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Mark Trail, 5/15/18

This is it, guys. This is the moment Mark’s been training for his whole life. He and a group of American tourists at this no-shower Mexican beachside resort have encountered a beached whale (not pictured, go back to Monday’s strip if you want to see it, I’m not going to do everything for you). One poor woman, weeping uncontrollably at the plight of the massive sea-beast and desperately searching for something solid to grab onto in this moment of tragedy, wonders aloud as to its species, and Mark, uniquely placed to meet her needs, steps up with facts at the ready. But then … but then … some Ernest Borgnine-lookin’ chump blunders in demanding to know where this know-it-all got all this useful whale taxonomy info. Who are you and how did you get so smart, mister? His hand, clenches, unwisely, into a fist. Oh, this gentleman’s about to get punched in the face, all right … but this time, with knowledge. (Later in the storyline, when it turns out he’s the sinister villain behind an illegal minke meat harvesting operation that caters to Japanese tourists, he’ll get punched in the face in the more usual sense of the term, with Mark’s crushing left cross.)

Beetle Bailey, 5/15/18

Remember, you can’t be as consistently furious with other people as Sarge is if you don’t also hate … yourself.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/15/18

Oh, look, we’ve been invited to watch the start of Snuffy and Loweezy’s sexual role play! I for one am extremely not down for this.

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Dennis the Menace, 5/11/18

This is definitely one of the most menacing things Dennis has ever said, as it’s exactly what he’d say if the police found, like, his collection of human skin trophies.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/11/18

Pretty sure you’re never going to have to worry about third grade if your husband keeps giving the kid extremely swallowable puzzle pieces, Loweezy!

Mary Worth, 5/11/18

She says she wants him to come to the car but … she’s definitely beckoning him over the cliff, right? That’s what’s happening in panel two? Just coaxing him into the comforting arms of death?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/20/18

I was struck by the first panel of today’s Snuffy Smith, as the strip generally doesn’t do much by way of experimenting with form but today gives us a different perspective of our diminutive title character, just barely visible from the judge’s bench. Perhaps it’s meant to be symbolic of today’s installment’s narrative: normally we see things from the viewpoint of Snuffy Smith, to the extent that we find his layabout criminal attitudes normal and even charming. But the mention of Farmer Clem reminds us that there are in fact honest citizens trying to extract sustenance from Hootin’ Holler’s meager soil, their lives made all the harder by Snuffy’s thievery. And then there are the chickens. My god, think of the horrors the chickens have to suffer! (I’m talking about being killed and eaten, of course. You thought I was talking about weird sex stuff, didn’t you? What, being killed and eaten isn’t bad enough?)

Hi and Lois, 4/20/18

This is an intensely weird setup to this joke, right? The definite vibe I’m getting here is that the “new friend” is going to follow the trail of detritus to Chip’s lair, where he will have to defeat him in combat and either win glory or be devoured.

Gil Thorp, 4/20/18

This seems like an adequate penance for Marty, but I see a big loophole: he’s going to take that ad time he’s forced to buy during the girls’ game and fill it with his own stream-of-consciousness take on what he got from reading the “Latin America: A Land Of Contrasts” ebook while drunk.

Mary Worth, 4/20/18

Oh, I guess Wilbur is only getting dumped from his local paper, so his livelihood won’t be destroyed; it’s just that his ex won’t be reminded of what she gave up every time she opens the Santa Royale News-Intelligencer to the op-ed pages, which, I assume, she probably doesn’t do very often, because print media, am I right? I know we did a whole storyline about how Iris is unusually old to be dating Zak, but come on, she’s not that old. Anyway, I certainly hope that, just as Santa Royale is a thinly veiled stand-in Santa Barbara, the Santa Royale Democrat and Telegraph is similarly modelled on the Santa Barbara News-Press, because that paper’s story is nuts. It’s probably the only small-city daily in America to merit not just a Wikipedia article but an entirely separate Wikipedia “controversy” article, and the idea of Wilbur stomping down there to whine about his columns while the staff is in the midst of labor agitation, ideological purges, and child porn investigations is delicious.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/20/18

“I thought I was going to be paired up with some young guys, some new blood,” Flash Freeman thinks mournfully to himself. “That Wayne and Garth shit is more than 25 years old at this point. This is going to be a disaster.”

Pluggers, 4/20/18

I think I’ve spotted your problem there, sir: your GPS is designed to navigate you from place to place via America’s road system and not, say, across an open field or wherever the hell it is you are.