GoComics Is in Repeats Because of Its Failure Outage Last Month; Comics Kingdom Dropped Its Ad-Free Subscription Level

I was all but ready to be ahead of schedule with my Rex Morgan, M.D. plot recap this week too. And then GoComics went and kept me from having to actually be ready. This because many — not all — of their comic strips went into unscheduled repeats.

As usual, D D Degg at The Daily Cartoonist explains it. Many of the Andrews McMeel Syndication comic strips were forced into repeats because of the same problem that caused that huge GoComics outage a couple weeks ago. Not everything that runs on GoComics is syndicated by Andrews McMeel, but enough are that people noticed. And we know this because of individual cartoonists explaining things in comments on their strips. GoComics has, for some reason, chosen to not make any public statement about these repeats. Nor, so far as I’m aware, about the original outage and whatever happened. So I can’t explain that but I’m going ahead and guessing you should change your passwords and wait for GoComics to offer you six months of credit monitoring because of their data breach. Credit monitoring is worthless, which is why companies give it for their many screw-ups.

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Meanwhile, Comics Kingdom continues to show lots of advertisements to paid subscribers like me, even though their FAQ claims that subscribers do not. Since this has been going on a month now, I surmise they’ve just decided they’re making paid subscribers see ads, regardless of any past or still-listed promises, and hope if they ignore my bug reports I’ll eventually stop being mad, because that’s a way people work. I am open to being proven wrong but given their refusal to run Sunday comics at legible sizes I suppose they won’t.

What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Why are GoComics and Comics Kingdom broken? September – November 2022

While we were all distracted with GoComics being broken, Comics Kingdom went and broke themselves. Well, changed, although the specifics of the change damaged something. Comics Kingdom replaced the commenting software used, moving away from Disqus and to OpenWeb instead. Along the way, this lost all the comments people had made, for years, on all of their strips. It’s yet another reminder that corporations are not only bad stewards of public platforms, they are hostile and destructive to it. I grant there’s limited value in reading how angry people can be when a comic strip makes a reference aimed at the young folks. But it’s good to see what people’s impressions of these strips were at publication. And many commenters are good enough to explain referenced older storylines or now-obscure characters. All of that connective tissue is gone now.

Comics Kingdom says there are benefits to the new system, and I accept that. I’m unclear how “personalized notifications” and “easier comment sorting” will avoid comment-section “toxic cesspools”, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, GoComics is back up! From the comments on Daily Cartoonist, it looks like it was coming up as my post yesterday about their still being down published. So it goes. All they’ve said to the public was a tweet that they were having “temporary challenges resulting from a network disruption”. No confirmation of the rumors about this being a “cybersecurity incident”. It still seems like a good chance to change out passwords for new passwords plus, still starring Alan Ludden. The site may be a bit shaky for a while as people catch up on a half week’s worth of strips, so, be gentle to them and laugh no more than mildly uproariously, please.

And now on to my plot recap. This should get you caught up to mid-November 2022 on Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth. If you’re reading after about February 2023 I likely have a more up-to-date plot recap here. And if any news about the comic strip breaks I’ll share it at that link too. Thank you. Now on to tales of love and thanking Mary Worth for making us thank Mary Worth … again.

Mary Worth.

4 September – 20 November 2022.

When I last visited Charterstone, Dawn Weston had accepted that Jared Mylo broke up with her for good reasons. And Mylo had a new girlfriend who sure presented no questions about the appropriateness of the relationship. (She had been a patient in his care.) All seemed wrapped up, apart from Dawn visiting Mary Worth to thank her for her help. Mary Worth’s help was badgering her into being friends with Mylo still, for obscure reasons.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 18th of September, 2022. Wilbur says he and Stella ‘may’ be on a break because Stella says ‘hoo boy yes, are we ever broken up’ but he’s not sure what she means by that.

