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Slylock Fox (panel), 8/11/13

In a neglected roadside nature museum sits a dusty diorama labeled “The Eagle.” But there is no eagle — just the shattered skeleton of a fox lying on a patch of bloodstained dirt near a few tufts of reddish fur and what might be part of an ear. The yellowing card reads, “The diet of the American Bald Eagle is almost entirely fish. An eagle will not attack a fox unless it competes for the eagle’s food or otherwise provokes it.”

What I’m saying is don’t piss off the eagle, Sly. I mean just look at him, Jeez.

Beetle Bailey (panels), 8/11/13

Oh look, it’s Beetle’s Dad! Did you know he’s also the father of Lois Flagston from Hi and Lois? His wife starves him until he completes the work she’s assigned! Just like in the Army!

Hi and Lois, 8/11/13

No starvation for Hi — Lois keeps meat on those bones with a steady diet of nutritious soups. But his family’s relentless petty demands give him no peace, and drive him by degrees to the farthest margins of his home. Lois is blind to his suffering — this is just the way families are, isn’t it?

Judge Parker (panel), 8/11/13

I’ll spare you the cheesecake, money porn, and blocky “romantic” banter (well, most of it) in today’s Judge Parker, but floating there in the final panel is proof that Randy’s fianceé is an original badass. That’s right — the minute she and Randy split up to evade the mystery woman in the floppy hat, CIApril confronted her and stone-cold threw her hat in the water. Final warning, too: if she stalks them even one more time, April will tell all the girls in homeroom Mystery Gal’s a total skank.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Slylock Fox, 7/30/13

Longtime readers know that I’m intensely interested in the moment in the Slylockverse’s history when the animals achieved sentience and rose up to overthrow their human oppressors. While I’ve speculated that there’s a rational, scientific explanation for the beastocracy, I’m also open to the idea that one day the animals simply awoke and, with the intelligence gap closed, overwhelmed humanity with sheer numbers. Today’s Six Differences strip hints at this possibility. “Wait a minute,” the big long-neck bird suddenly realized with perfect clarity. “I don’t have to sit around waiting for what crumbs this guy is going to bestow upon me. I can just yank the whole bag out of his lap and have it all for myself. See ya, chump!” As the man watches the bird walk off in blank terror, the other birds, only a few seconds behind in their emergence into sentience, begin to descend.

Heathcliff, 7/30/13

Speaking of terrifying animal scenarios, Heathcliff is usually the king of sang-froid, and I think this is the first I’ve seen him in a state of genuine panic. And well should he be! The prospect of dogs gaining the power of flight thanks to magic urine-powered hoverpads ought to terrify everybody.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 7/28/13

Boy, Slylock is sure getting all Judgment of Solomon down at the trailer park today! You don’t even need to read the solution (it involves trying to assess the cream soda’s fizziness levels) to see the contempt he holds everyone in here. After all, whether the delicious soda rightfully belongs to Reeky or to Mrs. Beaver, Slylock is going to pop it open and ruin anyone’s chance of enjoying it on their terms. Presumably he’ll just roughly thrust it at whoever’s it turns out to be, saying “Drink it quick if you don’t want it to go flat.” Or maybe he’ll just gulp the whole thing down himself, as repayment for having to come down and sort this nonsense out in the first place.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/28/13

If there’s one aspect of life in Hootin’ Holler that I don’t think gets enough treatment, it’s the system of clan-based feuds that inevitably springs up in places where the nation-state’s justice system is weak, nonexistent, or distrusted. What deadly slights do those marks on the tree represent? How many generations of Smifs have been recording them against how many generations of Barlows? Is there any way to wipe the slate clean, except with Barlow blood?

Panels from Marvin, 7/28/13

For a while now the Marvin Sunday panel has consisted of Marvin’s entire family staring straight ahead in numb, wide-eyed despair, which as you can imagine has pleased me to no end. Today, however, Grandpa offers a specific complaint, which I like less, as I prefer to think of them having reached this state merely by contemplation of their own hellish existence.