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The Phantom, 4/18/10

A mere 15 months after Bernie Madoff’s arrest — and a mere six or so months after the launch of innovator Judge Parker’s take on the scandal — the Sunday Phantom is launching a White Collar Investment Scam plotline of its very own! While Judge Parker’s version ended with a notoriously dull flood of exposition, the always-saucy Phantom narration box promises us that the Ghost-Who-Doesn’t-Understand-The-World-Wide-Web will solve the crisis in world financial markets with his fists and his pistol, as is his wont.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/18/10

So, it looks like the Morgans’ plans to forcibly drag their ne’er-do-well houseguests into bourgeois respectability are finally bearing fruit. It turns out that Brooke just needed the satisfaction of a job well done to coax out a smile that would break through her sullen shell! And Toots — or, sorry, “Tony” — is doing as he’s told, plus bringing just an extremely mild dose of countercultural wackiness (uh, what are the young radical kids into? the environment? yeah, put some whales and shit up there, that’s the ticket) to brighten up Rex and June’s just-a-little-too-staid suburban life. Yep, it looks like everything’s going to be fine, just fine, right up until Toots and Brook sneak off in the dead of night with all of the Morgans’ valuables.

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Mark Trail, 4/17/10

One of my favorite things about Mark Trail is that its plotting seems to demonstrate a complete lack of familiarity with how this country — or any other, for that matter — is actually in practice governed. Usually this ignorance is most obvious when it comes to law enforcement, which in this strip mostly consists of forest rangers who lead off ne’er-do-wells who Mark has punched into submission; but things tend to get extra hilarious when the plot’s focus moves to actual government bodies. Longtime readers will remember the exciting eminent domain plotline, in which a zoning hearing that would in real life have taken place in the course of some deathly dull meeting of the county legislature incomprehensibly took the form of a dramatic jury trial. And today, it looks like we’re going to see two wholly unrelated matters — a zoning proposal to restrict float planes and motorboats on a lake that may or may not be publicly owned, who knows, and a criminal complaint about a vicious gang of backwoods poachers who are holding the north end of said lake under a reign of terror — get resolved by some ill-defined gathering of white dudes in suits in some mahogany-paneled room. Who are these men? What power do they wield? Will they be putty in Mark’s hands once he shows him the shocking photos in that manila folder? One of these questions is easy to answer.

Of course, it’s wholly possible that Jack Elrod deliberately refuses to depict government realistically because he recognizes no political authority other than the NOAA as legitimate.

Archie, 4/17/10

Archie, the comics’ most notorious man-whore, is clearly trying to figure out if even he would fuck a small, disk-shaped robot.

Luann, 4/17/10

OH MY GOD TIFFANY AND GUNTHER ARE TOTALLY GOING TO LOSE THEIR VIRGINITY TO EACH OTHER EVERYBODY! I find this prospect distasteful, not least because their clashing grid-shirts will induce terrible headaches if they get any closer to each other.

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Archie, 4/16/10

The most disturbing thing about this Archie is Mr. Svenson’s lonely workboot, which has been abandonned in mid-hallway along with his tools. Is the comical Scandinavian laborer enjoying his break wearing only a single boot, walking with a weirdly asymmetrical gait according to the dictates of Nordic fashion or sensibilities? Or is this boot just the first in a trail of discarded items, which, if we were to follow it, would include his other boot, his hat, his overalls, and his underpants, until we would eventually find him running around stark naked, shouting mock-Swedish gibberish and horrifying the students?

Actually, now that I think about it, that’s only the second-most disturbing thing about this Archie. The most disturbing thing is the punchline. Ha ha, Archie and Jughead are terrified because they think that Mr. Weatherbee is going to beat them with hammer!

I fully approve of Mr. Weatherbee’s white suit and tie/black shirt ensemble. When that full-on ’80s fashion revival arrives, he will be ready.

Family Circus, 4/16/10

I find today’s Family Circus particularly repulsive for reasons I can’t put my finger on. It may be because I hate broccoli with a fiery passion, and that sometimes I think back to times when I ate it, by accident or under duress, and I too can still taste it, just like Jeffy does, oh my God it never goes away, the broccoli taste. Anyway, I now have something in common with Jeffy, so there’s that to deal with as well.