Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

I think I’m on to something.

In these days of shrinking newsprint and the ever-constant threat of our favorite comic strips being dropped, maybe a few ought to be combined.  Not forever, like some creepy muley-tigron-manpigbear hybrid, but only occasionally, when the situation merits it.

As an example, Mary Worth is embarking on a new storyline, and frankly, it looks dull.  If this were Sweeps Week, old Mary might be in the dustbin.

However, there’s some camera-swinging, gun-flinging action!!! over in Mark Trail, and it’s just what we all wait and pray for!  So in this case, maybe a little Mark Trail fleetness dropped into Mary’s favorite mercantile emporium will save the day:

Pretty freakin’ exciting, huh?

And speaking of action, Bonnie and Ernie actually show up for dinner at Mary’s! Is this action, or just plain stupidity?!  Only the grindingly-slow events of the evening will tell…

Stimulate that economy, Mary!

No! Don’t stop! Don’t return merchandise! Don’t platitudize!

We were all clamoring for a rip-roarin’ pool party, Charterstone-style, and this just isn’t it.  Maybe we’re a little early. Maybe the weather’s still a little chilly.  But it just doesn’t seem quite right if we don’t catch of glimpse of the rare white Caledonian whale…

WTF?!?

ONE DAY FOR A CHARTERSTONE POOL PARTY?!  AND A WEEKDAY?!?

Things are just not right in Santa Royale.  Still, while Toby was concentrating on her fat-free, flavor-free Pringles, Mary had been musing over returns (“Speaking of returns…”).

Who could it be? Aldo, back from the dead? Chester, having run away from his owner?  Drew, dying of dysentery and/or syphilis? Charley Smith, ready for a new sexual conquest?  The mind reeled for about 24 hours, and then…

Platitude-slinging in a freakin’ department store?!

Oh, well, you know the old saying, when life gives you a lemon potato, make Potato-Ade take Toby shopping:

I don’t know if this one is better, with Toby licking the window:

I just like the idea of Mary taking Toby “shopping,” and leaving her in a locked car.

Okay, we GET it! Kurt really isn’t Wilbur’s son.  Kurt leaves. Wilbur eats sandwiches.  Wilbur eats more sandwiches.  Dawn yammers. Kurt doesn’t come back.  Missing-in-action Mary quotes dead Communists.

Can we move onto a new story?

No?

Alrigthy, then…

But(t) wait! There’s more! Cue the harmoica-featured 70s instrumental music!

And it just isn’t going to stop!  Then again, I’m impressed in a denouement this length for a story that really never had much of a plot, much less a climax…

“Gibbon ugly gas station attendant”…well, you had to be there.

Did I mention Wilbur Weston’s long-lost “son,” Kurt, disappeared?  Of course Wilbur was distraught (since they’d been “bonding”), and even if the paternity test showed that he and Kurt weren’t related, he was still more than willing to be Kurt’s “friend.”  Tough luck, Dawn.

Then again, with a harridan like you for a “daughter,” can you “blame” him?

Yes, indeed, Kurt has disappeared.  It took him two weeks to do it (or two weeks for Wilbur and Dawn to realize he was gone…).

…or at least a resolution to this storyline.  Is Kurt Wilbur’s son (it doesn’t seem likely)?  Who will spill the beans — Dawn, Kurt himself, or Acme Paternity Co.?

And most important — what will the ultimate fallout be?

Wilbur and Kurt’s frolicking and gallivanting and gamboling cannot be contained in a single panel! on a single day!

Fortunately,  neither can the snark:

CC’s bourbon babe, unbuckled valiantly attempts to rescue the shenanigans by making it into a musical (good luck with that!):

Still, I am moved to compose…

You are “offspring” going on “boyfriend”
Here is another verse
Mary’s a loser, Aldo’s a boozer
At Charterstone you could do much worse!
You are “offspring” going on “boyfriend”
You’ve met poor, dowdy Dawn
Cameron’s got beer-gut, Toby’s a crackpot
Forget ‘em and climb right on!

Ew.

Cherry Trail playing coyly with a telephone cord while dialing 1-900-GOT-MARK.

June Morgan looking imperious (and down her nose, at the same time).

Mary Worth making a return to her own strip. Wilbur and Kurt.

WTF?

Seriously.  WTF? True, this has been a gold-mine for snark fodder, and for sick and twisted mash-ups.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Whew.  Thank heavens weeks like this don’t come around every, uh, week.

There will be a Comics Curmudgeon Meet-up in the D.C. area on 22 May.  While I’m not likely to be in attendance, I can be their virtually, wearing my virtual commemorative t-shirt with virtual copyright-violating  snark on it.

(And yeah, the only reason this design jumped out at several CCers was the Sunday Mark Trail, in which the fact that Ceylon lorikeets sleep upside down like bats (I did not know that), was superseded only by the fact that when lorikieets get wasted on fermented fruit and palm wine (where do they get palm wine? Are there jungle liquor stores in Ceylon/Sri Lanka? Are those the little bottles like Bartles & James wine cooler come in, or are they more like 40-ouncers?), they develop little bubbles and wavies around their heads.  Too cute!)

Maybe this could be the little illustration above the pocket on the front of the shirt:

And this could be on the back  (I think both designs would look best on a “Mark Trail Khaki” shirt)  :