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Mark Trail, 10/28/14

So here’s a little mystery for you: last week when Bill proposed to send Mark and his family into the Great Dismal Swamp, the nefarious chemical company involved was called “Petroxx Chemical,” which name I worked into a joke I was a little too inordinately proud of. But not long after the post went up, an anonymous commenter pointed out that in version online the company’s name had changed to “Riverway Chemical”; this is the name they seem to be going with now, and Mark is going out of his way to point out that this Riverway Chemical outfit is totally one of the good industrial mining concerns. Did just the name “Petroxx Chemical” offend some powerful interests? Is this storyline just going to become increasingly neutered, with any evidence that Mark cares at all about the environment vanished down some Stalinist memory hole? When we look at the strips from these dates three weeks from now, will Mark and Doc be talking about how titanium dioxide keeps a fish’s scales soft and supple?

Rusty, meanwhile, doesn’t care about any of this fancy tree-hugger talk. Mostly he wants to know: is this swamp full of dangerous reptiles that will kill and eat him? Will his pointless existence finally be snuffed out by blessed oblivion? Will he at last be able to contribute something to the world, as food in a gator’s belly?

Beetle Bailey, 10/28/14

It may sound like Miss Buxley is just babbling nonsense in panel three, but she’s probably just killing time so that the undercover EEOC agent at the next table can gather enough corroborating evidence about this mandatory lunch date with her boss, during which he’s already ordered that work matters not be discussed.

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Heathcliff, 10/27/14

After a nightmarish curse left the town’s inhabitants irrevocably transformed, the damned souls are taking hesitant steps towards recognizing one another and reclaiming some part of their lost humanity.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/27/14

Just another day in the teachers’ lounge, laughing it up about the endless parade of genetic defectives that make up Westview’s children!

Crankshaft, 10/27/14

Although 10 years earlier kids in the nearby town of Centerville went on a violent, terrifying rampage when Crankshaft’s family ran out of candy, so maybe Les and his cronies are right to view the local youth with mingled contempt and disgust.

Spider-Man, 10/27/14

Despite his best efforts, Spider-Man will in fact be rescued from his primary antagonist by his secondary antagonist.

Apartment 3-G, 10/27/14

NO MARGO YOU JUST STARTED TALKING OUT LOUD THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAID YOU’RE SAYING YOU WANT TO DO

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Panels from Slylock Fox, 10/26/14

Today’s Slylock Fox Six Differences puzzle takes place in that awkward period after the animals achieved sapience but before they had truly taken over the Earth. Our grumpy park ranger’s face may bear the scowl of prejudice, but his cause is legit: if this bear can now think and reason like humans, shouldn’t he be subject to the same law? Eventually the animals would develop their own cargo cult legal system in response to these issues, but at this moment, I assume that, despite his newfound intellectual powers, the bear here is still more than happy to meet aggression animal-style, with his claws.

Dennis the Menace, 10/26/14

At last, Dennis the Menace has shattered the unspoken rule that all characters in the daily comics must be gentiles! We learn a valuable lesson here today: that little Jewish children and little Christian children can be friends, so long as neither of them understands any of the theology behind their various holidays and just think of them as “that thing we celebrate in [insert season here],” and also agree to come together at the end of October to worship Satan. (Side note: I’m going to accept as canon the clear implication in today’s throwaway panels that Margaret is a well-known anti-Semite.)

Mary Worth, 10/26/14

There are lots of good reasons to wish that Frank Zappa was still alive, and somewhere on that list is my desire to see what he’d think about having a quote almost certainly incorrectly attributed to him used to try to bully an old woman in Mary Worth into an assisted living facility.

Six Chix, 10/26/14

Ha ha, it’s funny because the scalpel blades are breaking off still embedded in the patient’s flesh! There’s so much blood! So much hilarious, hilarious blood!

Momma, 10/26/14

Tina had sometimes resented the fact that her rift with her mother-in-law meant that she and Thomas didn’t get invited to many family gatherings with his brother and sister. But then, she reflected, if she had been at the house that day, she would’ve been mauled to death by the cold, thirsty bear-dog-things, just like the rest of Thomas’s family.