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Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

This might be the worst loving Dustin I've ever seen, and Ed Kudlick's not even there. (Except he really is because everyone in this strip is Ed Kudlick)

Hey SKELLY, why don't we go ahead and compare the number of elementary schools that have been nuked vs the number of schools that have been shot up?

Plus, it's not like nuclear war ISN'T a loving threat in the lives of children today.

gently caress you, gently caress you, gently caress you.

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Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

amigolupus posted:

That sure was a twist in Mark Trail. Explain yourself, Vargo. :v:

Evil Mastermind posted:

Dammit, Vargo, what else have you been lying about?

StrixNebulosa posted:

Vargo! Condolences on your..... juvenile diabetes?


There's absolutely no way James could have known this, but my father actually does have type-1 (AKA juvenile) diabetes.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Joestar posted:

Comic Strip Thread 2020: A Goon Was Immortalized With Juvenile Diabetes By A Clip-Art Wizard

I have had some weird things happen to me on the internet before but this is the weirdest by far.

BCN


Phoebe


Holy poo poo, Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Binary Badger posted:

I kinda think that's actually projection by Jallen, it's really his own standin, but making Vargo's namesake super pathetic like him is the best he can do

think he also needs to put up a tombstone that says that he never scored or something

I keep thinking "okay no, he's definitely not doing me anymore" but then again, I have a pinned tweet from 2018 about something cool I did and it contains a reference to "for potential employers who might be googling me", and James thought it was cool and funny to mock me being unemployed based on that. (Even though I have a job)

So every time I think this has dragged on long enough, I remember that he's a small, petty, stupid man and yes, he probably did do that ridiculous thing we think he did.

BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Obligatory:

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
It's really difficult for me not to post today's Mark Trail, holy poo poo, it's killing me.

BCN



Phoebe



Wallace



Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Gloomy Rube posted:

If only Juvenile Diabetes hadn't made me lose my leg, I could have been a social media star

I've been thinking about this all day and how it makes no goddamn sense.

Whatever James was going for here with Harvey retreating to social media because of his leg is really undone by the fact that Harvey has been HIKING THE loving HIMALAYAS WITH ONE LEG THIS ENTIRE TIME.

If his leg didn't stop him from doing this, then why would it stop him from doing anything else?

Also, if Harvey wanted to be big on social media, then he would absolutely play up the missing leg, not keep it hidden! The internet would lose its poo poo for a one-legged adventurer!

So yeah, James is being ablest as gently caress here and it makes no sense. This is what happens when a man who doesn't know how to use Twitter's @ function writes a story about social media.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

YggiDee posted:

Wait, okay, I haven't been reading every comic that gets posted, but is the Mark Trail guy using his comic as ammunition for a Twitter fight? A Twitter fight with someone in this thread?? How long has this been happening, there's eighteen threads and they're all five hundred pages.

Slightly longer version:

WAY back in August, James ran an entire week of strips where Mark complains about losers on the internet who criticize his articles.

James found me on Twitter making fun of him for it and proceeded to get into a slap fight with me over it. It went on for days, including him deciding I must be unemployed and making fun of me for that. I even (teasingly) asked if I could be a Mark Trail bad guy. A few other thread people got into it too.

I accused him of using clip art and that REALLY set him off. And we ended this fight with him saying something like "You'll see what happens to social media fools in this storyline, STAY TUNED"

Two weeks later, Dr Camel appears. And he looks... A little like me. Not a huge amount but enough to make me go "hah, that's funny". And then Dr Camel is a sad little loser and a jerk the whole time. And then stuff from our Twitter feud starts leaking into the strip. Including me getting mauled by a bear, which I think someone actually suggested to him.

And now I am friend-zoned and dead. RIP ME.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

amigolupus posted:


I can't help but wonder if the reason for the inconsistency is because Jams already wrote the first part of this story before he got mad at your posts and decided to change things up midway.

This seems like the most likely explanation, yeah. I could also say this is why there are three weeks between Dr. Camel being mentioned and Dr Camel actually being seen, but that's just how time works in this strip.

Also, as a result of this feud, the guy who does Over The Hedge is a fan of my podcast and the president of Andrews McMeel syndicate got in my DMs and took my resume.

It was a weird time.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Walker posted:


Mark Trail



Harvey began going to exotic and interesting places and sharing those experiences over social media, leading to him getting paid to do those things. So sad that he was forced to go to such lengths.

Yes, and this is... bad... somehow... because of his leg... I guess.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

It's amazing how detailed this is and yet it still missed half the interesting and also doesn't even get into the Dr Camel stuff.

