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Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/4/21

This is not the first time that Slylock Fox has done a strip where the “solution” is “fans don’t actually lower temperature, so I guess all this wax is going to melt, oh well.” But the previous iteration of this story was just in some bird’s dumb candle store, whereas the stakes here are much higher. This museum is a repository of priceless cultural heritage from the pre-animalpocalypse Before Times, and it’s sad but all too typical that these dim-witted animals that took over our civilization can’t maintain the HVAC systems needed to hold it together.

Mary Worth, 4/4/21

You might recall that way back at the beginning of this interminable storyline, Saul asked Eve if she wanted to go get lunch at the mall. Everything that’s come after has proved that he’s a man who’ll go to any length, including helping an abused woman reach emotional closure and finding a lost dog in the process, to get that food court date. Everyone loves eating at Arby’s and Wetzel’s Pretzels, but you can’t expect Saul to go by himself like some kind of weirdo, can you?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/21

You ever see a narration box beg for its own annihilation? Truly, wonders on the comics page never cease.

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Hagar the Horrible, 4/1/21

Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone! Say, were you concerned that the creative team behind today’s Hagar the Horrible believed that an olive tree might realistically grow out of an olive left floating in a martini glass over a single evening? Well, rest assured: that little sign being held by a tentacle is here to let you know that this is just a seasonally appropriate jest, and we’ll be getting back to this strip’s ultra-realistic medieval Norse setting tomorrow. (The creative team also knows that squid and octopuses do not hold signs this way; the tentacle is itself a secondary April Fool’s joke.)

Crankshaft, 4/1/21

These two twins have been volunteering to help Lillian with the unpermitted bookstore she runs over her garage for years now, and they’ve finally won her trust enough that they can start scamming her. And good for them!

Mary Worth, 4/1/21

Well, now that we’ve established that dogs are good, I guess we can finally move forward to the next storyline, and … OH NO SAUL DID YOU LET HER SEE A HEADLESS BESUITED MANNEQUIN, this is going to trigger another panic attack and at least another six weeks of this plotline, please, we had almost made it out of this one

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/17/21

“Butch Belluso” is of course, Rene Belluso, who once upon a time was Sarah’s art teacher, hired by the mob queenpin who had taken Sarah under her wing and also employed Rene for a little light art forgery. Since he parted company from his erstwhile employers, he’s engaged in a number of scams, like comics fraud and new age flim-flammery and even a little light COVID grifting, so he’s definitely a guy not into “the law” or whatever, but he’s never exactly struck me as the type who’d kidnap anyone, or go out in a blaze of glory in a shootout with the cops, no matter what literary genre he’s situated in. Then again, this is Sarah’s fantasy, so maybe despite her amnesia her subconscious remembers that he once got to order her around, and now she wants him dead from multiple gunshots to the face.

Hi and Lois, 3/17/21

As a fan of Thirsty sticking to his canonical role as this strip’s alcoholic, I’m not troubled by his declaration that he’s “on the wagon” today: his rumpled appearance and his immediate substitution of another chemical fix for his troubles (the raw uncut sugar in Lucky Charms marshmallows) tells me that this isn’t a serious stab at recovery, but rather just another move in his roller-coaster life of hilarious drunkery.

Mary Worth, 3/17/21

Guys, there are few bigger fans of dogs and the work they do than me, but … this is a lot, right? I’m beginning to think that a dog, or maybe a top-flight content marketing agency hired by all dogs everywhere, wrote this.