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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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Family Circus, 7/7/15

I love that Dolly has a bible tucked under her arm as she announces that she’d rather chow down on endless Clark Bars in hell than rule in heaven. The implication is that she didn’t even go online to one of several convenient Bible websites to do a text search for “chocolate”; no, she read through the whole thing looking for evidence of her favorite foodstuff and failed to find it, almost as if it had been written by people who lived in the Old World in the time before the Columbian Exchange began. Mostly I’m impressed that she got through an entire book that vividly describes, among other things, gang rape, genocide, incest, and bear magic, and she decided that the absence of chocolate was the hill she was going to die on.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/7/15

I was going to go off on a rant about how dumb and unrealistic this was — did they not put down a deposit? did they not read this guy’s Yelp reviews? does nobody have an iPhone’s worth of music they can just put on shuffle? — but then I got distracted by that link cleverly tucked between the first and second panels. There are a bunch of Funkyverse books, guys! All published by Kent State, a public university, presumably as part of its education mission! There’s one that collects the Crankshaft storylines about Alzheimer’s, and it’s called Roses in December: A Story of Love and Alzheimer’s, even though it actually contains two distinct stories! This is the greatest discovery of my week so far!

Dennis the Menace, 7/7/15

I love the knowing look Henry is flashing the reader here. “Heh heh, it wasn’t a big cake that convinced her to marry me. It was something else big, if you know what I mean! I mean my penis. That something was my penis. I have a big penis.”

Apartment 3-G, 7/7/15

This Apartment 3-G plot may still not make any sense, but at least we get to enjoy Margo trying and failing to coin a sassy new catchphrase. “That’s a heck to the no, am I right, everybody? This is how cool people talk! Let me hear a shoutout from my fellow cool people on this!”

Momma, 7/7/15

OH MY GOD MOMMA MADE AN CULTURAL REFERENCE THAT IS ACCURATE FOR A YOUNG WOMAN MARYLOU’S AGE, MY MIND HAS EXPLODED EVERYWHERE

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Mark Trail, 6/30/15

OK, so, that shark that Ken was all excited to catch? Well, he wasn’t going to kill it, he’s not a monster, he loves animals just like his beloved squirrel-feeding Kelly does. Ken just wanted to best the shark in combat so he’d feel like a big man, but then he was going to throw it back. That’s why it’s super disappointing that this shark he caught is already dead! This dead shark has Mark Trail written all over it, which I assume means that Ken’s going to call in Mark to solve the Mystery of the Dead Shark, which is probably going to boil down to “Hey, uh, Ken, sometimes sharks die, you know?”

Hi and Lois, 6/30/15

“How can something that seems good to me not always be good in all cases?” Trixie will be stuck in the body of a baby, which makes her halting moves towards an adult understanding of the world all the more heart-rending.

Dennis the Menace, 6/30/15

Always the smart one, Margaret recognizes that her entire universe is built out of worn-out tropes and borrowed memes. The true menace is the crushing banality of it all.