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“Hello kids, and welcome back to World of Animals — I’m your beloved host, Carl. Well, it’s been quite a while, so let’s all catch up — on entertaining Nature Facts from the wonderful World of Animals!”

Arctic Circle, 9/5/21

Did you know that turtles get parasites? It’s true! We’re prone to nematodes, tapeworms, flukes … a few roundworms even help with our notoriously slow digestion—thanks, symbionts! But we try to be a little discreet about it, you know? We don’t go walking around with some blood-sucker hanging off the outside of our shell, like this guy. That’s just vulgar!

Mark Trail, 9/5/21

Everybody knows spiders are arachnids and centipedes are arthropods and bees are insects, but did you know they’re all bugs? It’s true! And don’t go hating on them—you humans are badly outnumbered!

Mutts, 9/5/21

Have you heard the saying, “Dogs are good?” Don’t believe it! They are emotionally manipulative con artists, thieves, and gluttons!

Slylock Fox (panels), 9/5/21

Did you know that animal societies are quite complex, with interactions we can’t always explain? It’s true! Fortunately, Nature always leaves clues.

Slylock Fox (panel), 9/5/21

Spoiler Alert! Like most reptiles, crocodiles are very polite!

Thanks so very much for your kind attention. I do hope we have an opportunity to get together again soon!

Very truly yours,

— Turtle Carl

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Slylock Fox, 8/25/21

Based on the animal quiz that accompanies this drawing, that’s clearly supposed to be a wolf out there howling at the moon, and I’m very intrigued that the anonymous syndicate colorist chose to give him Slylock’s bright red fur. Clearly the reality is that they saw “canid in Slylock Fox” and used the fill tool with web-safe bright red without really thinking about it, but I’d like to believe that they briefly contemplated the idea of this strip’s normally cerebral title character stripping off his clothes and howling at the moon, and they said “Honestly? Good for him.”

Dustin, 8/25/21

Sorry, I refuse to believe Dustin’s dad likes impressionism at all. He is absolutely one of those people who would look at any art that isn’t photorealist portraiture and sneer “My kid could’ve done this.” (Then he’d look at Dustin and say, “Well, somebody’s kid could’ve done this, I guess.”)

Gil Thorp, 8/25/21

Oh, wow! Marjie Ducey, the Thorp-friendliest media figure in Milford, is going to retire, and now the paper’s going to hire a woman who was literally Gil’s student like two years ago to replace her! I certainly hope Marty Moon has something to say about this blatant conflict of interest, though we haven’t heard from him in quite a while, and frankly he may still be having some kind of hallucinatory experience in the wooden crate that serves as the Milford press box.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/25/21

We all, of course, have our own personal “what’s the worst recurring theme in Funky Winkerbean?” take, but I think we can all agree that “sometimes the strip hints that there may be multiple rivals for Les’s sexual attention” is in the top five.

Family Circus, 8/25/21

Look, Billy’s all hyped up because he’s been huffing pine cones! And honestly? Good for him.

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Mary Worth, 7/4/21

Not too much to say about Shauna vs. Ashlee: The Rumble At The Clinic For Drew’s Love except that the art here genuinely delights me. The dynamism of the hair-pulling in the middle row, the striking series of symmetries in the bottom row — it’s all great. I’m very sad that readers who don’t get the throwaway panels are missing out on the extreme Shauna closeup and quote from Yungblud (definitely an artist that I, a cool young person, had heard of and didn’t have to look up on Wikipedia to learn that he and Halsey broke up because they “worked better as friends”). Anyway, the next time this strip spends another six months on “dogs are good, actually,” we’ll have this moment to reflect back on and sustain us.

Hi and Lois, 7/4/21

I’m absolutely dying for an insight into whatever editorial process within King Features and/or Walker Brown Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC led to notorious local drunk Thirsty Thurston pointing to a box full of obviously illegal fireworks and calling them “legal fireworks.” Honestly the only way this would be funnier would be if Thirsty were doing an exaggerated wink at the reader when he said it, or if he blew several fingers off in the final panel.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/4/21

I’m not even going to bother with today’s dumb “mystery” and instead want to draw your attention to the Frankenstein-style monster looming in the bathroom doorway. It’s truly tragic that Count Weirdly, one of the last living humans in this animal-dominated world, is so lonely that he’s stitched together a shambolic golem out of the no doubt numerous human corpses available and animated it using forbidden science, just to have a friend.