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Mary Worth, 6/29/11

So, this might not be the most outrageous moment in Mary Worth history — nobody died in a fiery car crash, or was lured into a sex den or thrown bodily out of a rehearsal dinner — but it’s delightfully shocking all the same. Mary has decided to help Liza by finding an outlet for her persistent nature! And by “persistent” we means “psychotic.” Liza will be the kind of salesperson who repeatedly calls you to urge you to buy whatever it is she’s peddling, shows up at your work and home unannounced with already filled out paperwork so you can “just finalize that deal we worked out,” and eventually rifle through your trash to find your signature, the better to forge it and close the sale with your consent. She’ll be a millionaire within a year!

Marmaduke, 6/29/11

Speaking of aggressive salespeople, Marmaduke has done pretty well in establishing this magazine shill as threatening with only some sunglasses and a leer. Not that he’ll be trouble for long, as Marmaduke is going to eat him in a minute.

Marvin, 6/29/11

“Oh, and in unrelated news, we dogs have managed to develop bipedalism and opposable digits. Combine that with our powers of telepathic communication and you humans are totally screwed!”

Spider-Man, 6/29/11

“Oh, that’s right, I had to fire everyone at the paper, because of the Internet. Welp, guess I’ll update the blog and call it a night!”

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Ziggy, 6/7/11

One of the most shameful moments in the life of any social reject comes when they’re offered the chance to join in on the mockery of someone even lower on the ladder than they are. You might imagine yourself a noble defender of nerd solidarity, but too often, after years of feeling the brunt of teasing and cruelty, the opportunity to step to the other side of the social predator/prey line and feel cool, if only for an instant, is too tempting to resist. If you have shred of humanity, you’re haunted by it later — certainly I am, for the few times I briefly switched teams in my dorky adolescence — but I imagine it’s a pretty universal phenomenon.

I bring this up because Ziggy, who is usually the butt of cruel jibes from his various pets, seems to be enjoying the fact that his vicious parrot is mocking the dog, for once. Ziggy, they’ll never accept you. Try to maintain a little dignity!

Hagar the Horrible, 6/7/11

Hagar the Horrible is one of the most violent strips on the comics page, but I’m pretty sure it’s never depicted an actual corpse before. It’s possible that the poor nameless viking’s awful staring eye isn’t frozen open in death, but merely indicative of the shock he’s entered as a result of his massive and almost certainly fatal wounds, but either way this seems especially grim.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/7/11

This is happiest we’ve seen Funky in years. Naturally, it’s because multiple people that he ostensibly cares about are in painful emotional turmoil.

Marmaduke, 6/7/11

Marmaduke was the hero of the game, presumably because he ate all the children on the other team.

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Marmaduke, 5/25/11

Longstanding readers of this blog know my feelings about geese (and their elitist cousins, swans): they are vile, vicious creatures who would destroy us all if they could. And seeing as today’s strip proves that they’re more powerful than Marmaduke, and we already know that Marmaduke is more powerful than God, humanity pretty much has no chance.

Beetle Bailey, 5/25/11

Look, I don’t know how often we have to explain it: Sarge is not interested in women, sexually. But he does have outdated opinions about gender roles! The two facts aren’t mutually exclusive.