That’s just the boundary between the brightly lit and shadow parts of his face. They draw faces like this very often. Usually the line is not as bold, but Joe makes thicker lines on Sundays that Shelley does on weekdays.
Yes, Junior’s wife died in a car explosion from a bomb meant for Tracy and that left almost no trace of her.
The character in the current strip is technically a chimera, rather than a clone. That means she has DNA from two individuals. A pair of mad scientists had some of Moon Maid’s DNA (somehow) and implanted it into a woman who had won a Moon Maid lookalike contest long ago. They also did some plastic surgery and implanted fake antennae and some kind of mechanism into her hands that she could zap someone. Since then, it seems that the Moon Maid DNA has replaced more of her DNA and she is able to use natural “zapping” abilities without any artificial mechanisms on her wrists.
I haven’t even been there, but it was obvious to me.