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Dennis the Menace, 7/23/17

Ha ha, very funny, Dennis, but if you were a little more up on your history, like Mr. Wilson is, you’d know that two of the cultures he discussed are known not just for their mastery of the calendar but also their practice of human sacrifice. It’s no coincidence that Mr. Wilson in this final panel suddenly appears to be wearing an eye-mask — an integral part of the iconography of Zorro, a descendant of those self-same Mayans! Oh, Dennis, you’re in trouble now.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/17

Today in Things In Legacy Comics I Enjoyed Unironically: Silas’s wild breakdancing in the throwaway panels of Snuffy Smith. I’m glad to see he’s so limber, even if only in his dreams.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/4/17

It’s never entirely clear where Hootin’ Holler is supposed to be, but many places like it in the American South and border states, like Appalachia and the Ozarks, were hotbeds of pro-Union sentiment in during the Civil War, being mostly inhabited by poor farmers with no love of slavery or rich slavers. And so Hootin’ Holler has uniformly celebrated Abe Lincoln and the Union victory ever since — for the most part. Check out Loweezy there in the center of this image:

We don’t know her origins or her politics. Could she be trying to send a signal of her secret dedication to the Lost Cause?

Mark Trail, 7/4/17

Welp, I guess we really are going to get a blow-by-blow retelling of the Water-World Disaster shaggy dog story over the course of this week! I’m assuming it ends with an explanation of why Gil’s right arm is all shriveled up, possibly involving the process of extracting walrus twins from their mother’s birth canal in the midst of a raging fire started by an exploding boat.

Slylock Fox, 7/4/17

I don’t want young men getting the wrong idea from this cartoon. Guerilla fence-painting does not make others respect your devil-may-care attitude, and will definitely not attract wide-eyed blondes who won’t be able to keep their hands off you. Sorry to shatter your illusions, but those are the hard facts!

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Mark Trail, 6/12/17

This Mark Trail kidnap plot has been going on for approximately all of eternity at this point, but we still don’t really understand what motivates our bald-headed kidnap ringleader. What drove him to a life of crime? Why does he pretty much always look like he can’t poop and he’s real mad about it? Today we get a hint of his sad, empty emotional life: as a man who could only muster a casual “too bad Billy got shot” when a member of his crime-brotherhood was gunned down by the police, he can never understand the bonds that tie together real friends. You can keep robbing all the banks you want, but all that money isn’t going to fill the empty space inside you!

Mary Worth, 6/12/17

Unironic shoutout to the Mary Worth art team, who with Esme in panel two managed to perfectly capture a facial expression that says “Actually, it’s exactly what it looks like.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/12/17

The folk in Hootin’ Holler really only ever nominally adhered to the flatlanders’ sky-religion. When times get tough, they go out to the hidden lakes and commune with their ancient fish god.