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Spider-Man, 4/27/12

Here is me getting you up to speed on the current Spider-Man plot: Peter went with MJ to a cast meeting for her play, and her co-star showed up on crutches, and said he had a freak accident in which he fell down the stairs (“almost felt like someone pushed me!”). I half-expected Peter to be enlisted to replace him, but then the stuff you see above happened, which makes almost as little sense. Don’t Broadway productions as a rule have understudies for the major roles? Can anyone just wander in off the street and secure a part in a stage play if they’re desperate enough? Is MJ’s play actually a comedy? Would anyone with even a slight sense of what might make someone a bankable comedic actor use the name “Hardy Laurel”? Are we expected to be surprised when it turns out that Hardy Laurel is the guy who pushed MJ’s co-star down the stairs, using some kind of boring superpower, and that Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion?

Mark Trail, 4/27/12

Honestly, you can’t blame those “drug guys” for their violent anger at Ranger Tom. I mean, if you had spent a hot afternoon harvesting marijuana with a pirate cutlass and some fat-cat government bureaucrat who had been sitting on his ass all day started whining about being thirsty, you’d want him to shut up too.

Mary Worth, 4/27/12

I’m sure as a cabbie you get inured to the inane conversational stylings of your passengers, but I do find Mary’s choices here kind of puzzling. This “special announcement” is frankly the most interesting thing you’ve got in this anecdote, Mary! Why are you holding it in thought-balloon reserve?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/26/12

Poor Jughaid is grappling with the problem of living a righteous life in a world (and with a soul) indelibly marked with sin! “Parson sez my conscience keeps me from doin’ wrong, but it ain’t so” frankly sounds like it could have come straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. However, Loweezy’s simple-minded guffawing indicates that this dilemma won’t end with a harrowing but ultimately enlightening revelation; Jughaid’s just going to grow up to be a chicken thief, like everyone else in his family.

Mark Trail, 4/26/12

“If I can just do this without making any noise! If only there were a way for me to clarify my thoughts without speaking them aloud! I’ll just have to shout them as quietly as I possibly can!”

Marmaduke, 4/26/12

In order to cement his rule as demon-king of Earth, Marmaduke has savagely devoured all human politicians, regardless of their ideology or partisan affiliation, and has collected their campaign signs as grisly trophies.

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Mary Worth, 4/25/12

Oh, man, the fancy New York City party Mary’s going to is being thrown by none other than Bobby and Gina! Gina, you might recall, was a waitress who was pining away for her lost childhood love and then Mary gave her the painfully obvious advice of “Maybe look him up on the Internet?” and then she found out that he was a soccer superstar who still loved her, of course. Last we saw her she was getting the hell out of Santa Royale at maximum speed and acquiescing eagerly to Bobby’s casual marriage proposal. Have they really waited this long to have an engagement announcement party? I’m thinking it’s something bigger. “We’ve asked all our loved ones together here because we have a special announcement: Gina has transcended this plane of existence to become an omnipresent, omniscient deity! Wherever you go, whatever you do, her disembodied consciousness is gazing at you from the clouds!”

Gil Thorp, 4/25/12

How bored have I been by the current “Milford’s new star pitcher has a secret and that secret is the child she had when she was 14” storyline in Gil Thorp? So bored that I haven’t discussed it, like, at all, for eight weeks! How much do I miss the “All the Milford players are getting tattoos at a completely legal tattoo parlor” storyline from the winter? So much that I really wanted that to be an enormous cross tattoo on the neck of the girl in panel three, but I think it’s just a shadow or something.