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Mark Trail, 5/24/05

Sadly, it looks as if the current painfully stupid storyline in Mark Trail is going to be resolved not by Mark’s quick fists and utter disregard for the constitutional rights of the accused, but by his tedious and pedestrian knowledge of natural phenomena, which in this case has been augmented by his ownership of a mail-order magnifying glass. Gosh, them magpies sure do like shiny things! Thank goodness they’re probably just flying in great squawking flocks around the collar, rather than, say, picking it up and hoarding it in a nest somewhere. If there were any justice in this world, the birds would be laying an elaborate trap for Mark, luring him to the distant clearing, far from human help, before descending on him and visiting a horrible, painful death upon him with their razor-sharp beaks. The freakishly large woodland animals would look on in silent approval in the foreground.

Meanwhile, check out the funky shading on Mark’s manly, rugged jawline in panel one. Compare to the faces of the dead-eyed zombie sherriff and the insane old hermit from earlier installments:

Looks like somebody got some kind of Acme Shadow-Drawing Kit™ for Christmas!

In shameless hucksterism news, Mike Donovan, who was one of the very first people to ever link to me, is TCC’s latest merchandise model:

Don’t let the visible creases dissuade you from buying this high-quality item of clothing, folks: they come out with just a few hours of vigorous ironing.

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Mary Worth, 5/19/05

Mark Trail, 5/19/05

It’s like they’re trying to taunt me. I mean, these two strips routinely move at the speed of a glacier; but somehow, in what seems like it should be a contradiction of all known laws of time and space, in the past few weeks or so they’ve become even slower. Seemingly every twist in this Mark Trail plot that might result in some drama gets nipped in the bud; meanwhile, Mary and Jeff are out at sea, cut off from all external stimuli, with the rest of the world fading out into the background: it’s like Waiting for Godot, except instead of the two of them engaging in absurdist philosophical banter, Mary is just reeling off platitude after platitude while Jeff looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, possible with a gun at his temple.

So, because the comics are being recalcitrant today, I offer a few funny sentences that I’ve thought up here and there and have been trying to figure out how to wedge into a blog post. I hope you enjoy them in this noncontextualized form.

• It’s not like it’s the most the subtle movie in the world, you know? I mean, I was only seven, but still, I was thinking, “Mom, the guy dressed in black leather and the mask that looks like a skull who keeps strangling people with his mind? Not a good guy.”
• It’s the sort of place that looks like it would sell CDs with names like This Is How We Do It, Volume 6: Best of Flemish 160 BPM DJs, 1997-1999.
• So we’ve seen Margo with her hair up, and with her hair down, but you notice we never see her putting it up? That’s because it would take about an hour, which would translate to about seven dozen strips, not counting hairpins.

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Mark Trail, 5/12/05

It’s fun, in a self-psycho-analysis kind of way, to watch delusions of grandeur slowly transform into paranoia. For instance, now that I know that at least one comics writer reads my blog, I’ve come to assume that all comics creators do. This means that just about anything that happens in any comic could be a reaction to things said here!

Take Mark Trail, for instance. Jack Elrod has long come under sustained and savage attacks, both by me and my commentors, for his inability to draw human beings and corresponding tendency to throw into random panels adorable wildlife animals rendered freakishly huge by problems with perspective. But today’s strip is fauna-free, and instead features a disturbing closeup on the wizened, crumpled visage of Mike, the lovable alcoholic hermit. When considered along with last month’s zombie sherriff, it’s almost as if Elrod is saying, “You want strips with drawings of people? I’ll give you drawings of people! I’ll give you drawings of people until you can’t take it any more! You’ll be glad for me to go back to beavers, moose, pelicans, and sea turtles once I’ve shown you what an ugly, awful creature Homo sapiens is.” And then he laughs and laughs, one of those awful laughs that gets raspier and raspier until it degenerates into hacking coughs that raise up blood-tinged phlegm.

At least, that’s how it happens in my mind.

Well, I for one say: enough already! Bring on the beasts! Not least because the human-interaction angle of this story is possibly the dullest Mark Trail plotline on record. An insurance investigation has made for entertaining narrative exactly once in human history — in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity — and there was at least sex involved there. Jack Elrod can draw a mean sea turtle, but he’s no Billy Wilder.