Mark Trail - The AWESOMEST Comic Strip Ever

[The Baron]

Check out the second panel of today's (August 6th, 2009) strip. Doesn't it look as though the squirrel's hind leg is conversing with a cluster of acorns?

[The Baron]

I love surreal stuff that doesn't make much sense. Must be why I produce so much of it.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

"Hind leg" was not my first thought.

[Mr. Satanism]

The Comics Curmudgeon has a lot to say about this strip- check out joshreads.com

[The Baron]

Mr. Satanism said:

The Comics Curmudgeon has a lot to say about this strip- check out joshreads.com

Yeah, that's the site that got me started reading Mark Trail again.

[The Baron]

The funny thing is - when I was a kid, the local paper only ran Mark Trail on Sundays. The other six days they ran something called Buz Sawyer, as I recall. It was years before I found out that Mark had advenutres of his own, and didn't just pop up on Sundays to talk about animals.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

Mark Trail: Terrorizing young boys since 1946.
(from here)

[Luke Blanchard]

Buz Sawyer was a long-running adventure strip created and owned by Roy Crane. Crane had earlier created Wash Tubbs, which evolved into one of the first and best-regarded adventure strips, and its spin-off Captain Easy. According to Lambiek he retired from Sawyer in the 60s, so by the time you remember it may have been in the hands of his successors.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I remember Buz Sawyer from when I was a kid. However, the Sunday strips were given over to "his pal, Roscoe Sweeney," and, as I recall, weren't half as adventuresome or interesting.

[Luke Blanchard]

From what I can tell Sweeney was the star of the Sunday version from an early stage. According to Toonopedia Crane had handed the Sunday over to others by the late 40s.

[Luke Blanchard]

Ron Goulart has pointed out that Joe Shuster's style was modelled after Crane's (as it was in his Wash Tubbs years).

[The Baron]

Meanwhile, Mark is about to become a "Zeeba neighba".

[The Baron]

Check out today's (10/21/09) strip in which the word balloon in panel one is definitely pointing to the wrong character. Not the end of the world, but the same thing happened two days ago.