Post Content

Your comment of the week coming in a bit, but first: several items! First off is a set of classic Eisenhower-era Mark Trails I’ve been meaning to share with you for a while. They were sent in by faithful reader JJ Carlisle, who found them at an antique fair, meticulously cut out of the newspaper and taped into a scrapbook by some child who had fairly bizarre taste in comics. They feature the sad story of a blind colt almost callously killed by its cruel lady owner, only to be rescued by Cherry and “Scotty,” the ugly Lost Forest orphan ward of the moment.

How can this beautiful but useless horse be saved? By the appearance of “Mike,” a suspiciously Rusty-looking gap-toothed boy-monster!

Notice that, unlike our Rusty, Mike is totally unsentimental about dogs. “Yeah, I gotta hurry and sell this dog, or just throw it in the river or something. A knife? Sure, I’ll take a knife in exchange. Now I can stab things!”

Also note the random bolding throughout! It’s nice to know that this is a Mark Trail tradition of long standing.

Also! Faithful reader LoMinang was combing through the transcripts of the Warren Commission, for some reason (THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE), when he found the following exchange between a Mr. Thornley (who had been in the Marines with Lee Harvey Osward) and Albert Jenner, an assistant counsel on the commission:

Mr. JENNER: Did you think it went beyond that, this unkemptness or this sloppiness?
Mr. THORNLEY: It did go beyond that, because he seemed to be a person who would go out of his way to get into trouble, get some officer or staff sergeant mad at him. He would make wise remarks. He had a general bitter attitude towards the Corps. He used to pull his hat down over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at anything around him and go walking around very Beetle Bailey style.
Mr. JENNER: What is Beetle Bailey?
Mr. THORNLEY: Beetle Bailey is a comic strip character who walks around with his hat over his eyes much as Oswald did.
MR. JENNER: You want to keep in mind, Mr. Thornley, I am an old man and there are things I don’t pick up or get hep to.
Mr. THORNLEY: This is nothing recent. This is a comic strip that has been around quite a few years now.

The idea that a U.S. government official, either in earnest or sardonically, admitted on the record that he is not “hep to” Beetle Bailey is surely one of the greatest pieces of information I have encountered this week.

And, in other Beetle Bailey news, thanks to the many, many readers who sent me the link to the recently released collection of Mort Walker’s filthy sexy cartoons. Not safe for work, or for people who are trying very hard not to think about General Halftrack’s inner sexual life!

And now, your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“Somehow I don’t think the tagline ‘Supports the weight of an average woman!’ is going to sell many shoes.” –ks

And your runners up! Also hilarious!

“Dick Tracy invariably gives us three images, one of which is Dick. I call it, ‘Dick Tracy and the Two Other Things.’” –Uncle Lumpy

“Dick Tracy doesn’t seem to tell stories in the usual sequential way. You get an insane setup at the beginning and a gruesome death at the end, but every thing in between is just short, violent, vignettes in random order.” –Andy L

“The Parkers are not !ing. The !s are coming from Stan Lee and Larry Lieber, because Tony Stark is describing Mary Jane as ‘talented,’ and they totally are not writing her that way.” –Joe Btfsplk

“Surely the ‘Havin’ a good time’ part starts for his parents after they dump him with his new family?” –Baron Bizarre

“I am positively giddy with anticipation over the upcoming meeting between Dr. Roberts and Jenna Thomas. I envision it going something like this. Mary: ‘Welcome, Dr. Roberts. I’d like you to meet Jenna Thomas. Can I offer you a blanched marshmallow? A ramekin of poached fig casserole?’ Dr. Roberts: ‘Love is not for everyone.’ Jenna Thomas: ‘That is so true, Doctor! Speaking of which, what do you think of Bonnie Johnson’s finances? Are they awesome or what? Seriously, it’s all I can think about.'” –Violet

“They need to change the zoning ordinance to prohibit misuse of punctuation. There’s no way an officer of the law should be allowed to end four unexciting sentences in a row with exclamation points.” –Iconoclast

“I was thinking that Mary had the ability to conjure an current image of the doctor, like the Wicked Witch’s crystal ball or the Phantom’s Big Red Circle of Off-panel Communication. This would mean that the doctor had dyed his hair in a desperate attempt to disguise his appearance. It’s nice to think at least some of Mary’s victims go down fighting.” –Walker of Dog

“I can just picture the Mary Worth artist looking over the dialogue of the last couple of weeks, struggling with the eternal MW dilemma of How The Hell To Make This Tortuous Crap Visually Appealing. ‘Hands!’ he decides. ‘That’s it! I’ll make them do … something … with their hands! Humans do things with their hands when they talk, right?'” –Krazy Kat

“Act out today’s Mary Worth with a friend. You already know how funny the person playing Jenna will look in Panel 2, so, expecting the hilarity, the person playing Mary will try to keep a straight face while delivering his or her line and end up looking exactly like Mary in Panel 1. What I’m saying is that we have finally found out Mary’s power that makes her a Super Meddler: She can see at least 5 seconds into the future.” –Drew Funk

“My guess on Mary covering her mouth: she has a little Mary-Worth-head tongue à la the Queen from Aliens. And it’s hungry. For eyes. Hence the ‘wink’ in the second panel.” –DevinT

“Jenna’s not having a stroke, she’s merely trying to shut out the terrifying visage of Mary’s meddling. The problem is that if she shuts both eyes that leaves her wide open to attack. The best compromise is to wink fearfully.” –TheTJ

“Oh man, Mary’s totally trippin’ balls! What’s she even looking at? ‘Oh man Jenna … I … I can SEE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND IT IS LONELY.'” –Tophat

“Oh my God, 30+ years of obsessive Fantastic Four geekery has finally paid off with a minor insight on a possible upcoming plotline in the newspaper Spider-Man comic! This is not as satisfying as I had hoped.” –Ed Dravecky

“Only the most hardcore gamers ever made it to the level of Duck Hunt represented by the large panel in this Sunday’s Mark Trail.” –Sed

“The ‘hospital’ has shrunk. From the outside it looks like some elite mental institution or a place where celebrities might to go dry out; inside it is circa 1952 Eastern Europe.” –MWDG

“Gosh, if Dr. Roberts’s face was any paler, I would suspect Mary Worth of jumping on the vampire bandwagon. ‘Oh, you mean … social contact? I was hoping she would just waste away so that I could sample her delicious blood.'” –Josh N.

