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Mark Trail, 1/25/18

Wait, who is Doc talking to on the phone? We all know he doesn’t have any friends, and when it comes to romance Cherry has to basically exploit his love for his grandson to force him into sexual liaisons with the local ladies who lust after him. My theory is that this is a toy phone that Mark gave to him yell nonsense into so that passersby aren’t alarmed when he starts in with his shoutings again.

Family Circus, 1/25/18

Welp, it looks like Billy’s finally figured out that domestic labor is indeed labor — and in his case, since inadequate retirement savings often mean that parents rely on their adult children in retirement, any labor that helps raise his academic achievement level will have a quantifiable financial return down the line. A look at his parents’ facial expressions lets you know exactly who benefits from having the true nature of the economic system properly understood in the Keane Kompound.

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Mark Trail, 1/23/18

Immediately after his giraffe encounter, Rusty ran home to tell his adoptive parents about it, only to be berated at length that you’d have to be a crazy person to say you saw a giraffe in the forest and you must be dreaming or hallucinating like that time with the dinosaurs, so you should stop insisting you saw giraffes or you’re going to have to go live in the crawl space again. Of course, we know that there’s a whole dang circus loose out there, and so I sincerely hope that Mark, maintaining that smug, know-it-all facial expression, steps outside to prove to Rusty that Lost Forest is giraffe-free and is then immediately mauled by a lion.

Mary Worth, 1/23/18

Ha ha, is 2004 Democratic Party presidential nominee and former Secretary of State John Kerry Ted Miller going to steal Mary away from his old friend Dr. Jeff, right in front him? Notice that Mary is sure to welcome Ted “to my home,” emphasizing that she has long refused to marry, move in with, or commit to Dr. Jeff in any way.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/23/18

Rex is scowling in panel one, but thoughtfully, indicating that he might be open to allowing this Maoist self-criticism session to mollify him. Unfortunately, the Marches have made the decision to deploy youth slang, which he’s not going to appreciate at all.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/18

One of the things I’ve resigned myself to kind of enjoying is that printed matter that appears in Snuffy Smith is spelled in the same eye dialect used in the word balloons. Still, today’s strip is horrifying because it prompted me, unbidden, to imagine a context in which one of the characters might say the world “ballz.” Like, “Lukey, th’ next time we’re int’mite, I’m gonna ask Loweezy t’ tickle my ballz!” If I have to think it, you have to read it, which is, I suppose, this blog’s mission statement.

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Mark Trail, 1/19/18

Welp, looks like those giraffes Rusty spotted last week are actually part of a whole herd of exotic animals freely roaming around Lost Forest, presumably because after the Tingling Bros. Circus farewell tour the circus’s creditors ordered the entire menagerie to be simply released into the woods rather than making an expensive attempt to find new homes for the beasts. You’re probably thinking that this uniformed monkey is in charge of all these creatures, but in fact he’s a mere lieutenant for their true king, the Great Wilhelm, who’s holed up in an inaccessible forest lair screaming out his orders.

Shoe, 1/19/18

Roz runs what I believe is one of the of the only dining establishments in Treetops (is there also a fancy white-tablecloth French restaurant with snooty bird-waiters? I’m pretty sure there is, but I’m not going to bother to check) but one of the jokes of the strip is that she is actually pretty bad at cooking. Nevertheless, all of the characters continue coming to her diner to order food, either because of their aforementioned lack of other options (but why doesn’t the invisible hand wing of the free market push someone else into starting a rival with more palatable fare?) or because they all love cruelly taunting Roz, and the gastic side-effects of eating her food is a small price to pay for the opportunity to do so. Anyway, what I’m saying is, I guess the joke in today’s strip is supposed to be that, like Roz’s burnt cooking, Roz’s cookbook (but how could someone mainly known for making unappetizing food score a coveted publishing deal?) managed to set off some smoke alarms, but the facial expressions on display here (Shoe all heavy-lidded menace, Roz bug-eyed with rage) imply that maybe Shoe just led a book-burning, right there in the middle of Barnes & Noble.