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Beetle Bailey, 12/16/10

Good lord, this strip has presented few more nightmarish visions than today’s panel two (and this is a strip that earlier this week featured a disinterested Sarge feeding a bed full of blood-sucking parasites). I guess the point is that the soldiers have been eating so much pork that they’re pretending to turn into pigs (proving that Beetle Bailey is written for and possibly by eight-year-olds), but there’s something about the way they’re all throwing their heads back and closing their eyes making animalistic noises that implies to me an insular group that’s gone off the rails in a deeply creepy way. To avoid “cannibalism,” these self-proclaimed pigs will now spurn the smallish ham and fall upon their cook, tearing him limb from limb and consuming his flesh, oinking all the while.

The Jumble, 12/16/10

The Jumble is definitely one of those strips that I wish I could see as a larger-format image sometimes. Today, for instance, I am fascinated by the three hairs that constitute this horse racing guru’s combover. Rather than flopping greasily over his pate Wilbur Weston style, they hover over his head as if repulsed from his skin by a static charge, presumably barely being held in at the roots.

Mark Trail, 12/16/10

So here’s our villain Ben Smith, and, um, wow. In any visual storytelling medium, we’re supposed to get a read on a character via their appearance, but I have no idea what message the combination of bald, shaggy, mustache, cravat, open-collar dress shirt, and lime green v-neck sweater is supposed to signify. Is it supposed to be “gay” by way of “fussy fashionista”? Under normal circumstances of course one would not associate this outfit with “fashion” in any sense, but then again this is a strip in which Mark just throws an enormous brown jacket over his khaki jumpsuit and calls it “dressing up.”

Spider-Man, 12/16/10

Well, now that I see Spider-Man is planning on punching a dazed, unresisting Mole Man in the face, I guess I should apologize for calling him a coward.

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Mark Trail, 12/12/10

In today’s educational Sunday strip, we learn some crap about Santa and Druids but mostly get to see with our own eyes how uncomfortable Mark gets when his wife is kissing him. “When the last berry is picked, the kissing should end — it must end. Please, please, let it end. Good luck in enduring a lady’s mouth parts touching all of your mouth parts!”

Mary Worth, 12/12/10

Mary’s intrigued by Jill’s M.O. “Instead of bottling her emotions up deep inside, she just lets loose with stream of invective! What compels her to be so open about her negative thoughts? Could this technique be learned? Must … find out …”

Spider-Man, 12/12/10

If I’m ever involved in some kind of superhero team-up, I hope at some point I get to say “I figured you could handle him — while I looked after the ladies.” That’s because I’m a ladies man! And also a coward.

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Spider-Man, 11/17/10

You know, I mock the Spider-Man comic strip for its determined avoidance of superheroics, but to be honest there really are few things I find duller than superheroes and supervillains battling with one other. Spider-Man is still irritating because its title character is so relentlessly unlikable, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy some of the non-Spidey-centered action. I’m really digging the Mole Man-Aunt May romance, for instance, and am particularly pleased that MJ is being put in her place for not recognizing the particular purpose each of these hideously garish gems will play in the complex and beautiful aged crone/underground monarch mating dance.

Mark Trail, 11/17/10

Oh my God: it’s Mark Trail, Undercover Fisherman! Deep in your heart, you know that everything you’ve experienced in your life so far has been leading up to this one beautiful moment.