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Mark Trail, 8/19/10

Oh, look, the hideous little girl in the current Mark Trail plot has named her new deer-pet “Lucky!” I’m pretty sure that most of the wild animals who are taken out of their natural habitat and forced to amuse their hideous human overlords end up being named “Lucky” — there was of course Lucky the Beaver, and I’m pretty sure an injured goose that Rusty adopted was given the same name — because the cruel god of Mark Trail has a nasty sense of humor.

Mary Worth, 8/19/10

Wow, did I ever underestimate this storyline! It seems that Dr. Mike’s dad was could never take Mike’s calls not because he is a sad, shame-filled drunk, but because his mission of savage revenge occupies his every waking moment. I absolutely love his determined striding away from his family in the panel two flashback — “Well, kid, you’ve had eight or so years to help me track down Richie’s killers, and you haven’t done a damn thing. I’m through with you!” His shaking and sweating in panel one is not a result of the DTs, but rather because he can barely contain his anxious need to go to some seedy underworld club and start busting heads until he gets answers.

Pluggers, 8/19/10

Oh, come now, we all know that the only thing pluggers hate and fear more than elitist college education is the Orient.

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Pluggers, 8/11/10

You have to give Pluggers a little bit of credit for coming up with a half-assed excuse to rerun panels (“Spotlight on readers who have nothing better to do than send in tons of Pluggers ideas!”); some cartoons just rerun strips in no-assed silence, which speaks to a certain lack of pride of craftsmanship. Anyway, as a professional comics-reader, it’s interesting to keep track of how my own immediate, visceral reaction to a panel can change from month to month. For instance, when this panel first ran back in May, I apparently was moved to write some weird diatribe about awkward sentence construction, Jewish stereotypes, and plugger sex. Whereas today, I just laughed a cynical laugh, because it’s obvious to me now that point is that pluggers are cheapskates who’ve never given anyone a tip in their lives, and plugger wife here dies a little inside every time they sneak out of the diner without leaving anything on the counter, and now Mr. Plugger is making a big joke about it. And certainly he’s not going to do anything nice for his wife, who just has to take care of him for free, without expecting any sort of reward, even emotional rewards, ha ha! You might want to keep an eye on those scissors, buddy.

Dick Tracy, 8/11/10

Considering the important social function served by the morgue in the corpse-lousy Dick Tracy universe, it’s no surprise that the building’s facade features enormous letters that presumably light up at night, so people know right away where they should be dumping the bodies.

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Mark Trail, 7/15/10

Not since Rusty claimed that he “just put a new memory card” into his 1953 Leica camera has there been a Mark Trail that more hilariously mashes together decades-old repurposed art and writing with the vague sense that the existence of so-called “modern technology” should probably acknowledged. For the love of God, Mark, why are you paying $2.99 a minute or whatever madness the local Motel 6 is going to charge for use of their in-room telephone when you’re talking on a cell phone right now — a cell phone that, if it’s like every other cell phone sold in the last eight years, has a built-in caller ID feature? Is he one of those paranoids who doesn’t give out his cell number to strangers, because that would allow them to steal his precious bodily fluids? Does Mark’s Junior Illegal Wiretapping And Phone-Call Tracing Kit only work with landlines?

Gil Thorp, 7/15/10

Well, I guess we all owe Coach Thorp an apology, because it turns out his “Let’s run six miles around the golf course!” idea from yesterday was a joke, just a joke, heh heh heh, no, obviously I know how to coach golf, OK? Why else would they be paying me? They are paying me, right? Anyway, it appears that this summer’s dramatic conflict will come from the thought-ballooned antics of this surly teen golf prodigy, and honestly I can’t even imagine four more boring words in the English language than “surly teen golf prodigy,” I almost fell asleep just typing them.

Pluggers, 7/15/10

Most of the people I know are not pluggers, and none of them enjoy actually being tickled. Thus, I’m going to assume that “front tickle” is a plugger euphemism for sex, putting this one firmly in the Pluggers “there are a whole lot of things pluggers would rather do than be sexually intimate with their spouses” file, which is depressingly large.