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It’s Sunday night, and you know what that means: this week’s Comments of the Week! First, the top finisher:

“In regards to Funky Winkerbean, this is probably the only time in this dude’s life that he’ll have had two girls in French maid outfits grinding up on him, and the one who likes him is insecure and drunk. Nothing on earth could stop that sex from happening … except vomit. It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone if it were written by Shakers.” –Trent

And the nearly-as-hilarious runners up:

“Iris Beedie may not be as street smart as her pony-tailed prisoner son Tommy, but he solicits drugs in lunch bags to passersby, so his street cred is not exactly beyond reproach.” –MossMoses

“If Snake and Jake spend all their time setting up elaborate traps for animals just so they can kill them for fun, what do these clowns do for money? The mortgage on that log cabin has got to be sky high, and ammo doesn’t come cheap these days. I think Snake is a substance abuse counselor and Jake is a hairstylist to the stars.” –dramashoes

“If Crankshaft was not complicit in atrocities committed by US troops during the Vietnam Conflict, I don’t know who the hell was.” –Joe

“That movie is better than 90% of the stuff on TV. Recast Loretta Lockhorn with Jessica Rabbit and you have every sitcom on CBS.” –yellojkt

“I also like how there’s a comma after the first Ha Curtis makes, but none of the others. The writer put in one comma, then realized that because it was Curtis, he should have put Ha in quotation marks, then realized that because it was Curtis, he needed to do something more with his life.” –Steve S

“Do they call it Lost Forest because it is so small no one can find it? How in the hell do all these people keep stumbling into each other in the middle of the woods?” –Barking Spider Brewery

“That drawing of J. Jonah in panel #2 just ain’t right. Most of me wants to vomit on my keyboard, but there’s a small part of me that wants to reach out and touch that incredibly bristly head of his and see if his hair is sharp enough to break the skin.” — King Folderol

“Molly doesn’t understand why bears in nature find her undesirable. In the human world, a naked woman chained to a tree while two men drink Old Milwaukee twenty feet away while holding guns is an invitation to fantasy fulfilled.” –Dingo

“Lynn Johnston should change the name of her comic to Invariably Worse.” –paddywhack

“Did Arbuckle break up with Liz? I mean, the strip’s forte is all-encompassing hopelessness and not real human emotion, so I could see it.” –Ryan

“Regarding the strange arrangement of Mary Worth’s kitchen: Her kitchen is mostly correct for what we call ‘universally designed,’ which is interior-design-speak for a person who will live most of her life in a wheelchair throughout her elderly years. It’s also correctly designed for a disabled person, like a person who becomes permanently wheelchair-bound after getting her legs broken with a brownie pan. I say, good forward thinking Mary!” –MGArchitect

“I find myself idly wondering what Marty Moon is doing. Whatever it is — working on his car, baking a ham, mastering sudoku, performing back-alley abortions — it has to be more interesting than the mindless plots and horrendously drawn characters we’re getting now. I’m getting worried if Moon doesn’t get a storyline soon, McLaughin’s gonna forget how to draw a goatee and we’ll lose him forever.” –Cold Eels, Distant Thoughts

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Judge Parker, 11/12/06

Oh man, Sunday’s pre-“Meanwhile” Judge Parker packs in as much queasy adolescent sexuality as a John Irving novel. The image of Ned sticking out her ass for her mother, and asking “You don’t think it’s too revealing … too sexy?” is somewhat alluring, but mostly horrifying. Abbey’s blatant look of mingled horror and arousal in panel five adds to the squirm. She probably would like to complain about her daughter’s trampy outfit, but realizes that she doesn’t really have the moral authority to do so since you can totally see her buttcrack in panel three.

By the way, Neddy, French women dress in sexy and stylish clothes, not like … that. Prepare to be mocked.

(Incidentally, Abbey isn’t Ned’s bio-mom … and I’m pretty certain Ned was adopted as a teenager. I’m not sure if that makes the underlying tension here better or not.)

Post-“Meanwhile,” the phrase “Nice work, Celeste … you smell like a still!” may be the best marital put-down this side of the Lockhorns. Still, it’s nice that Reggie gave her a full two hours get her drunken mess of a life together enough to get to the press conference.

Beetle Bailey, 11/12/06

There’s a lot to hate about today’s Beetle Bailey. It follows the weird stumbly, improvised, cumulative-joke rhythm that’s been somewhat typical of the Sunday strips of late. I also wonder what happened to Beetle’s perfectly presentable t-shirt-and-shorts combo while he was in the truck, or why Miss Buxley is the only person Beetle can think of to call in his predicament, or how Miss Buxley could possibly be so femme that she doesn’t own any clothing item that isn’t a dress, or any shoes that aren’t high heels. However, I’d like to reserve the brunt of my ire for the phrase “But it sure left its output,” which has never been and will never be uttered by any speaker of idiomatic English ever.

Mary Worth, 11/12/06

As Mary walks towards her date with destiny, it’s amazing just how rattled she is. First off, in the first panel she appears to actually be practicing her first greeting to her new archrival. In panel three, she looks like she’s sneaking down the hall way, ready to leap around the corner and bash in roller-suitcase-woman’s skull with her pan. But mostly I’m charmed by the look of grim determination on her face, which gives way to an utterly insincere smile in the final panel. Next week is going to be great.

Family Circus, 11/12/06

The lesson: You can’t have nice things when your kids are morons.

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Blondie, 11/11/06

You know, Dagwood gets walked in on when he’s in the bathtub an awful lot. It’s one of this strip’s stock jokes, but you have to admit that it’s pretty weird. But our nosey paint-jockey’s comment made me think, “Say, it’s kind of unusual that Dagwood is shampooing in the bath, rather than in the shower,” which then made me think “OH MY GOD DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE DON’T HAVE A SHOWER WHAT WEIRDOS.” Seriously, there’s no shower head, or curtain, or even a rod where such a curtain would be, and the soap dish is blatantly at tub-level. This strip shows the showerless tub at a different angle. This goes a long way towards explaining why Dagwood is so damn late for his carpool every morning.

Hey, is that a glass door on the bathroom? This gets more disturbing by the moment.

Mark Trail, 11/12/06

I love the way Jake and Snake — surely two of the dumber miscreants in the history of Mark Trail villainy, and that’s saying a lot — don’t ever form any kind of long-term villainous plans, but rather lunge at each new opportunity for evil like a giant rabbit at a delicious carrot. Sure, bear-baiting and illegal organ sales are all good fun, but why not engage in a little kidnapping and torture if you have an opportunity? Unless they think that Kelly Welly gallbladders sell for good money on the Asian market, they seem to be losing track of the goal here.

I also enjoy the reassuring similarities in the appearance of Mark Trail villains. Facial hair is of course an obvious indicator of evil, but the orange-shirted, non-mulleted half of Jake and Snake (has it actually been established which is which?) is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the no-necked patriarch of the petnapping hillbilly clan from two or three storylines ago:

The Phantom, 11/11/06

The NEXT: box in the Saturday Phantom is pretty much always awesome. This one sent the phrase “Last night the Phantom saved my his life,” to the tune of the title line from Indeep’s 1983 hit “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”, rattling through my head for the past 36 hours or so, so I thought I’d subject you to the same treatment.