The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Mark Trail

Comments are closed

Lovelorn Monday

Post Content

Mary Worth, 7/8/19

So I guess we’re really getting a Dawn plot, huh? Well, we all know there’s only one kind of Dawn plot, and that’s a story about her weird, sad romantic life. Whether she’s catching her boyfriend two-timing her at the stables, moping on the couch for weeks after being dumped, having an all-consuming but ostensibly platonic relationship with one of her professors, or finding out her new boyfriend is married to somebody else, the combination of Dawn and love can only mean one thing: pain. That’s why it’s appropriate that this summer’s romance starts with Dawn and her inevitable inamorato slamming into each other at full speed and presumably breaking a rib or two in the process.

Mark Trail, 7/8/19

You know, I always thought one of the big pluses of having a gun is that you don’t have to come up with some elaborate personal backstory or emotional arc to explain why you’re going to take what you want by force. You can just threaten to shoot them if they don’t give it to you! No need to get into interest rates on small business loans or whatever!

Pluggers, 7/8/19

I don’t want to tell Pluggers how to do their job, but I do think that once your caption hits four lines of text, it’s gotten a little too specific.

Comments are closed

You don’t DESERVE that corporate Amex

Post Content

Mark Trail, 7/6/19

I gotta say, as Things You Could Be Mad At Mark Trail About go, getting mad that he gets to take exotic vacations on the company dime and writes maybe three stories a year is pretty good! It’d be a little more realistic if this complaint weren’t coming from JJ, the proprietor of a well-stocked and presumably highly profitable outdoorwear and mining equipment retailer, but rather from some poor underpaid content producer jealous of Mark’s cushy staff job. “I write three to five hot takes a week on breaking news and I get paid $150 a pop,” the embittered web drone would say, thrusting the gun in Mark’s direction. “I’m a contractor and don’t get health insurance! They don’t have fact checkers and if I get something wrong they hang me out to dry! How dare you, sir!”

Funky Winkerbean, 7/6/19

Jess and Cindy are doing research for their documentary about Butter Brinkel by … watching a documentary about Butter Brinkel? Have they considered just telling people there’s a documentary they can watch that’s already been made? Someone went through all the trouble of putting it together and everything.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/6/19

“Maybe, but it seems like it’d be a lot of work, so, you know, enh. What do you wanna do for dinner?”

Comments are closed

Thursday is for recanting criticism

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/4/19

Readers: I hereby apologize for ever doubting the continuity-respecting bona fides of the Gil Thorp creative team. Faithful reader Downpuppy pointed me to the GoComics Without GoComics archive site created by long-ago (and perhaps still current?) faithful reader commodorejohn, which fills in some of the gaps in my sadly deficient coverage of Gil Thorp in 2005. I had completely forgotten that Jaquan was not a brand-new character when he showed up with Trey Davis a couple summers ago; in fact, back in 2005, he had been Jaquan “The Don,” a superstar player at local high school powerhouse Bishop Tardy, which blew into Milford to take on the Mudlarks, media circus in tow. Hadley stumbled on Jaquan hiding out in the library and reading books like a nerd, and later convinced him to go to college instead of jumping straight to the NBA. A decade or so later, Hadley, who became a lawyer and apparently abandoned her ideals to represent big-shot clients who could gift her front-row Bulls tickets, reconnected with Jaquan during a game, and here we are! All’s well that ends well, with rhyming!

Mark Trail, 7/4/19

Ah ha, it seems JJ didn’t drown after all. Nope, he used the flood as a distraction to separate from the group with the map so he could get to the gold mine first, probably hoping that the rest of them would wander around the desert and eventually give up and go home. Sadly, he didn’t count on Doc’s perfect memory, so now he’s gonna have to shoot them. Hey Doc, bet you’re sorry you did all those crosswords to stay sharp now!

Beetle Bailey, 7/4/19

Ah, it’s July 4th, and you know what that means for Beetle Bailey, the only comic focusing on America’s military: another episode about the tedious interpersonal drama between Sarge and Beetle. But … are we missing something? Something about this date that we should probably be covering? Probably not, but if need be we can wedge in a visual reference to it at the last minute.