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Yesterday this lady acted like Mark’s spurned lover, but obviously that’s absurd

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Mark Trail, 8/28/15

Oh my God, what did Mark to do this mysterious professor’s car that has her all icy towards him? Did he blow it up? Did he refuse to call it Dirty? Did he use it to store a bunch of nasty lesion-covered dead sharks? Did he punch it? Probably he punched it, right?

Blondie, 8/28/15

I eat a lot of gross, crappy science-chemical food-style products, but even I’m put off by the thought of a snack that would be shelf-stable enough to sit in a vending machine for who knows how long but could still be described as “gooey.” Dagwood’s eating issues are many and fascinating, is what I’m trying to say.

Marvin, 8/28/15

A Marvin strip that ostensibly isn’t about pooping, but where the title character uses the phrases “a full load” and “dumps his cargo,” then looks at his father’s open mouth, then stares at the reader with an awful, knowing smile? I can only interpret this as an open declaration of war against me and my truth-telling.

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Horrifying Thursday

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Dick Tracy, 8/27/15

Under the previous Dick Tracy creative team, every plot ended with the villain dispatched in some completely nightmarish and violent way. They were burned to death, blown up, torn to pieces by dogs, had their minds erased by their own diabolical machines, plummeted into a smokestack, fell to their death and had their still-fresh corpse run over by a bulldozer, and, in the final storyline before the strip was handed off to the new writer and artist, were eaten alive by rats while begging for help. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that today’s strip, in which two bad guys contemplate the mangled body of their boss, who they just accidentally shot with a massive pistol, and his guts are splattered everywhere, and one of them is on the verge of vomiting in mingled horror and disgust, is really just par for the course, historically speaking.

Mary Worth, 8/27/15

Fortunately, all the violence in today’s Mary Worth is emotional, as Ian and Toby finally both admit exactly what they think of each other (“parasitical dilettante” and “pompous boor”, respectively). I’m just glad to see that the two of them set down their mugs of steaming hot cocoa between panels one and two. They’re going to want both hands free for dramatic gesticulation over the course of this argument.

Spider-Man, 8/27/15

Meanwhile, Peter and Mary Jane’s cruise is being menaced by some sort of terrifying sea-dick.

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Disease-carrying parasites: They’re just like us

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Apartment 3-G, 8/26/15

The Apartment 3-G dreamscape continues with this callback to a previous plot that almost seems to make sense in light of previous events but then not really at all when you think about it for more than 30 seconds! Lu Ann didn’t “meet Eric a few years ago”; she worked for him at his gallery, as did her drug-addled boyfriend, and was spending enough time with him to send Margo spinning into a hilarious jealous rage. She and Tommie in fact both knew Eric pretty well, so why would Tommie’s protest be that “Eric Mills died five years ago” rather than “Eric Mills looked nothing like this man standing in our apartment?” Or if he does look like Eric, why aren’t they saying “But we thought you were dead?” It’s like they’re constructing the reality of their world using logic and their vague memories of the past rather than the evidence of their senses, which, I guess, wouldn’t be the first time.

Mark Trail, 8/26/15

“That’s it! … Ken, you’ve given me an idea! We need to get our hands on a geiger counter and take it down to the sunken freighter! Fortunately, geiger counters are readily available for purchase and can even be shipped overnight!”

B.C., 8/26/15

Here’s today’s B.C.! It takes place on a nightmarish fleshscape, just underneath which seethes delicious blood.