Christmas Holiday Yuletide Comics Roundup Spectacular!!

No, that's not Paulie Walnuts! It's Mary Worth!

Christmas is mere days away, and I have nothing to give you except some comics parodies. Try not to look disappointed. It's been a lean year.

Sure, let's do a comics roundup! What's the worst that could happen?

Let's just jump into it.

As another summer fades into autumn, blah blah blah... here are some comics. Is it mostly Mary Worth again? Yeah, probably.

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.

Comics are fun for everybody! Let's read some now!

Batman is not in this article. This image is lying to you.

I know I just did a comics roundup a few weeks ago, but I figured it would be a nice change of pace to post something non-Ed Wood-related to this blog. So let's dive in and swim, huh?

Oh dear. It's time for another comics roundup.

"Take that, you judgmental old biddy!"

The comics, like the waterfalls, never stop. That's a big part of their charm, the constancy. Sure, the newspaper industry died at least ten years ago, and the last non-ironic reader of Judge Parker died twenty years ago. But does that mean King Features Syndicate should just stop paying people to write and draw Judge Parker? I hope not.

Anyway, I haven't done one of these comics roundups since February, and they've been building up on my computer, so I figured it was time. Past time, really.

Another roundup of comics parodies by Joe Blevins

Remember these?

Well, folks, it's that time again. The long-running comic strip Mary Worth has just wrapped up another glacially paced story, so I figured it was time to do another assortment of comics parodies, takeoffs, and spoofs. I've accumulated quite a few of these over the last few months.

Random cartoon time, gang!

For a while, there was an outbreak of mismatched hands in comic strips.Victims included Mark Trail and Wilbur Weston.

Happy day after Labor Day, everyone! And guess what? I have another backlog of comics and cartoons I want to delete off my hard drive, so I'm dumping them all into one big post here at Dead 2 Rights. Enjoy or don't. It's your call. Either way, after today, they're gonzo.

Let's light this candle.

Let's have fun with the funnies! Part One: The Random Stuff

This is your cultural legacy, America. Don't neglect it.

It's been a while since I've done a post like this. As you know if you follow this blog, I do a lot of parodies and remixes of newspaper comics. Occasionally, I like to collect these and post them here so I can delete them from my hard drive in good conscience. That's what this is: another collection of random junk headed for the incinerator.

Let's go.

This is just a bunch of comics parodies and remixes, okay?

This book never existed, but don't you kind of remember it in bookstores anyway?

Look, I'll level with you. I was going through the images saved to my hard drive, deciding which ones to chuck, and I found some  comics parodies that I hadn't posted here yet. So I wanted to collect them in one big post before deleting them from my computer forever. That's what this post is. There's nothing else to this, so don't expect any incisive commentary.

Fun in the sun with Mark Trail! (and a veritable panoply of high-larious comix!)

So I guess Mark is just nude to the waist.

How's the week been treating you? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Well, however it's been going, prepare for it to get just a little better. I have a whole new selection of fractured funnies to share with you. If you'll direct your eyes slightly upward, for instance, you'll see my latest Mark Trail adventure.

And here's one featuring that little dickhole dickens, Dennis the Menace:

Fundamentalists say the darnedest things.

Speaking of Dennis the Menace, here are a couple of parodies of a recent panel. I decided to remove Dennis and replace him with another, more appropriate character.

Corporate synergy FTW!

Another variation, one that possibly goes too far:

So Dennis is probably dead in this scenario.

For a change of pace, here's another edition of Family Circus Minus The Family. Isn't this peaceful and serene? I know the kitchen has two doors that hinge in incompatible directions, but try to look past that.

No malapropisms have ever been uttered here.

And finally, just for giggles, here's my attempt at constructing a typical newspaper comics page.

And no ink stains on your fingers either!

The existential ennui of Jeffy

Alone. Why must he be alone?

Context is everything. Bil Keane's heartwarming Family Circus is a single-panel feature, meaning that we really only get to see a few seconds of the characters' lives at a time. Maybe if we saw what happened right before and right after, we'd have a different view of the proceedings. So it is with today's cartoon. Jeffy is really only there to be a sounding board for Dolly. But what if the larger, more interesting story were all about Jeffy? That's what I've tried to convey here.

Speaking of recontextualizing the funnies, here's my pitch for a spin-off of Crock.  It'd be about the adventures of a imaginative, rambunctious boy and his best friend, a sassy talking vulture. You might think this looks a little familiar, but trust me -- it's all original, baby.

Nothing second-hand about this.

And just to round things out, here's a little comic I pieced together out of panels from Mark Trail and Rex Morgan, M.D. Enjoy.

You'd best not talk to Jules that way, June.

The day Mary Worth and Mark Trail switched places!

Writing comics is easy and fun!

