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Lots of comics testing their traditional boundaries today. Check it out:

Mark Trail, 7/23/15

Slowly, with predator-like stealth, Mark Trail’s Sunday Nature strips have moved beyond their traditional range to invade and conquer the week. Tiny steps, at first – panels just a little larger, audience distracted by an African vista or boat explosion. Then the wildlife — foreground animals starting with bugs, then rodents, a comical lynx, then POW! A fin whale, right in your face!

Next comes dialog, and (like most dialog) this won’t go well for Mark: “They are known for attacking their own kind. Not like the FIN WHALE, a peaceful member of the RORQUALS, all of which have dorsal fins and throat grooves! Ken has been fishing these waters a long time … I’m confident he knows THE WHALE IS NOT A FISH … or else he wouldn’t be a fisherman but a WHALER, BRINGING THESE MAGNIFICENT CREATURES TO THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION, right? Hahaha wait what’s happening? Are those villains at NOAA behind this? I bet they are!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/15

Doc Pritchart is a dentist? Why?

Mary Worth, 7/23/15

Huh? A change of mind can’t be forced? Mary, have you completely forgotten what you’ve been doing for the past seventy-seven years? It is your brand, lady.

I sure hope this isn’t a move toward a kinder, gentler strip in which Mary minds her own business, keeps more and more to herself, and gradually withdraws into privacy of her room until a passerby notices that the talc-and-salmon smell outside her door has developed a distinct undertone ….

Meanwhile, AdamandTerry, get a room, wouldja?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mark Trail, 7/20/15

Mark works out his resentment of his editor’s new office by abusing his expense account.

Apartment 3-G, 7/20/15

“I mean I’m going to garrotte her in an alley, dissolve her flesh in lye, crush her bones to powder, and dump the slurry in a river. Honestly, mother, sometimes it’s like you don’t know me at all!”

Slylock Fox, 7/20/15 (solution inverted)

Psst, Shady … tell Slylock you cooled them in the stream. Then offer him one, and invite him to sit down and cool his feet. You know how things work around there.

9 Chickweed Lane, 7/20/15

9 Chickweed Lane parodies the eponymous rabbit from Harvey, on the theory that the strip needs a character even more irritating than the regular cast.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mark Trail, 7/14/15

Look upon panel three, O Mark Trail readers, for here is a chunk of exposition of which you will not see the amazing like again for months, if not years. “Good thinking, Mark,” says the professional wordsmith, “I am aware that Doc is a veterinarian!” There are two potential explanations for this that make the slightest sliver of sense: either Mark goes into Doc’s veterinary bona fides whenever he brings him up in conversation, and Bill is cutting him off so he doesn’t have to listen to 20 minutes of blah blah about Doc’s MCAT scores and how he settled on the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, again; or Bill made an embarrassing error on this topic earlier and is covering up for it. “Ha ha, yes, of course I am aware that Doc is a veterinarian! 100% aware of that fact. And someone who knew that definitely wouldn’t have sent Doc a bunch of emails trying to convince him to prescribe Adderall, would he? Definitely not!”

Spider-Man, 7/14/15

A quick glance at Spidey’s awkward position atop this bat-glider (side note: should Batman sue Hobgoblin for appropriation of the bat- prefix?) shows that it’s not his feet that he needs to squeeze closer together, but his thighs and calves, which is pretty obviously what he’s doing in panel two. Not sure why he doesn’t say this; maybe the syndicate is trying to desperately draw attention away from the blatant humping going on here? Also, I’m not an engineer or anything, but I’m thinking that damaging the exhaust pipe of this contraption won’t so much slow it down as give the rocket’s output nowhere to go and possibly cause the whole thing to explode, which may not be the best outcome for our hero, but hey, let’s watch this play out.

Heathcliff, 7/14/15

“And in unrelated news, there’s a lot of hair on my cat’s chin! But let’s go back to talking about why your husband isn’t interested in you sexually and never has been.”