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Mark Trail, 5/15/14

As promised, we are at last being treated to a genuine wild bear fight, of the sort that happens all the time in the actual wilderness, as determined by me doing exactly zero research on the subject because this is super rad and I want it to be real.

Also super rad is Mark’s completely gob-smacked expression in panel three. It’s almost as if, even though he planned to lure this wounded black bear into Rex’s territory, he never really expected it to work. Is this the origin story of New Model Mark Trail, in which he realizes that he can control the beasts of the wild, with his thoughts?

Apartment 3-G, 5/15/14

Man, I kinda regret having shown you any of the last six weeks worth of Apartment 3-G, because if I hadn’t I could believably present today’s strip to you and say “Tommie’s taken on work as a trainee dominatrix at a rural BDSM dungeon — but is she ready for the job?”

Family Circus, 5/15/14

I was pretty disgusted by Jeffy’s lack of even basic science knowledge here about suborder Rhopalocera’s life cycle. But, upon reflection, I don’t think Jeffy should learn that a gross, squirmy caterpillar can eventually become a beautiful butterfly. Best not to get his hopes up, you know?

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Mary Worth, 5/14/14

I’m not going to claim that Iris and Tommy’s dialogue in panel one consists of the greatest twenty-word sequence in the history of English prose, but let’s just say that it’s my current favorite, OK? I hereby order anyone who lives in Atlanta, New York, Houston, Phoenix, or any other city with a Midtown and who is talking about a restaurant in said neighborhood to say, airily, “you know, the eatery down in Midtown?” Will one of your friends respond with “Yeah, I know of it”? That all depends on whether you hang out with hardened meth-dealing ex-cons whose native tongue is the language of the streets, I guess!

This is, quite obviously, the beginning of the promised Redemption of Tommy, and I have to admit that I’m charmed by how extremely chill he’s being about it. “Enh, maybe that lady was right and I can expiate my past sins by finding a job. Hey, does this Jerry guy want to give me a job? Can’t hurt to find out, I guess.”

Dennis the Menace, 5/14/14

OK, let’s ignore the dumb wordplay and just acknowledge that Dennis is maintaining eye contact with his mother while dumping the meal she made for him directly into the trash. Would it be more menacing if he were saying “This is garbage, just like all the other garbage I have to put up with in your garbage house”? Yes, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Family Circus, 5/14/14

Oh, man, PJ is just delightfully smug in this panel. “That’s right, Dolly, you wallow in nostalgia all you want. Your day is done. I’m youth! This is PJ’s time now!”

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Family Circus, 5/6/14

If there’s one thing we know about Billy Keane, it’s that he hates learning things. Attempts to get him up to the base knowledge of knowledge necessary for being a functioning member of society have inspired in him a range of emotions running form smoldering anger to haughty contempt. But today we see that resisting all forms of intellectual advancement is just straight-up exhausting. When will Billy get to stop fighting with the chance to learn something about the world outside himself? When will they just let him wallow in his own ignorance? How much more of this do you expect him to take?

Six Chix, 5/6/14

I’ve always thought it would be a good real estate strategy to check out houses where high-profile murders or other horrible things took place, since I’m not superstitious about that sort of thing but a lot of people are, and it seems like I could get a good deal, maybe. Like, for instance, a house where a couple of children were killed and eaten! That’s what happened here, right? Because the kids in the Hansel and Gretel story killed the witch, so this is clearly an alternate scenario, but there’s no way everyone survived. Those kids were stone-cold killers. It was eat or be eaten. What I’m saying is that from a real estate perspective, that’s a much bigger problem than just the lack of candy attached to the outside of the house. The candy was probably attracting rats anyway, let’s be honest.

Mark Trail, 5/6/14

i don’t mean to frighten you

than normal bears

PURE POETRY