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Lots of comics testing their traditional boundaries today. Check it out:

Mark Trail, 7/23/15

Slowly, with predator-like stealth, Mark Trail’s Sunday Nature strips have moved beyond their traditional range to invade and conquer the week. Tiny steps, at first – panels just a little larger, audience distracted by an African vista or boat explosion. Then the wildlife — foreground animals starting with bugs, then rodents, a comical lynx, then POW! A fin whale, right in your face!

Next comes dialog, and (like most dialog) this won’t go well for Mark: “They are known for attacking their own kind. Not like the FIN WHALE, a peaceful member of the RORQUALS, all of which have dorsal fins and throat grooves! Ken has been fishing these waters a long time … I’m confident he knows THE WHALE IS NOT A FISH … or else he wouldn’t be a fisherman but a WHALER, BRINGING THESE MAGNIFICENT CREATURES TO THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION, right? Hahaha wait what’s happening? Are those villains at NOAA behind this? I bet they are!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/15

Doc Pritchart is a dentist? Why?

Mary Worth, 7/23/15

Huh? A change of mind can’t be forced? Mary, have you completely forgotten what you’ve been doing for the past seventy-seven years? It is your brand, lady.

I sure hope this isn’t a move toward a kinder, gentler strip in which Mary minds her own business, keeps more and more to herself, and gradually withdraws into privacy of her room until a passerby notices that the talc-and-salmon smell outside her door has developed a distinct undertone ….

Meanwhile, AdamandTerry, get a room, wouldja?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/9/15

“Howdy boys! You all no doubt are vaguely familiar with the story of Noah’s Ark from the sermons I preach that you sometimes pay attention to! Just as the calm seas are nothing compared to the World Flood, so too was the Ark in a whole different class from the simple sailboat you built. Speaking of floods, I’ve been delegated to tell the residents of the Holler that they’ll be experiencing their own biblical deluge soon! Specifically, the good people at Maxelon Energy Corp. will be building a dam that will transmit cheap, abundant energy to flatlanders for hundreds of miles around, with the small downside that Hootin’ Holler will be entirely submerged under the resulting artificial lake. But don’t worry! Just as God provided for Noah with the Ark, Maxelon will provide for the Holler, with a series of trailers that will be available to rent at low prices just above the new water line. Go on, tell your parents! You have 72 hours!”

Dennis the Menace, 7/9/5

Mrs. Wilson is right to gasp: by suggesting that Dennis has a serious chromosomal abnormality, Mr. Wilson has gone too far this time — too far. He’s said something she can never forget, and thus, just by standing there staring dumbly into space, Dennis has menaced their decades-old marriage.

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Crankshaft, 7/5/15

Sure, Ralph Meckler says he’s just an ordinary citizen fighting for the little guy’s right to drive on safer streets. But his campaign is in the pocket of the sausage restaurant industry. Do we really want our city government ignoring important environmental and zoning concerns and just rubber-stamping approvals of chain eateries that serve substandard biscuits? Mayor Kane: Leadership We Can Trust.

B.C., 7/5/15

Here is a sequence of words that has almost certainly never been constructed before but which I nevertheless believe to be meaningful and also true: these prehistoric ants appear to be Seventh-Day Adventists.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/5/15

OH MY GOD LOWEEZY IS GOING TO RAISE CORPSES FROM THEIR GRAVES USING FOUL BACKWOODS NECROMANTIC SORCERY