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Mark Trail, 8/16/09

Ah, there’s nothing more relaxing in your Sunday Mark Trail than seeing terrified horses running from an all-consuming inferno! This week’s edutaining Sunday strip reminds me of why I find Smokey the Bear so unsettling, which is because he’s wearing pants and no shirt. I can sort of see the chain of logic that got clothes on him in the first place — they had to put the hat on him to show that he was a forest ranger, and then once that happened he was a little too anthropomorphized to get away with no pants; I just don’t understand why the thought process stopped there. Surely there’s some sort of snappy uniform shirt they could have put on him? Because as it is he sort makes me think that forest rangers used to lounge around their fire towers shirtless, like slobs, which makes me glad that they all got fired due to budget cuts and replaced by people calling on their cell phones and saying “Hey, is this the government? I, uh, I think your forest is on fire.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/17/09

I’ve been avoiding talking about Rex Morgan because I or someone I love losing their memory and forgetting who all their loved ones are is one of my very worst nightmares; and so, grasping at straws, I’m willing to accept this half-hearted conversation as a sign that we’re getting back to what I thought this storyline was all about, which is to say adultery, and suspicions of adultery. Normally I don’t root for uninteresting, semi-attractive people to flirt in the comics, but if it takes panel time away from “I don’t know who I am or where I am and I think I’m married to this person who isn’t my husband, ha ha,” then I’m all for it.

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Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, 7/16/09

Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois may share the same offices over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC (in a low-slung business park, just off the interstate), but that doesn’t mean that they march in creative lockstep! That’s particularly clear today. Beetle Bailey uses Otto, the strip’s most intelligent and self-reflective character, to contemplate serious philosophical questions. Since he’s a dog, one could say that he was put into this world to bark; yet, like so many of us, he suffers a crisis of identity, a belief that even the actions that reflect his innermost nature are ultimately unrewarding and unrewarded. One is reminded of Arjuna expressing his doubts in the Bhagavad Gita, before going into battle; however, whereas Arjuna had Krishna to explain to him the spiritual importance of fulfilling one’s dharma, or duty, Otto has no teacher or framework to show him the essential value of barking. In this way he is like us, who toil away in alienated post-capitalism, unsure of the larger connection between what we do and the world we would like ideally to help build.

Hi and Lois, meanwhile, takes a different tack. Did you know that vomiting is funny, and that babies are prone to vomiting? The first panel is a little crude artistically, but seeing as it’s probably the first point-of-view depiction in a nationally syndicated comic strip of what it’s like to have someone puke into your face, we should probably cut it a little slack.

Phantom, 7/16/09

Oh, hey, what’s going on over in the Phantom, where we’re being shown how the first two lady Jungle Patrolpersons are fitting in to this elite paramilitary unit? Well, the lady cop patrolhuman has been enlisted for her helicoptering skills, and has picked up the Unknown Commander from an urban location, from whence he had unceremoniously nabbed a suspect out of his own home. Now she’s dropped them off in an isolated rural area, where, without any wimpy liberal niceties like a trial, he will presumably be viciously attacked by a wolf or just shot in the back of the head. And our heroine’s main goal throughout has been to get a look at this human rights abuser’s handsome face. Ha ha, women, am I right, people?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/09

Hey, remember how the new Rex Morgan, M.D., plot was going to be some sexy story about adultery? In classic bait-and-switch fashion, it turns out that the promise of extramarital relations and the drama they cause was just to lure you into reading about something much more important, and depressing, namely the poor care that people with Alzheimer’s receive. Becka has been shocked — shocked! — to find that a private clinic is interested in cutting costs, even if that means lowering the quality of medical attention given to its paying customers! As we learn in today’s strips, the clinic’s revenue-generating ideas push the boundaries of medical ethics: they’ve set up an “Alzheimer’s enclosure” at the zoo, near the primate house, where members of the public can buy tickets to come and gawk.

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Gil Thorp, 7/5/09

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS GIL THORP HAS A TWITTER! GIL THORP. HAS A TWITTER. And before you say, “Oh, the character Gil Thorp has a Twitter within the context of the fictional Gil Thorp universe, how mundane,” let me just assure you that while Gil Thorp may be a narrative construct his Twitter feed is all too real. Just think of the tweeting slap-fights that will soon break out with Marty Moon!

I am a little concerned about Gil’s statement that he has “a whole beautiful summer to figure it out.” Summertime in Gil Thorp is supposed to be about total deranged lunacy like Gail Martin hiring Coach Kaz, P.I. and Marty Moon getting grifted by Ben Franklin and little girls beating the crap out of each other at gymnastics and Von the teenage DJ protecting his older lady friend from a stalker who can’t spell. Last year’s long, boring continuation of the tale of Elmer the Accidental Illegal Immigrant was a terrible disappointment in this regard, but it will seem like a crazed, non-stop roller-coaster ride on PCP by comparison if we spend the next two months watching nothing but Gil laboriously hunting-and-pecking his way through four or five Twitter updates a day.

Blondie, 7/4/09

Underlying the the absurd, low-stakes suburban antics of Dagwood and his friends has always been a sense of ennui, a feeling that there must be more to life to experience that carpools and borrowed tools. Thus, it’s not surprising that Dagwood and Herb have decided to form a two-man anarchist terror cell, determined to spread destruction for its own sake, offering to their neighbors the joy of being alive that only close encounters with death can provide. Today the bowling alley goes up in flames, tomorrow Dithers Enterprises LLC’s headquarters!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/4/09

Good lord, why would Peter ever even consider stepping out on his lovely wife? Estelle the Nutritionist may be fetching enough, but she’d probably look at that plate of lo mein and mutter under her breath about sodium and MSG; Becka, meanwhile, knows just how to drive a man wild, sucking a single long noodle slowly up from the plate while locking her unblinking, reptilian eyes on Pete. Undeniably HOTT, am I right people?

Spider-Man, 7/4/09

If panel three is any indication, the way that Peter Parker makes moments last forever is by crapping in his pants. That way, if someone asks him, “Peter, what would consider to be your greatest achievement as a professional photographer?” he can say “That’s easy! It was the day I got the Bugle to buy my pictures at twice their usual rates!  I remember because that was also the day I pooped in my drawers.”