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Mark Trail, 9/3/13

Oh, man, this Mark Trail plotline is just getting started — it involves a mysteriously dead elk Mark found on Lost Forest property — and already there’s punching! Panel two is a true classic of the Trailian punching genre, with hat and gun flying in opposite directions as Mark interprets “turn around, mister … slowly” as “turn around mister … very quickly and then punch me in the face as hard as you can.” I guess it’s a little bit awkward that Mark ended up punching his friend Dusty, but that’s just the price you pay when you punch first and verify identities later! Everyone’s all smiles and there appears to be no permanent harm done, unless that parabola emanating from Dusty’s mouth in panel two is meant to be a trail of spittle following behind a dislodged tooth, which it almost certainly is.

Shoe, 9/3/13

I grudgingly respect the fact that Shoe follows the logic of at least one aspect of a society of bird-men to its logical conclusion and has a bird that feasts on the dead as the town undertaker. I do wonder how many casual Shoe readers know that Mort is a mortician-bird-man, which I’m pretty sure is a key piece of information for this joke. Not that it makes much sense anyway? Ha ha, did you enjoy your time at the opera … in a coffin? Because you’re a mortician-bird-man, and opera is a dying genre? Eh? Eh? Death?

Momma, 9/3/13

Well, it looks like I was right yesterday, and we are going to get a multi-day plot in Momma, a strip that never, ever does multi-day plots. So since we’re going into uncharted territory, I guess why not take a head-first leap into howling madness, with MaryLou walking up the aisle of an airplane, shoving big steaming spoonfuls of glop into the mouths of the weirdly compliant and passive passengers? I look forward to further airborne insanity over the rest of the week!

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Apartment 3-G, 8/30/13

Uh oh, looks like there’s another proposal in the works for Lu Ann! She was already engaged to Scott Gaines the cartoonishly rich janitor in 2005 and then got engaged to Paul Linski on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and I think she was engaged to someone else in between there too? I’m blanking now. We all know the chances of Lu Ann ever actually marrying anybody are nil, because that’d ruin the strip and also she’s emotionally and intellectually a child, so I guess the drama is whether she’ll accept the proposal and then dump the governor later or just kick him to the curb right now.

I suppose it’s appropriate that Lu Ann is most frequently engaged Apartment 3-G girl, since Margo is too much woman for most men; her one shot at marriage came when she found an engagement ring while snooping around her boyfriend’s apartment, right before he died in an avalanche. Pretty sure Tommie’s never been engaged, but even if she had been I’m certain it was super-boring and am not even going to bother hunting through my archives to find the sad evidence.

Momma, 8/30/13

This punchline was supposed to read “699,” right? Because otherwise Momma’s really managing to luck out!

Shoe, 8/30/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because the sexy lady bird has breast implants! Also, she’s sitting like five feet away from these other bird-people who are all ogling and/or gossiping about her. SHE CAN TOTALLY HEAR YOU, GUYS.

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Mark Trail, 8/7/13

The cruelty of Nature is well documented, but the cruelty of Mark Trail, Man of Nature, retains its power to shock. Blissed-out Rusty nurses his otter and dreams of fishing, but mere days from now he will have neither otter, nor fishing, nor any last shred of hope. Mark just twists the knife, while Andy’s mind is all on dinner. Say — maybe they’ll have fish!

Beetle Bailey, 8/7/13

In the grip of his alcoholic hallucinations, General Halftrack misinterprets Lieutenant Fuzz’s invitation to Where the Wild Things Are costume sexplay. Lt. Fuzz takes it as a rebuff and retires to his quarters for another long night of Patton, tears, and self-abuse.

9 Chickweed Lane (panel), 8/7/13

OK, I take back all the terrible things I said about the Not-Ardins’ mouths yesterday.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/13

Heather’s hissy fit reminds Rex what June has in store for him when he gets home. Four months wasted figuring out Milton’s vomiting might be something he ate, and no boat or free meal in it for them anywhere? And now he’s supposed to look into the Alzheimer’s thing, too? These wealthy, entitled jerks! Why, if Milton weren’t his only patient ….

Shoe, 8/7/13

Well OK on the face of it this is one of those “reverse-engineered from the punchline” jokiform utterances we see so often in Shoe, Archie, and Herb and Jamaal. A real-life bird-woman would say, “I surprised my husband in fishnet stockings”, but where are you gonna go with that when you’re on deadline and that tee-time is coming up fast, huh?

But on a deeper level, blondie here is being really unfair — I mean, sometimes a fella just wants to feel pretty, and pantyhose is gross in August and it’s not like I didn’t double-check to see what time you were coming back. Wait — HE! He didn’t check!

— Uncle Lumpy