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Mark Trail, 1/22/13

Oh boy, you guys, we’re about to see a side of Mark we don’t usually see: Mark Trail, hard-hitting journalist! Rod Bassy is the king of the professional bass fishing circuit. Women want him; men want to be him. Mr Bassy, what’s the secret to your success? “Well, I’m a better fisherman than the others!” It seems that way! Well, I think I got what I came for, let me just take a few pictures of you in your stately home for the cover. This interview will appear in June’s Woods and Wildlife Magazine, and on our website at woodsandwildlifemagazine.biz just as soon as we can find someone who knows how to make a website.

Archie, 1/22/13

I actually find Dilton’s defensiveness in panel two kind of poignant. He’s not absent minded, OK, he’s just not physically coordinated, we can’t all be popular jocks like you Betty, OK? I relate, but he needs to check himself, because wearing the incorrect sporting equipment for a pre-planned recreational outing isn’t so much “absent minded” as “comically dumb.”

Six Chix, 1/22/13

Look, I can’t fault anyone who’s watched the economic gyrations of the past five years for being gun-shy about investing in equities, but even if you’re just going to go with an all-cash portfolio, you don’t need to physically carry it around with you at all times. Go ahead and keep it in under your mattress or in a dresser or something. It’ll be safe there! JPMorgan Chase isn’t going to turn your drawer into synthetic sock-backed derivatives and sell tranches to investors in China and the United Arab Emirates. Probably not, anyway.

Crankshaft, 1/22/13

Haha, Crankshaft is so embarrassed about his compulsive hoarding that he transparently lies about it to his own family! It’s all just about some harmless gardening supplies, though, which is how you can tell that this is the “fun” Funkyverse strip.

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Crock, 9/11/12

Wow, congratulations, Crock, for creating the Platonic ideal of an “angry old person rages against something he doesn’t understand at any level” comic strip! Shall we enumerate the ways in which the word-sequences in panel one fail to map onto the world as we understand it? Let’s start with “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the future,” which should really be “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the mid ’90s,” since that was the heyday of term (everyone knows that “augmented reality” is the new hotness). Then we’ll move on to “TV game,” which is inherently funny, and which is part of “everyone needs a TV game with it,” which I guess is an awkward way of saying “Everyone needs a video game that includes virtual reality features”? Or maybe it just means “Everyone needs a TV game with ‘virtual reality’, which I have no idea what that is,” which seems more likely. “How many do you want?” probably is supposed to mean “How many of the aforementioned TV games do you want” but I prefer to interpret it as “How many virtual realities do you want, here, look at these small brown boxes, each contains a virtual reality.” Finally, Crock’s smug “Now that’s virtual reality” is I guess supposed to be a triumphant zinger that represents a victory over the kids today with their TV games and their virtual reality, with the only downside being that it makes no sense to speak of. Kudos to you, Crock! Truly, this is a stunning triumph of out-of-touchness!

Gil Thorp, 9/11/12

Kudos also go to everyone who predicted that Irish soccer star Terry O’Irishperson (did you know that in non-America places they call soccer “football”???) would end up kicking for the Mudlark football team, which means kudos go to everyone because this was a painfully obvious development. I do have high hopes for Terry’s “I feel like a knight!” line in panel three, as perhaps his “armor” will make him prone to Don Quixote-style fits of nostalgic insanity. Perhaps he’ll use the annual football bonfire as an opportunity to burn some Cathar heretics at the stake!

Apartment 3-G, 9/11/12

Haha, there’s nothing better than reminding your boss that you’re using a little light office remodeling as an excuse to take an extra week’s worth of paid vacation! Presumably Margo is suddenly ten feet away from her dining companions in panel two because she’s about to unleash some killing death-rays of rage on them.

Six Chix, 9/11/12

If, like me, you’ve always been a little unsettled by whatever sexual implications lurk beneath the whole metaphorical “kiss a frog to turn him into a prince” story, you’ll find today’s Six Chix particularly disturbing.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/9/12

You know, I guess it’s OK for Slylock Fox to go around imposing arbitrary, unchecked justice when he’s putting a stop to actual crimes or whatever. But now it appears that he’s just wandering the land looking for opportunities to be a dick by preventing a little intra-posse tomfoolery. And why is he even assuming that Reeky’s friends are being scammed? Isn’t it possible that they know full well that Reeky means to do 1,000 pushups over a series of days or weeks, but, well, maybe they just want Reeky to do some exercise once in a while, ever think of that? Maybe they want him to improve his health, and that’s worth $10 to them, because Reeky’s their friend. God, Slylock, keep your snout out of other people’s business!

I also dispute that Reeky’s pals are in any way “punks.” Neither of them seem to be cultivating any kind of aesthetic that seeks to shock or undermine bourgeois values in the slightest! Reeky’s pink hair might qualify, maybe, but today that’s pretty tame.

Six Chix, 9/9/12

The look of shock and horror on this poor dog’s face is amazing. “Wait, they’re … they’re alive, and they’re inside of me? And they’re coming out where? And I’m expected to feed them how? Oh god oh god oh god”