Oh! Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Some crackpot in The Phantom is capturing bats and killing them for their blood! W. T. F. ??? Do something, Ghost-Who-Snoops!
…and now it’s Mr. Trail Goes to Washington! This is a pretty cool Sunday installment of Mark Trail — the Ocean Hall looks keen! I thinks it’s also pretty keen that the director of the Smithsonian and a NOAA representative are there, too!
Christian and Mary are fer real ‘n’ true folks. If that’s the case, maybe there really is a Mark Trail…
All right, Andy, be a good dog! I guess even Andy has his limits, knowing that he’s going to be dragged along on Mark’s newest caper and most likely going to be the one responsible for solving the Mystery of the Disappearing Wetlands or the Case of the Rabid Raccoon…
And here we are at Pop’s place. Poor Andy! You just know that his spider-sense doggy-sense is tingling, and Mark is oblivious to it.
This one isn’t even particularly snarky. I do like doofy old Mark Trail (he was sort of the Marlin Perkins of the comic strips — when I was growing up, the paper only carried the Sunday strips, so I was blissfully unaware of the weekday screwy storylines and that he was sort of doofy), and I’ve always liked Rose is Rose (I don’t mind the kids talking strangely, I like Peekaboo, but Clem is a putz and one of these days ought to be deep-sixed by Rose’s Motorcycle Mama alter-ego).
I thought today’s MT was a bit of a snooze-fest (the leaves changing color thing was interesting, but the illustrations just can’t quite capture the actual leaf-turning events back east), and Mark needed to have a friend come over and play…
Ah, the calm before the next storm in Lost Forest. Kelly Welly is off “editing” her “movie,” and Mark and his family can tuck into some good old home-cookin’!
I only did this because Comics Curmudgeon reader Joe Btfsplk’s comment today just tickled me to death, and if I couldn’t carve it in stone, I’d mash it up in pixels.
Maybe there ought to be an animal mascot for water conservation (like Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl). In the meantime, there’s always good old Mark Trail…
Occasional Mark Trail character Kelly Welly makes me nuts! Bossy, incompetent, and worse, everyone around her kowtows to her (so they richly deserve her, IMO).
Here’s a not-too-mashed-up example of Kelly at her Bone-Headed Best (yes, she put out a slab of meat to attract animals for her fabuloso photography skills):
If someone would just decide to stand up to her, life in Lost Forest would be so much easier…
…even if it looks a lot like blame. CC’s Niall alerted me to a stripey-butt sighting (several, in fact) in Sunday’s The Phantom. Sure enough, butts aplenty!
Then he mentioned that Sunday’s Mark Trail could use some doctoring. (Fleas?! That’s like talking about — MRSA!) Well, okay, this is sorta like being the physicist or chemist or nutjob that fused peanut butter and chocolate together. The result ain’t no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but I rather like it.
Or maybe not. Anyway, I loved Mark Trail when I was growing up because it was just like “Wild Kingdom” (well, without Jim Fowler being squeezed to death on a fairly regular basis by an anaconda, all the while being cheered on by Marlin Perkins) — they were about ANIMALS, and I just loved animals!
Of course, the years pass, I discover The Comics Curmudgeon and people of similar humorous bents. Maybe it was Red Greenback’s surreal combining of two Sunday episodes of Mark Trail and Rex Morgan, M.D., or maybe it was DAS speculating how Mark would explain MRSA (I think it involved a talking beaver).
Whatever the inspiration, thanks to those two gentleman: speculating like that can’t be left languishing!
(A side-note, not that you care: my first mashup of Rex Morgan and Mark Trail just happened to be with each other. Go check out “Ducklings? What Ducklings?” to see some hot flannel-on-khaki action!)
