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Mark Trail, 5/29/11

Mark Trail is always willing to take time off from his busy bad-guy punching schedule to teach you about the ocean, and all the ways it can kill you. Riptides may not be as sexy as tsunami or terrifying gangs of flying squid, but you are more likely to encounter them on your Memorial Day beach weekend. Plus, demonstrating how you can survive a riptide gives Mark the excuse he needs to strip off his shirt and display some sexy shoulder for your ogling pleasure. Rowr!

Family Circus, 5/29/11

While semi-naked Mark Trail is probably only of prurient interest to those of you who are into dudes, I think all of us can enjoy this Family Circus, in which the Keane Kids weep inconsolably while their parents ignore them.

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Momma, 5/26/11

Momma is routinely awful to her children, and all of them are fairly unpleasant to her in return. It’s not clear which was the cause of the other, or if it’s just a sort of continuous feedback loop situation, but today we seem to have reached the inevitable moment when the Hobbes boys move from passive-aggressive comments to outright elder abuse. Still, it’s interesting to note that Thomas has shed his usual preppy garb for zubaz pants, a Charlie Brown-style t-shirt, and — horrors — a baseball cap, worn backwards. It’s almost as if he was unable to become a true monster like Francis unless he dressed the part.

Spider-Man, 5/26/11

Anyone who wants an introduction to the glory and pageantry that is the Spider-Man newspaper strip would do well to review the last couple weeks’ worth of action, which has consisted entirely of people arguing and then almost falling off of the roof before being saved at the last minute. Since Spidey only has enough web to save half of our bickering vampire couple, the fun might end soon. But wait, wasn’t the whole reason Spider-Man needed rescuing in the first place because his web-slinging was on the fritz? And can’t one of these vampire clowns fly, or at least glide? Is it really that hard to keep track of the continuity in this strip?

Mark Trail, 5/26/11

Yes, you can tell this emporium for expensive merchandise is quite popular with the kids. Just look who’s haunting the store: hip young people like the guy who modeled for The Scream (panel one) and the mayor of the Munchkin City (panel two).

Pluggers, 5/26/11

Whole teams of dedicated medical personnel are working around the clock just to keep pluggers alive. And why?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/11

You know, I thought I had already unwillingly contemplated all the ways in which existence among the inbred, illiterate wretches of Hootin’ Holler would be awful, but here comes today’s strip to prove me wrong! Can you imagine what life must be like for what I assume is the community’s sole undertaker? Day after day, he must deal with the town’s filthy, hirsute dead, and some dim sense of how civilized people look and behave drives him to provide them in death with a modicum of the dignity that they cared nothing for in life. I’m actually kind of surprised that Loweezy and Elviney even recognize Travis, and don’t hiss at his strange, hairless face, fearful of whatever devil-magic cleaned all the grime off of it.

Mark Trail, 5/16/11

Ha ha, what if all this “there’s a crazy man living in the woods” business was just a distraction from the real story here: namely, that the bears have finally decided to rise up against us? One shouldn’t doubt their capability to put their revolutionary schemes into effect, as they’re clearly intelligent to eliminate the Mark Trail, the only human who could stop them, before moving against the cities.