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Gosh darn it, those Sunday strips are so big! With my feeble attention span, I could only focus on these small bits of them:

Panel from Mark Trail, 6/8/08

Hmm, there were 50,000 grizzlies in North America, but now there are about 1,200 … plus another 30,000 in Alaska? Apparently the Russians, not satisfied with merely reversing the political consequences of the Alaska Purchase, are secretly in the midst of building a canal down the Alaska-Canada border and using the resulting dirt to fill in the Bering Strait, thus making the grizzy-rich Seward’s Icebox a part of Asia! Mark Trail’s gonna have to punch a lot of Russkies to stop this.

Panels from Shoe, 6/8/08

The philosophical implications of Roz’s first statement here — “I hate time” — sort of boggle my mind. Does she hate time as an abstract concept? Does she wish that everything happened at once? Is she actually opposed to entropy, which scientists call “time’s arrow”? These intellectual musings serve to distract you from her statement in the second panel, which, given that Shoe takes place in an all-bird milieu, we must take quite literally: Roz has horribly mutilated one of her fellow avians and is wearing its feet as some kind of grisly trophy. Her “somewhere” implies that she doesn’t even know the whereabouts of her hapless victim, implying that she committed her ghastly crime in a fugue state — so perhaps it’s “lost time” that she really has a beef with.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/8/08

Speaking of philosophical dilemmas, Rex is about to find out just how hard it is prove a negative. “See, here’s my ID, which says, ‘Rex Morgan, M.D., a doctor, and totally 100 percent not a cop.'”

Panel from Family Circus, 6/8/08

Ha ha! Jeffy is terrifying his little brother with some kind of horrific demon mask! Oh, it’s all fun and games until Daddy finds out he’s been poking around in the Ritual Room again.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/8/08

“She is convinced that Shady Shrew is the nut-grabber.” Oh, well played, sir.

UPDATE: Oops, that’s actually “nut-nabber.” Curse you, tiny type and failing eyes! I like my version better anyway.

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Family Circus, 6/5/08

A discussion about the nature of eternity, set against a blank, featureless void: behold the beginning of the transformation of the Family Circus into Existential Despair Comics.

Mark Trail, 6/5/08

“No! When Kelly took my pictures, she made me do things and touched me and it made me feel funny and bad! I MUST PROTECT THE ANIMALS!”

Gil Thorp, 6/5/08

“I mean, he’s still a total douche, so by all means carry on with the assault; I just can’t stand to see a savage beatdown conducted under false pretenses. It cheapens it, you know?”

Spider-Man, 6/5/08

“That’s my wife! The only thing she cares about more than my health is money, and the things you can buy with money.”

Pluggers, 6/5/08

Oh man, that plume of noxious smoke is just the delicious icing on the “fuck you, hippies”-flavored cake.

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Mark Trail, 5/31/08

For those of you new to Mark Trail, that individual in panel two is Kelly Welly, the strip’s resident sexpot, who’s always trying seduce Mark away from his virtuous, ever-faithful wife Cherry. The fact that you’re supposed to be looking at that face and thinking “irresistible seductress” and not “fetal alcohol syndrome” tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the depiction of humans in this strip.

Naturally, when Kelly started talking about “filming” at Lost Forest that could net the big bucks, my mind immediately turned to pornography. My bet is that Kelly initially hoped to get Mark to star in her sexy wilderness production, Naughty Nature Lovers, with herself as both the auteur and female lead; Mark’s dogged professionalism would overcome is total asexual disinterest and finally lead him to give her the ravishing she’s been wanting for years. But with Mark out of the area, her Plan B is to make Cherry her star, and once Mark sees her naked (he hasn’t yet, obviously), their marriage will be destroyed, as he can’t deal with yucky girl parts.

Mary Worth, 5/31/08

Mary thought she was done with Jeff — but then she caught a glimpse of that Corey ass, the one that always keeps the ladies coming back.

Sally Forth, 5/31/08

New #1 on my list of incredibly creepy euphemisms for having sex that will ensure years of involuntary celibacy: “practice making a baby”.