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Mark Trail, 4/14/18

OK, fine, Jim isn’t dead, but he did have a good chunk of his shirt just completely ripped off, and is now standing around awkwardly, nipple exposed to the forest breezes. If this circus storyline has taught us one thing, it’s that the woods are full of dangers that can rip your sleeve clean off, leaving your muscular upper arms sexily visible.

Marvin, 4/14/18

Marvin is a strip that, infuriatingly, bounces back and forth between its infant characters’ speech being presented in thought bubbles or straight up word balloons, and it’s a small thing I’m willing to overlook, except in cases like today, where the distinction between actual, literal speech and, like, psychic baby communication is important! Marvin has more than a five-word vocabulary! He says seven words in the first panel of this comic strip! I swear to god, they plant these just so I’ll say “No, really, go back to the jokes about shitting.”

Family Circus, 4/14/18

Ha ha, look how angry Jeffy is as Dolly embellishes on the sacred word! Looks like he’s found the heretic!

Gasoline Alley, 4/14/18

Guys, who … who does Gasoline Alley think Paris Hilton is

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Gil Thorp, 4/11/18

Well, it was bound to happen: the Social Justice Teens are feeling kind of bad about defeating Marty by goading him into cussing on-air. You’d think they’d take the attitude of “Yay, the sports radio guy who literally nobody liked even before we found out he was a racist isn’t going to be saying rude things about our friends on-air anymore!” But these kids sense, at the periphery of their minds, that they are in fact the current protagonists in an ongoing narrative; and while in real life we actually enjoy getting what we want, within a story a protagonist without an antagonist is dull and lifeless, and they know it.

Mary Worth, 4/11/18

Mary Worth, obviously, doesn’t feel itself restricted by such conventional narrative niceties. Sure, the current storyline of Wilbur’s mid-grade ennui appears to lack dramatic tension, drifting as it is from a little shower singin’ to some light shoe purchasing. But in fact the true interest to the reader is the nature of the story itself: is something actually going to happen one of these days? Or when we picture the future, should we imagine Wilbur thought-ballooning while shopping at various chain stores, forever?

Family Circus, 4/11/18

Generally speaking the circumstances in which you’d eat off a tray like this are that you’re eating dinner in front of the TV, which is literally every child’s fondest wish, so it seems weird that Billy is so outraged here. The prissy face really sells it, though. “Mother, not only are we watching televised entertainment rather than earnestly discussing our day over dinner, but the lack of a table means that there are no arbitrary rules of etiquette to enforce! This is sheer anarchy! Also, I dropped a lot of whatever this green goop is on the rug.”

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Pluggers, 4/5/18

Are you an ordinary biological life form made of meat and bone? Are you trying to transcend those limitations by festooning your flesh-shell with baubles made of gold or jewels? Well, pluggers are way ahead of you. Pluggers are enhancing their bodies with metal and machinery, to become something greater, something powerful, something more. I honestly did not anticipate this new direction for Pluggers, but I am very much here for it.

Dennis the Menace, 4/5/18

Your mother is a young woman, Dennis, and probably sees her still-young child as a reflection of her own youth. Letting her know that you, who will almost certainly outlive her, already feel the icy breath of mortality on the back of your neck is menacing indeed.

Family Circus, 4/5/18

“What’s her angle? Is she plotting against me? Against us? Are we in a blood feud with grandma? I’ve been waiting for this day all my life.”