Anyway Dawn thanks Mary Worth for helping her see that letting Mylo go after he broke up with her was good for their friendship. But we have to have some thanking of Mary Worth or it’s not a plot. And on the 18th of September we go around the horn and see everyone content. Mylo and Jess are enjoying each other’s company. Dawn is happy she’s alone again. Wilbur Weston is content to spend more time with his sandwiches. Stella is singing with her cat and dog. And then Dr Jeff comes over so he and Mary Worth can agree how they’re a great couple with a way better relationship than anyone else has. Also they are definitely not getting married. And that takes two weeks.

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Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 9th of October, 2022. Oh, hey, Zak looking up, clinging desperately to Iris’s arms, his life depending on her. It’s foreshadowing! (I know, it probably wasn’t intended that literally as foreshadowing, but this scene works nicely as such and I want to point out when the comics do things nicely.)

The 3rd of October starts the current story. It’s about Iris and her much-younger computer-game-guy boyfriend Zak. I bet one or both of them have last names, but if they don’t, pick any that you like. I’m going to say one of them is “Beedie”. They’ve had a great relationship despite the unconventionality of her being older than him and knowing of obscure, hard-to-find movies like Casablanca. So well, in fact, that Zak proposes, catching Iris completely off guard.

Iris, having been married before, doesn’t want to do that again. Zak is crushed but accepts that she would rather keep the relationship as it is. She does agree to a long-delayed hike at Piccadee Falls and, sweet Zak, that’s as good as marriage to him. How can you dislike a guy who’s that able to bounce back from depressing news?

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 23rd of October, 2022. Meanwhile I’ve reached the point in my life where I once wore my reading glasses by mistake walking upstairs and froze in panic, unsure how to get safely down from the landing. In hindsight I should have taken them off my face quicker than I did. Please remember, I earned a PhD in Mathematics.

Oh, right, because he’s got the judgement of a jack-chi puppy in a chocolate store. He demands a selfie from the edge of the waterfall, declaring, “Not even the Gods themselves could make me fall off!” Well, what do you know but Parakutes, the Ancient Greek God of Plummeting, is in a grove nearby and, well, there we go. Zak clings to a branch, something he can do for the rest of his life. But Iris is able to overcome her fears — and her fear of her own frailty — and pull him back up.

Back on safe ground they hold each other tight. And Iris realizes her fears of marriage are nothing compared to how she feels about Zak. Is it just anyone who would rather he did not die? No. She accepts his proposal, the 6th of November, which might be the first time in my tenure covering these strips that we’ve achieved the summum bonum of Mary Worth.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 29th of Ocober, 2022. Wait, how did she pull up Sergeant Snorkel from Beetle Bailey?

Or almost achieved, anyway. Even a small, modest ceremony takes time to arrange. Iris hurries to Mary Worth to tell her the good news that she isn’t dead, and neither is Zak, and so they’re getting married. Mary Worth seems so surprised by this that she’s left saying stuff like “Are you referring to your previous married state versus his inexperience with matrimony?” that even Tom Batiuk says is not how people talk. Commander Data pops in to offer to punch that line up a little. Anyway, Mary Worth is so happy they’ll be able to celebrate the unconventional love of a woman who’s older than the man. And that is our happy (US) Thanksgiving-week resting point for Mary Worth.

Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!

• “I’ve learned that love, not time, heals all wounds.” — Andy Rooney, 4 September 2022.
• “Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.” — Hermann Hesse, 11 September 2022.
• “And if by chance that special place that you’ve been dreaming of … leads you to a lonely place, find your strength in love.” — Linda Creed and Michael Masser, 18 September 2022.
• “Familiar acts are beautiful through love.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, 25 September 2022.
• “Growth is the only evidence of life.” — John Henry Newman, 2 October 2022.
• “Marriage is a gamble. Let’s be honest.” — Yoko Ono, 9 October 2022.
• “If you don’t lose, you cannot enjoy the victories. So I have to accept both things.” — Rafael Nadal, 16 October 2022.
• “It’s a good thing to learn caution from the misfortune of others.” — Publilius Syrus, 23 October 2022.
• “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.” — James Thurber, 30 October 2022.
• “Ultimately, love is everything.” — M Scott Peck, 6 November 2022.
• “Life is a collage of events, really.” — Mohanlal, 13 November 2022.
• “The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.” — Nikon Kazantzakis, 20 November 2022.

