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Mary Worth, 3/27/15

Hey, guys, remember back in 2009, when Mark and Cherry Trail’s friend Patty kept a deer in her house and it infuriated her violent, jealous husband who slapped her around for it (not pictured) and shot the deer, but then the deer came back for revenge and injured him and they decided to let bygones be bygones and adopt a baby? This was egregious enough to generate actual angry letters to King Features, who said that they “should have done a better job of researching the facts about domestic violence” and “We can only apologize sincerely to the readers of Mark Trail for this oversight and endeavor to be more vigilant in the future.” So I’m hoping this vigilance will result in some negative reprecussions for Adam, whose decision to track down Terry has caused her to burst into tears and run away in panic and that’s before she finds out he’s literally moved into her apartment building? Rather than having Mary gently guide to two of them to the altar? Wait, never mind, this is Mary Worth, we know what they do to stalkers here.

Mark Trail, 3/27/15

In new-look Mark Trail, the only violence will be part of the eternal war of man against bug. Bankrupted by beetles! How humiliating that must be for you, Mark’s Friend With Hair That’s Really Aggressively Retreating At The Temples!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/15

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, M.D., we find out that anyone who dares to inconvenience Sarah Morgan or her entourage in any way gets a MEATY FIST IN THE THROAT. Who exactly are we supposed to be rooting for here again? I mean, in theory I’m against punching as an end game for economic disputes, but the thuggish enforcer of a longtime mob family does make some pretty good points about loyalty and the nature of patron-client relationships here.

Spider-Man, 3/27/15

Congratulations, Newspaper Spider-Man Comic Strip! You started a Wolverine storyline a full two months after the release of Wolverine: Origins, and an Avengers storyline four months before the release of the first Avengers movie, but now you’re introducing a storyline featuring beloved Avengers character Black Widow a mere five weeks before the release of the new Avengers movie! This is a decent example of cross-platform marketing for Marvel franchises! Spider-Man the character is still hilariously incompetent, of course, but Spider-Man the comic strip is kind of doing its job well for once.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/15

I DID IT EVERYONE

I SUCCESSFULLY PREDICTED THE ENDING OF THIS STORYLINE

WHO ELSE COULD’VE — oh, literally everybody? Oh, OK. Damn it, now I’m mostly just bummed that we didn’t get to see the no doubt hilariously inept Max-Bobby fisticuffs.

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Spider-Man, 3/21/15

“Oh no! One of my major super-powers can be easily defeated by … a sharp thing! Probably should’ve seen this coming?”

Apartment 3-G, 3/21/15

“And by ‘practically,’ I mean literally. He runs this place! He’s the manager of the hotel! ‘Run the hotel’ is his job description!”

Dennis the Menace, 3/21/15

“I’m talking about Jesus, of course. He’s boring as shit! I just think about those damn beatitudes for a minute and it’s light’s out!”

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Mary Worth, 3/11/15

The Hanna-Sean-Amy-Gordon storyline (haha, just kidding, Gordon was not actually involved in any meaningful way) is finally over, though we can’t say for sure until someone digs it up and puts a stake through its sinister heart. But until then, let’s enjoy the tale of the first time Mary and Jeff met! This might be an enjoyable story to see in flashback, so naturally we’re watching the two of them exposition it to each other over fish- and vegetable-disks at the Bum Boat. I’m a big fan of Mary’s use of the phrase “former bigwig” here. “Obviously I could tell you were a nobody, Jeff, but how was I supposed to know that you used to be somebody? I didn’t see a tag, and you weren’t dressed the part, and you certainly don’t exude confidence or competence of any sort!”

Heathcliff, 3/11/15

The less said about this cartoon, which seems like one of the saddest attempts at combining the syndicated comics character Heathcliff with vaguely whimsical pop-cultural tropes to date, the better, but it does lead me to one of my current favorite obsessions, namely looking up dumb URLs to see if they’re available to purchase. Up until fairly recently, URLs either ended with a two-letter country code, like .ca or .uk, or a fairly limited set of generic codes, like .com, .org, or .gov. Then a few years back some new, much dumber top-level endings were introduced, like .biz and .info, and lately there’s just been a flood of truly moronic ones, one of which is .ninja. This is meant to appeal to serious scholars of the semi-legendary shinobi of Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period the sort of dips who think changing their job title from “web marketing assistant” to “social media ninja” makes them sound cool, but it’s worth noting that the domain name bait.ninja is available for only $14.99 a year, and while I’m not going to buy it, if somebody else wanted to and have it just redirect to this post, I certainly wouldn’t object. Also, and I’m just putting this out there, when you look to see if a domain name is available you get auto-generated suggestions of similar domains you might be interested in, and this is what I got when I checked on bait.ninja:

Spider-Man, 3/11/15

Apparently most of the incidents in this plot had been set up by Peter and Mary Jane to trick Mysterio? Who they didn’t even really know was involved for a lot of it, I don’t think? Nice try at tricking us into thinking these people are smart or capable of forethought, Newspaper Spider-Man.