Post Content

Mark Trail, 3/22/19

Ruh roh, looks like Mark is about to be pulled into a crazy world of adventure and vanishing gold mines! As usual the real victim in this storyline, other than whatever rented vehicles Mark is going to blow up, is Cherry, who is once again going to be separated from her husband for weeks or possibly months as he gets trapped underground of whatever. “Mark!?” she asks, incredulous, pointing at herself. “Remember me!? Your wife, Cherry!? This is my face!? This is what a human face looks like when the human that face belongs to is upset!? We talked about this!?”

Hagar the Horrible, 3/22/19

It feels weird saying this about a strip where the main characters are the perpetrators of a century-long reign of mayhem and terror taht snuffed out the nascent Carolingian renaissance and set European civilization spiraling back into a grim, dark age, but today’s Hagar the Horrible, in which one squirrel is dying, leaving its partner panicked at the prospect of imminent starvation, is pretty grim.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 3/13/19

The first two days of this week’s Funky Winkerbean teased us with “Holly’s gonna drop some bad news on Funky over the phone,” and this being Funky Winkerbean the smart money would’ve been on “somebody’s dying.” Instead, it’s just “your mother-in-law, of whom neither of us is particularly fond, is going to live with us, forever,” which is honestly one of the best case scenarios here. But I do like the rollercoaster of emotion Funky is going through> Look at him smiling in panel one, even though, as noted, he has been warned that non-good news is at some point in this conversation going to be delivered! Like he hears “We don’t have to drive my mother back from Florida” and thinks “That’s great! We’ve already established that she’s an old lady incapable of driving herself and we’re her only family, so I’m not sure how she’s getting back there — maybe she’ll ride the rails, like a hobo? — but that sure takes a load off my mind. Things are only looking up today!”

Mark Trail, 3/13/19

Oh, whew, Cherry’s dad was briefly at risk of experiencing emotional growth by allowing himself to mourn his friend, but then he realized that talking, or thinking, about feelings isn’t what men do! What men do is talk and think about mysterious bearded strangers who blow into town with tall tales of magical Native American gold mines. At some point we’re presumably going to discover that the real magical gold mine was the friends we made along the way, and that’s all the healing that Doc is going to need.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 3/12/19

Oh, hey, if you’re wondering where the Estelle/Arthur Z (or, more accurately, Estelle/team of catfishers hanging out in a Kuala Lumpur cybercafe operating the “Arthur Z” SilverDaters account) is at, it’s reached “quoting e e cummings over the phone,” and Estelle is over the moon! The main question I have is if they’ve somehow tricked her into calling into a phone number she has to pay them for, or if they’re doing this toll-free via Skype or whatever and they’re keeping their powder dry for the moment when “Arthur Z” loses his wallet and needs a five-figure sum wired to a Malaysian Western Union office, stat.

Mark Trail, 3/12/19

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail, Cherry’s dad just got a phone call letting him know his old friend died, which means we have six to fifteen weeks of a “Doc confronts his own mortality!” adventure ahead of us. Not sure how they’re going to work Mark blowing up a boat into this but I’m confident they’ll find a way.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/19

The Wikipedia list of Beetle Bailey supporting characters is invaluable to a scholar of the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC oeuvre such as myself, but I have problems with some of its takes on the players’ personalities. For instance, Dr. Bonkus (NO REALLY HIS NAME IS “DR. BONKUS”) is described as “Camp Swampy’s loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable,” but in all the time I’ve been reading the strip he’s never been anything other than a long-suffering straight man to everyone else’s antics. I kind of enjoy the fact that today’s strip takes place in two entirely different locations; it would have been a little shticky if Rocky had pulled out his guitar and delivered this punchline in mid-session, but as it is we can imagine that he just said “Great!” and got off the couch and left without further explanation, leaving Dr. Bonkus behind to sigh heavily and contemplate, not for the first time, just how much he really helps his patients.

The Phantom, 3/12/19

You’d think that when you’ve been raised from birth to be the 21st in a lineal series of mysterious jungle superheroes, you wouldn’t make rookie secret identity mistakes along the lines of “me … uh, I mean, not me, my close personal friend, the hero, who isn’t me at all, heheheheheh [nervous laughter gradually fades out]”

Six Chix, 3/12/19

Congrats to Six Chix for taking its weird foot thing to the next level … indeed, to the highest possible level. Who wouldn’t want to worship a God with such magnificent toes? Truly we are blessed to be formed in His image, foot-wise.

Pluggers, 3/12/19

Ha ha, did you guys know that bears are carnivores and kangaroos are herbivores? I sure hope plugger diner seats are pleather or some other material that’s easy to hose the blood and viscera off of!