Marmaduke is being affectionate to a stranger in order to ruin his owner-man's day. Their relationship is complicated at best.

Marmaduke is a member of the Boy Scouts of America, despite being a large dog rather than a boy. He has developed the sole shared characteristic of all Boy Scouts: the compulsive need to help old ladies across the street, even if it means dropping everything you're doing (like being walked by your owner-man) and physically harming the old lady (in this case, by biting a chunk out of her arm).

Marmaduke's Owner-Man vainly attempts to exert control over the situation by doing a racist World War II-era impersonation of Hideki Tojo.

Marmaduke is flying.

Marmaduke is hugging his owner-man because the lawn mower is about to hibernate.

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke: Now with comments

As some of you have noticed, I have never allowed comments on this blog. I have a number of reasons for this, but recently I have found a number of reasons to go against my initial stance:

1. I keep getting a lot of emails asking me to allow comments

2. People often leave comments related to this blog on another blog I do

3. The people leaving comments, and especially writing the emails, are almost uniformly friendly and thoughtful (or at the very least, not stupid)

4. I don't have to read blog comments if I don't want to, and I sure as hell don't have to respond to them if I don't feel like it

5. Eh, what the hell

That last one was by far the most important. So: eh, what the hell, comments are enabled. I totally reserve the right to yank this feature if I decide this was a bad idea.

Beats,

Joe Mathlete