Sometimes, it doesn't take much to transform a mediocre or poor comic strip into a great one. The elements are all there; they just have to be properly arranged for maximum effect. Take Mark Trail and Mary Worth. Currently, both of these long-running serialized strips are mired in very slow-moving, creaky storylines with little appeal to newcomers. The title character of Mark Trail, a nature writer and adventurer, has apparently stumbled onto some kind of crime ring while on his way to study ferrets. Some no-goodniks have kidnapped a very passive blonde woman for reasons that remain unclear. Meanwhile, the heroine of Mary Worth, a sixtyish advice columnist, is taking a cruise with her much younger friend, Toby, and might wind up interfering in the lives of strangers while on the boat.

Ho-hum, right? Pretty standard fare for both series.

What I did with these strips is simply swap the dialogue. Now, both comics are more intriguing. Mark Trail seems to be complicit in a human trafficking operation, while Mary has lost all interest in "helping" others. It's called playing against type, and it works like gangbusters.

For comparison, the originals are here and here.

Blah, blah, blah, Mark Trail, something, something...

Aw, man, you couldn't burn Old Wave or Back to the Egg instead?

I was looking through old files on my hard drive, and I found a little Mark Trail remix that I hadn't put up on the blog yet. So here's that. You're welcome... or I apologize, depending on your reaction. That doesn't seem like enough for a post, so here's a Marvin parody, too:

It's funny 'cause he's abandoning his wife and infant child.

And here's a Judge Parker, too:

I just liked the haunted look on Ned's face.

Finally, here's a Marvin/Funky Winkerbean crossover, since I know you were all waiting for that.

Well, at least she didn't miss those leaves.

Another heartwarming 'Mark Trail' adventure

Mark seems like he'd be a fun dad, right?

Rather like Batman, nature writer and adventurer Mark Trail has his very own creepy orphan to look after. The motherless waif in Mark's life is named Rusty Wilson, and he's been a part of the venerable Mark Trail comic strip since 1981. Mark officially adopted Rusty over twenty years ago, but the little ingrate still refers to his benefactor by his first name after all these years instead of calling him "Dad." With his off-putting personality and misshapen, rat-like face, Rusty has been a favorite in-joke/whipping boy among Trail-heads for decades. The strip itself often forgets about the little creep for weeks at a time, which is probably for the best. In the episode above, I imagine what the dynamic between Mark and Rusty is like when the cameras have been turned off, so to speak.

Oh, and here's a bonus Family Circus episode featuring that long-running strip's most pitiful character: red-headed middle child Jeffy.

Just eat what you're given, Jeffy.

Notes on my incredibly glamorous and exciting life (including a trip to Onion HQ)

No, this isn't an outtake from Caligula. It's supposedly a picture of an Onion staff party. (Not pictured: me.)

"May you be happy in the life you have chosen."

-Scrooge's ex-girlfriend, Belle*

*She doesn't really mean it when she says it, but I think it's good advice anyway.

My life is, at least partially by design, uneventful to the point of almost total stasis. I can define myself by the (many) things I dislike: people, crowds, noise, disruption, spending money, following directions, traveling, making small talk, listening, trying to be nice, doing favors for people, and social interactions of all kinds. The extent to which I can successfully and temporarily avoid these terrible maladies is the extent to which my life is tolerable. Of course, this comes at a price. Boredom, alienation, loneliness, and stagnation are the occasional side effects of my chosen lifestyle, but they beat the alternatives: despair, frustration, humiliation, resentment, and an overall disgust with the world and every last person in it. In other words, a relatively solitary, quiet, and dull life is the only kind for me. I couldn't imagine any other way of existing.

The (continued) dark side of Mark Trail

Ha! It's funny 'cause somebody probably died!

I don't know why I find the comic strip Mark Trail so endlessly amusing. It's one I used to read as a kid, and even then my appreciation was ironic. Nowadays, I keep up with it through Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon blog. For the uninitiated, Mark Trail is a nature writer, adventurer, and outdoorsman who travels around and gets into life-and-death scrapes while doing research for undoubtedly boring articles. His employer is a publication called Wood & Wildlife. Almost always clad in a tan jumpsuit and sporting immaculately Brylcreemed hair, Mark is simultaneously the squarest, dullest, and manliest character in American newspaper comics today. Here, we see him chatting with his equally-boring editor, Bill Ellis. They're so humorless and straight-laced that it's almost too easy to make fun of them. But I do it anyway. Forgive me.

Mark Trail, you old smoothie

What works for Mark and Cherry can work for you, too!

More Funday Sunnies

Artwork from Crankshaft; dialogue by me.

Artwork from Mark Trail; dialogue by me

George Stover: Not just an actor but a fine dancer as well!

making gifs