Next Week!

The Phantom and his wife continue exploring an ancient labyrinth that once held animal-human hybrids the Egyptians may have worshipped as gods! What have they found and is it going to eat them, too? I try to recap Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sunday continuity) next week. Good luck with your own animal-human hybrids once worshipped as gods.

GoComics Is Still So Down That Funky Winkerbean Looks “Up” to It

GoComics is still suffering from being incredibly knocked out. This doesn’t require me to postpone my Mary Worth plot recap. Mary Worth runs on Comics Kingdom, which had an ordinary-for-it glitch Monday where the non-vintage strips didn’t update. That cleared up, though, and it didn’t affect the archives anyway. No, I’m delaying Mary Worth partly to share what I know about GoComics and partly because I figured back on Thursday to write a rough draft and make things easier for myself, and then I sat down and watched a cartoon for a while, and then it was Tuesday afternoon.

Anyway. GoComics has been weirdly reluctant to share information about what’s going on. Once again D D Degg, at The Daily Cartoonist, has some information. According to the Arizona Daily Star, GoComics company Andrews McMeel is having “apparent cybersecurity issues” and they’re working on fixing it, but don’t have word on when that will be. When I just looked at GoComics it offered this not-quite-reassuring notice.

So something I should explain, since you and I aren’t paid professional user-interface designers. You might think that the question “how about playing a game on our sister site” should be punctuated with a question mark. No. Proper user interface design has learned that if you put a question mark on something, then you’re asking the user a yes-or-no question. And that means the options you need to provide are, for something that involves only the user’s computer, “OK” or “Cancel”. If it’s for something that transmits information about the user back to a server on the Internet, the professional options to provide are “Let’s start already!” and “I’ll answer later”.

Anyway if it is a cybersecurity issue, that could mean anything. But it likely is a good time to change the passwords on any accounts that share the one you use for this silly low-priority web site you use to say nice stuff to the person who draws Amanda The Great on. (Also Amanda The Great is a sweet strip and you should say nice stuff to her.)

And I’m not saying that Tom Batiuk is the problem, but have we ruled out that Tom Batiuk is the problem? Because Degg also reports that Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis’s Crankshaft is to move to GoComics with the start of 2023, as the strip changes syndicates again. I assume this means Comics Kingdom will take down its Crankshaft archive. I don’t have any information what it means for the Funky Winkerbean archive on Comics Kingdom. If you’ve got a favorite strip you’ve been meaning to download or have printed on a mug, maybe do that sooner rather than later.

What’s Going On In Mark Trail? What’s with Comics Kingdom’s ads? August – November 2022

So those ads I was complaining about yesterday? Comics Kingdom wrote back. They explained they had changed to a new company providing “programming” and they’re working on the problem which should be solved soon. I am filled with no confidence because it’s been nine months since the Sunday comics problem started and they’ve done nothing about it. Also, they’re calling advertisements “programming”. They are “programming” only in the propaganda sense of the word.

Also for what it’s worth I started clicking on the little ‘Stop seeing this ad’ box. Google Ads told me OK, they won’t show this particular ad again. And three links after that, guess what was back? It’s wild that there’s such a sexual harassment problem at Google, isn’t it?

Anyway that’s all to the side. What we’re here for is Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail and to see a tiger fight an elephant. No luck on that count yet. But maybe by January 2023, when a subsequent plot recap should be at this link, we’ll have seen it. For now, let’s catch you up to mid-November 2022.

Mark Trail.

