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Mark Trail, 2/12/12

Oh, hey, Mark, have you slipped something completely horrifying into the last panel of Sunday’s nature lesson? Yes, let’s all gaze upon the repulsive New Zealand flatworm, which has no natural predators. Presumably once they finish devouring all the earthworms available, they’ll start moving up the food chain, and by the time they get to humans they’ll be about six feet long and completely unstoppable. Fortunately, these monsters appear to be confined to island nations at the moment, but it’s probably best to eradicate all life in New Zealand and Great Britain with atomic fire, just to be sure.

Beetle Bailey, 2/12/12

Of course, it may already be too late for the rest of the world, as even members of the U.S. military appears to have been infected with awful mutagenic diseases that can transform them into horrific beast-men.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/12/12

And don’t forget, Crazy Harry, every birthday brings you closer to the moment when you’ll tumble through the narrows of the hourglass of time onto an awful pit of impaling spikes! ARE YOU SMILING AS YOU BLOW OUT THOSE CANDLES, WHY ARE YOU SMILING, BIRTHDAYS ARE FOR THINKING ABOUT DEATH AND ONLY DEATH

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Mary Worth, 2/6/12

Ooh, fancy Nola has fabulous apartments plural, something sure to send condo queen Mary into paroxysms of jealousy. “Why, when you tire of your view of the parking lot from Unit 51, you can cut across the courtyard to Unit 16, just in time to catch the sunset rays peeking over the top of the freeway sound barrier!” Mary has prepared the sort of meal you’d expect for such a fancy guest: a steaming layer of green glop that she’s shoveling out of a shoebox with a trowel. “Dear, would you like some butter on, uh, whatever the hell this is?”

Apartment 3-G, 2/6/12

I’d like to believe that the sudden and pointless brunettification of Nina is a result of ongoing tension between artist and writer over the strip’s direction, and that the latter recently received a memo from the former that read in its entirety “ANCILLARY CHARACTERS WILL NO LONGER INCLUDE WHORISH BLONDES.”

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/12

Sometimes Funky Winkerbean readers ask themselves, “My God, is there anything that happens in this strip other than misery and death?” Well, sometimes there are terrible malapropisms, delivered by people whose facial expressions make them look like they just received a cancer diagnosis

Curtis, 2/6/12

“He’s not tech-savvy like us kids, who print out emails when we want to show them to someone!”

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Mary Worth, 1/30/12

For far, far too long we Mary Worth trufans have been denied the Charterstone Pool Party that is our due. And now, it seems, we’re getting one with a vengeance. People lounging around in various hideously colored and patterned outfits? Check! A lonely Wilbur loading up a plate with earth-toned blobs of food-esque material? Check! Mary and Toby furiously gossiping about Nola Wolverson, well known local sex-hussy? You’d better believe that’s a check!

Even better than Mary and Toby sniping about what a whore Nola is (what sort of woman with a boyfriend would try to steal another woman’s husband? everyone knows that’s a single gal’s prerogative!), and indeed even better than Toby’s delusional belief that someone, anyone, might actually try to steal Ian from her, is the fact that Nola’s man-hunting actually refers back to one of the greatest plotlines in recent memory, The Erotic Adventures of Delilah. Delilah almost strayed from her marital vows before she realized that sex was gross, and so she got back together with Lawrence, culty motivational speaker husband and made a baby with him instead. Good times! Anyway, as much fun as it would be to delve back into Delilah and Lawrence’s sexual psychodrama, I hope the real direction of this next storyline involves Toby’s doubts about her own marriage, since nothing could be as delightful as the Camerons in emotional turmoil.

Slylock Fox, 1/30/12

My God, can you imagine the moral dilemmas that confront an exterminator in a world of sentient animals? And this guy’s a rat, so half the time people are probably paying him to massacre his own relatives. Presumably he found the offending bats and told them, “Look, the squirrel downstairs wants you dead, I don’t know why! Clear out as fast you can, I’ll feed her some bull about eggs or something. Just go! GO!” But no, Slylock is here to impose the iron-clad Law of the Wild: You take someone’s money to murder someone, you’d damn well better murder them.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/30/12

You’d think, with all the complaining I do about it, that I’m 100% opposed to modern-day Funky Winkerbean’s weird vibe, where the current depressing, realistic mood is slathered over a base layer of cheerful wackiness. You’d be wrong, though! I do occasionally like the strange tonal mismatch that results. For instance, our “wacky neighbor” character here (he is actually named ‘Crazy’) says something silly that in zany-world would get a laugh from the audience, but instead our redheaded waitress recoils in confusion and distaste, just as someone would in real life.

Dennis the Menace, 1/30/12

Now I know what you’re thinking: There’s literally no way to be less menacing than by helping your mom do the dishes when she asks you to, right? Oh, I don’t know, I’m guessing that the conversation before dad showed up went something like this: “Sure, mom, I’d love to help you do the dishes. It always seems like you’re doing them yourself. Why doesn’t dad ever help? Mostly he just watches TV after dinner, but how important can TV shows really be?” BAM. The seeds of discord are planted. Advantage: Dennis.