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Mark Trail, 7/12/15

“Mark, that old grizzly is in the backyard again!”

“Cherry, did you know that there are only eight species of bears on earth?”

“Well, yes. But that grizzly is acting strange and kind of aggressive. Say, have you seen Rusty?”

“With their conservation status listed as ‘vulnerable,’ sun bears are struggling to survive in the jungles of Southeast Asia.”

“Wait … oh no! Rusty’s outside! Rusty, no! Don’t alarm that old bear!”

“Despite being the smallest of the bear species, they can extend their tongues out nearly 10 inches when trying to reach a meal of bees, termites, ants, beetle larvae, or honey.”

“No, Rusty, oh God! That bear is so hungry!”

“While living in jungles provides plenty of food for sun bears and there is no need to hibernate, tigers and snakes are occasional dangers…”

“My father is running out to help him — dad, it’s not worth it! It’s already too late!”

“However, their biggest threat comes from mankind through habitat loss and commercial uses such as traditional medicines and the pet trade.”

“Oh god, it’s got my father! My poor father! He’s locked his jaws around him! I can’t look! And all you can talk about it … sun bears …” [choking sobs]

Panels from Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/12/15

Good ol’ Abbey has been a beloved member of the Morgan family for more than a decade but hasn’t gotten a lot of panel time lately. I do appreciate her extremely skeptical expression in panel two here though. “Wait, you want me to fight wild animals for you? Oh, hell no. I weigh, what, fifteen pounds? Twenty, tops?”

Mary Worth, 7/12/15

I was going to make a joke about Adam having won over Terry “so soon,” but I guess it has only been three and a half months, which isn’t really that long in the grand scheme of things. Man, it feels like forever, doesn’t it?

Momma, 7/12/15

Real talk: Momma would have her children killed, mummified, and entombed with her like an Egyptian pharaoh if she could.

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Pluggers, 7/10/15

I had a little difficulty parsing the text of today’s Pluggers — it’s actually a pretty good example of why I’m O.C. (Oxford comma) for lyfe. There was a brief moment where I thought maybe “Beltone and the Scooter Store” were a wacky morning DJ duo on the most old-person-friendly radio station around. In fact, they are, respectively, an apparently perfectly respectable hearing aid manufacturer and a company that manufactures mobility scooters that went out of business in 2013 after being having perpetrated upwards of $50 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. In other words, even Pluggers’ old-people cultural references are several years out of date! But the overall theme of today’s panel still stands: the U.S. Postal Service largely exists as a marketing tool for companies that try to make money off the elderly.

Mark Trail, 7/10/15

“Yes, we can afford this expensive office in a Manhattan high-rise because unlike literally every other print publication on the planet, Woods & Wildlife Magazine is insanely profitable, thanks to one thing: boat explosions. Our readers can’t get enough of them! So I don’t care what that wife of yours says, you’re going out on that boat, and if it doesn’t explode on its own, you make it explode, do you hear me?”

Heathcliff, 7/10/15

I spent a lot of time trying to relate this joke to the octopus having eight tentacles and Heathcliff having two feet and that adds up to ten, but then I realized that two of the octopus’s tentacles are being held aloft like arms and then also I checked with my perennial beginner surfer wife and she told me that the whole point of “hanging ten” is that all your toes are off the board, which is exactly what we’re not seeing here, so you know what? Screw you, Heathcliff. Screw you.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/15

“The reunion…! The one … foretold … in prophecy!” I have no idea where this is going but I’ll bet it’s gonna be pretty grim!

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Slylock Fox, 7/8/15

There’s a lot about this strip I find perfectly reasonable. It makes sense, obviously, in a world where predator and prey animals both recently found themselves suddenly sapient, that whatever social structures the earth’s new rulers borrowed from vanished humanity or created anew would have difficulty weighing a new morality against some citizens’ need to eat. It’s reasonable that our two police officers — a plant-munching rabbit and an omnivorous bear — wouldn’t have much sympathy for the hypercarnivorous wolf. It also makes intuitive sense to me that wolf would cast off his clothes before reverting to his animal nature and devouring a pig who, in theory, is his equal in the new dispensation. But the smiles on the faces of those other pigs? “Better him than us,” they seem to be thinking, and it chills me to the bone.

Mark Trail, 7/8/15

I do remember what happened to that boat, Cherry. It blew up, and it was awesome. Are you trying to deny another exciting boat explosion to Mark Trail readers, Cherry? What kind of monster are you?