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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/13/13 (panels)

What is the relationship between art and reality — among the dreamer, the dream, and the dreamed? Magritte gives us one viewpoint, Snuffy Smith another.

Snuffy reveals how the artist not only creates a work but selects its audience, source of his reputation and claims to authenticity. He is his own best example: once a mere usurper in Barney Google’s strip, he now asserts his own membership in the very elites who read his Sunday “throwaway panels” in their expansive flatlander newspapers or on high-falutin’ electronic devices. With a delicate hanky-dab at his nose, he rises — refined and redefined, “Snuffy” no more!

Judge Parker, 10/13/13 (panel)

Boy, this lady sure hates hats, doesn’t she?

Beetle Bailey, 10/13/13

You know, there are plenty of attractive and willing human partners around, like Sarge’s Sgt. Louise Lugg, Beetle’s Miss Buxley, and Killer’s groupies, but it’s all surrogates with these guys: robots, trees, and again with Beetle’s beloved pillow here. I’m just saying that’s kind of messed up.

Mary Worth, 10/13/13 (panel)

We had to wait a long time to see Mary’s head impaled on a fish, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.

Mutts, 10/13/13

Mooch ignores the comics’ prohibition of “FLICK” to imply that Earl has sex with his own parasites.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Slylock Fox, 10/6/13

There’s an awful lot of fun things going in today’s Slylock Fox — that “How To Draw” bull looks more exasperated than raging, for instance, and I’d dearly love to know what’s going on in the Six Differences, in which ordinary animals seem to be ganging up on a baffled Grimace-thing. But the best little detail is that Max Mouse is surreptitiously dialing 911 as Slylock outlines the ratiocination sequence that will convict Shady Shrew of larceny and assault. He knows Sly’s been pushed to the limits by Shady Shrew’s constant low-level criminality, and fears that this might be the day when, instead of handing Shady over to the owl-run justice system, the predator-detective will just grab the insectivore between his powerful jaws and shake him back and forth until his neck snaps. Even though they’re on different sides of the law, Max can’t stand to see his fellow small mammal go down like that.

Beetle Bailey, 10/6/13

Welp, Beetle Bailey is still fixated on sex robots, but at least this time they’re imagined as part of the camp’s chilly rationalist’s vision of a dystopian, dehumanized future, so I guess that’s progress?

Momma, 10/6/13

Haha, it’s funny because Thomas and Tina’s house is literally infested with vermin, augh augh augh augh

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Mark Trail, 10/5/13

Whoa you guys, Mark is using high technology to defeat his enemies. And by “high technology” I mean “a cell phone that appears to have a seven- or eight-inch screen.” That counts, for this strip! Hiding an enormous tablet-slab might be slightly trickier than stashing away a smaller phone would’ve been, though.

The tragedy of today’s Mark Trail is the terrible coloring job. Mark appears to be wearing a charming western jacket with arrows embroidered on it. Do you expect me to believe that the whole thing is just a dull brown? For shame, King Features colorists! We want to see Mark’s jauntiest outfit ever in all its glory!

Beetle Bailey, 10/5/13

Normally, if a beloved long-running family comic strip that runs in thousands of newspapers had a character openly arranging an orgy, you might think that was kind of noteworthy, you know? But now my attitude is “Well, at least all of the women he’s planning on having sex with are biological life forms and not crudely anthropomorphic robots,” so well played, Beetle Bailey!

Shoe, 10/5/13

This bird-lady and her bird-husband went on a second honeymoon and, despite her husband’s advanced years, they were able to have all the intercourse they wanted, thanks to modern pharmaceutical science.