28 August – 13 November 2022.

One of the stories going on regarded Andy and Sassy, and many other pets, getting chemical burns. It’s the Sunny Soleil Society, of course, and Honest Ernest’s Lawn Libation. Some weedkiller potion that Ernest brewed up. Cherry and Rusty Trail walk Sassy around to figure where he got exposed. They find a perfect green weedless lawn with a koi pond; Sassy loves barking at fish, as who would not, so that explains that. And the lawn is Violet Cheshire’s, turns out.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 14th of October, 2022. The bee stings were part of an earlier adventure that introduced Honest Ernest and his wife Caroline.

Cherry Trail returns, fruit basket in hand. She means to apologize to Violet Cheshire for accidentally trespassing and ask if they could tone down the toxins. Cheshire’s instantly suspicious, and nearly panics when Cherry says she wants to talk about Ernest. Cherry can barely talk about the Lawn Libation chemicals before Cheshire denies having an affair with Honest Ernest. Also, Ernest comes up with a bouquet of flowers declaring he doesn’t care who knows about his love. Although he’s a little embarrassed to say it right in front of Cherry Trail. Cherry talks with Mark about this; on the one hand, it’s rotten to Cheshire and Ernest’s partners. On the other, it’s not specifically their business. It’s something that ran into them like a rampaging elephant or something.

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Speaking of rampaging elephants. The story Mark Trail passed up? You know, to cover Tess Tigress’s Tiger Touch Center? And work alongside stunt-driver-turned-naturalist Rex Scorpius? That other story was an escaped elephant reported in four states. Keep that in mind.

Mark Trail snoops on the reclusive Rex Scorpius, and finds he’s Facetiming his dog back home. Mark Trail shares his own Facetiming with his dog, and they bond over having dogs who helped them through traumas. So they’re new friends as the arrive for the first day of shooting with Tess Tigress. Diana Daggers starts things off polite but vicious, complimenting her “roadside zoo”. Tigress declares they won’t have her bad vibes and kicks her out. This leaves an unprepared Mark Trail with directing duties since, hey, photography is pretty much like directing, right? Well, it worked for Stanley Kubrick and I bet some other director too.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 21st of September, 2022. Mark Trail may be an unqualified director but he’s quick to pick up on a couple good tricks. At one point he feigns the camera being low on battery, to avoid filming Rex Scorpius cuddling the tiger cubs. Much like the difficulty in making an anti-war movie, it’s hard to overcome the compelling fascinating prospect of interacting with an animal in the wrong ways.

Tigress leads them on a tour that threatens to be so exciting and adorable as to overwhelm one’s senses. It’s exciting and thrilling and magical to hold a tiger cub. Should a cub be separated from their mother so young? There must be a lot of people paying cash for seeing so many tiger cubs; does the volunteer staff get paid? Or deeper questions, asked when Tess Tigress isn’t around to glare at volunteers. Where are they getting enough meat for the animals? Do they have a vet on-site? Have they harmed other animals? That rogue elephant, is she moving in this direction because she remembers a traumatic experience with the Tiger Touch Center?

Jiffy, one of the Tiger Teammates, says they don’t have a vet, and half their animals are sick. And there’s a “weird trailer” they’re not allowed in because that’s where Gemma the Rogue Elephant’s cub is kept. The staff sleeps in tents, and there’s not resources to care for the animals. Mark Trail’s ready to investigate the weird trailer, when he’s interrupted by Tess Tigress and Rex Scorpius.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 28th of October, 2022. I get the dramatic purpose of Mark Trail mentioning the risk Jiffy is taking; it’s for readers. But in-universe, it seems best if Mark Trail pumps Jiffy for information making it sound like he’s not asking about anything special, just doing some small talk. People don’t want to snitch but they love to gossip.

