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Mark Trail, 9/9/18

Remember a few years back when Mark’s ranger pal discovered some miscreants growing pot on government land, which led to an adventure at the conclusion of which Mark bludgeoned one marijuana grower with a stick and set a vicious dog on another, then left them to die of exposure and warned Rusty that some of his little friends were probably drug fiends, too? Anyway, now it’s 2018 and in lots of places weed is basically legal, which probably really cheeses Mark off, and so he’s bringing out the big guns: sure marijuana is a relatively mild intoxicant whose effects carry no more health or social risk than wholly legal alcohol, but did you know that it’s a danger to these adorable furry critters???? Remember, when large-scale industrial agriculture intrudes on natural habitat, the main thing to focus on is what’s being grown on those farms. Think before you toke, hippies!

Beetle Bailey, 9/9/18

Golf is of course beloved by people of a certain age and social position in the United States, and the fact that those positions have traditionally overlapped with newspaper comics creators has been well reflected in the strips. Still, times are changing, and I guess I have to grudgingly respect that Beetle Bailey recognizes this and has chosen to make a well-reasoned case for the game in the marketplace of ideas rather than just assuming that everyone immediately sees its charms.

Marvin, 9/9/18

Marvin, meanwhile, just uses golf as an excuse for a terrible bit of wordplay that honestly could’ve run in a three-panel daily strip but has been inflicted on us on this, the Lord’s day, in what is surely a sin deserving of eternal damnation.

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The Phantom, 8/24/18

So the Phantom’s daughter Heloise has been locked in a battle of wits with her father’s arch-enemy, the Nomad, and it is not going well for her! The Nomad slipped some bogus info to the TSA at the airport where he stashes his private plane to arrange this little interrogation, and I have to say that I find it both hilarious and terrifyingly plausible that some TSA guys would say, “This random guy we’ve never met tells us he’s overheard a teenage girl saying that terrorists … are good??? Set the entire country’s threat level to orange and get ready for a seven-hour interrogation!”

Six Chix, 8/24/18

I’ve noticed that several recent Six Chix strips set in a therapist’s office have included a discreet box of tissues located near the patient’s couch, which I think is a nice bit of verisimilitude. At least it’s something to cling onto here, where we otherwise have to try to figure out whether this hippo (?) is, like … hovering over the bird, or crushing it, or if they’re both on the couch, or what.

Marvin, 8/24/18

“Five! Five is exactly the right number of coffee shops for a city to have.”

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Marvin, 8/15/18

I honestly neither expect nor require Marvin, a legacy syndicated newspaper comic strip about a baby who poops a lot, to be up-to-date on current fashion trends, but I do think it’s a little awkward that in its attempt to depict a modern-day hipster they’ve overshot and given him a fashy, the haircut beloved by your more upscale white supremacists these days. Since Miller is the third most common surname for Jews in the United States, it certainly gives a very different reading to “they may not even let you in”!

Spider-Man, 8/15/18

Oh, Kingpin, you think you’re going to be some kind of bad-ass real estate criminal, but you’ve got a lot to learn about branding! The sort of hipster “pioneers” you want to attract in your moves to gentrify Chinatown will be positively thrilled to live above the alley where MJ Parker’s first husband was brutally murdered by a Chinese gang. Then, five years later, once MJ has been married to a fellow celebrity more suited to her current lifestyle, you jack up the rent by $1,000 a month and then the finance industry people move in.

Mary Worth, 8/15/18

This is definitely one way for Tommy to gently explain to Brandy that he has no plans to put out any time soon.

Pluggers, 8/15/18

Sure, it makes sense that Branson, Missouri, is ground zero for the plugger orgy scene, but I for one could’ve gone my whole life in happy ignorance of this fact.