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Mary Worth, 3/15/06

So, presumably because of outraged letters from portly advice columnists everywhere, Mary Worth has jettisoned its Wilbur-gets-sued storyline like so much ballast from a bald-headed hot air balloon. This week we’ve gotten a new saga starting up, with trophy wife Toby Cameron making awkward attempts to befriend Charterstone’s resident meddler. What with her husband being roughly Mary’s age, you’d think that she’d know how to talk politely to old people. Instead, she not only refers to Mary as being of “a certain age,” but condescendingly pledges not to “outwalk” her on her young, sexy, coltish legs. Maybe those “passive-aggressive hostility quotes” fly right over the head of your blowhard chinbeard of a husband, Toby, but Mary Worth does not miss a trick. See that weird hand gesture she’s making in the second panel? She’s about to grab you by the ear and drag your skinny blonde ass out the door.

Meanwhile, over in Rex Morgan, Dr. Troy McHomosexual finally makes his move:

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/06

Can you imagine how dissapointed Rex is going to be? The only reason he went out on this damn jaunt was to get some action, but I think he’s about to get an Amway pitch instead.

Oh, one more thing: Some readers might think that I’ve hemmed myself in a bit by focusing my blog on just the comics. Heck, sometimes I feel restricted myself. But I honestly believe that the best blogs — both the best ones to read and the most rewarding ones to write — are the ones where there is a single thread that holds things together. With that in mind, I give you a comics blog I discovered today with much more of a laser-beam focus than I could ever hope to provide:

The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch

SPPW: We salute your extreme specificity.

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Mark Trail, 3/14/06

“OK, Josh, we get it,” you’re saying. “Rex Morgan and Doctor Troy are gayer than two cowboys who have surreptitious man-on-man sex with each other in a tent, then move to Massachusetts, get married to one another, open an interior design firm, and serve on the board of directors of the local chapter of GLAAD! But what I really want to know is, what’s going on in Mark Trail?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. When last we checked in on this plotline, “You’re My Lawyer” Blake had been charged with figuring out a way to get the local government to use its power of eminent domain to allow a shady developer to build a road through Lost Forest to his shady casino. What with the Supreme Court’s recent decision about the potential scope of eminent domain, it seems that Blake should be getting to work wining and dining local officials, making sure backs are scratched, and lining up votes, maybe with the help of a kickback or two from his bald-headed boss’s deep pockets.

Instead, he’s placing calls to explosives-wielding miscreants seeking to hire them to blow up the existing road, which, in the it-totally-makes-sense-until-you-think-about-it-for-thirty-seconds world of Mark Trail, will force the government to build an entirely new road to the casino. The flaws in this scheme are too numerous and glaring for me to bother going into, so I’ll content myself with asking the following: did the Bald Baddie really need a lawyer to do this? Surely he has any number of (no doubt bearded and/or sideburned) thugs on retainer who would make the necessary illicit road-demolition arrangements. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching mob movies, it’s that even the boldest criminal enterprise tries to keep its lawyers from actively participating in criminal acts.

The person to watch in this drama (such as it is) is clearly Baldo’s creepy, affectless grandson Tony. We’ve been told that he’s been “having a hard time” since his parents died in an auto accident, yet he’s showing an unseemly interest in watching the road get blown up — just the sort of thing that could make more little boys and girls wards of their sinister grandfathers. Clearly Tony’s loss has destroyed whatever sense of right and wrong he once had. I’m looking forward to finding out just what it is that’s going to make him snap and turn into an unstoppable pint-sized, tousle-haired killing machine.

Meanwhile, here’s a few other things of note that happened in today’s funnies:

Spider-Man, Family Circus, and panels from Curtis, One Big Happy, Get Fuzzy, 3/14/06

As the drama of the fake Spider-Man grinds on, we learn that the Spider-Suit does carry with it one Spider-Power: Spider-Self-Narrative! The relative inability not to verbalize one’s thoughts of a spider!

This panel is noteworthy because, as Curtis’ dad heckles Curtis, his fingertips (or possibly forehead) actually emit the sound effect (stage direction?) “Heckle!” I find this technique pretty charming (much more so here than the last time it was used).

I should also make it clear to all of you that the today’s Curtis is nowhere near as filthy as the dialogue in this panel might lead you to believe.

Also, today’s One Big Happy, Family Circus, and Get Fuzzy are about vomiting, urinating, and eating something unidentified that is almost certainly vomit or feces, respectively:

Actually, now that I think about it, the Family Circus is vaguely about vomit as well, since it reminds us that the family dog is named “Barfy”, which strikes me as the sort of name you earn, if you know what I’m saying.

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Non Sequitur, 3/13/06

Ah, “nitwittery!” A fine addition to anyone’s quiver of invective, to be fired off from the bow of rage in the service of, um, grumpiness.

Still, it’s no jackassery. I don’t mean to be a hater, but I gotta speak the truth.

Nevertheless, I do like the little stars and swirlies emitting from Danae’s mouth in panel two. And the the fact that her grumpy thought balloon has the same Punisher logo that that we can see half of on her chest.

But: not quite a worthy successor to jackassery. I’m just sayin’. Keep working on it.