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Mary Worth, 2/7/10
Uh oh — it looks like Dawn isn’t going to sit back just acquiesce to losing her father’s affections to some scam artist! It seems that she is going to try shock therapy by finding the one person who can be guaranteed to terrify Wilbur back to his senses: erstwhile romantic rival Martin Clark. Sure, he’s been dead for years, but that will make the ultimate confrontation all the more harrowing, as Dawn rigs up the rich man’s corpse to move and speak like a marionette. “Look at me, Wilbur!” Martin will say, thanks to the ventriloquist lessons Dawn’s been taking on the sly. “I’m a charred, reassembled cadaver, and yet Abby would still choose me over you!”
Blondie, 2/7/10
This right here is seven panels of Superbowl Sunday inanity punctuated by one glorious moment of complete madness. I suppose that longtime readers of Blondie are supposed to know that spinning around on one’s head is an indicator of extreme, uncontrollable emotion of some kind, but to the casual viewer, it would just appear that Dagwood, Herb, and Daisy have chosen to express their football-related outrage with a stunning display of eerily synchronized breakdancing. Which I for one am totally in favor of.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/10
You know who I just realized that I totally don’t get at all? Berna! She’s Rex and June’s receptionist and she runs a successful salon of some sort and she uses Yugoslav generalissimo Tito’s recipes to dominate the local restaurant scene? Why would such a power broker need a relatively menial job behind a clinic’s front desk? Perhaps she uses it to drum up business for her salon. “Honey, trust me, Western medicine can’t do a thing about those split ends. Here’s my number.”
Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing how this strip attempts to make a guy named “Toots” who has a stripey rugby shirt, a goofy little beard, and a lot of hair gel into some kind of threat against Rex and June’s carefully constructed bourgeois order.
Marvin, 2/7/10
Since we only get a single glimpse of Marvin’s dad in this strip, in which he appears to be a good 15 or 20 feet away from his terrible little son and not getting any closer, I’m guessing this is less “father/son bonding” and more “let’s bring the hateful monster outside and leave him there until he ‘accidentally’ freezes to death.”
Mark Trail, 2/6/10
I may have missed this earlier, but it appears that the hilariously surnamed Parker brothers are hilariously named Moe and Joe. What whimsical parents they must have had, to give them rhyming names! Clearly the only way they had to rebel against their twee upbringing was to grow facial hair and generally dick it up out on the lake, with their big motors. Still, we can see a bit of their wacky heritage out on display in the rapid-fire shirt exchange they made between panels one and two, just for absurdist fun. Mark and Senator Hatcher just stand there with their hands manfully on their hips, their low-key masculinity offering a counterpoint to their desperate antics
In panel three, Joe, or possibly Moe, shows that he’s well acquainted with the most up-to-date way to effect political change, which is to buttonhole one of your elected officials and scream at him.
For Better For Worse, 2/6/10
FBOFW reruns are like comics methadone: not as good as the real thing, and yet I still can’t seem to taper off. I do enjoy them for their sociological insight into late ’70s/early ’80s Canada, anyway. Today we learn what the main characteristic of a dark, seedy Montreal jazz club of the era was: omnipresent menacing mustaches.
Marmaduke, 2/6/10
Come now, Marmaduke’s lovingly curated collection of human femurs is a work of art, not a mere job. I mean, I at least hope that nobody’s paying him for it.
Apartment 3-G, 2/5/10
OK, you guys, are you ready for a theory that will blow your mind? Huh? Are you?
Before I launch into said theory let me, for the benefit of relative newcomers, recap the Story of Margo. Margo was raised by her wealthy father Martin and his wife — who, it turns out, was not her mother. Her mother is Gabriella, a lowly maid, who Martin knocked up. When Margo found out this sordid tale as an adult, it wreaked havoc with her family life and ability to feel ordinary human emotions, obviously, and she seems deeply suspicious that her parents are palling around again.
And what about Martin’s wife, the one who, presumably, Margo thought of as her mother for most of her childhood, but who probably viewed Margo with some combination of horror and disgust? Well, we don’t really know much about her, other than her name, which is … Roberta.
What’s a common nickname for Roberta? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Or, really, more specifically, are you thinking what the folks over at the Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3-G blog are thinking, who had the idea first? Is the cheating husband Bobbie is obsessively chasing Martin? Is that building across the street Gabriella’s? Is this glorious lunatic pill-popping shrink-screwing floozy the woman whose disdain and resentment shaped Margo into the woman she is today? Will this plotline end in a fantabulous one-on-one Bobbie-Margo battle that will result in the two of them resolving their differences and teaming up to destroy anyone in their way? I am giddy!
(And if you aren’t reading the Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3-G, well, why the heck not?)
