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Mark Trail, 8/28/18

Oh, wow, a genuine twist! It seems that Rusty and Mara’s lovable pal/personal chauffeur Jose is in on the artifact-napping ring! I’m not sure if taking Rusty and Mara directly to the location where the big artifact exchange was going down and letting them roam around unsupervised while drool-napping was the master plan laid out by “Joe”‘s presumably gringo bosses, or if our guy is just too darn sleepy to be an effective henchman. But the important thing we’ve learned is that, while north of the border a “gig” is a woman who enjoys sex, south of the Rio Grande it refers to “an elaborate scheme to plunder Mexico’s cultural heritage.” Please make a note of it.

Gil Thorp, 8/28/18

Gil has finally decided how he’s going to combat cheating: he’s going to have his own very special Milford Invitation Golf Tournament To Which No Cheaters Are Invited! I mean, presumably this tournament doesn’t have the prestige of whatever tournament the cheating kids got to go to, but, when you think about it, how much prestige does any given golf tournament have, anyway, I mean, really, come on, it’s frickin’ golf, man.

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Mary Worth, 8/26/18

Man, maybe I’m a bad person for seeing a sincere, chipper, bright-eyed recovering substance abuser telling his lovely girlfriend on the beach “And I don’t hate myself anymore!” and enjoying my most honest laugh in weeks. But if you’ve read this blog all these years and not known what kind of person I am, well, that’s on you, I guess. Anyway, long story short, there’s no word in the English language to describe how extremely healthy and durable this relationship is going to be!

Mark Trail, 8/26/18

Hey, kids, do you think that plants are boring? Tell that to fuckin’ hogsbane, a 14-foot-tall invader that, if you try to kill it, will blind you by spraying you with its poison blood. No wonder Mark doesn’t even crack a half-smile in today’s strip! We must kill all plants, everywhere, until we can be sure that we’re safe.

Dick Tracy, 8/26/18

So Dick Tracy is doing a two-week “minit mystery” with a guest artist. It’s a locked room mystery in which the real Dick Tracy has to solve the murder of a guy cosplaying as Dick Tracy, and all the suspects are people cosplaying as Dick Tracy villains, which I think is a pretty good metaphor for how far up the ass of its own lore this strip has gotten in general.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/18

I’m enjoying today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which the title character allows himself a brief smile when he believes that his mother-in-law has finally, blessedly died, only to scowl when he realizes she’s just dozed off.

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Mark Trail, 8/23/18

Welp, it’s taken a while, but this Mark Trail storyline has finally settled into a groove, and that groove is mysterious, silent figures staring at our protagonists from a few feet away, causing a weirdly mild degree of consternation rather than the full-on terror that normal humans would experience. Shadow and light flicker across the scene, seemingly disconnected from any actual light source. It’s a horrifying dreamscape, in other words, and it’s only going to get more surreal and nightmarish as our curious children go deeper into this temple of awful secrets. Also, Rusty, has a new nickname, and it’s “crime dog” for some reason! Ha ha! “Crime dog!” Arf arf!

Gil Thorp, 8/23/18

“Hey, Josh,” you were probably extremely not wondering, “how’s that Gil Thorp golf plot going?” Well, the golf plot turns out to be a plot about golf cheating, which allows Gil to thunder extremely self-righteously about how golf is a sport built on honor, so that’s how it’s going, I regret to inform you. Gil seems beaten down here, longing for just a few short weeks from today, when he’ll be coaching football, a sport built openly on lies and deceit.

Pluggers, 8/23/18

Pluggers feel the icy hand of death on their neck literally every day of their rapidly shortening lives.