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Slylock Fox, 6/2/11

This is definitely one of the more aggressively bonkers things we’ve seen in the Island of Dr. Moreau meets Encyclopedia Brown world of Slylock Fox in some time. One of the strip’s lower-level police-dogs has harnessed an elephant with an S&M collar and is using him to drag a shark in a tank up to a motley gaggle of animals. I’m not exactly whether the beasts at the right end of the panel are supposed to be sentient or not, but they look extremely dubious about the presence of this shark, probably assuming that one or more of them is about to become its food. I’m guessing that before the editors forced a last-minute change to this “letter T” business, the original question was “What the fuck is going on here, exactly? Anyone?”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/11

The second of Les’s paramours has declared love for him in as many weeks, and in both cases Les responded as any man would: with emotionless silence. Cayla, of course, is the more together of his two hapless not-girlfriends, so all she did was dump him and stalk off in a huff. Since Susan tried to kill herself the last time Les rejected her love (back when she was his student, in high school), the next two days should be extra-cheery, as Les watches the carnage in detached befuddlement. “Unring a bell” is generally used in legal contexts, when jurors learn information that should not have come out in a trial, so hopefully this presages a killing spree to come.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/2/11

It appears that the Vikings have plundered the coasts of Britain and the Frankish Kingdom so throughly as to have snuffed out the brief Carolingian Renaissance, and their depredations have now brought them to the Mediterranean, where they’ve been savagely destroying the last remains of classical civilization. The legacy of Roman literacy must have already been wiped out by the time Hagar’s war-band got to Italy, presumably by terrifying fires that mindlessly consumed the libraries and monasteries, so he had to settle for just enslaving one of the locals.

Apartment 3-G, 6/2/11

This Tommie plot has meandered along aimlessly for way too long, but I’ll be willing to forgive a lot if it ends with Margo gradually teaching Tommie about hard drugs.

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Apartment 3-G, 6/1/11

When Scarlett O’Hara wistfully announced that “tomorrow is another day,” the great love of her life had just walked out on her, and she was trying to figure out how she would win him back. When Tommie says it, it’s because she failed to deliver a CD to her aunt. She could probably try to just slip it through the mail slot, but then what would she do for excitement tomorrow?

Judge Parker, 6/1/11

Oh, hey, have you been wondering how Judge Parker Emeritus’s attempts to talk a defense contractrix out of suicide are going? Apparently he’s decided that the best way to get her to step back from the ledge is to describe how empty and meaningless his own life is. He’s thinking outside the box!

Luann, 6/1/11

I’ve never been an exchange student, but I’m reasonably sure that they know pretty far in advance when they’re going to return to their home country. Do Australians do things differently? Does the government in Canberra have the right to call young men home for national service at a moment’s notice, for emergency shrimp-on-the-barbie placement or something?

Beetle Bailey, 6/1/11

“Are you ticklish?”

“No.”

“Would you be unsettled if my head started spinning around on my neck like the demon-girl from the Exorcist?“

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Mary Worth, 5/31/11

I ran into a friend of mine at the supermarket yesterday and he asked me, because I’m “that guy” now, what was new in the comics, and because I embrace my role as “that guy,” I started waxing rhapsodic about the stalkertastic action in Mary Worth, and for the first time it really occurred to me that the strip may be actively trying to recapture the stalky magic of Aldomania 2006. They’re going to have to really amp up the crazy to top that legendary storyline, of course, but today’s installment is promising. Liza will apparently go to any length to prevent Drew from breaking up with her, and if that means arranging an impromptu surprise birthday party for him on a day that is very much not his birthday, then so be it.

B.C., 5/31/11

As noted, neo-B.C. is putting way too much effort into gags like this, which were transparently created as excuses to photocopy some clip art and then call it a day. Today’s installment is actually an example of how trying too hard actively lessens the strip’s quality. Since beloved B.C. character Grog is a subhuman dullard and almost certainly illiterate, it would have been more realistic to portray him as continuing to stare dumbly ahead for two panels, rather than react with horror at the thought of a small business and all the precious but desperately hocked items within going up in flames.