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Mary Worth, 2/26/10

As I’ve noted before, there are few things in this world that fill me with more loathing and disgust than Wilbur’s happiness, so I hereby give Mary the go-ahead to unleash whatever joy-killing meddle she’s so transparently plotting. Ugh, what are Kurt and Wilbur even doing in that second panel? “Hey, let’s go down to the Old Unmowed Hillock. Okay, wait, let me clamber up a few steps … ha ha, look, I’m taller than you! Whee, isn’t this fun! OK, now hold your arms out, I’m going to jump into them!”

Also, confidential to the Mary Worth artists: Please do not dress Wilbur in white, and if you do, please do not depict him from the waist up only, as he looks disconcertingly like a shmoo.

Dennis the Menace, 2/26/10

Dennis realizes that he would have been much more menacing if he had been raised by a pack of feral dogs.

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Apartment 3-G, 2/25/10

Looks like Bobbie’s traded in her formerly subtle dye job for Miss Clairol’s Brassy ’n’ Sassy™! This no doubt heralds the fact that a full-on manic episode is in progress, which can only mean hilarious good times. “Hope you like red, Ari! I’ve painted all the walls and every item in the apartment, including the food!”

Mark Trail, 2/25/10

Boy, this whole sequence has really destroyed my image of Mark as a bastion of righteous honesty, or at least too simple to understand the concept of “lying.” He hasn’t just been blatantly misleading his wife; he’s also wholly misrepresenting what went down with the senator and the Parker Brothers. Sure, we all exaggerate a little when we’re hangin’ with our buddies in some disused hospital office, enjoying some refreshing cans of off-brand energy drink, and maybe on Planet Mark Trail senators getting into physical altercations doesn’t constitute news of any sort. But in general, I don’t call scenes like this “getting into a fight”; I call it “getting your ass handed to you.”

Mary Worth, 2/25/10

Hey, look who’s finally managed to fit an appearance in the strip named after her into her busy schedule! “Dear, I don’t have a lot of time, so let me just utter a single sentence that will destroy everyone’s chances for happiness, in between sips of your mediocre tea.”

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/25/10

This panel will be on the front page of June Morgan’s new fetish Web site. “Is there anything you can do well for Mistress June, slave? No, don’t get up! Keep groveling!”

Marmaduke, 2/25/10

Marmaduke knows that babies are the most delicious.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/22/10

You know, for a long time I’ve wondered why exactly Mrs. Wilson constantly encourages Dennis to come over and raise extremely mild hell at her house, when her husband obviously loathes him. I’d always just chalked it up to a difference in opinion combined with an absence of solicitousness one might expect from a longstanding and not particularly passionate marriage; if there were any grimmer undertones, they might involve the children that the maternal Mrs. Wilson seems to have always wanted but that Mr. Wilson was unwilling (or unable?) to have with her.

But today’s strip casts an even darker pall over the marital dynamic. Mrs. Wilson fills Dennis with trash talk about Mr. Wilson’s mental state; far from worrying that the filterless little moron will run off and repeat it at the first opportunity, she actually waits just around the corner to make sure that he does, tittering to herself at her husband’s discomfiture. Mr. Wilson’s trademark creepy single bead of sweat is the payoff; she knows that one of these days, Dennis will push him over the edge and he’ll die of a massive rage stroke, and then it’s off to Boca with his Post Office pension.

Mark Trail, 2/22/10

Mark Trail is an action-based continuity strip, but the sad fact is that some kinds of action translate better to comic strip form than others. Punching, for instance, seems to work out pretty well! But a thrilling canoe ride through rushing rapids: not so much, apparently. “To get their friend to a hospital as quickly as possible, Mark and Ben Harris run the dangerous rapids at Devil’s Pass. Aaaaannnnd … they’ve successfully gotten through the rough spots, after just a panel! Boy, that was a close one. Uh, here, enjoy this close-up on a magnificent raptor, won’t you?”

Spider-Man, 2/22/10

Sometimes he forgets that it’s on, sometimes he forgets that it’s off. Is Peter Parker just physically incapable of telling whether or not he has on his costume under his clothes unless he actually unbuttons his shirt and looks at his torso? Perhaps this is a result of the spider-bite-induced changes that caused his sensitive nipples to wither and fall off.

Mary Worth, 2/22/10

“Now that cold, heartless medical science has proven that the son I loved so much is a fraud, I’m going to end it all by downing a big glass of cleaning solvent! Care to join me in the sweet release of death?”

Marmaduke, 2/22/10

“You don’t understand! He … he hungers! Please, your Dark Majesty, I’m digging as quickly as I can! No … nooooooo….“