Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

…check out that car!

There was some nattering about the relentless use of “Ghost-Who-Fill-in-the-Blank” and little yellow boxes in The Phantom, as if five or six words would bring a potential new reader up to speed.  I don’t know.  I look at the strip (and yes, it is relevant that I look at the strip more often than read it) and I don’t care much one way or another.

One of the good folks at CC brought up a strip that ran earlier this year, to demonstrate that Ghost-Who-Has-More-Money-Than-Common-Sense does actually show up from time to time out of spandex.  At those times, he’s “Mr. Walker” (ooooh, quite the disguise).  It looked like a good time to feature “Mr. Walker,” little yellow boxes, and dopey epithets.

The car is still purple, though.

…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…

Nothing says “hospice regatta” like a bar-fight between the two most competitive yachtsmen on the eve of the Big Race!  Only KT from CC land dubbed it “Pruuuuuuuunefiiiiiiiiiiiight!”, and I damn near swallowed my tongue.  Golden, KT!

And of course, while I’m sure Lenore and Tweaks could’ve worked all of this out, the Yacht Club staff are understandably shaken by the potential of fractured hips.  (Me? I’m mystified at the thought that there’s a second string of color-monkeys for the Sunday strips vs. the weekday ones….compare and contrast.)

Finally, Rex and Lenore can get back to a quiet conversation that lasts all of 30 seconds before Rex wedges his foot into his mouth again.

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.

Wasn’t the alien Dax in charge of Security in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series?  Or slept with someone in charge of Security?  Something like that?

It seems Dax has retired to Santa Royale, had her spots lasered off, and is living a comfortable life at Charterstone — except when Mary Worth blabs about her knowledge of security issues and identity theft!

The current storyline plods ahead.  It isn’t any more interesting than banner ads for Free Security Scans (aside from Toby going histrionic from time to time), and that the introduction of “Ms. Terry Bryson” elicited a flurry of Star Trek and soft-core porn film commentary.

Me? I just went for the poo joke.

Mooncattie is an old-timer at Comics Curmudgeon (which means he was there before I was) and has got to be one of the nicest, happiest fellows I’ve ever met (and yes, considering the great, big world, we did meet at the Tucson Mudgeon Meetup in March 2008 — wooo, what fun that was!).  Photos of him at other meetups (and reports from other Mudges) confirm that this is Just the Way He Is.

I think he’s the type of person you just want to have at your party, bar mitzvah, class reunion, etc.  The Spectacular Spider-Brick says it awfully well (as he does most things):

I swear I’ve seen Mooncattie (on the left in the meetup picture) before. I think he came to the Madison ‘Mudgeon Meetup last year, under a different name. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that Mooncattie is CC’s very own Forrest Gump, showing up in the background every time anything of note happens. Where were you, “Mooncattie,” if in fact that is your real nickname, when Aldo Kelrast died? Or when Toby Cameron’s identity was stolen… by a Canadian, I might add? Or should we call you… HaXX0r Yuri?! AHA! Jacque Hughes!

Which of course only makes me toddle over the the Photo Shoppe…

Still not convinced?

Do we really need a plot in Judge Parker, ever?  Can’t we just have Abbey and Maria and Gloria and most other women who traipse through in skimpy outfits or various states of undress?  Ditto for Sam Driver and Steve?  The good judge in Hawaiian shirts?

Sure, it wouldn’t make much sense, but aren’t the comics a visual medium?

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…

Over at Apartment 3G, Lu Ann is wandering through her druggie boyfriend’s apartment.  He claims to be an artist, but he’s really not much more than a drug addict.  Of course, Lu Ann, with all the mental acumen of an Irish setter, doesn’t know a thing about this.

Dean Booth from CC made the last panel for today a very nice cut-and-paste do-it-yourself project, so of course I just had to get out my pot of Le Page’s paste (the one with the little spatula mounted in the lid and smelling like pepperment) and safety scissors and go to town…

I did my best to limit myself.

In other news, not much has been going on in Morganville, other than Lenore teaching Rex the basics of sailing, like not getting hit with the boom.  Considering her feelings for her sailing nemesis Old Man Tweaks, I’m surprised that she doesn’t have a cannon mounted on her boat and is planning to beat him one way or another.  More later!

Woo hoo and Huzzah to the Comics Curmudgeon’s own angry kem!  This is all her doing!

[Update: angry kem has her very own blog now that gets medieval on the comics that deserve it (and there’s a metric buttload of them).  Check out her mashups and medieval philosophy on the likes of the Keanes, Pattersons, et al. , at “Japes for Owre Tymes,” on my blogroll/links list.]