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Mark Trail, 9/23/14

Hey, remember Jacob Hickman, the anti-poaching activist who sat out this entire Mark Trail poaching storyline with a sprained ankle? He’s still talking, apparently! And introducing his entire team of fellow anti-poachers, who also didn’t help Mark out. How long are we supposed to sit still for this nonsense? “I’m a bit of an survivalist!” says the guy who never had to shove a flaming branch into a hippo’s maw or behead a snake or listen to a guy with a flattop talk about his relationship troubles and also demand to be called ‘Dirty’ even once.

Apartment 3-G, 9/23/14

So, we’re really, really going to do this? Just a week of Jack and Carol talking to each other, huh? OK, well, uh, let’s look on the bright side, Jack promised when he left that he was going to commune with the spirits of the dead, so at least we’ll get some creepy action out of WAIT WHAT DAMN IT JACK

Judge Parker, 9/23/14

WHEW, at least something is happening in Judge Parker, if by “something” you mean “the Spencer-Drivers are going to motor off onto the highway in their enormous, gas-guzzling, almost certainly non-road-legal motor home.” Seeing terrified poors driving their adorable li’l compact cars into ditches to avoid being smeared all over the interstate by the Road Queen ought to be good for a laugh or two! By the way, Sam, you bought that thing because you and Abbey abruptly decided you wanted one, for sex purposes, and then the first RV dealership you went to was about to go bankrupt and so sold you one dirt cheap.

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Slylock Fox, 9/22/14

We’ve seen this courtroom drama before, and back then I was interested in the sad picture it painted of the animal justice system: the injured Slylock meekly giving his testimony, almost cringing as the bull and his sharp-toothed lawyer grin confidently, secure in the knowledge that this case is going their way despite the facts. Today I’m more intrigued by those facts, or at least the presentation of them here, and what they say about the post-animapocalytic world. Are we meant to understand that the Great Change altered so many things about the world’s bovines — not only making them sapient, but also transforming them from quadrupeds to bipeds and granting them front-facing stereo vision to boot — and yet still left them color blind? Moreover, how exactly did the entirely human urban legend about bulls being enraged by red come to be believed by animal-dom at large? Were images of bullfights perhaps used during the Bestial Revolution to rile up anti-human sentiment? At any rate, this provides more evidence that Slylock Fox takes place in the first generation of so of the post-human reality, as the animals are slowly learning about each other … and about themselves.

Crock, 9/22/14

Congratulations, Crock: for a strip with exceptionally crude art, you’ve sure managed to pack a lot of deeply unsettling emotion in the face of the Legionnaire in the second panel here. Does Butt Stew contain meat from a butt, or stuff that came out of a butt, or something even more disturbing? You don’t want to know, but he wants to spend the whole rest of the afternoon grinning smugly about just how much you don’t want to know.

Apartment 3-G, 9/22/14

NO DON’T TAKE YOUR TIME GO VERY QUICKLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE GOING TO GET ANOTHER WEEK OF THIS STORYLINE

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Mary Worth, 9/21/14

Welcome to your next Mary Worth plot, everybody: should old people (who aren’t Mary) be permitted to drive? Or, perhaps more specifically: should old people (who aren’t Mary, obviously Mary is fine, everybody, Mary is 100% in control of her faculties and her body is in as good as shape as it’s ever been, beyond some fetching silver in her hair) be forced to move in with their terrible daughter Amy, of whom they are obviously terrified? I’m guessing the answers are “no” and “after a little light meddling/reconciliation, yes” respectively. On the other hand, the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote found on inspirational-quotes.info seems to point in another direction. “We start dying as soon as we start living! You risk life and limb every time you get out of bed! Why not get behind the wheel? Why not experience the thrill of knowing you could plow into a crowd of schoolchildren, or be run down on the sidewalk? THE RISK OF DEATH IS THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW WE’RE ALIVE”

(Also maybe old people should go to the optometrist to see if they need new glasses? Just a thought!)

Blondie, 9/21/14

Legacy strips tend to contain innumerable running gags that have been popping up regularly for decades, and in so doing ossify cultural attitudes that have long ago faded in the real world. Strips like Dennis the Menace have really young kids playing unsupervised around the neighborhood in ways that were commonplace a generation ago but would get many parents in trouble with Child Protective Services today. The tradition of just letting your dog roam freely at night, has, I think, been dead (at least in suburban American neighborhoods like the one where the Bumsteads live) for even longer: I’m pretty sure I first learned that it had ever been common when as a child I asked my mother why Fred Flinstone was dumping Dino out on their doorstep at night, and was horrified at the answer. Yet Daisy being allowed to wander around unleashed in a common theme in Blondie, and I’m genuinely curious as to whether there are places in the United States where it would still be considered unremarkable. That all said, if Dagwood were abruptly devoured by this pack of feral dogs with the same gluttonous ferocity with which he’s crammed innumerable sandwiches down his gullet over the decades, I for one would not object.