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Mark Trail, 11/17/09

Hello there, faithful readers! I think it’s been a little too long since you were last treated to the dimension-warping horror that is apparently the natural configuration of Rusty’s face when he’s excited about Sassy. So, enjoy! Take a good look at his eyes bugged out in terror! Against your better judgment, try to look down his maw, only to see darkness, infinite darkness! Watch each of his blue-black hairs rippling across his huge, bulbous head! And then maybe you’ll understand why Mark doesn’t let Rusty go to school with the other children.

Mary Worth, 11/17/09

So I’m guessing that someone over at King Features told the Mary Worth creative team to use the interweaving and ongoing Apartment 3-G storylines as a model, rather than this strip’s typical self-contained plots. The grinding of the plot-shifting gears are still loud and obvious; it’s just that we appear to be revisiting older plots rather than allowing them to vanish into Mary’s Successful Meddles file. Thus, we had “Adrian gets flim-flammed” followed by “Delilah in Charley’s sex den” followed by “Adrian’s boyfriend in a coma,” and now we’re back to Delilah again.

But! Perhaps Mary Worth needs to learn when a beloved character from the past should be revived! For instance, Adrian was a prime candidate for a plot sequel, since her previous storyline had ended with her emotionally devastated and in the process of being wooed by an unethical cop who was the son of Dr. Jeff’s secret schoolboy crush. EXCITING! When we last saw Delilah, meanwhile, she had rejected Charley’s lustful advances and was reconciling with her boring husband. We certainly don’t need to see any more of that. It’s possible that Delilah is calling to beg for advice on her compulsive need to rapidly change clothes, having somehow gone from a canary yellow number to an even more hideous salmon-colored tracksuit in just a few seconds; but more likely she’s just calling to let Mary know that she’s finally decided to embrace her womanly destiny and pop out a kid. If so, I hope for entertainment’s sake she at leasts brings the little squaller over to Charley’s no-children-allowed pad, to humiliate him further.

Blondie, 11/17/09

Most everyday objects in Blondie, like Herb’s weirdly top-heavy little car, are in a sort of boring version of the uncanny valley: while not cartoonish enough to be funny or interesting, they’re also not particularly realistic-looking if you really examine them for any length of time. I have to say, though, that in panel two pretty much nails that lonely exurban freeway off-ramp and overpass. The dark sky makes for quite an evocative scene, as these four white-collar drones head back to their identical houses, bickering in a desultory fashion about their hated jobs, in that incongruously cheery pastel car.

Family Circus, 11/17/09

Normally I’m against any and all premature expressions of the Christmas spirit, but if Dolly is humming her little tune slowly and creepily off-key while staring at Billy with that blank expression as a prelude to strangling him with a garland of tinsel, I’ll let it pass.

Marmaduke, 11/17/09

It probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that Marmaduke has harnessed the slower, plumper inhabitants of his community so as to more efficiently drag them off to his blood-drenched devouratorium. The question is, how did he get these poor damned souls to ingest the powerful tranquilizers that have made them so complaisant and easily led to their own doom?

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Your COTWs momentarily, but some items first! In self-aggrandizing news, the radio dealie I did for “The Story,” talking about the wild dot-com roller coaster of the turn of the millennium, is now available on the Internets! You will have to listen to or skip over half an hour on medical marijuana to get to the me bits.

In actual comics-related things: if you like comics, and you like classic authors, perhaps you will like this article on McSweeny’s, depicting comics as narrated by famous authors? You may also be intrigued by this interview with Jeff “Jeffy” Keane, in which he comes across as extremely interesting and intelligent and not at all Jeffy-like! Thanks to faithful readers James and Chris, respectively, for the tips.

And now … your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“Why is the bear so pissed off? Probably the same reason the owl is the judge. Bears are angry murderers, owls are wise hooters. And in Slylock’s forest, chicks are either old or hot, and green evil-looking people are always evil. Honestly, it’s the easy-to-follow stereotyping in Slylock that I enjoy the most, and I really hope kids can take that from the comic and apply it in their day-to-day lives.” –MolyBendum

And the funny runners up!

“That leering smirk should never be on someone under the age of … well, okay, so there’s no age when I’d want to see that smirk, but the younger the worse.” –Krud

“Someone should tell Wally that it’s pretty damn hard to drink yourself to death with beer. Unless he’s merely planning to drown himself in his own urine.” –cheech wizard

“There’s a Luann musical and it’s not ironic. Welcome to Hell, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been here the whole time!” –carbunicle

“I’m holding out for an Apartment 3-G musical featuring the rock ballad ‘What Would Margo Do?’, the country-fried ‘Lonely Lu Ann’, and a spoken-word dirge titled ‘My Name is Tommie.'” –Ed Dravecky

“Ha! He will swirl about and erode his way in! By the standards of this strip, erosion is a pretty brisk process.” –Uncle Lumpy, on how the Sandman’s powers will aid in bank robbery

“I think she’s bad. Margo bad. And really, isn’t it all too easy to imagine Margo commissioning a naked statue of herself as an angel. It’s probably why she got into the gallery business in the first place. I mean, she clearly doesn’t care about art, normally. I bet she also has a bunch of paintings of herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary. I bet they both do.” –Les of the Jungle Patrol

“Has anyone else noticed that Bobbie seems to be looking at the back of the prints? ‘So, the girl’s name is KODAK, you say?'” –willethompson

