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Mark Trail, 12/14/08

Kudos to Mark Trail for blowing the lid off of the weird little world of the chickadee! These birds stay active in the bleak, cold winter hellscape that most of their feathered cousins are clever enough to flee for warmer climes. Mark claims to be able to read the feelings of these non-English-speaking little creatures, saying that they’re “never depressed” by having to stay north all winter, but their behavior seems to tell a different story. As he describes it, they want nothing more than your handouts, and once they start getting them, they lose all sense of personal initiative, becoming nothing more than avian hobos, hopping around in your backyard begging for your scraps — and doomed by their own dependency if you grow bored with their antics. This seems to me to be indicative of a very poor self-esteem that doesn’t jibe with the cheery demeanor that Mark is trying sell us.

Kudos also to my alma mater for hosting a bird-related Web site from which Mark Trail can crib valuable ornithological information! Keep coming back to birds.cornell.edu for such bird-related headlines as “The Long Trek of the Bar-tailed Godwit”.

Mary Worth, 12/14/08

Here’s a little clue to help you get situated in Mary Worth: no matter who’s talking, it’s all about them. Thus we get to the climax of Lynn’s sad story: her friend Greg, whom her dad forced her to shun, was killed in a car accident, his brother behind the wheel. Would he still have died if Lynn hadn’t broken off their friendship? Obviously not! Was his horrible, untimely death intended to break her heart and serve as a direct rebuke against Lynn’s father? Of course it was! Greg’s family was probably broken up about it too or whatever, but the important thing about it is that it sent Lynn into a downward spiral that has affected her skating.

The shocking punchline to Lynn’s tale has sent Mary into head-wobbling palpitations in the final panel. This is not because she shudders in empathy for the young skater (ha ha, like you even need me to say that) but because the mention of death by car crash has given rise to intrusive feelings of guilt concerning her part in Aldo Kelrast’s fiery demise. Once she manages to suppress these feelings back into her Shame Place, she will be taking this out on Lynn, obviously.

With today’s strip’s epigraph, quirky outsider musician Daniel Johnston joins Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova on the list of Indie Rock Darlings You Never, Ever Thought You’d See Mentioned In Mary Worth.

Marvin, 12/14/08

Anyone who doubts that St. Nick really is a saint need only take a look at the second panel of today’s Marvin, in which he continues to display a cheery disposition despite being immediately adjacent to the strip’s titular hell-infant in full-on screaming mode. We’ll see if that crinkle-eyed smile persists after he receives all sixteen yards of Marvin’s illegible, saliva-fouled Christmas list.

Family Circus, 12/14/08

Phase one of PJ’s plan — confining his siblings in an enclosed space that would be difficult to escape from quickly — had gone perfectly. Operation Only Child was well on its way to a bloody but triumphant conclusion.

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Lockhorns, 12/2/08

When I first started this blog, way back in the day, one of the things I was most perversely excited about was writing about the Lockhorns — I think I had this post written in my head before I had even set the blog up in the first place. Over time, I haven’t said as much about it as I have about other strips, but my weird admiration for its gung-ho commitment to marital heartbreak hasn’t wavered. Today’s installment features one of my favorite recurring aspects of the strip — Leroy and Loretta’s shared bleak, glum expressions, with eyes deadened by years of horror, as if they’ve just stumbled out of a concentration camp or something. Normally, a cartoon character about to have Dr. Blog’s finger up his butt would look comically anxious, but here Leroy just looks like he’s thinking, “Whatever. Nothing you can do can possibly wound my dignity more than my very existence already does.”

Loretta, meanwhile, is equally numb, for private reasons of her own. Maybe she expected to get a fleeting moment of satisfaction from Leroy’s prostate-exam-related panic, and is realizing that even that will be denied her.

Also, it appears that someone at Lockhorns central is fixated on airport security, and rectums.

(Also also: “Dr. Blog?” Really?)

Marvin, 12/2/08

Speaking of emotional devastation, I was pleased to see Marvin’s grandparents left completely shattered as their plans for retirement fall to pieces around them, but that’s just because I hate Marvin and want all of its characters to suffer horribly. Maybe they’ll have to move in with Marvin’s parents! And everyone will get on each other’s nerves, and Marvin will poop in his pants while thought-ballooning wryly! Oh, the hilarity.

Mark Trail, 12/2/08

Now, Mark Trail — there’s a guy who never lets things get him down! Why, here he is, tied up, being held at gunpoint by a dude named “Rabbit,” being handed over to a burly fellow with a Fu Manchu-ish mustache named “Salty” — and he’s keeping his cool! Almost as if he’s secretly pleased, for some reason. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

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Hi and Lois and Pearls Before Swine, 9/8/08

I got about a jillion e-mails about this today basically asking me OH MY GOD DO YOU THINK THIS IS A COINCIDENCE?, which I have to say that I pretty much do, as the jokes don’t work together quite well enough for it to be a coordinated effort. I think Pastis just picked the wrong day to make fun of Hi and Lois (though when the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC hired goons burn down his house, he’ll find that any day is the wrong day to make fun of Hi and Lois.) It might at first be hard to imagine that Hi and Lois would be taking on any kind of international politics, but keep in mind that this strip was one of the first to tackle the subprime meltdown, so it’s smarter than it looks.

I’m intrigued by Ditto’s shirt. It looks like when the time comes for him to take absolute power from his sister’s ailing hands, he’ll have a spiffy logo for his paramilitary organization all ready to go.

Family Circus, 9/8/08

There’s something off about this cartoon. Big Daddy Keane’s indulgent smile clashes with his complaint that the days when his house wasn’t cluttered up by four pants-pooping submorons and their many overpriced toys are now as distant as the Fillmore Administration or the Thirty Years War. And the children’s rather generic hijinks don’t at all imply a brash solipsism in which everything that preceded their birth is consigned to a single inchoate prehistoric moment. Presumably this panel is designed to be repeatedly trotted out and assigned a new “parents say the darnedest things about their kids” caption as needed — which captions, I predict, will only become more bitter as time goes on.

Marvin, 9/8/08

Say, remember the Hulk, the sort-of popular comic book character that became the basis of a hit TV show in the late ’70s, and then later of two not-quite-blockbuster films in the ’00s? Well, Marvin hopes you still have “Hulk fever” as a residual effect of the marketing behind these media properties, because we’re apparently going to get some lame Hulk-themed jokes for the next few days. No matter how bad they get, we can at least console our selves that they appear not to actually feature the hated Marvin himself.