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Judge Parker, 6/15/08

Yes, because obviously this woman would have had to bring her explosives with her from Terrorist Land where she lives. Here in the terrorist-free U.S.A., we never have any reason to blow things up! We solve our disputes and demolish our buildings with pure, unfiltered Freedom.

And speaking of Freedom, thank goodness we live in country where we have a free press that’s free to not report about attempted terrorist attacks on American soil. That’s certainly not the sort of thing the public would or should be interested in, after all.

Marvin, 6/15/08

The first non-throwaway panel — in which an unshaven Jeff looks sidelong at his his sleeping wife and thinks “I never realized how devious Jenny was” — is creepy. But not as creepy as the first throwaway panel, in which we see Marvin in the same blue nighttime lighting, wide-eyed, grinning, and obviously ready to kill. The unspoken conclusion to his thought balloon in the final panel is “Feed me … with your flesh.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/15/08

And thus began Rex’s never-ending quest for young Dipstick.

Get it? Because it sounds like … oh, never mind.

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Marvin, 4/28/08

There have been a lot of subtle changes in Marvin — little tweaks to the artwork, for instance, and the move from thought balloons to word balloons. These might just be presaging a much more momentous shift, in which the strip will cease to be about a droll baby and his droll dogs and cranky grandparents, and instead will focus on toddler Marvin’s Child’s Play-style killing spree. Is the comics page ready for a baby bathed in blood spouting droll witticisms about murder and carnage? Since such material will be replacing urination jokes and dog urination jokes and, God help us, Belly Laffs, I’d say the answer is a hearty “yes”!

Dick Tracy, 4/28/08

So, it looks like the criminal and bizarre Dab Stract, whose face was shrouded in shadow when we last met him, is hideously deformed? For some reason? Just like Cole Lector was also hideously deformed? For some reason? I’m beginning to suspect that the creators of Dick Tracy have a thing for hideous deformities. For some reason.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/28/08

Actually, the medical inquiry was just a cover. No, thrifty Loweezy has recently discovered the Internet and has started supplementing Snuffy’s paltry moonshinin’ and chicken-stealin’ income with a for-pay Website, www.HotSleepingHillbillies.com, which caters to a very specific kind of fetishist. By the excited look on the doctor’s face in the second panel, you can tell that he’s a charter member of the VIP club.

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Slylock Fox, 4/20/08

I am really beginning to become concerned about the constant persecution of harmless eccentric Count Weirdly. After having been repeatedly detained and hassled by the cops for no reason, sitting in the tank again with only his faithful vulture for his companion, he’s at last decided that only a hunger strike can draw attention to the injustice of his plight. And how do the thuggish police react. “Oh, you’re not Weirdly, you’re probably a robot.” They’ve already denied his essential humanity by marginalizing him as a freak; this is just taking things to their logical conclusion. I’m surprised they didn’t just “test” to see if he was a machine by cutting him open to see if he’s full of wires and stuff.

Marvin, 4/20/08

True, this is yet another installment in Marvin’s intermittent and discomfort-making series on the sex lives of babies. But look on the bright side: “Wee Harmony” positively invites a urination joke that, thankfully, never comes.