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1176167609059958793?s=20

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1185967894741618689?s=20

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1208452034883665920?s=20

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1210299384891629569?s=20

Also I found an op-ed by an actual newspaper editor saying "I can't keep this garbage in my newspaper"

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1167873010323222528?s=20

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

My Lovely Horse posted:

He looks actually good in this. Like a slightly more detailed Tintin character, and I realize that's against the point of Tintin.

Can someone quote the Morning Call article for us poor Europeans who are being locked out?


The Morning Call posted:

The Morning Call
SUBSCRIBE
OPINION
Mark Trail is off the rails
By BILL WHITE
OF THE MORNING CALL
AUG 22, 2018 | 6:30 PM


The turning point in the Mark Trail comic may have been the interminable Six Months in a Cave story line in 2016.

When you’ve been writing a column as long as I have, you should be able to point to some good things that happened because of what you wrote.

One I’ve always felt good about was my role in rescuing the comic strip Mark Trail from the results of reader polls and newspaper trends.

In light of some of the letters to the editor we’ve seen recently, many of the private comments I’ve been receiving and my own growing disillusionment, that achievement is looking less and less laudable. But before I get to where we are today, let’s take a walk down Mark Trail memory lane.

If you had access to our archives, you would find that I’ve been defending Mark for 25 years.

I proclaimed it my favorite comic strip in a 1993 column that was a satirical defense of a gay story line in “For Better or For Worse.” The emergence of a gay character had prompted numerous attacks and defenses in our letters to the editor, and I wrote:

“If you can believe it, the cartoonist actually tried to preach understanding and tolerance on the funny pages! Next thing you know, they'll be trying to foist these kinds of destructive values off on our kids in school.”


Setting aside my prescience about what would happen 25 years later in the East Penn School District, I’ll note that this column prompted an anonymous poison pen letter from one of my fellow employees, who thought I was attacking gay people but didn’t have the guts to confront me.

Then again, if he/she had, I’d have told him/her that he/she was a numskull for misreading the column. So maybe it’s just as well.

Back to the column, I went on to satirically point out the destructive values embodied in our other 30-some comic strips. Here’s what I said about Mark Trail:

“Even Mark, portrayed on the surface as an animal-loving, environment-protecting straight arrow, has his dark side.

“He has been living for at least 30 years in Lost Forest with his so-called ‘fiancee,’ Cherry, and her father, Doc, and there's been nary a suggestion that wedding bells might be in the offing. In recent years, they've taken in a waif named Rusty to complete an arrangement that can only be described as bizarre.

“Why won't Mark make an honest woman of Cherry? Why doesn't Doc put his foot down? What kind of family values are we preaching here?”

Perhaps not coincidentally, Mark finally married Cherry months later. And after I interviewed Northampton County President Judge Robert Freedberg about a Mark Trail story line in which Mark’s dog, Andy, was put on trial for murder, then-cartoonist Jack Elrod sent me one of his original drawings of Andy on trial.

Framed and hanging in our house, it remains one of my most prized possessions.

A few years later, when Mark Trail finished very poorly in one of our comic strip polls, I did a scientific analysis of the results to conclude that it actually was one of our most popular strips. I interpreted the results through what I called the Passion Ranking and the Approval Ranking, because I felt that strips that inspire passion, even negative passion, should rank higher.

I concluded, “As for Mark Trail, only a lunatic would drop our eighth most popular comic strip.”

So it survived this and subsequent polls, including one of my own in which a reader wrote that Mark Trail should be beheaded. I’m convinced that without my advocacy, many years of Mark’s interesting life as a hard-punching environmental writer would have been lost to the Lehigh Valley’s readers.

King Syndicate should be paying me royalties.

If anything, my investment in the strip increased when Elrod retired and was replaced by protegee James Allen. I’ve spoken to Allen several times about his ideas for improving and modernizing Mark Trail, including scarier animals, more action and a greater focus on the relationship between a more buff Mark and a much sexier Cherry, who suddenly was shown lounging around in bikinis.

I was on board with hot Cherry and Allen’s other ideas about ramping up the strip’s excitement level. But as time went by, I became increasingly alarmed by its … weirdness.

Mind you, Mark Trail always was weird, in a stodgy kind of way. But its weirdness was predictable and oddly comforting. I likened my fascination to people gawking at a car wreck.

Now, the wreck was a multicar disaster with toxic waste spillage.

The turning point, I think, was Allen’s interminable Six Months in a Cave story line, where Mark was trapped below ground forever after he and two naturalists were chased into a Mexican cave by machine-gun toting drug runners.

Allen told me it all happened in 48 hours of real time, but for the rest of us, it was six months of tepid subterranean peril, lame comedy and relentlessly spouted nature facts. By the time the plot abruptly ended, many of the few remaining Mark Trail fans were grumbling or in open revolt.

