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Gil Thorp, 11/26/09

Greetings, faithful readers! I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving did so with your real friends, a whole bunch of beer bottles, and celebrated as our Pilgrim forefathers did, at a picnic table in some dark, lonely park somewhere.

Mark Trail, 11/26/09

Those of you who are criminals have a lot to be thankful for! Specifically, you can be thankful that in America’s forgiving justice system, you can go from being a law-breaker to being law-enforcement official simply by choosing exactly the right time to kick one of your erstwhile criminal associates in the face.

Dick Tracy, 11/27/09

As for me, I’m mostly thankful that Dick Tracy refers to any concert not performed by the U.S. Marine Corps Band or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as “long hair stuff.”

Mark Trail, 11/29/09

And I’m also pleased that Mark Trail decided to pass over more obvious animals on Thanksgiving weekend and go for the deep’s more terrifying tentacled monsters, offering us in the process a lovely image of a nervous human approaching the rotting corpse of 50-foot-long giant squid and a giant depiction of a living squid of indeterminate size regarding us inscrutably from his watery lair. And, sure, the bottom left panel is a repeat of one from a previous squid-themed Mark Trail installment, but what of it? If I had produced an awesome drawing of dozens of squids flying through the air like a barrage of betentacled missiles, I’d run it every damn day if I could.

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Heart of the City, 11/25/09

I’ve enjoyed a couple of trips to Philadelphia, where Heart of the City is set, and I’ve always considered Ben Franklin to be my favorite Founding Father. Still, if I were walking through a scenic Philly park and encountered a tiny Franklin-gnome staring ahead with dead eyes, I think I would be profoundly disturbed.

Luann, 11/25/09

“So it turns out that Brad is pretty good at picking out gifts for both of us! How incredibly awkward, for baffling, inscrutable reasons of narrative convenience!”

Crock, 11/25/09

It obviously makes total sense that Captain Preppie is being eaten from the inside out by his own handsomeness. However, I’m unsettled by the way he’s brandishing that corn dog with a heavy-lidded leer.

Hey, kids, I’m going to be gorging myself on turkey and drinking gravy straight from the boat for the next few days. See ya Monday or thereabouts!

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Mark Trail, 11/24/09

Rusty may be intensely stupid and hideously deformed, but he knows how the world — specifically, the world of Mark Trail — works. Having literally swung into action to defend an irritating puppy, Bob will have all of his past transgressions forgiven. Anyway, he was only killing and skinning gators to feed his family, as opposed to his more hirsute co-poachers, who were probably using the money to feed themselves, and whatever other non-related individuals they might share their backwoods shacks with, the greedy bastards. Rusty obviously doesn’t want Bob to labor under the misapprehension that there will be consequences for his actions, which is why he’s stage-whispering to Mark well within earshot in panel three.

Still, the point is largely moot, because nobody’s going to jail. Obviously there are no such things as “courts” or “police” or a “criminal justice system” or “institutions of government with a monopoly on legitimate violence” in Mark’s universe. There are only Mark’s fists and the righteous punishment they dish out. This explains why the poachers are just glumly sitting around the swamp; having been punched, their villainy has been drained away, and they are hollow of motivation and await further instructions.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/09

Cue may be intensely stupid and have dumb piercings, but give him this: he is a total fanatic about referring to his sad little trailer as his “crib.” Here, he almost seems to be using the word as an act of defiance: “Yeah, all you squares might look down your nose at ol’ Cue, just because I deal weed and hold old people for ransom. Well, you know what? I won’t use some bourgeois term for a dwelling, you hear me? I won’t! You can put me in jail, but you can’t stop me from calling my cell a ‘crib.'”

Apartment 3-G, 11/24/09

Well, it looks like the staff of I Dressed In The Dark met with complete and total failure in their attempt to gussy up Tommie. I visualize wave after wave of highly trained makeover artists charging at her, only to watch their best efforts vanish beyond Tommie’s event horizon of blandness. At least they convinced Ruby that her ridiculous hair ribbons should complement her outfit, rather than being the exact same color as everything else she has on.