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

Marmaduke, who is skateboarding, knocks over a man in an ill-fitting suit who had previously seen everything but a skateboarding dog knocking him over.

Marmaduke stole his owner-man's car keys, which he used to steal his owner-man's van. Owner man is too busy wearing a fedora to realize this.

Marmaduke ate his owner-children while they were making sandwiches, but now finds himself overcome with remorse. The reality of the situation has not yet hit Marmaduke's owner lady, who so far has only noticed her giant Great Dane weeping into her children's backpack.

Marmaduke ordered a dumptruck and a dumptruck's worth of bones from Ace, a guy who sells ridiculous bullshit to dogs.

Marmaduke sold the naming rights to his doghouse (to Cave's Meats).