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Judge Parker, 6/5/12

That’s quite the sly and sinister expression Sam’s sporting in the final panel there … almost as if he’s thinking “With the contract signed and the money on its way to Alan’s bank account, I can take these saps up to the Old Cherry Creek Lodge at Payton Crossing, where I dispose of the dismembered bodies of all of my victims! Abbey, please make a note of their names on my ceremonial Clipboard of the Doomed.”

Actually, “The Old Cherry Creek Lodge at Payton Crossing” sounds like a ghastly faux-rustic luxury condo building in a meticulously landscaped and completely soulless exurban development, which, if you think about it, is exactly the sort of place where Sam would stash corpse parts if he were a serial killer.

Spider-Man, 6/5/12

Meanwhile, I love the expression of pure joy on the face of … whoever that is with the microphone in panel two. The broad shoulders and brush-cut imply that he’s a sportscaster who’s been assigned to cover theater as some kind of punishment, and over the course of the first act he was horrified to learn that you’re not expected to or even allowed to offer a stream of loud running patter about a play the way you do at football games. But now something interesting is happening! Something you’re allowed to talk, or at least, whisper, about!

Mary Worth, 6/5/12

Wilbur’s editor is maintaining a poker face, but you know that it was really difficult for him to not dissolve into giggles while saying “Did you fall in love with someone new?” I mean, he’s probably been on the verge of hysterics from the minute Wilbur walked in wearing that suit.

Six Chix, 6/5/12

Ho ho! Turns out Larry’s bad at sex!

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Mary Worth, 6/3/12

Well, this is an unexpected development! It seems that Wilbur is looking to get Dawn out of his few remaining hairs by shipping her off to … exotic Italy! With Giorgio, who sounds sexxay. And maybe married, but whatever, they do things differently over there, as I’ve been led to believe by Silvio Berlusconi. This seems like exactly what Dawn needs to pull her out of her funk.

And what a funk it is, as we reach day seven of Dawn lying on the couch and watching Game of Thrones and intermittently blurting out “Life is brutal.” Although with her eyes closed and neither hand properly visible, I’m tempted to guess that she’s actually engaging in a little self-pleasure right there in the living room, which, good for her in general, but not bothering to get out of home spaces Wilbur might at any moment occupy may be a symptom of larger problems. And it isn’t even during one of the show’s many sex scenes! (I’ve never watched it, but I’m given to understand that you see balls and/or boobies about once every 45 seconds.) Also, if “Life is brutal” is what she says while orgasming, we may have an explanation for why her relationships all seem to end so abruptly.

Dick Tracy, 6/3/12

Little Face has been nice enough to spy on his evil crime gang for Dick and the cops, so you’d think that they’d have him wear a wire in the traditional sense of wearing one concealed under his clothes, rather than giving him a clunky old two-way wrist TV that’s totally visible and emits glowing electrical arcs to boot.

Six Chix, 6/3/12

You heard it here first, parents: spend too much time on the computer and your child will go catch whatever diseases you get from splashing around in bird shit.

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Marvin, 5/30/12

At this point in my life I’m pretty deep in the throes of Marvin Derangement Syndrome, so I don’t really ever expect to find satisfaction in this feature’s panels. But I have to admit that I feel a certain amount of validation in knowing that even the other characters in the strip are disgusted at the thought of looking at more images of Marvin.

Ballard Street, 5/30/12

Ballard Street is a generally amusing one-paneler that depicts a mostly interchangeable cast of characters engaging in insane and inscrutable activities, so I usually leave it alone, but I thought that today’s installment, in which the punchline basically boils down to “Chip got drunk and passed out on the couch,” was worthy of your attention.

Six Chix, 5/30/12

I was going to huff that a plant needs the energy it derives from sunlight via photosynthesis in order to engage in the metabolic processes that this woman is demanding, but then I just decided to respect this panel for what it is: the melancholy tale of a person who feels so powerless in her everyday life that she comes home and bullies her plants.

Pluggers, 5/30/12

A plugger’s life is an awful charnel house in which everyone around them is dead or dying.