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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/26/12

Poor Jughaid is grappling with the problem of living a righteous life in a world (and with a soul) indelibly marked with sin! “Parson sez my conscience keeps me from doin’ wrong, but it ain’t so” frankly sounds like it could have come straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. However, Loweezy’s simple-minded guffawing indicates that this dilemma won’t end with a harrowing but ultimately enlightening revelation; Jughaid’s just going to grow up to be a chicken thief, like everyone else in his family.

Mark Trail, 4/26/12

“If I can just do this without making any noise! If only there were a way for me to clarify my thoughts without speaking them aloud! I’ll just have to shout them as quietly as I possibly can!”

Marmaduke, 4/26/12

In order to cement his rule as demon-king of Earth, Marmaduke has savagely devoured all human politicians, regardless of their ideology or partisan affiliation, and has collected their campaign signs as grisly trophies.

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Mark Trail, 4/18/12

OK, guys, I know that what I’m about to type will sound like pure liquid madness, but: does anyone else think that the current series of Mark Trail events actually somewhat hold together logically? I’m thinking in particular about these two boys here, who, despite their cheery bravado, are not the brightest pair of underemployed mulletheads in the county, as their decision to grow pot on government land indicates, and have arrived at this place in their life because of their inability to clearly plan out the steps they need to reach their goals. Probably a lot of brutal killings that happen in the course of the illegal narcotics trade don’t happen because someone woke up one morning hoping to become an axe murderer; it’s just that someone stumbles upon your grow operation, and he’s seen your stuff and he’s seen your faces, and, well, murder’s a big deal, you probably don’t do it right away, but you can’t let him go, and the hours pass and you can’t think of other options, and, I mean, you’ve already got the axe. It’s right there, you know?

Beetle Bailey, 4/18/12

Everything in Beetle Bailey, meanwhile, only makes sense in a unsettling fugue state of underdeveloped eroticism. Beetle and Miss Buxley are in a field, and it’s the middle of the night, and suddenly she stubs her toe. “Hug me!” she demands, and the Beetle, who’s never shown anything other than platonic interest in her, suddenly becomes a sexually aggressive bear. It’s like what Freud must have thought sex was like, when he was nine.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/12

So this perky underclassman nerd is attempting to woo jock senior Summer by means of anonymous text messages, which sounds like something that most girls would find spectacularly creepy and would probably earn him a punch in the face, but in the Funkyverse there’s a 50-50 chance this will result in true love. It did make me wonder (a) if anonymous text messages are even something you can send from your phone, (b) if so how a reply could get back to you, and (c) assuming such things exist, if anyone really calls them “restricted texts” as our amorous dweeb has been doing. Then I realized that I had just a little too much self respect to put the energy into researching the answers to these questions, so I didn’t! Aren’t you proud of me?

Mark Trail, 4/17/12

By “updating an aerial survey of his area,” Doc of course means “masturbating.” He knows that Mark will go in search of Tom, and hopes that, in stumbling upon him in the act of onanism, Mark will finally be forced to confront the reality of human sexuality. Decades of marriage to Doc’s daughter hasn’t done the trick, so this may be his last chance.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/17/12

So far, this plot’s central mystery has revolved around the dead Foster’s true character. Was he a lovable old rogue who perhaps drank a bit more than he should? Or was he a hateful alcoholic dick? The fact that he left for his daughter a book (one that everyone keeps emphasizing “reads like a screenplay”) that’s full of traumatizingly hot sex scenes involving her mother seems to tip things towards the latter possibility.

Spider-Man, 4/17/12

The last bit of dramatic tension in this storyline has been resolved without any help whatsoever from our ostensible protagonist, so now he can finally celebrate Spidey-style! Spidey-style celebration apparently consists of a little jig that’s frankly embarrassing to watch, because dancing is one of the many, many things Spider-Man sucks at.