It's an old-fashioned summertime comics roundup! (Part 2)

Which one's Mutt and which one's Mindy? I can never remember.

Comics. We all love them. And you know what they say. You always hurt the ones you love.

That said, let's continue with our survey of comic strip parodies, mashups, and pastiches.

Mark Trail has spent its last few weeks (months? years?) on an utterly pointless treasure hunt in the desert featuring Mark, his father-in-law Doc, some guy named JJ, and a nice lady whose name I have forgotten. Anyway, JJ broke bad mid-trip and decided to rob the other three. It was so sad, since he'd obviously come way down in the world.

He kept the hairdo, though.

But Mark was able to take care of JJ pretty quickly. One right hook to the jaw sent the tow-haired miscreant flying.

First variation on the joke.

Second variation on the joke.

Third variation on the joke.

Mark and the gang were after some gold that Doc remembered being in an abandoned mine. He spoke cryptically of a "bearded stranger." Hmmm. Who could that be?

First version of the joke.

Second version of the joke.

Somewhere along the line, I decided to mess with the characters' eyebrows.

I think all these are lovely.

Eventually, long after it was revealed there was no treasure, JJ said that he understood the error of his ways. I also had him commenting on another comic strip.

Take that, legacy comic that no one but me cares about!

Over in Marvin, Marvin kept being Marvin. His friends are as disgusting as he is.

Marvin's world has just been rocked.

This is the point in the comics roundup when we turn our attentions to Mary Worth. Just for fun, here's a Mary Worth panel with some Mark Trail narration.

Ha! It's funny because Wilbur is gross.

Okay, all kidding aside, this summer's story has focused on Wilbur's daughter Dawn, who shares a certain talent with Mary herself!

Maybe it's the eyes.

Anyway, Dawn has landed herself a beau, specifically a snobbish Frenchman named Hugo. To be perfectly blunt, I do not care for Hugo.

Isn't it fun to be condescending to a foreigner?

Hugo and Dawn have a lot of cultural differences, but Dawn at least is trying to bridge the gap the best she can.

She's working on her chortle.

Hugo and Dawn's dinner conversation is so bad, I had to limit it just to the bold words and some punctuation.

Fish talk, what?

And, naturally, Dawn sought Mary's advice in this troubled relationship. Sort of.

Then there's The Pajama Diaries, which is just a domestic comedy about a family (I think). One recent strip really bothered me because the joke was so cringe-y, so I decided to take out all the dialogue to see if that helped.

The facial expressions help sell it.

I thought that was a good first step. Then I decided to remove the characters altogether.

Pretty colors.

Still not quite right. So I decided to add other characters and dialogue.

She has the same shoulders as Pumpkinhead.

Anything happening in Pluggers? Eh, not really.

Is she reading Purple magazine?

Rex Morgan, M.D. has been so awesome lately that I don't even want to make fun of it. The current plot pits Rex against a phony spiritualist and healer.

Also, licorice allsorts are terrible.

Shoe remains a hellscape.

They're birds who have forgotten they can fly.

Six Chix continues to impress me with its unmistakable art. Here, I compare and contrast the backgrounds of Six Chix and Crock.

It really brings you into this fictional world, doesn't it?

And one recent Six Chix reminded me of a popular '90s sitcom. I've included the original so you can see how those characters were designed.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Last and least, we have a couple of random images that aren't tied to any particular strip. Like this one, my proposal for a 1980s-style cartoon series:

And make sure to get the official inflatable donut.

And this one, a mashup of Aleister Crowley and The Simpsons:

This would've worked on Aleister, too.

And that's really all I have. Goodbye.