Tigress and Scorpius have been committing acts of canoodlery almost since first meeting. I’m not sure is this is strategic on Tigress’s part. It’s wise if it is; Scorpius’s infatuation makes him dismiss Mark Trail’s concerns. It may be sincere, though. Scorpius was a celebrity stunt driver and became a Bikbok star animal-wrangler. He seems attractive enough in his own right. Scorpius’s angles are clearer. He’s been going through a rough time. He abandoned stunt driving after a severe crash and found that being a video star is hard, unfulfilling work. And Tigress fits neatly with a fantasy he’s had since his childhood favorite superhero movie had “the ultimate catgirl”. (I don’t know if that’s an elliptical way of saying Catwoman, of if the character is literally named Ultimate Catgirl.) But between that transferred crush and her warm, inviting, accepting pose he’s fallen hard for her.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 11th of November, 2022. So, like, did Mark Trail almost get Rex Scorpius killed here? Because if he weren’t there, I assume Diana Daggers would have still got herself kicked out of the Tiger Touch Center, but with nobody else to hold the camera wouldn’t Rex Scorpius have gone home instead? Gemma might still have run back to the Tiger Touch Center for whatever old horrors were inflicted on her, but Scorpius at least wouldn’t have been there? Maybe not; I can imagine Tigress putting the moves on Scorpius anyway, since the center does depend on celebrity clients, and without the responsibility of a shooting schedule he might have fallen even faster for her.

And foolishly, too. This past week we saw him shirtless and chained down in an arena for the “Tiger Truth Ceremony”. He can be part of Tigress’s family if he proves himself true, by the tiger not mauling him. Her other five boyfriends didn’t pass but he’s feeling good about this. Until Mark Trail reminds him: if something goes wrong who feeds his dog? Scorpius has a moment of life-clarifying doubt, but the tiger is already loose.

So is Gemma, the rogue elephant who it turns out was heading right for here, and smashes into the arena.

That closed out last week; this week has been back on Cherry Trail’s storyline.

Sunday Animals Watch!

• Scorpions, 28 August 2022. Note: not former stunt-driver turned Bikbok star Rex Scorpius! Know the difference!
• Armadillos, 4 September 2022. Apparently armadillo litters are identical pups, which seems like something that should’ve been used in more kids shows.
• Lawn Chemicals, 11 September 2022. Just use native grasses and if you absolutely must have a uniformly green lawn, try food dye.
• Monarch Butterflies, 18 September 2022. If you’ve got some milkweed you could do the butterflies a solid.
• Horned Lizards, 25 September 2022. Also known as the ‘horny toad’ because of its after-dark account.
• Raccoons, 2 October 2022. In one panel Mark Trail recommends setting a radio near the den of a raccoon you need to relocate and there’s this adorable picture of a raccoon looking cross at your choice in music.
• Floods, 9 October 2022. Remember that thing where Pakistan got destroyed earlier this year? We should be trying to stop that from happening.
• Grasshopper mice, 16 October 2022. They’re mice that think they’re little wolves! Seriously.
• Sandhill Cranes, 23 October 2022. They migrate through Texas so, as you can imagine, they need a lot of help.
• Texas Red Wolves, 30 October 2022. Which are interbreeding with coyotes on Galveston Island, a reminder of how messy and ambiguous the concept of ‘species’ is in the real world.
• Yellowbelly Racers, 6 November 2022. The snake is fast and harmless to humans, even beneficial for most of our purposes since they prey on insects and rodents, but, you know, people.
• Roadside Zoos, 13 November 2022. I mean, sure, any individual roadside zoo may look bad.

Next Week!

It’s been a cliffhanger of a time in Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth! Find out all there is to know about the cliff when I recap the plot, I hope in six days. See you then.

Why Aren’t You Talking About What’s Going on in Mark Trail?

It’s nothing too personal and it’s not anything I have against Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail. It’s more that I’ve had a very annoying couple of days and not been in the head space to talk about fun stuff like idiots trying to get mauled by tigers and elephants.

Some of that’s personal and I feel like maybe keeping that private for once. But some of it is also Comics Kingdom has decided the bit where they claim that “once you are subscribed, you will no longer see ads on the site” was a good funny joke and instead, they’re just going to keep showing advertisements.

