Dan has mistaken Mark for a Mormon missionary, and that instant of confusion gives our hero the opening he needs to force his way in and get all shouty shouty.

Apartment 3-G, 4/17/07

I have a great memory for useless trivia, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. For instance, most of you have probably long forgotten that more than six months ago Margo casually mentioned that she had an assistant, but I’ve been on tenterhooks to find out who this person was, or if the very existence of such an individual was just a figment of Margo’s bravado and need to look important and/or imagination. Today, we learn that she’s hired an attractive, younger fellow, naturally, though his unnaturally wide hair part and taste in powder blue polo shirts are unfortunate. While it’s impossible to say for sure, we can reasonably assume that he harbors lustful feelings in his heart for his boss, which her frequent outbursts of unreasonable rage only intensify.

By the way, Margo, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but you were, strictly speaking, hired to, um, help. Don’t be mad at me.

Gil Thorp, 4/17/07

Oh, so he’s a preternaturally helpful old black man with a colorful nickname! Nice. I bet he has some real life lessons to impart to these young white people. Yup.

To be fair, if my name were “Otha,” I’d go by a nickname too. The fact that he likes to be called “Clambake” may indicate that his real agenda is to protect the Milford baseball team from Scientology.

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Mark Trail, 4/15/07

Let it never be said that the Sunday Mark Trail strips aren’t educational and informative. Without them, I’d probably still view elephants as gentle, endangered herbivores rather than the murderous, yam-poaching menaces that they are. Today, I learned that, despite all my assumptions and common sense, great herds of squid can and occasionally do leap out of the water in precise, Olympic-synchronized-swimming-quality formation. It’s a good thing I learned this in the safe confines of the comics, because I think that if I had encountered a flying flock of squid in real life I would have been reduced to a quivering, urine-soaked lump of fear.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/15/07

The goofy, absurd punchline to this strip hearkens back to the days before Funky Winkerbean took The Turn To Grim, but with the shadows everywhere, the glum faces, and the general pall hanging like a black cloud over everything, there’s no mistaking it for anything but a product of this feature’s late ’00s bleakness. I particularly like Black Teacher Dude Whose Name I’m Pretty Sure I Never Knew’s attitude of slouched resignation in the second panel. He seems reasonably sure that this newfangled copier will somehow make his job obsolete and put him in a homeless shelter within the month. He’s right, of course, but what he doesn’t realize is that he’s standing too close to its radioactive core and he’ll leave his job with a nasty case of stomach cancer to boot.

Mary Worth, 4/15/07

As I think my visual annotations above prove pretty well, Vera Shields is either completely insane or very, very sarcastic. (For more visual evidence of Mary’s horrible cooking, check out this post on Subdivided We Stand, faithful reader Smitty Smedlap’s blog.)

Lio, 4/15/07

No snark on this one from me, just thought you’d all enjoy it. I particularly like the way Leroy Hateachothers keeps his cool and makes a wisecrack while everyone else panics.