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Slylock Fox, 7/8/15

There’s a lot about this strip I find perfectly reasonable. It makes sense, obviously, in a world where predator and prey animals both recently found themselves suddenly sapient, that whatever social structures the earth’s new rulers borrowed from vanished humanity or created anew would have difficulty weighing a new morality against some citizens’ need to eat. It’s reasonable that our two police officers — a plant-munching rabbit and an omnivorous bear — wouldn’t have much sympathy for the hypercarnivorous wolf. It also makes intuitive sense to me that wolf would cast off his clothes before reverting to his animal nature and devouring a pig who, in theory, is his equal in the new dispensation. But the smiles on the faces of those other pigs? “Better him than us,” they seem to be thinking, and it chills me to the bone.

Mark Trail, 7/8/15

I do remember what happened to that boat, Cherry. It blew up, and it was awesome. Are you trying to deny another exciting boat explosion to Mark Trail readers, Cherry? What kind of monster are you?

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Family Circus, 7/7/15

I love that Dolly has a bible tucked under her arm as she announces that she’d rather chow down on endless Clark Bars in hell than rule in heaven. The implication is that she didn’t even go online to one of several convenient Bible websites to do a text search for “chocolate”; no, she read through the whole thing looking for evidence of her favorite foodstuff and failed to find it, almost as if it had been written by people who lived in the Old World in the time before the Columbian Exchange began. Mostly I’m impressed that she got through an entire book that vividly describes, among other things, gang rape, genocide, incest, and bear magic, and she decided that the absence of chocolate was the hill she was going to die on.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/7/15

I was going to go off on a rant about how dumb and unrealistic this was — did they not put down a deposit? did they not read this guy’s Yelp reviews? does nobody have an iPhone’s worth of music they can just put on shuffle? — but then I got distracted by that link cleverly tucked between the first and second panels. There are a bunch of Funkyverse books, guys! All published by Kent State, a public university, presumably as part of its education mission! There’s one that collects the Crankshaft storylines about Alzheimer’s, and it’s called Roses in December: A Story of Love and Alzheimer’s, even though it actually contains two distinct stories! This is the greatest discovery of my week so far!

Dennis the Menace, 7/7/15

I love the knowing look Henry is flashing the reader here. “Heh heh, it wasn’t a big cake that convinced her to marry me. It was something else big, if you know what I mean! I mean my penis. That something was my penis. I have a big penis.”

Apartment 3-G, 7/7/15

This Apartment 3-G plot may still not make any sense, but at least we get to enjoy Margo trying and failing to coin a sassy new catchphrase. “That’s a heck to the no, am I right, everybody? This is how cool people talk! Let me hear a shoutout from my fellow cool people on this!”

Momma, 7/7/15

OH MY GOD MOMMA MADE AN CULTURAL REFERENCE THAT IS ACCURATE FOR A YOUNG WOMAN MARYLOU’S AGE, MY MIND HAS EXPLODED EVERYWHERE

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Slylock Fox, 7/6/15

Are we supposed to assume that our criminal dog, fleeing Slylock and his goons, got into this room one step ahead of the law? How did that work, exactly? He leaps into the unoccupied bed, starts feverishly wrapping bandages around his face, and growls to the actual patient, “You don’t say nothin’, see?” Or maybe it’s much more horrible: maybe he’s subjected the other dog to an involuntary Face/Off-style surgery, the better to escape justice. His victim is in a morphine haze, but the criminal refused painkillers; though he’s in agony, he knew he’d have to be sharp in case the cops showed up. Either way, the real tragedy is that the real patient didn’t receive a fruit basket.

Spider-Man, 7/6/15

This is a good question, because let’s be frank: even when he has his whole life ahead of him, caring about stuff isn’t Peter Parker’s strong suit.

Archie, 7/6/15

The way Veronica stares directly at the viewer in the final panel, inviting us into her world of gossip, is profoundly unsettling. “Do you miss the good old days? Sign up for an account on Gosspr, my new social app for gossip and rumors, and feel free to share what you know or have heard about your closest friends! #jointhecoversation”

Momma, 7/6/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Francis and Marylou are slowly poisoning their mother!

Pluggers, 7/6/15

Pluggers have found that they hardest part of living is the seemingly endless slog through a meaningless existence that we have to endure until we finally feel the sweet embrace of death.