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Tension seethes beneath the surface

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Mark Trail, 8/2/05

What’s that you say? You’ve been waiting in vain for weeks — nay, months — for another exciting installment of What They Say And What They Mean? Well, wait no longer!

What he says What he means
El Presidente “I’m surprised at Lynn, I didn’t think she would enjoy the outdoors…” I enjoy forcing my underlings and their loved ones to do things they hate in order to prove how much power I have over them. It’s like the time I made my secretary get a tattoo!
El Presidente “She seems to have adjusted well!” I shall have to try harder to break her will. Upon return to civilization, she’ll be joining a naked roller-derby league for my amusement … unless you’ve decided you don’t want a future at my company, of course.
El Presidente “She’s the type of wife I like my executives to have!” Whiny, murderous, social climbing, and cravat-wearing! Oh, and someone told me once that straight women, gay men, and single people can make good executives too. Isn’t that a hoot?
Scott “Thanks … she’s a good woman … I think I’ll turn in!” You know, I was feeling bad about my wife’s plan to kill you. Now I’m more than happy to help out, you loathsome dinosaur. Ever been garroted by a cravat before?

Yes, that’s our patented feature … What They Say And What They Mean! Sometimes it’s even funny!

Incidentally, hasn’t the sky in Mark Trail been a particularly trippy shade of ultra-bright blue lately? Even in strips like this, which ostensibly take place at night? The fact that everyone’s skin is chalk-white makes for extra psychadeliosity. Maybe the mega-amphibian in panel two is meant to stand in for the uncompromising toad-licking that the censors wouldn’t let Jack Elrod show.

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Medical marvel!

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FoxTrot, 8/2/05

Look at panel four! I believe that what we’re looking at here is the first visually confirmed case of cooties on record. Long rumored to be the result of contact between prepubescent boys and girls but dismissed as a fantasy by the medical establishment, we now know that cooties do exist — and, more alarmingly, can be spread electronically.

OK, seriously though, can anyone tell me what the deal is with Jason’s face? ‘Cause if it’s not cooties, I got nothing.

One of the problems of kids in comics who don’t age (which I suppose is every comics child outside of For Better Or For Worse) is that behaviors that are no doubt charming or at least vaguely tolerable for the year or so they last in real life become deeply irritating as they go on in eternal comics time. Jason’s anxious avoision to girls in general and his obvious soul mate Eileen in particular is a prime example. I can’t sum up this attitude any better than the Simpsons’ Jimbo Jones: “Dude, you kissed a girl! That is so gay!”

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In this car, hell is other people

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Apartment 3-G, 7/31/05

Oh, they’re joined somewhere, Tommie, but it’s not at the hip.

Ahem. OK, got that one out of the way early. My non-double-entendre comment here is that this may be the lamest use of the large-scale Sunday format in Apartment 3-G to date. Of course, there’s nothing more visually interesting than two people sitting and talking in a car, so it’s best to show that from every possible angle, with loving attention paid to the relative level of tension Tommie and the Professor are putting on their seatbelts in various poses. And we really wouldn’t be able to properly appreciate all this sitting-in-car action if the conversation were scintillating, so thank goodness these two clowns are doing their best to demonstrate why they’re consistently not featured in Apartment 3-G storylines. If the Professor’s vague prattling about the agony and the ecstasy of European travel does not turn out to be a vital plot point, I will lose my remaining respect for him, his academic status and weak heart be damned.