Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

Once more conscious, Mark Trail realizes that Rusty! and Sassy! have been left alone! In the tent! A quick peek revealed that the campsite looked peaceful and calm.

That’s what every damned thing that lives and flies and crawls and buzzes and swims in the swamp would like you to believe.  Only it takes a person with cunning and a sense of danger to realize otherwise.  Like CC’s AeroSquid (well, certainly not Mark!)…

Or even more insidious:

Oh, yeah. Like I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon (particularly when I can mash on AeroSquid’s original mashie goodness):

Okay, just one more:

“Holy Crapping Pancakes!” is courtesy of Sequitur (and I think if Mark every cursed, this would be it).  Speaking of Sequitur, guess who came along for the ride (Mark’s expression in Panel 2 kills me):

Murder under the Big Top! Performers dropping like clumsy trapeze artists flies! Who’s to blame?

But a bigger question:  can we link the Extreme Close-Ups, Fitful Exposition, and Creepy Characters to a larger conspiracy?  I think so!

(and that’s just where the gator’s going to be in another few moments).  Mark remains unconscious, while not-really-a-bad-guy rushes to his rescue!

Wow! A bevy of “what happens next?” suppositories and suppositions sprang forth from CC’s Peanuts Gallery, and much of it lands here (most of Dingo’s contributions are included in the mysteriously-missing Panels 4 through 6) — thanks, Funny Folks!

Just come back.  I can’t take the Rex-less storyline much longer.  Even the cussing doesn’t help that much. Or the cameo appearances.

Okay, planning a major drug-bust requires careful planning and split-second timing.

However, the SRPD assault on its drug traffickers in “Operation H-Town” (snerk!) is not tantamount to the Invasion of Normandy.  Get over it!

And Scott? Nothing sez “twu luw” like a photo of your best girl that smells like foot-funk:

Let’s toss in a bit of E.S.P., too:

It’s been an exciting day for Rusty and Mark, catching fish, hearing gunshots in the distance, unhooking gators from poachers’ hook lines.  No doubt things are going to settle down after cocoa and toasted marshmallow:

Well, sorta (now where did I put my corkscrew?):

Back to Mark and Rusty’s adventures in the Lost Swamp in a minute.  First we’re saluting some of the great tiger art in Dick Tracy.  Yes, while the art in Dick Tracy is getting more and more cubist (along with Dick’s pudgy little fingers), the current storyline, set in a circus, is giving someone all sorts of opportunity to draw some fabulous tigers.  They’re even Mark Trail worthy!

Of couse, nobody listens to us, so it’s up to CC’s AeroSquid and yours truly to demonstrate just how easy a crossover between these two old warhorse comic strips can be:

Reggie was always my favorite Riverdale teen.  He was good-looking and smart, and most of all, a snarker before snarking was cool.  (Back then, he was just a smart-aleck.  Just like me!)

Fortunately, other snarkers have come into the light, no longer afraid to be ridiculed, to be told that they’re immature, or that they act like middle-school kids, or that all they think and joke about is sex, sex, sex! (Hi, katya…that one’s for you, sweetie!)

[This is a slight reworking of the mashup I did early.  The first one was rushed, because I didn’t want AeroSquid to steal my idea.  You didn’t think I was going to take the fall for the broken Ming vase, did you, A.S.?]

Oh, Jeffy! Oh, Billy! You two little casaba-heads make things so easy!

Of course, we can always class up the joint by an episode of “AeroSquid Modern Literary Classics” (In Color!):

“What are you drawing ?

“NOW you’re interested ? What’s your angle ?”

“No angle. I’m on the up and up. What is that ? ”

“Since you SEEM interested, I’ll let you in on it.”

“I’m all ears. Lay it on me, Jackson.”

“Well. You know what a Tesla coil is ?”

“I think so. That thing that goes: BZZZ BZZZ ?”

“Crude sound effect, but accurate.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Anyway…..”

“Anyway, as Mommy recited her oblations to the Old Ones the night before, I noted a small, almost undetectable variance in the third realm of Baoht Z’uqqa-Mogg. You worship Baoht Z’uqqa-Mogg….don’t you ?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“You’re lying. Baoht Z’uqqa-Mogg knows it and I know it.”

“Okay. You got me. I’m not an adherent. I worship Nug and Yeb.”

“The Twin Blasphemies ? Ha ! You might as well lay with Shub-Niggurath !”

“The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young ? Men have died for less for such impolitness !”

“Anyway….”

“Anyway…”

“I’m drawing a pee pee. HAHAHAHAH!”

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

It’s just something you get or don’t get.

Heck, I’m not even sure if it goes this way:

Or that way:

So I’m covering all my bases.