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Mark Trail, 9/28/09

You know, while Mary Worth was busy pumping ancillary characters full of lead, Mark Trail was offering us the unusual spectacle of Mark experiencing the blunt head trauma-induced unconsciousness he usually dishes out to others. The most exciting aspect of this plot is not any danger to Mark — surely he can punch out any real threats to his person while out cold — but rather the prospect of the feeble Rusty wandering aimlessly around the alligator-lousy swamp with only his own hideousness to protect him. Sadly, we weren’t even given a few hopeful days to imagine that Mark’s deformed ward had been devoured by a vicious reptile before the inevitable discovery that he’s safe and as sound as he ever is. I don’t normally root for stories about children in danger, but I make exceptions for Rusty.

Dick Tracy, 9/28/09

Oh, also, the soulful-eyed clown, who I pegged as the killer pretty much upon his first appearance, then briefly began to doubt the guilt of, turns out to be the killer after all! Thank goodness Dick Tracy isn’t challenging my plot-related expectations in any way, as I don’t think I could handle it.

Really, though, Dick Tracy isn’t particularly interested in the big-picture strokes of the plot at all: it’s not a “mystery” strip as such, as your most base impulses (sinister clown = murderer, in this case) are always likely to be correct. No, it’s more interested in following its own drifting dream logic on the way to its predetermined conclusion. So Ringo was a corporate whistleblower (OK) who was put into the care of the witness protection program (makes sense) and given a job running a circus (wait, what?). And Mr. Pops the clown worked at the company Ringo worked at, or something? And now everybody at the circus also hates Ringo, because … they also were profiting from the corporate malfeasance … or maybe because he’s a bad boss, or bad ringmaster? You might think that Mr. Pops’s accusations will be followed up on in future strips, but trust me, they won’t, not to anybody’s satisfaction, anyway. It’s not so much a “tightly constructive narrative” as one of those nightmares you have where you’re in college or a new job and you haven’t done your homework or learned any of your duties, and everyone is mad at you, and eventually you get eaten by a tiger.

Pluggers, 9/28/09

Kudos to pluggers for allowing their yards to revert to prairie, but why not go all the way? They ought to allow their human-style dwellings to decay, strip off their clothes, and go feral, like the beasts that they are. Of course, they may be devoured by their wild cousins who never experienced the softening effects of domesticity, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Beetle Bailey, 9/28/09

Ha ha, Sarge is closing his eyes and pretending that the only words he hears are “bigger,” “job,” and “harder”! Jesus, I am a fucking twelve-year-old.

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Mary Worth, 9/10/09

It’s easy for Scott to be patient, because once you’re as fucked up on Special K as he appears to be in panel two, the flow of time no longer has any meaning for you.

Phantom, 9/10/09

“She’s being attacked by some purple-clad freak and his two diminutive diaper-wearing minions! Argh, I’m too late!”

Pluggers, 9/10/09

Pluggers think that “electronics superstores” still sell things out of catalogs in 2009, for some reason.

Ziggy, 9/10/09

Ziggy is about to be sodomy-searched over the phone, because nobody wants to deal with any of Ziggy’s nether parts in person.

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Marvin, 9/6/09

You know, I’m pretty much a prematurely jaded cynic, but sometimes the comics can still surprise me. Marvin in particular always manages to surprise me with the new depths of horror it reaches every week. Let’s review today’s trauma:

• This strip introduces entirely new characters, two bees drawn with the enormous noses that defile the faces of most of the human males populating this feature.
• The bees believe that their purpose in life is to sting people for no good reason by the end of the summer; if these are ordinary honeybees, this is of course a suicide mission.
• The bees are intensely focused on stinging a human on the buttocks, which they refer to as a “rear assault.”
• The bees attempt to sting Marvin on the buttocks, but are prevented by his “padded armor,” which, this being Marvin, presumably includes a layer of feces.
• The bees are crushed to death by Marvin’s ass.

And then, the ultimate insult: the Stars and Stripes, dragged unwilling into the opening panels as some kind of attempt to justify this atrocity. Why does Marvin hate America?

Apartment 3-G, 9/6/09

As is its wont, Sunday’s Apartment 3-G provides us with relatively little new information, but I do think that it throws a couple of important facts into stark relief:

• The Professor is prescribing powerful sleeping pills to Ms. Merrill after she mentions that another doctor gave her some years ago, and is thus violating professional ethics and several laws, because he wants to bone her.
• Margo is almost insanely insensitive. “Yes, I haven’t been to the gallery that Eric owns since he died. So many bad memories there! Not like you, who only associate this place with good thoughts about your dead boyfriend.”

Pluggers, 9/6/09

OH SNAP SINISTER ALLIGATOR/VULTURE MAN-BEASTS! You don’t lay off someone with a nationally syndicated comic unless you want to suffer nationally syndicated comics wrath five months later! I am charmed enough by the righteous burn that I will pass over the laughable notion that any plugger would work in a cubicle job. HEY AFGHAN LADY I BET YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE SUCH A SNOB ABOUT FREE SAMPLES FOR DINNER ANYMORE, ARE YOU?

Funky Winkerbean, 9/6/09

“Which makes sense, when you consider that it’s not really funny, at all.”