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Mark Trail, 6/11/11

We interrupt this 100 percent laughable police work (“Moccasins, eh? You know who wears moccasins? Weird mountain men! I seen it on the TV!”) to say a few words in memory of this noble mountain goat. He was innocently attempting to leap dramatically from crag to crag, as is the wont of his species, when he was brutally impaled by an errant word balloon and pinned to the sky like a bug in an entomologist’s collection. He deserved a better fate and will be missed.

Mary Worth, 6/11/11

Remember, everyone, Mary thinks that the best way to deal with these sorts of “delicate matters” is to bully the poor lovestruck delusional soul until he or she is driven to suicide, which explain why she’s stroking her chin like a sinister supervillain in panel two.

Family Circus, 6/11/11

Normally I don’t want to see any kind of bodily fluids dripping from any member of the noxious Keane clan, but I have to admit that I’m rather enjoying the sight of sweaty, exhausted Billy. It summons up a vision of him dressed in his fancy tennis clothes and hitting the ball again and again into the net, growing increasingly frustrated and saddened at his own incompetence, which I frankly find hilarious.

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Mary Worth, 5/31/11

I ran into a friend of mine at the supermarket yesterday and he asked me, because I’m “that guy” now, what was new in the comics, and because I embrace my role as “that guy,” I started waxing rhapsodic about the stalkertastic action in Mary Worth, and for the first time it really occurred to me that the strip may be actively trying to recapture the stalky magic of Aldomania 2006. They’re going to have to really amp up the crazy to top that legendary storyline, of course, but today’s installment is promising. Liza will apparently go to any length to prevent Drew from breaking up with her, and if that means arranging an impromptu surprise birthday party for him on a day that is very much not his birthday, then so be it.

B.C., 5/31/11

As noted, neo-B.C. is putting way too much effort into gags like this, which were transparently created as excuses to photocopy some clip art and then call it a day. Today’s installment is actually an example of how trying too hard actively lessens the strip’s quality. Since beloved B.C. character Grog is a subhuman dullard and almost certainly illiterate, it would have been more realistic to portray him as continuing to stare dumbly ahead for two panels, rather than react with horror at the thought of a small business and all the precious but desperately hocked items within going up in flames.

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Mary Worth, 5/28/11

Oh, well, this isn’t terrifying at all. Just Dr. Drew thinking about how he needs to explain to Liza in excruciating detail how “breaking up” works, while, unnoticed, Liza, who has managed to surreptitiously burrow under Drew’s flesh, bursts out triumphantly, like Athena out of Zeus’s brow. Only stalkier!

Spider-Man, 5/28/11

Yes, Spidey wasn’t able to save the one Dr. Morbius loved — you know, Martine? The one who was a real, actual vampire? I’m not vampire expert (nosferatologist?) or anything, but I’m pretty sure that one of the scary things about vampires is that they’re mostly immortal, and can only be killed in a certain limited number of ritualized ways, and none of those ways are “being dropped off a building.”

Lockhorns, 5/28/11

The Lockhorns may fight all the time and hate each other so, so much, but that doesn’t meant that they don’t share some pastimes. For instance, they enjoy going down the park and making snide comments about the way the Kids Today dress, all the while looking very much like they want to kill themselves.

Family Circus, 5/28/11

This would just be run of the mill Keane Kids Saying The Darndest Things if not for the look of genuine embarrassment on Barfy’s face. Ha ha, no resident of the Keane Kompound can escape the omnipresent crushing body shame!