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Herb and Jamaal, 10/3/09

So Herb and Jamaal spent the entire last week engaged in a wholly unaccustomed but not actively offensive behavior: a multi-day storyline. Herb and Jamaal went hiking and Herb was supposed to be guiding them but he got lost but didn’t tell Jamaal for a while, ha ha, and then on Friday he indicated that he did pack one bit of wayfinding gear: his comically oversized cell phone! WOKKA WOKKA WOKKA!

But here’s the thing about doing a multi-day storyline, Herb and Jamaal: If you’re going to do one that lasts for five days, you really ought to just add one more installment, because otherwise the Saturday strip feels out of place. And if you’re going to do Saturday as a standalone, you really shouldn’t include just enough elements from the Monday through Friday story (Herb is lost, Herb is talking on a brick-sized cell phone from 1991) to make it seem like it’s sort of part of the work week’s story, because otherwise your readership will think that, say, Herb lured Jamaal deep into the woods to kill and eat him, before driving back home and engaging in hilarious banter with his mother-in-law on his enormous mobile phone.

Judge Parker, 10/3/09

It’s true that my love affair with Judge Parker has cooled a bit of late, as I’ve found myself unable to work up much enthusiasm to analyze either the abuse-of-power-tastic celebrity vs. paparazzi plot just completed, and the return to the thinly veiled Bernie Madoff revenge fantasy isn’t looking that much more exciting. But I will say this for today’s strip: it features Sam Driver wearing a tie that, somehow, is actually narrower than its own stripes.

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Mark Trail, 10/2/09

I just did a quick look-see over the past couple of weeks of Mark Trail and have confirmed my suspicions: other than some vague, shifty talk from Morally Conflicted Bob about “poachers in the area,” nobody has offered Mark any explanation as to how he came to be suddenly unconscious, nor has he attempted to rationalize up one himself. And yet there he is with his classic smug Trailian grin, assuring Rusty that everything’s going to be great. “Rusty, maybe you’ll go to the Dark Place like I did earlier this evening! It’s just like when you go to bed, except sleepier and ouchier! Don’t worry, if it happens to you I won’t let the alligators eat you, probably!”

Mary Worth, 10/2/09

Kudos to faithful readers P and sarahtheawesome for pointing out that “Dr. Good” is almost certainly Dr. Brian Good, star of a rather repulsive Mary Worth plotline from some years back. That story, in a nutshell: Mary urges girl to pursue boy, who is an old and currently married flame, at high school reunion; boy turns out to be divorced; boy and girl make out in parking lot; boy and girl get married, have sex; girl had been convinced of her infertility even before marrying boy, though she didn’t mention it; girl vomits; girl turns out not be infertile, just stupid; girl and boy gaze lovingly into each others eyes forever and ever. As that recap demonstrated, Dr. Brian was very interested in spawning a li’l Good from the get-go, so by “vital areas” he obviously means Scott’s baby-making parts; still, “we did what we could” sounds kind of like an excuse for some awful result. “I mean, I know you love Scott, but it’s never really been the face part of Scott you’re most attached to, right?”

Adrian, meanwhile, is keeping a solid grip on the only thing that can keep her grounded in this troubling time: her chin.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/09

Aw, come on, fellers, let’s give up this charade: we all know that Snuffy is illit’rit! He just swiped that newspaper from one of the packing crates down at the store, and is using it in a half-hearted attempt to hide the fact that he’s engagin’ in the Sin of Onan.

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Hey all, as noted, today (Friday) is the last day to get a What Would Margo Do bracelet with a donation! The arbitrary cutoff is noon U.S. eastern time. To tempt you last-minute holdouts, here are some more fun WWMD photos. First up is faithful reader AhClem, a-pickin’ and (presumably) a-grinnin’:

Faithful reader AMSTERDANG has some pretty specific ideas about what Margo would do:

Faithful reader Joe Btfsplk says that “this image is something along the lines of the first thing that came to mind when I considered the WWMD question. I would have modeled my own arm, but didn’t know where to look for the other necessary prop. So, here is an unholy amalgam spawned of bits of Uncle Lumpy’s Margo Moments, another old 3G strip, an Aztec Codex, and probably too much time on my hands.”

And finally, one faithful reader shows that even Jane Austen (or at least her action figure) wants to know what Margo would do?

If you donated last week, your bracelet ought to have already arrived, or will do so in the next few days; donators this week, yours are coming! If you suspect yours has gone missing in the mail, please contact me at jfruh@jfruh.com.

Oh! And! In totally unrelated news, I got nominated for a “Mobbie,” the Baltimore Sun’s blog awards. It’s open to reader voting, so you know what to do! (Warning: You will need to sign up for a Baltimore Sun account to vote.)