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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.

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Normally, I don’t use this space to promote comics-related commercial products. But then again, most comics-related commercial products aren’t nearly as cool as Balloonist, and aren’t the creation of my friend Dave Horlick, as Balloonist is. Dave is both a cartoonist himself (anyone who went to Cornell in the mid 1990s remembers the odd genius that was Gerald Gazelle) and a computer programmer, so he’s the perfect guy to create the next great thing in computer-based cartooning.

What is Balloonist, you might ask? Dave (or, technically, this product announcement that he wrote) will be glad to tell you:

Balloonist is cross-platform comics layout software. For busy comics professionals and comics-minded graphics designers, Balloonist represents a big improvement over lettering guides, rulers, and general-purpose illustration software.

Balloonist seeks to accomplish for comics what word processors have done for writing. Using traditional tools, it’s an effort to trace a page full of panels. It’s work to draw or position cut-out word balloons. And lettering the text inside those balloons is tedious.

But the real disadvantage of existing comics workflows is their inflexibility. Want to nudge an overlapping word balloon, or shift a panel? You usually have to start over from scratch. Often, time constraints make us settle for second-class layout.

Not anymore!

With Balloonist, moving and re-sizing the components of a comic is as easy as dragging your mouse. You can even move the gutters between panels! Throw in support for vertically-oriented languages, shape merging, ties, font styles, and multiple levels of Undo, and you have the underpinnings of a comics revolution. Or at least a great new tool.

Anyway, those of you who live to modify and mock the daily funnies might be particularly interested in Balloonist’s Gouache tool, which lets you replace the text in word balloons from somebody else’s comic with your own bon mots. I’ve been pimping this fine piece of software in my adstrip for the past few days, so some of you may have already checked it out. The rest of you can learn more by heading over to the main Balloonist page.

In slightly less meretricious news, my latest Cartoon Violence column is up on Wonkette. (If you want to read my political cartoon commentary but can’t be bothered with the rest of Wonkette’s offerings, you can subscribe to this RSS feed.) And I’ve got another Geek Comic of the Week up on ITworld.com. Since these are weekly occurrences, I won’t be promoting them every time they happen from here on in, but you can see when each has been updated last in the Other comics-related stuff Josh does section of the sidebar.