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Mark Trail, 6/6/14

“Africa!? But … I’ve finally learned how to endure time spent with my wife! Curse you, Woods and Wildlife Magazine, for somehow still having a cushy travel budget, despite the implosion of print journalism revenues!”

Blondie, 6/6/14

“We also have a terrible, persistent rodent infestation in the kitchen, which dovetails nicely with your metaphor as well!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/6/14

Silas’s face crumpled as he realized his plan to turn his store into a local literary salon would run up against an insurmountable obstacle: the near-universal illiteracy of his customer base.

Marvin, 6/6/14

Hey, remember how Marvin hates his parents? Well, they don’t really care much for each other, either.

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Blondie, 6/3/14

Haha yes Dagwood is on an emotional roller-coaster because the idea for wearable food-based scents that he came up with during an idle sandwich-binge but never pursued has been monetized by someone else with a dumb brand name, and now with that out of the way let’s get to the real story here, which is the weird rolls of flesh (?) around Dagwood’s neck. Longtime readers know I’ve been worried about these things for some time; once, long ago, I worried that Dagwood had maybe sewed a turtleneck out of human skin. But now I think something slightly more subtle is going on here. Dagwood’s face is as smooth and youthful as it’s ever been over the course of his 80+ years in the comics pages. Could it be that only his wrinkled neck-flesh reflects his true age? I would be wholly satisfied if this were the result of either a Portrait of Dorian Gray-type curse scenario or an increasingly elaborate series of facelifts that had to shift the excess wrinkles somewhere.

Apartment 3-G, 6/3/14

Well this has definitely been the boringest ever Apartment 3-G storyline that’s been played out over the course of a conversation between two non-main characters whose motivations we can’t understand and don’t care about! So, in addition to being Jack’s love interest and an example of what Lu Ann would look like if she were put into a highly experimental fast-aging chamber, Carol is also the best friend of Jack’s dead wife! Also, Jack has a dead wife! I guess we’ve finally figured out what this plot is about: Tommie and Jack are mourning their dead partners in the same way: by not talking about it and burying their feelings under mounds of horse poop.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/14

Congratulations, Hi and Lois: after literally years of unsuccessful attempts, you have finally made me genuinely laugh. Hi’s tiny brandy snifter is a nice touch, as is the fact that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is hanging on the wall, which Hi, in a signal of his total commitment to this passive-aggresive gag, presumably put up to replace whatever sub-middlebrow print was there before (some cursive phrase about the importance of family that you can buy framed from Target, I’m guessing).

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/3/14

True story: when I read panel one, I legitimately thought the joke was going to be based on the premise that Hootin’ Holler was one of those few regional markets where you can still buy Tab, the diet soda that’s now been almost entirely displaced by Diet Coke. But then I got to panel two and realized it was just yet another Barney Google and Snuffy Smith about how all its characters were desperately poor and I got real sad.

Pluggers, 6/3/14

“No! Your mother’s great! I love your mother! I think about having sex with your mother all the time! Come back! What am I saying wrong?“

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Hagar the Horrible, 5/29/14

In the 9th and 10th centuries, spices were unfathomably expensive in Western Europe; most came from the Muslim world and beyond, where the states were much more powerful than the chaotic post-Carolingian kingdoms, and so the Vikings usually had to offer money or legitimate trade items, rather than going with their usual M.O. of just raiding and looting. In other words, this scene is pretty much the early medieval Norse equivalent of a millionaire couple having sex on a bed covered in hundred-dollar bills.

Dennis the Menace, 5/29/14

“C’mon, Joey,” said Dennis. “Let’s go outside.”

“But … but Dennis, it’s pouring out. It’s been pouring out all day.”

“Whatever. We’re going out to play.”

And then they just stood there, under the umbrella that didn’t quite cover them both, for more than an hour. Dennis was staring at the sidewalk and the sign with an angry intensity. The silence was tense, electric. Joey didn’t dare move. He knew Dennis was thinking something, was about to say something, that he had brought him here for a reason — but for what? What did he have on his mind? What was he going to say? It was the most menacing evening Joey had ever spent. He knew his mother was waiting for him to come home, but he was too scared to leave.

Momma, 5/29/14

“Ha ha,” said the Hobbes siblings to each other, “Momma sure is having trouble parsing easy-to-understand English sentences!” None of them mentioned it, but they knew what they felt, that moment they walked into the living room and found her sitting in the chair, the TV still on, her head lolled grotesquely off to one side. For just a second, before her eyes jerked open and she started babbling nonsense, they all felt, deep in their hearts, the purest kind of freedom they’d ever known. They never talked about it, of course, but then again, they never had to.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/29/14

Hootin’ Holler’s soil is so poor and rocky that it cannot feed itself through subsistence agriculture; and yet, since it has nothing much else to offer economically, what food the inhabitants do manage to import from the outside world isn’t particularly plentiful or nourishing either.

Crankshaft, 5/29/14

Crankshaft is just a straight-up dick about everything, all the time.