I first noticed this last week. It might have been going longer, but it’s so hard to notice an advertising banner existing that I can’t swear to it.

I’ve filed bug reports with them, of course. And they’ve e-mailed back to say they’re working on the problem. Now, we’re in the ninth month of Sunday strips such as The Lockhorns, Prince Valiant, and The Phantom being unreadable on their Favorites page, and they haven’t been able to figure out how to solve the problem, even when I have told them exactly how to fix the problem on eight separate occasions. So they’re working without any credibility here.

Comics Kingdom Is Never Going to Make Sunday Comics Readable on Computers

I have mentioned my problems with Comics Kingdom’s redesign. Particularly, they’ve switched the source for Sunday comics, changing from the correct three-row formats designed for comics that get a half-page in the newspaper to a four-row format designed for quarter-pages. It looks ugly and, worse, cheap, to my eye. But it gets worse in that some strips, particularly The Lockhorns and Prince Valiant, turn into something illegible. (Others, like Beetle Bailey or The Phantom, just look ugly.) Viewed on my Favorites page, we get this.

The Lockhorns for the 22nd of May, 2022.

Prince Valiant for the 22nd of May, 2022.

I have filed bug reports with Comics Kingdom about this every week since February when this started. You can see how much satisfaction I’m getting from this. What I get most weeks is their pointing out that I could simply zoom in the images, even though I always include a screenshot showing what the zoomed-in comics look like. I have explained to them that I know how Zoom works, and I know that it does not, because unlike them, I have tried it. While I feel a bit bad snarking at a customer service representative, I feel worse about four months of being ignored when I report an obvious and easy-to-reproduce problem and getting back suggestions that can not work.

The Lockhorns for the 22nd of May, 2022, but pudgy.

Prince Valiant for the 22nd of May, 2022, but pudgy.

After a lot of challenging them to read a single word of any of these comics last week they admitted something of substance. That is that when they published the redesign back in February, they switched the formats for many comics to ones that they figured would read better on mobile devices. The argument for this is that most of their readers are on mobile devices. Which may be. And I grant the need to decide what systems you are and aren’t going to support. But it does mean that not a single person involved in this web site redesign ever asked, “What if someone looks at this web site on an actual computer?” Or that people did and they got the answer, “Comics Kingdom does not, and will not, care”.

Now, yes, I know ways around this. Not to brag but I know how to extract the images from what they provide and view them in a readable size. Or you can go to the comics’ own page, rather than your Favorites page, and get more reasonable pictures. This should not be necessary. Comics Kingdom chooses what files to show, and up through February this year they chose files that looked fine for people with actual computers. They could make this choice again. They could even make this a choice for the person reading the site, whether they want the real-computer or the mobile-device versions of these comics. They won’t.

Sherman’s Lagoon is on GoComics now, not Comics Kingdom

I had read about this on Daily Cartoonist, but forgot in time to be surprised Sunday. Jim Toomey’s Sherman’s Lagoon switched its distributing syndicate recently. It’s moved from King Feature Syndicate over to Andrews McMeel Syndicate. And, so, it’s left Comics Kingdom to settle in at GoComics. As I write this, GoComics only has the strips from yesterday and today. I don’t know whether it’s going to get any (or all) of the 31-year back catalogue of the comic. (If you have Sherman’s Lagoon on your Favorites page on Comics Kingdom, you can still flip back to previous days. But you can’t get a link to, say, last week’s strips to pass on to someone else.)

Jim Toomey’s Sherman’s Lagoon for the 1st of May, 2022. Also a pretty good representative of the comic’s sense of humor. If you find nothing entertaining in non-player-characters getting eaten by sharks you probably want a different comic strip.

I hope it does. Sherman’s Lagoon is one of those underrated but reliably funny comics. It’s also, without a joke, the place where I get most of my marine-biology news, as Toomey works what’s new and interesting into the jokes often.