The funny pages, one assumes, are intended to be funny, but alas, this is not always the case. Mind you, I'm not talking about the ones like Judge Parker, or Rex Morgan, or Dilbert, where the people are drawn to look realistic and grapple with serious life issues, but rather the ones that are supposed to be funny, but are in fact, a blight on the face of the universe.

First off, let's take a look at Marmaduke shall we? He's just not funny. Every single time, the joke is based on one of the three following premises: Marmaduke is large, Marmaduke has a bunch of unneccesary crap in his doghouse, Marmaduke thinks he's people. I cannot express in words how utterly hilarious it is to open up the paper for what feels like the ten thousandth time in a row only to read great captions like this, "Okay Marmaduke, I'll get up and walk you now!" hahaha, isn't that funny? Funny like a kitten in a blender, and if you thinks that's funny, you're a sick, sick person.

Moving on down the page, let's take a look at Shylock Fox. Now, I know that this is really a pretty funny one, but I think it more than makes up for that by teaching kids all sorts of prejudices. How, you ask? Every week, Shady Shrew is guilty (okay, sometimes it's Count Weirdly). Now, they can try to say that it's because the weight on the scale gave away the fact that Miss Possum's stolen diamond was in the loaf of bread, or that the dead hooker in the storm drain was clutching Shady Shrew's monogrammed crack pipe, but really, Shady Shrew is already guilty. You don't need to go to the crime scene to figure it out, he's guilty by nature. So yeah kids, just go around assuming that people will always live down to the worst of your assumptions. Bah. And yet, next week he's back on the streets again, thanks to the revolving door of forest justice. Man, how much must Shylock hate his job? Every week he has to notice some trifling clue to solve a meaningless crime, and next week the felon is right back on the streets free to not rewind his videos before returning them again. Or whatever.

Next on the parade of loathing: Cathy. Now, Cathy seems to me like the kind of comic that's really only funny if it mirrors your own life, kind of like the Far Side, but with fewer space aliens and one more talking cow. Really now, how many times can a poorly drawn woman fret about how her thighs look in her bathing suit before it starts to get a little old. Who cares anyways? Your thighs aren't your problem, woman! You'd still be ugly and look as if you were drawn by a paraplegic elephant even if you lost 30 pounds. Really, Cathy's only redeeming triat is her propensity to say "Ack!" which invariably reminds me of Bill the Cat, making me feel all happy inside.

And now for the worst comic to disgrace the lifestyle section of the paper ever, Funky Winkerbean. Now, don't get me wrong, Funky Winkerbean used to be funny (if a little predictable), back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Jimmy Carter was President. But then Something Happened, and Tom Batuik felt the need to become socially relevant. Maybe his cat died, maybe he was more traumatized than most at the failure of Crystal Pepsi to capture a viable share of the soft drink market. It doesn't really matter; but then in Funky Winkerbean, nothing really matters anymore. If you don't follow the strip (in which case you ignorance is truly bliss) they've spent something like, the past three years going on about how Wally can't get over having been a P.O.W. in Afghanistan. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against dealing with important issues of wartime life, this is merely a retarded way of doing it. Anybody out there want to see Garfield deal with prostate cancer? I didn't think so, and that's really my point here. Seriously, I'd punch a Nazi off a blimp for even one strip where he can laugh at the uncalled for fanaticism of the band director, or chuckle along to the wacky world observations of Crazy the postal delivery person. But alas, those days are dead and gone.

And now to make up for all the evil of the preceeding paragraphs, it's time to do a comic that's the exact opposite of the above; one that looks like it's supposed to be serious, but is in fact the craziest, most wacked out funfest ever to fit into three panels a day. I am of course talking about Mark Trail. What, you say? How is Mark Trail that funny? Well my friend, you clearly haven't been reading it long enough. First, everyone in the strip looks either exactly like Mark or like Cherry, his ho with delusions of decency (no Cherry, we all know you're a skank, don't keep lying to yourself). Seriously, it's like Bizarro World, or that episode of Star Trek with all the androids that looked alike and though Checkov was sexy (I think we can all be grateful that we don't live in such a world as that). Next, Mark Trial is a total, freaking, super hero. Sure he looks like a mild-mannered park ranger, but how many people can bring down an airplane full of terrorists by throwing a piece of fossilized wood at it? Just one. And who can distract a gang of nefarious poachers by standing outside their door and saying "Cluck, Cluck" then, get this, punching them in the face as they come out to see what could have made such a sound. Seriously, Mark Trail is my new demigod. Finally, He's bound by law, and on pain of death, to include a woodland creature in at least one frame of every strip. Mark can be sitting in an office in New York City talking to Evil Mark with a comb-over and Fat Mark with a mullet, and all a sudden, right out of nowhere, VWOOOOOM, you're fifty mile away listening as a speech bubble emanates from the distant and tiny city, reading the strip from the point of view of the enormous and omniscient squirrel who now fills an entire frame. Then, just as you begin to get your bearings, VWOOOOOM, you're back in the office with the Mark Brothers discussing a missing panda, unable to warn Mark that an abominable hell-rodent has overheard his every work from half a state away. Chilling, isn't it?

Well, I've clearly been at this for far too long now, and if you've read this far and kept your sanity, then kudos to you, go get a waffle or something.