“I’ve never read a hookup email that sounded so much like a Nigerian inheritance scam.” –150

“In an effort to compete with other online dating sites, Mary has launched M-Harmony, where you’ll be matched on the only dimension of compatibility that counts: Mary’s unbreakable will.” –Dude…wait…what?

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And we must of course give thanks to our advertisers:

• From NYT Bestseller Allison Brennan: The Seven Deadly Sins series! “Seductive, suspenseful and exquisitely written… a fantastic escape.” –SF Examiner

To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

Post Content

Judge Parker, 6/21/10

While Sam and Neddy’s French boyfriend (about whom she has expressed ambivalence!) are back home writing elaborate legal disclaimers for fancy shoes, Neddy has slipped off to meet up with … the mysterious Mark! Is this the fellow that Neddy was doing the “tongue thing” with, when she was making her tearful goodbyes before heading off for her semester in France, four and a half years ago? No, that was apparently “Bob,” whose necking session with Neddy was spied upon by pretty much the entire Spencer-Driver household. (Click those links to check out the pre-Barreto Neddy and Abbey — rawr!) Anyway, this Mark fellow seems to just be some dude in an ugly green polo shirt with whom Neddy will apparently not be making out, yawn.

Luann, 6/21/10

I’m assuming that these screams of shock and horror are because Luann has accidentally walked in on Gunther changing and is seeing him in some extremely mild version of undress (i.e., without his omnipresent grid shirt), and this is going to set up another dumb “Tales of Ribaldry”-style sequence. Still, I’d like to imagine (for narrative interest, not sexual thrills, as all of these characters make my libido shrivel and die) that something truly “AHHH!” worthy is going on there: Gunther in a crotchless fursuit, Gunther in a crotchless fursuit humping a Luann-shaped pillow, etc.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/10

Well, it looks like Funky has stepped back from the precipice of full-on alcoholic relapse … for now. But what is the significance of our anachronistically attired barkeep’s decision to gulp down the cocktail Funky left behind? Perhaps the pall of gloom that seems to hover over the entire Funkyverse really only afflicts the main characters; the ancillary players live normal, happy lives in the background, until the day they come in contact with Les or Susan or whoever. As soon as Funky entered the bar, the awful aura of death and misery that surrounds him presumably chilled the bartender to his very core, leaving him very much in need of a stiff drink.

Mary Worth, 6/21/10

Dr. Roberts may be reluctant, but Jenna is insanely eager to get this Mary Worth-orchestrated romance off the ground. “Aww, yeah, here we go! I got my bowl of cottage cheese, my tall glass of Metamucil, and my laptop! Let’s get this party started!”

UPDATE: Good lord, i almost missed this:

One Big Happy, 6/21/10

The fellow in the first panel is, of course, wearing a Finger-Quotin’ Margo shirt! You can order your own and wear it with pride, whether or not you choose to sport goofy facial hair.

Post Content

Mark Trail, 6/20/10

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the geometry teacher I had my freshman year of high school. She was an excellent teacher, but she had one quirk: she had a crazy underlining tic. Any word she wrote on the board that she felt had even the slightest importance would be underlined. Sometimes the word was “important” only in that it was a verb! Thus, in order to designate things that were actually important, she would double-underline, but she was pretty free with that, too, so it wasn’t unusual for our chalkboard to end up with certain words sitting atop three or four levels of underlines. (I eventually learned to just remove two layers when taking notes.)

Anyway, she may have been a middle-aged African-American math nerd living in a city, but I think she had a certain similarity to Mark Trail, outdoorsman extraordinaire. Mark is a serial abuser of boldface and exclamation points, so when he’s really worked up about something (like the dangers of sky-electricity — he’s already kept all electrical appliances out of his primitive home, but you can never escape these devilish electrons!), he has to turn the text-shouting up to utterly bizarre levels. ALL THUNDERSTORMS ARE DANGEROUS! DO YOU THINK THAT RUBBER-SOLED SHOES CAN PROTECT YOU? NO! THAT IS A MYTH! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU! STAY AWAY FROM TREES! STAY AWAY FROM ALL FORMS OF METAL! STAY AWAY FROM WATER! HUDDLE IN A FETAL POSITION IN YOUR RUBBER-LINED ROOM, EVERY DAY, FOREVER! OTHERWISE LIGHTNING WILL KILL YOU AND YOU WILL DIE!

Mary Worth, 6/20/10

The transition of Dr. Roberts’s face from pleased to devastated in panels four through seven is a delight of visual storytelling. “What’s this, another head case for me to fix? KA-CHING! Oh, wait … she wants me to … I mean, with a woman … emotional intimacy … oh, God. Oh, God. Well, I guess I don’t really have any choice, do I? Oh, right, her e-mail address, Christ. Ugh ugh ugh.”

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/20/10

Loretta is ashamed because she and/or Leroy are addicted to prescription medication! But really, anyone who knows them wouldn’t be surprised at what they need to do to get through life married to one another.