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Mark Trail, 5/18/13

Girl fight Girl fight GIRL FIGHT!!!

Mark Trail is a pretty punchy guy, as you can tell from this collection of a few of his greatest hits. But Cherry, despite her reputation as a coffee-and-pancake-bearing hausfrau, is actually quite the little badass herself. Our gal can cinch up a pack mule, nail a beer can dead center in mid-air with a rifle no sissy shotgun for her no sir — and look damn fine doing it. As we see here, she can also slap the clear light of reason right back into an effete city-dwelling hysteric overcome by panic over some teensy forest-consuming sea of fire.

Or maybe not? Maybe Cherry isn’t trying to focus Shelley’s attention so much as rebuke her for disrespecting Wes? “Don’t you dare speak that way about your husband, Mrs. Wesley Thompson — what part of ‘Love, Honor, and Obey’ don’t you understand? And my own husband Mark loves these backwoods, ablaze or not: I will not stand for you to call them ‘stupid.'” Maybe behind all her woodsy competence, Cherry really is that traditional hausfrau, impatient for this annoying inferno to end so she can get back to her man’s side where she belongs?

Nah, I’m going with “badass.”

Curtis, 5/18/13

Curtis struck a pose for his class picture so outrageous that even Chutney, despite her lifelong crush on him, doesn’t want a copy. But this strip works another way, too: on the very day Chutney finally decides to put Curtis behind her, he shows up with a photo of himself as a gift. She savors the moment and the memory of what felt like love for so long, then, true to her decision, sends him on his way — a loser in every important sense of the word.

Unfortunately, that would make Barry the strip’s principal character, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants that.

Mary Worth, 5/18/13

Oh man you guys Mary Worth has been such a garden of visual delights lately I can’t get enough of it. Check out the disembodied hand watering Elinor’s windowsill — maybe that’s Beth’s leftover hand from panel two? Speaking of which, our monopod young lovers may as well wrap up their tryst — those bushes have already engulfed Tom’s private parts.

Wizard of Id, 5/18/13

Opening for Bung at the Laugh Zone tonight will be Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart singing The Whisky Ain’t Workin’.” Frankly, it’s not doing much for The Wizard of Id, either.

Family Circus, 5/18/13

“It’s a nice day.”
“I like ice cream.”
“It is pleasant to be outdoors this time of year.”
“Punchlines are overrated.”

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dennis the Menace, 3/18/13

Oh, man, the knowing glances Dennis and Mrs. Wilson are exchanging here speak volumes. Mr. Wilson’s look of peaceful repose, hands crossed contentedly over his chest, can only mean one thing: he’s been dead for months, and Mrs. Wilson hasn’t told anyone so she can keep collecting those sweet Postal Service pension checks. Dennis found out, naturally, but just as naturally is happy to keep her secret, as long as Mrs. Wilson keeps the cookies coming. Preserving Mr. Wilson’s corpse through some no doubt ghastly home mortuary science was not strictly necessary for running the scam, of course; that’s just to allow Mrs. Wilson and Dennis to glory in their satisfaction at the old crank’s death.

Curtis, 3/18/13

Seeing as 90% of Curtis strips are variations on the same five or six jokes, I would not have picked it as the first newspaper comic to use the resignation of Pope Benedict as fodder for a punchline. Only five weeks after he quit, too! In the world of syndicated comic strips, that’s an amount of time that can only be detected with the most delicate of scientific instruments.

Slylock Fox, 3/18/13

More haunting evidence of the terrible cataclysm that wiped out humankind and left Earth in the hands paws of sentient beasts: although New York survived more or less intact, elsewhere whole mountain ranges were submerged by massive flooding. Typically, these creatures may be wearing hats and sailing boats and thinking they’re the ones in charge, but they’re still very keen to dig up some of the valuable remnants of the far superior civilization produced by the late lamented Homo sapiens.

Crock, 3/18/13

This camel is outraged that a bird wants to use his hump for sex.

Heathcliff, 3/18/13

It’s nice to see that Heathcliff and his owner went through the trouble of putting up a festive banner in their living room, to create some holiday context for just staying home and getting bombed out of their skulls.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/10/13

Guys, it’s been a long time since we’ve checked in with Slylock and Cassandra Cat’s wrong-side-of-the-law romance. So, what’s up? Hmm, it seems that Cassandra has drunkenly driven up on Sly’s lawn in the middle of the night, and is now making up a fairly pathetic story about why exactly she’s there. “I just … I just happened to be driving this way and then … this squirrel, Granny Squirrel, I always knew she was trouble, she just … she just ran me right off the road! Do you live here? I didn’t even know you lived here. I must have forgotten, or whatever. Oh, hi, Max, you’re here too, I guess that’s not a surprise. Anyhoooo, I gotta … lemme just put this into reverse … unless … you want me to stay? I could … I mean, of course not, God, I’m so stupid, let me just … [weeping]”

Funky Winkerbean, 2/10/13

I know it seems kind of dumb to say this, but … I’m kind of worried about Funky Winkerbean? Like, look, it snowed, and there’s a flurry of activity and people are shoveling out and then A SAD OLD MAN SITS IN A DARKENED ROOM IN A WHEELCHAIR ALONE, LOOKING DOWN AT EVERYTHING HE CAN’T PARTICIPATE IN BECAUSE HE HAD A STROKE. I mean, that’s the punchline. That’s the punchline. This is one of those moments where I think, “Oh, is my stock joke about one of the strips I cover really accurate?” and then realize “Yes, it’s more horribly accurate than I could ever have wanted it to be.”

Curtis, 2/10/13

Whoa, instead of doing a boring old report about some guy he looked up on Wikipedia, Curtis wrote a media studies paper, examining racial attitudes in the United States through the lens of popular cinema! Sadly, this probably will in fact get him in trouble in elementary school.