Pluggers, 2/5/10
Pluggers pretty much go through life in a prescription med haze, so why shouldn’t their pets, too? It sure would keep the damn things from barking constantly and cutting into pluggers’ valuable staring-at-the-wall-and-drooling time! Plus, giving pills to animals is the sort of thing that seems hilarious when you’re high.
Beetle Bailey, 2/5/10
Meanwhile, the poor vendor who owns that cart is lying on some city sidewalk bleeding to death from a bayonet wound to the gut. But, whatever, that Sarge sure likes to eat, amiright?
Beetle Bailey, 2/4/10
OK, I’ll admit it: today’s unspeakably perverse Beetle Bailey, in which Sarge’s leering sex maniac of a dog takes him to some kind of canine fetish club, made me laugh. (I’m assuming the “fire plug dancing” bit means that their target audience is into watersports.) I think what makes this strip for me is Sarge’s look of wide-eyed innocence giving way to growing shock in the second panel. So many things he will learn tonight, about dogs and what they like to smell and/or pee on!
Gil Thorp, 2/4/10
I was going to make some sort of snide comment about how every sentence in panels two and three could be construed as a double entendre, but then I caught site of Gil’s sweater vest, and now can think about nothing but said sweater vest. Do you think it’s in Mudlark team colors? That would be ever so keen!
Mary Worth, 2/4/10
“It must be the same guy! Such an unusual name, after all!”
Dawn better keep track of her father while she thought-balloons, as Wilbur has snuck away to hunch over his computer in the background and go all crazy social-networking style. Watch out, Dawn! Maybe he’ll discover that daughter he always wanted!
Dennis the Menace, 2/4/10
Too bad you won’t be alive to see it, old man! Maybe Dennis’ll bring the little tykes over to dance on your grave!
B.C., 2/3/10
Whoah, post-Johnny Hart B.C. is dangerously flirting with relevance, using as a cultural touchstone an actor whose career popularity peaked a mere 15 to 20 years ago! Perhaps — and this is just a suggestion — this joke shouldn’t have paired overacting with the name of a man who’s mostly known for squinting at the camera in an expression that might be described as either stoic or confused, depending on how charitable you’re being.
Momma, 2/3/10
It’s kind of disappointing that the first Momma to acknowledge that the title character is in fact 11 inches tall is also the one where her son leaves her outside in the snow to freeze to death.
Luann, 2/3/10
I’m pretty sure this is the opening scene of a film used as aversion therapy for porn addicts.
People! Normally, I don’t bother you with metaposts mid-week, but I’ve received a bevy of Mark Trail related delights from readers over the past few weeks that I feel deserve their own showcase!
First up is a book discovered by faithful reader Charterstoned:
Note that it’s Mark Trail’s Fishing Tips Created By Ed Dodd, with the actual authorship left vague. Presumably this book was churned out by strip creator Dodd’s lowly assistant, while Dodd partied till all hours with Hollywood big shots.
This is clearly the high point of the whole book, in which an innocent young boy cringes in terror at the approach of a menacing weirdo in a hat. Don’t worry, kid; he just wants your gum … for now.
Also, you can tell the difference between the various almost-identical kinds of catfish you catch, assuming that counting the number of rays on on a dead, smelly fish’s fins is your idea of a good time.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Mark Trail without a freakishly oversized animal. Fishing dude who may or may not be Mark is so smug about his little pie-pan trick that he doesn’t even notice the giant carnivorous moth that’s about to latch onto his face.
Meanwhile, faithful reader Jasper Jinks sends a couple of scans from a 1956 Mark Trail comic book put out by the U.S. Public Health Service.
An “industrial problem” that’s “being licked all over America by plain citizens, working together at the local level for everyone’s benefit”? Translation: Mark Trail is a dirty communist. A dirty communist in terrifying jodhpurs.
The plot of this tract involves a rotten little kid who gets a little under the weather after swimming in a watering hole containing industrial run-off from some awesomely profitable factory. Here’s a scene of the crazed Marxist lynch mob Mark puts together to put a stop to progress. Note that Mark is clenching his fist in case political agitation fails and he needs to punch pollution out of the water:
Of course, seeing old Mark Trails like this makes one wonder how similar they are to the current version. Well, a lot more than you might think! Faithful reader These Strange Worlds has put together an exhaustive comparison showing how much of the current storyline is recycled from one that ran 30 years ago.
And, finally, fans of Mark Trail and making fun of Mark Trail should check out Mark Stale. “What’s wrong, Rusty? Why are you lying awake, whimpering like a baby?” (Thanks to faithful reader festoonic for the tip.)
Oh, also, if you are going to be in the mid-Atlantic region over the weekend of May 22, perhaps you will want to get in on a meetup faithful reader bourbon babe is planning? Certain bloggers who live in that neck of the woods will in all probability make an appearance! (HINT HINT)
