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Mark Trail, 12/9-10/05

I never would have pegged Jack Elrod as part of the chardonnay-swilling liberal real-American-hating elite, what with his love of the outdoors and camping and hatred of swarthy people with facial hair. Still, this latest plotline has managed to indulge in just about every vicious stereotype about the proud, overall-wearing rural folk that make up the moral backbone of this great country: that they’re stupid, they’re lazy, they wear overalls all the time, they’re by and large hideously unattractive (except for the young womenfolk), they refuse to give up pet-napping for honest work, etc. Just about the only slander that we’ve avoided has been the one about incest and sexual depravity … until now. Yuck. Thanks, Mark Trail, thanks a lot. Still, I have to admit that I like the wordless tableau in the last panel of the second strip: Andy the hero dog valiantly comes to the aid of our blue-haired heroine, with Scrawny Hillbilly Dude stumbling backwards, his dumb hat falling off of his stupid head. Meanwhile, No-Neck Hillbilly Dude is lumbering into action in the background, afraid that his dreams of “over a thousand bucks!” are going to vanish in a fit of intrafamilial squabbling.

Meanwhile, Sunday’s nature lesson takes us to chilly Arctic:

Mark Trail, 12/11/05

Yes, I’m sure that, when choosing the beasts that would pull his sleigh, Santa gave careful consideration to reindeer’s endurance, their special heat-spreading circulatory system, their “unique hair” … and also the fact that they can goddamn fly. Sheesh, Mark, for a naturalist, you’re sure leaving out some important details.

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“Hey,” you’re saying. “Not much going on in this week’s Apartment 3-G,” you’re saying. Well, that’s because you haven’t been following the fortunes of the guy I like to call El Sombrero Rojo.

See, on Tuesday, the call went out for extras. “We need a guy in a red hat and a black vest,” said the casting people, and this fellow was just happy to be there.

A couple panels later, they moved him to the foreground. Was it just to provide a counterpoint to the Blaze-Lu Ann conversation? Was he supposed to be looking wistfully at Lu Ann to reinforce the idea that she’s got effervescent good looks? Or were the Apartment 3-G powers that be beginning to notice his undeniable charisma?

Wednesday, he was in the background again, but he was projecting a sort of wry bemusement, or maybe a bemused wryness — anyway, it was the sort of fine-grained character work we’ve now come to expect from Vesty McRedhat.

And now, after he’s paid his dues … he actually gets a speaking part!

Apartment 3-G, 12/8/05

Unfortunately, it involved losing a battle of wills Lu Ann Powers, the dumbest blonde in Manhattan. Nobody said it’d be easy to break into the big time, buddy.

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Gil Thorp, 12/7/05

Great God and saints in heaven above, if this strip were any whiter, it would belong to a country club and have a whole closet full of pastel golf shirts. Having the words “streetball” and “sweet passes” come out of the eager, post-orthodontia-perfect mouth of überhonkey Steve Luhm is just icing on the cake. (I also can’t read the latter phrase without hearing Napoleon Dynamite saying “sweet jumps.”)

I once knew a guy who had a haircut identical to Mr. Ithaca there; he was a 70-year-old French medieval history professor with a bad hip, and he wasn’t much of a baller. I also went to school in Ithaca, and trust me when I say it’s not really a streetball town. You can now buy t-shirts that spoof the city’s traditional “Ithaca Is Gorges” motto, reading instead “Ithaca Is Gangsta.” That might have thrown the good people at Gil Thorp off. Guys, I know it’s a little late for this but: trust me, they’re ironic.

In the category of Things I’m Going To Draw Your Attention To That You’re Going To Really, Really Wish I Hadn’t: check out the package on the black-sweatshirted dude on the left in the second panel! Them’s some tight sweatpants, and that ain’t right.