“Yes, I need to go in and check on him Adrian. Make sure his hunky, hunky thigh is alright. Open his gown and check for numbness by running my hands up … Oh, Mary, are you still here?” –AMC

“The high school drama club probably aren’t very good, judging by the scratch marks left on the wall by earlier audience members frenetically trying to climb out through the windows.” –ArtisticPlatypus

“Meanwhile, the dialogue in Crock reads like what you’d get if you yelled ‘Legs’ at two of the world’s worst improv comics.” –Steve S

“‘Who says corporate crime in America doesn’t pay?’ Nobody. Nobody ever said that.” –rachel

“It must be a pretty grim universe in which ‘great legs’ are defined as ‘has obviously visible legs.'” –Alan’s Addiction

“Mr. Wilson’s expression makes me think that Dennis has ‘forgive’ mixed up with a verb that means ‘urinated in your coffee cup.'” –Patrick

“When one wears sweatpants and slippers as part of a three-piece suit, you’re damn right they’re having some mental problems.” –Steve L

“What the hell is on Dolly’s head? Is 1943 on top of her head?” –Steve®

“Oh look. String beans and potatoes … in Dark Age Norway … Looks like Hagar decided to raid the fridge somewhere between pillaging Baldo’s house and returning to his time machine. And look! He brought Ziggy’s nose home and gave it to his daughter’s boyfriend! What a guy!” –Black Drazon

“Hey, so why are all five of the witnesses to this ‘crime’ adults? Slylock should be shifting his focus from the Count’s alleged theft of milk and graham crackers to why all of these creepy grownups are hanging around a nursery school.” –Judas Peckerwood

“‘A turtle is the only reptile with a shell. What do other reptiles have that a turtle lacks?’ Friends.” –Disingenuous Penguin

“‘Can you list the order in which the animals testified?’ Not really, since it’s one of the notable things about animals that they can’t talk. On the other hand, check out the look on Slylock’s face as he realizes what an amateur operation he’s been running. ‘I got a bear to testify? A bear? And a rabbit? Jesus Christ, I’ve wasted my life!'” –TruthOfAngels

“Sassy is understandably straining at the leash to back herself into the gator’s mouth rather than face the hugs and kisses from the hideously malformed Rusty that surely await her upon a safe return to camp.” –Chipper

“Were it any other comic, I might be inclined to criticize Dick Tracy for today’s labored and tedious exposition, but I find the action of the strip so consistently inscrutable I could actually use a little more elucidation. I think every panel should feature not only stilted, explanatory dialogue but also at least three narration boxes and possibly a map.” –Violet

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

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Mary Worth, 11/16/09

So, it looks like Scott is going to be A-OK, now that Dr. Jeff has given him and his sexy legs the once-over! Adrian is of course a doctor as well, but her medico-vision was disabled by grief and estrogen, so it was important for Jeff to make sure. (A competent doctor who was not a relative or potential relative of the patient was unavailable, as Dr. Jeff has made sure that everyone who works with him at Santa Royale General is one of his cronies or offspring.)

Anyway, with a mighty MEANWHILE, our narration box thrusts us pell-mell into the next storyline, and panel two shows us why we keep tuning into this feature. Who is making a phone call, and to whom? Is it someone calling to tell Mary that she’s wearing a hideous canary-yellow skirt-suit just like the one Mary’s been wearing all week, presaging a “Single White Meddling Biddy” storyline? Let’s hope!

Dick Tracy, 11/16/09

Here is the ethical dilemma for me as a Dick Tracy reader: each and every storyline inevitably ends in a scene of gruesome violence — with people being electrocuted or torn to bits by vicious dogs or run over by bulldozers — that I am genuinely shocked and discomfited to find on the comics page. And yet the rest of the strip is so baffling and dull that these flesh-mangling episodes are all I feel that I have to look forward to in this feature. Thus, I’m feeling pretty cheated right now, because despite several months’ worth of foreshadowing, not a single person in this interminable circus storyline has been mauled by a tiger, despite many chances for such a thing to happen. One can only hope that the plot’s various ne’er-do-wells have been spared that fate so that Dick can line them up and shoot them in the face one by one.

Luann, 11/16/09

For the record, this is a bad idea because Brad will try too hard and screw everything up, plus TJ will attempt to seduce Brad’s mom. His whipped sweet potatoes will still be exquisite.

Curtis, 11/16/09

I have never claimed to some kind of consistency in my comics likes and dislikes. Thus, while Marvin’s endless poop-smeared antics repulse me, I will always laugh at jokes about Curtis’s little brother picking his nose with malice aforethought, especially when this is indicated by comical sound effects.

Hi and Lois, 11/16/09

I realize that “nostalgia music” was more or less necessary to set up the punchline here, but for full sneering-at-old-people effect, I prefer “dinosaur rock” myself.

Oh, and Vintage Guitar magazine? It exists, my friends. Order it now for the dinosaur rocker on your Christmas list!

Spider-Man, 11/16/09

Newspaper comic strip Spider-Man trufans have been enjoying this plot so far, but have been waiting with mounting anxiety for the moment when the plot will hinge on the non-functioning of an ordinary household electronic device. Never fear, faithful readers! You know this feature always comes through for you!

More Josh-on-the-radio news! If your local public radio station carries Dick Gordon’s “The Story,” I am on it, today, talking nostalgically about being laid off during the last recession! In the Baltimore area it’s on WYPR at 8 pm. I will post a link to the podcast when available!