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Mark Trail, 12/9-10/05

I never would have pegged Jack Elrod as part of the chardonnay-swilling liberal real-American-hating elite, what with his love of the outdoors and camping and hatred of swarthy people with facial hair. Still, this latest plotline has managed to indulge in just about every vicious stereotype about the proud, overall-wearing rural folk that make up the moral backbone of this great country: that they’re stupid, they’re lazy, they wear overalls all the time, they’re by and large hideously unattractive (except for the young womenfolk), they refuse to give up pet-napping for honest work, etc. Just about the only slander that we’ve avoided has been the one about incest and sexual depravity … until now. Yuck. Thanks, Mark Trail, thanks a lot. Still, I have to admit that I like the wordless tableau in the last panel of the second strip: Andy the hero dog valiantly comes to the aid of our blue-haired heroine, with Scrawny Hillbilly Dude stumbling backwards, his dumb hat falling off of his stupid head. Meanwhile, No-Neck Hillbilly Dude is lumbering into action in the background, afraid that his dreams of “over a thousand bucks!” are going to vanish in a fit of intrafamilial squabbling.

Meanwhile, Sunday’s nature lesson takes us to chilly Arctic:

Mark Trail, 12/11/05

Yes, I’m sure that, when choosing the beasts that would pull his sleigh, Santa gave careful consideration to reindeer’s endurance, their special heat-spreading circulatory system, their “unique hair” … and also the fact that they can goddamn fly. Sheesh, Mark, for a naturalist, you’re sure leaving out some important details.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/30/05

Yeah, why is she so down? Maybe it’s because she’s headed out to work, churning out awful press releases, pimping no-talent actors and playwrights, glossing over the crimes of evil multinational corporations — you know, the sort of things that keep New York, the greatest city in the world, humming, and all for a salary that isn’t going to keep a girl in Kate Spade and Jimmy Choo like she deserves. Meanwhile, the two of you, who have selfishly chosen high-paying, zero-stress jobs in the nursing and elementary-school-art fields, get to enjoy a leisurely breakfast over the paper, relaxing in your deeply dowdy but no doubt warm and comfortable robes.

Honestly, it’s like being white, unscrupulous, and upwardly mobile doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I thought that the chatter in the comments this morning had prepared me for the harrowing sight of Mark Trail’s muscular but nippleless torso. I was wrong. Hoo boy was I wrong. No one had mentioned that there was something deeply freaky about his face as well. Is that a shadow cast by his sunken, heroin-addict-style cheekbones, or is he just wearing black rouge? Whatever the case, he joins Dagwood Bumstead in the no-nips hall of fame:

Also, is anyone else as unsettled by the current teenage-jewel-theives-in-fetish-masks plot in the Phantom as I am?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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Jeez, our power was restored this afternoon, but there was deep server wonkiness this evening that almost forced me to put off a new post yet another day. Thank goodness it got resolved just in time for me to put up a loopy, two-o’clock-in-the-morning, caffeine-fueled post. I feel like I’m seeing transparent divorce birds bumping see-through uglies in midair or something.

Mark Trail, 11/28/05

I was convinced that we were going to be forced to endure the Most Boring Mark Trail Plotline Ever™, which seemed destined to go something like this: “Hey, it’s an incredibly rare bird!” “Let’s call in an expert to verify it!” “No, that’s not the bird you’re looking for.” “Oh, well, thanks anyway!” But just in time to stave off this disastrously dull denouement arrives this clan of inbred, overall-clad bumpkins, determined to shake things up by striking back at the Northeastern liberal elite the only way they know how: by kidnapping an innocent dog. Perhaps the long, snooze-inducing buildup is Elrod’s little way of telling us that, despite Mark Trail’s ostensible nature-focused narrative purpose, actual nature is actually boring, and we should be thankful when the strip returns to its true calling, which is to say: fisticuffs in which our attractive, square-jawed hero defeats ugly people. You better watch yourself, there, no-neck: Mark Trail doesn’t take kindly to dognappers. You’re much more likely to get a knuckle sandwich than the “over a thousand bucks” you’re dreaming about.

By the way, the phrase “Pa, please don’t steal any more pets!” is going on a craptacular item that you can buy with good money soon. Mark my words.

Blondie, 11/29/05

You know what I like best about today’s Blondie? It’s the fact that the punchline depends on a homonym, so it’s only obvious in word balloon form. I’d like to imagine that Baldo McMustache here continues to stare blankly at the sleeping Dagwood, wondering desperately if there was a season of American Idol that he missed or something (“Isn’t he too old for the show anyway? My God, is that Bo Bice with his hair cut short?”). Meanwhile, Mr. Dithers looks back and forth between the idiot and the narcoleptic and wonders again about just how his HR minions make their decisions.