Your comments of the week in a moment, but first I must point to a blog of which I was wholly unaware, and which appears to have not updated since July, but to which attention must be paid: The Secret Life of Mark Trail. Pointed out in the comments by faithful reader True Fable, it pairs bizarre, out-of-context Mark Trail panels with funny captions. Do not miss!
“Somewhere, an assistant is hanging a new number on a large sign in the Fred Basset production office that says ‘_ _ _ _ DAYS WITHOUT A DISCERNIBLE JOKE.’” –Muffaroo
“thatquietkid: According to your fine newsletter, Mark Trail is 32 years old and has been married for 15 years. I now have a glorious mental image of Mark Trail as a seventeen-year-old child bride, swathed in khaki with a mosquito net veil, having been sold to Cherry as breeding stock.” –Jessie
“Lynn, you clearly don’t know what you’re doing. By ignoring Mary’s biddying you’re just making the inevitable meddlegasm stronger and longer. Panel after panel of stale platitudes and broken metaphors rhythmically spurting out of Mary, covering you and your horrible father in layer after layer of fetid sticky cliche, until she lies, spent, in the busybody’s afterglow.” –Baka Gaijin
“Reading zombie Foob is like watching paint redry.” –Uncle Lumpy
“Peter Parker’s only saving grace is that his enemies are inevitably even more pathetic than he is. After such hapless losers as The Shocker and The Vulture, we have perhaps the most pitiful of all — Big Time, who has to work overtime to keep his contrived persona going: constantly reminding people of his self-imposed nickname, carefully hanging clocks around his sad little lair, planning boring clock-related crimes … I just hope he lucks out and gets to die at the end of his storyline instead of going to prison, thus depriving Peter Parker the opportunity to make some lame-ass comment about how BT will be ‘doing time’ or how he’ll have ‘plenty of time to think about his mistakes … while he’s being shivved in the weight room by skinheads.’ Oh, wait, even if BT dies, Parker will be able to say that he’s ‘run out of time.’ Sorry, Biggie, you’re screwed either way.” –Joe Blevins
“Doc: ‘Could I get a second opinion?’ Dagwood: [looks down at his pants] ‘There’s one right there!’” –Ptycho
JP: “It seems like an obvious point, but in most murder mysteries interest is sustained by having more than one plausible culprit. Means and motive can also be points of investigation. But since we got all those questions out of the way quickly, that leaves only the expected rescue by the leather pants lady to complete this story and get back to the exciting subject of applying for solar panel tax credits.” –Mr. O’Malley
“I just think Margo is simply reaching around her ear to remove the flesh-mask that hides her true, scaled, Velociraptor visage. Soon, the assistant will be nothing but stains and entrails, to be hung as art and received as genius.” –Lettuce
“Save ‘some’ of the animals in the swamp? So much for natural selection. Are Mark and Pop to sit in judgement on the swamp, picking and choosing which animals meet their warped sense of worth? In panel three, Mark has already swelled to god-like proportions.” –McManx
“I’m not sure if ‘forvever’ is Milford slang or just the result of the profound aphasia that develops in a society oriented entirely around games of hitting each other — or, indeed, if those two things are different.” –JohnsonDelegate
“I’m pretty sure that Jeff’s shirt really does say MILFORD and not MILF; he just had one custom made to be horribly off-center so it would better match his chin.” –peabody
“So Dixie somehow ties Sam to a chair next to the bed in the motel room (they are in a motel room, right? I’ve lost track in all that noir-ness). Then Sam and Dixie await the arrival of Detective Vavavoom. She, upon walking into the room, gazes at Dixie, who has already removed most of her clothes. Smiling, they wordlessly move toward each other, tenderly remove each other’s remaining garments, and drop to the bed to begin their entwined silken-limbed lesbian lovefest. Sam, still tied to the chair, falls asleep.” –Poteet
“When someone would pass gas, my grandmother used to say, ‘Someone stepped on a toadfrog.’ Mark Trail, however, seems to prefer the phrase, ‘I hear an old gator bellowing.’” –Perky Bird
“I’m thankful that Luann has taught me that just because something is maudlin doesn’t mean it can’t be creepy.” –Spunde
“Why does little Sarah look like a Venetian porn star in the second panel of that RMMD strip? I ask merely for information.” –Angry Kem
“Of course, no one has actually joined the cast of Beetle Bailey in at least a decade, so until we see this new friendly face again, I can only assume Beetle has lead him to Cookie’s tent and that there will be suspicious-looking meatloaf in the mess tonight.” –Black Drazon
“I can only hope that the teaser saying, ‘Is time running out for Spider-man?’ means the strip is going to star Maria Lopez after Peter Parker dies of apoplexy when his cable service gets cut.” –True Fable
“We are all reading TJ’s remarks with the wrong inflection. Should read more like this: Hey, ‘Mom and Dad,’ or ‘Big Jerks who won’t let me mooch off you anymore’ — I don’t care that you kicked me out and got that restraining order because I found a NEW family to ‘borrow’ credit cards from and impregnate ‘younger sisters’. Heh, heh, heh… You just can’t see all the quotation marks because of the dishwater.” –Rachel
“Watch out, Margo! The top button of Mr. Ken Doll Hair’s shirt is unbuttoned! He has no respect for society!” –Echo
“Josh, you’ve just made yourself obsolete. There’s really nothing more left to do with Momma than post ‘Momma: Hengh?’ every morning.” –teddytoad
