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Mark Trail, 2/20/15

“It made me think of my own wife! Her name is Hope, and I love her so much I never even mentioned her before now. Definitely I would never take her deep into the swamp where I keep my bog-palace! I mean, people’s wives get kidnapped all the time out here! What kind of monster are you, Mark, bringing your poor wife into this hellhole kidnapping-land?”

Dennis the Menace, 2/20/15

By refuting the basic premises behind harsh prison sentencing, Dennis menaces our modern prison-industrial complex and the culture of retribution that feeds it.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/20/15

Literally Funky Winkerbean is just spending days having representatives of Enormous Midwestern University be smirking dicks to the hapless teens of Westview High. I mean, I guess most people in this strip are smirking dicks to everyone else all the time, but somehow it jumps out more when non-recurring characters do it.

Lockhorns, 2/20/15

I know this is one of those things where just speaking the name summons the thing into existence, but at the moment I am very glad for the Google search results I just got:

Clearly any such stories would include a depth of emotional and sexual cruelty that would put Fifty Shades of Grey to shame.

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Six Chix, 2/8/15

I prefer to think that this episode takes place in the Slylock Fox world in which sapient animals have risen up and taken over — maybe several generations later, when the few remaining human holdouts, the Slick Smitties and Count Weirdlies, have finally gone extinct. With no humans left and none even in living memory, it’s no surprise our talking mountain goat can’t answer any questions about the vast vaguely simian face carved into the side of this cliff. George Washington’s shocked, staring expression is particularly poignant here, as he contemplates his state as a baffling final reminder of a vanished race.

Panels from The Lockhorns, 2/8/15

I got not one but two genuine laughs out of today’s multipanel Sunday Lockhorns. I’m definitely curious about the backstory to Leroy’s grim online mission in the top panel — does he have his own blog, or popular Twitter feed, which attracts Internet haters? Or does he feel compelled to wade into the comment sections of local newspaper articles or, God forbid, Wikipedia talk pages and correct people who are being wrong on the Internet? The second panel is more self-explanatory: Like Dante, Leroy and Loretta journeyed into the bowels of Hell, where God punishes in eternal agony the souls of the wicked, and got married, in a ceremony presumably conducted by actual, literal demons.

Panel from Mark Trail, 2/8/15

Wow, Mark really cares about whelk purity. “Hey Mark, look what I found on the beach!” “That’s not a true whelk, Rusty!” [slaps it out of his hand and into the sea]

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The Lockhorns, 12/17/14

Kudos to the Lockhorns for occasionally giving us another angle on their “Leroy and Loretta passive-aggressively try to emotionally destroy one another in a mostly featureless hell-dimension” shtick. By another angle, I don’t mean thematically, of course; I mean a literal viewing angle. Today, for instance, Leroy responds to Loretta’s basic need for reassurance on her appearance with a cruel wisecrack while the two of them stand next to a doorframe and a mirror floating in an otherwise featureless-hell dimension, as you’d expect, but we’re looking up at the whole scenario from about knee height, which gives us both a close up on Loretta’s ass (demonstrating what gave rise to the conversation) and also a great look at Leroy’s looming gut spilling over his belt (demonstrating the lack of self-awareness that’s going hand in hand with his lack of tact).

Gil Thorp, 12/17/14

How is Gil following up his state football championship? Why, by keeping all the good players off the basketball team, that’s how! “I only do a half-assed job at coaching most years, so shouldn’t I be able to rest on my championship laurels and literally not even field a basketball team this year? Let’s see how many people I can convince to quit!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/17/14

Oh whoops it looks like Becka’s husband didn’t actually leave her for the sexy nutritionist co-worker he flirted with in 2009; that was just to establish his untrustworthy character in the very long chess game Rex Morgan has apparently been playing with us all this time. Anyhoo, I know Becka’s in a low emotional state, but she also appears to be in the 25-40 demographic, and therefore shouldn’t go around affixing the “cyber” prefix to whatever slur she’s applying to people just because they came into her life via the Internet, satisfying though it no doubt is.

Dennis the Menace, 12/17/14

“Cheer up, Mr. Wilson! All of us are on a one-way road with no exits, and its final destination is death!”