It hasn’t gotten better. This latest plot, which has something to do with Mexican archaeological artifacts, has been meandering aimlessly for months, although it finally seems to be taking shape.

During the endless lead-in, there were circus animals loose in Lost Forest as a result of a train derailment, which seemed really stupid until this gave way to the local sheriff’s even stupider tale about the clowns on the train. They were left wandering the countryside, in full makeup and costume, emerging from a cemetery to terrorize children at a bonfire. One clown, the Great Wilhelm, was shot in the buttocks with rock salt. Oh, and he hasn’t talked for 65 years.

Believe it or not, it was worse than that sounds.

Still another unresolved plot, about a one-eyed big game hunter, named “Dirty,” who apparently wants to kill Mark, popped up in the background before disappearing again. I would imagine Dirty will return at some point. Maybe dressed as a clown.

It has begun to remind me of T-shirts with variations on, “I’ve been told I have ADHD, but I don’t think — hey look, a squirrel!”

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to mount a defense when people come up to me and say, “What is going on with Mark Trail?” So if James Allen is reading out there, consider this an intervention.

By all means, put Cherry in skimpy outfits, showcase Mark’s abs and blow things up. But if you persist in plots that move at the pace of continental drift and with the coherence of malarial fever dreams, I won’t be able to save you the next time your comic strip is on the chopping block.

I may not even try.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

It's not an alter ego! He's there, actually doing that stuff! There's nothing alternative about it!

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN



Phoebe



Wallace



Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Yvonmukluk posted:

The thing is...a proper 21st-century Mark Trail would be doing basically everything Harvey is, save the juvenile diabetes/yeti thing. Honestly, Mark making a web series would provide a diegetic reason for the random animal fact strips.

It's like Jam Esallen basically laid out a blueprint for what a competent writer would be doing with the character, but he's going 'look at how much VargoHarvey sucks, what a loser!'

This is... loving hilarious when you put it this way. Like he's so close to getting it right, and he's made them the bad guy.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

It's the middle of February, vacuum your loving floor.

BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Walker posted:

Mark Trail



I mean, if I found the yeti it would probably change everything for me, so I can't fault the logic.


As opposed to the much more noble endeavor or risking your life for the minor fame of writing a magazine column.

BCN


Phoebe


Vermin Supreme: Origins


Curtis

Vargo fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Feb 17, 2020

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
This Mark Trail story conclusion makes me feel like I am losing my loving MIND. Every time I think about the point James thinks he's making versus what he's actually put to paper, I get whiplash.

Today's thought: Harvey, the guy who was apparently driven mad to take risks by social media, DIDN'T EVEN HAVE HIS PHONE OUT WHEN HE DIED.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Walker posted:

Mark Trail



Well I hope we all learned something from this adventure. Trying to gain internet fame by finding the yeti is deadly. RIP Dr Vargo.


looooooooolllllllll

BCN


Phoebe


OH NO WALLACE IS GOING TO DIE OF SOCIAL MEDIA


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

davidspackage posted:

I feel like Jamesallen means for Mark to be talking directly to Vargo in that close-up.

"Hello, police? I've received a death threat. Okay, so you know the newspaper comic Mark Trail..."

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

you broke my grill posted:

the team with the worst record gets the highest draft pick so you have a chance to get better players like that

I don't know if any teams actually do this but fans talk about it as a legit strategy all the time

The Philadelphia 76ers have all but admitted to doing this for nearly a decade until they scraped together a decent team recently.

"Trust The Process" was the unofficial slogan for a long time.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

readingatwork posted:



Calvin and Hobbes (Feb 18-19, 1987)






I know everyone looks back fondly on C&H as the whimsical imagination adventure strip, and they should, but as I get older I really appreciate these little family moment strips where Hobbes doesn't even appear.

BCN


Phoebe


Baldo


Huh, this seems like kind of a big moment, a huge leap for a character. Let's see what set this in motion, what happened yesterday...



Oh, this is just a completely random bit of forced development with absolutely no lead-up and it will never be mentioned again. Like the Dreamers that Tia Carmen is (still?) hiding in their attic.

Also, I went back and looked at the past week of strips, he's not even wearing a ring.

Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Walker posted:


Mark Trail



"Maybe he's alive"
"Welp, if he is, he's on his own."
:lol:


This is some straight psychopath poo poo to say about a guy you think died five minutes ago, 50 feet in front of you.

amigolupus posted:


My dream scenario is for Vargo to pull an Olivia Jaimes and take Mark Trail off Jams Eallen's hands. Or for Vargo to write a Dr. Harvey Camel series, as Yvonmukluk helpfully puts it:

Yvonmukluk's idea is better, but when I was making fun of James, I wrote this tweet off-hand

https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/1166820505237823490

And then suddenly realized that this actually isn't a bad idea for a Mark Trail story. Instagrammers and influencers actually do disrupt habitats, disturb sacred sites, do damage to ecosystems all the time. Hell, you could do a "Logan Paul and the suicide forest" kind of thing if you wanted to be macabre. Have Lost Forest suddenly become a popular influencer site and Mark has to deal with an influx of wealthy teens disturbing his forest. Cherry says its a good thing that young people are coming, Mark suddenly has to deal with his feelings about people enjoying nature "wrong". Finally, some instagrammers wander off-trail, get lost, don't have survival skills, are attacked by a cougar, Mark has to be a hero and then you have a story about ACTUAL social media dangers. And this is all something I came up with in a tweet to mock this dude.

Also, since you all have enjoyed my adventures in old-person comics, you're all now legally obligated to listen to my podcast, Breaking Mayberry, which is about my adventures in old-person TV. As you can imagine, I wind up talking about newspaper comics regularly on the show. And if you think comics storylines are bad, plotless, and dumb, that's nothing compared to like, half the episodes of the Andy Griffith Show.

BCN


Phoebe


Baldo


Again, this would be much better if the artist had ever included the detail of Sergio wearing his ring before now.

Like, imagine seeing this strip if you hadn't seen yesterday's.

Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
I get to cross-post from the Idiots on Social Media thread. The official Peanuts Twitter account tweeted this today, they managed to catch and delete it quickly, but someone got a screenshot:

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

MariusLecter posted:

A day late and a dollar short, champ.

Was this already posted? I scrolled through the past couple of pages.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
Aw jeez, same page, too. I bet they posted while I had the window open to post. My bad.

EDIT: Okay, well, here's something I know hasn't been posted yet because it just happened, to me, right now.

I'm sitting at work and my friend Adam is next to me, he gets a package, and screams "this is the best day ever! My Garfield/Neon Genesis Evangelion t-shirt has arrived!"



He was not lying.

Vargo fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Feb 21, 2020

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
They didn't even try to look for Harvey.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN






Phoebe






Baldo






(That nun race car movie sounds good as hell, what are you talking about)

Wallace






Curtis




Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN



Phoebe



Baldo



This Baldo bit actually isn't bad, but again, I wish there had been any sort of lead-up to it.

Wallace



Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Green Intern posted:

I have read ahead on Mark Trail, and well :allears:

No, you know what? I get to be the one to post this. I've earned it.



It has been eight months and this is exactly where we started.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Some Guy TT posted:

Well now I'm not sure whether this was actually an intentional tribute or whether Allen was just going along with it.

I'm extremely torn, because

1: James has put real-life people in his strips before, people he claims are friends of his, but he doesn't really seem to give a poo poo how they're portrayed beyond "hey look I drew you"

but also...

2: That guy... doesn't look like Dr. Camel. And his evidence is... a blue shirt? I mean, with the Mark Trail filter ruining everything, it's hard to say who looks like whom. I guess he looks as much like Dr. Camel as I do, in that we both have brown hair and beards. But like, Dr. Camel's hair is curly. My hair is curly. Loren Coleman's is not. Loren Coleman looks like Hans Gruber.

3: James doesn't ever say "haha, you figured it out!" and gloat like he does when there's an intentional reference, he just says "thank you for reading my work" because he likes it whenever anyone pays attention to him. Making me think it was unintentional.

But on the OTHER hand:

4: Loren Coleman ACTUALLY did write a book about hunting the Yeti.

5: He seems like exactly the sort of dude James would be into.

But on the other OTHER hand:

6: Outside of having a Twitter, Loren Coleman doesn't seem to have any connections to social media, so including him makes no sense.

7: But neither does anything James Allen does.


So in conclusion, Mark Trail is a land of contrasts.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN



Phoebe does some projecting



Baldo



Allright, this won me over by the end.

Wallace



Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Johnny Walker posted:


Mark Trail



NEXT: SABRETOOTH


Y'know what, I'll just say it, I straight-up unironically like this.

Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!
Oh crap, it's the baby raccoon saga, prepare to cry, everyone.

BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

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Vargo
Dec 27, 2008

'Cuz it's KILLIN' ME!

Stultus Maximus posted:

I haven't used cursive since elementary school and I sure as hell don't care if my students do. I've got plenty of other ways to teach patience and precision than sweating over an outmoded means of writing.


I hope they're just like the Clean Cut Kids, who were like 40 and had facial hair.



God, I miss this kind of benign 80s-movie stupidity from Mark Trail.

BCN


Phoebe


Wallace


Curtis

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