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Mark Trail, 10/28/15

Guys, sorry I didn’t provide a play-by-play of the awesome sea-battle in Mark Trail, but basically Mark and Ken rode around in the water and the bad guys shot at them and damaged their speedboat and Mark and Ken had to drive (sail? navigate?) it up onto a tiny island. Now the boat’s drenched in marine fuel and Mark is, presumably, about to blow it the fuck up by firing a flare gun directly at it, no doubt just as the bad guys arrive. Remember when Mark was on a boat that blew up, and then Cherry was worried that he might be involved in another boat explosion in the future? Well, don’t try to change him, Cherry. Mark’s a guy around whom boats just can’t not explode.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/28/15

Congrats to Funky Winkerbean on really being the best at what it does. This strip, for instance, manages to convey a sense of almost unbearable autumnal melancholy despite only existing to showcase the terrible wordplay-joke slogan of a fictional arborist.

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Momma, 10/27/15

This strip’s been running for 45 years, OK? You try coming up with new things for Momma to be annoying about. “Not understanding standard English idioms” is certainly preferable to Oedipal horror.

Shoe, 10/27/15

I was going to make fun of the Perfersser to reacting so negatively to this slur against his hometown — he is, with his defeated slouch and his hand at rest inside a chip bag, part of the very problem being mocked — but then I wondered if the whole thing wasn’t a cry for help on the part of the artist. “Look, I thought I could wring endless funnies out of a town of bird-men, but I can’t, OK? I’m bored. I’m so bored. This bird-man who can’t even muster the energy to lift his hand-wing out of the bag of potato chips … that bird-man is me. I am that bird-man.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/27/15

Ooh, Apartment 3-G plans to go out with a bang by assembling all of Margo’s boyfriends at her bedside! That’s Greg, who used to be Margo’s boyfriend and also played James Bond, in the movies, no big deal. Who else will be showing up to proclaim their love to Margo’s unconscious form? Scarf-wearing architect Trey? FBI Pete? Will they be bringing any of Lu Ann or Tommie’s exes with them? (Haha, just kidding, nobody cares about Lu Ann or Tommie’s exes.)

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Spider-Man, 10/26/15

Oh, hey, Spider-Man vs. Namor, remember that whole business? It’s been 11 days since I last updated you and these two guys are still just jawin’ down by the docks, getting ready to maybe someday go over to the U.N. to talk about pollution or whatever. I assumed this was just the strip’s usual go-nowhere pace, but apparently Namor was stalling as he brought out his secret weapon: a poor, sick undersea child who will tug at the world’s heartstrings and cause the surface-dweller leadership to rethink our ocean-polluting ways and hahahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence. Yo, Namor, there are plenty of human children who get sick due to water pollution; do you think we’re gonna care about some little fish-boy? Anyway, undersea life seems like it’s pretty harsh, with no concept of “focusing the positive,” since Namor responds to Pharus’s plea for hope by letting everyone know that, nope, this kid’s gonna die, and the best-case scenario now is that he does it adorably enough to get some kind of toothless UN Security Council resolution passed.

Gil Thorp, 10/26/15

“It didn’t happen to Survivor or American Idol, two shows that launched early in the era of reality television and were very different from anything else on American TV at the time. What do we need? A time machine? A time machine, to go back and launch our show in a less reality-saturated programming environment?”

Family Circus, 10/26/15

Man, I for one really wish we had gotten to see what Jeffy and Dolly did to get themselves expelled from the Keane Kompound, with only their paternal grandmother and God willing to take them in. Was it redhead-related? Did Big Daddy Keane get a revelation that gingers were spiritually unclean?