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Hi and Lois, 5/14/12

An old standby in comics (or any other medium where corny jokes happen) is to have someone feign an inability to parse a completely standard turn of phrase any way but literally. Extremely minor kudos to Hi and Lois for at least portraying Lois reacting with wide-eyed bafflement and distress, exactly as an actual normal human would in this situation. “Wait, did … did Hi really not understand what I was getting at? Oh my God, is he having a stroke?”

Mark Trail, 5/14/12

“So I shot him! Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Just as individual Mark Trail strips are created by combining archival clip art, so too are whole plotlines now being generated by mashing previous plots together. In this case, we seem to be in for some combination of “Mark’s friend Johnny Malotte is not guilty of murder even though all the evidence is against him” (which ran from October 2007 to March 2008, and which among other things featured Mark getting this same sort of jailhouse interview, which is usually the privilege of lawyers and clergy) and “Competition between rival fishing camps turns violent” (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010, and in which two forest ruffians beat up a senator). These were of course two of the more awesome storylines of recent memory, so we can only hope that hybridization produces increased vigor so as to provide us with even more entertaining mayhem.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/14/12

Sadly, Snuffy only managed to inspire Li’l Tater with a passion for justice, racial equality, and human rights. Everyone in Hootin’ Holler was outraged.

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Judge Parker, 5/13/12

You know I’m a fan of people scowling sullenly in continuity strips, and today’s Judge Parker offers us a doozy! What’s the matter, Sam, are you sad because your once reputable law firm has suddenly become a literary agency for Judge Parker Emeritus’s terrible books and/or a wedding planning consultancy? Ha ha, just kidding, Sam’s law firm has never been “reputable.”

I am intrigued by our first glimpse of the Sam’s new antagonist, Avery Blackstone, who seems more than capable of holding his own in the coming effete-rich-guy-off. “Stewardess, your barbaric in-flight meal has caused minor discomfort to my digestive system! I demand that you vivisect one of the unfortunates in coach in order to fetch me a new one. Quickly now!”

Mark Trail, 5/13/12

I’m pretty sure Mark put all those boring snoresville facts about tuna in the throwaway panels just to make sure that his editors didn’t even bother to read past them to the part where he basically dared comics-reading children around the world to eat dangerous pufferfish. “Yeah, a bunch of nerd scientists are trying to make boring, safe fugu, the kind your mom would eat. What about you? Are you man enough to eat the real thing? The kind that might kill you? You’re not a little baby, are you? Baby want his bottle?”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/12

Oh, hey, what’s going on in Rex Morgan, looks like it’s just Iris still sadly reading her dad’s memoir and AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAH! In panel one, it seems that Iris’ face has been removed altogether, only to have a weeping grinning one-eyed horror glommed onto the front of her head in panel two. Has there ever been a comic-book supervillain whose origin story involved whisky and grief? Mabel better watch out at that funeral, is all I’m saying.

Gil Thorp, 5/12/12

Gil Thorp’s horror is subtler but still unsettling. I guess that our single parent pitcher has hit or grazed or come close to grazing the batter with the ball, as a response to anti-single-parent bullying? That’s pretty impressive, considering that in panel two the batter was digging in approximately 12 feet away from the empty patch of dirt where home plate is supposed to be. It still doesn’t explain the awful tangle of limbs emerging at impossible angles from the Goshen gal’s looming crotch in panel three.

Spider-Man, 5/12/12

The second best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is that all the scripted lines in MJ’s play appear to be exactly the same level of corny and awful as Hardy Laurel’s ad-libs, despite the fact that everyone is acting like he’s desecrating Shakespeare. The best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is how hilariously petulant Peter looks in today’s final panel. I dearly hope this drawing of him is used for all of his non-masked appearances in the strip from now on.