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EVERYBODY! I am BACK in the saddle, my saddle having been moved approximated 3,000 miles to the west by either the good people at Allied Van Lines or my wife driving our car, depending on whether you’re using the “saddle” metaphor to refer to my desk chair or my actual ass! Huge thanks to EVERYONE who contributed to the westward bound fundraiser — you’ll get individual thank-yous this coming week, probably with a reference to a specific item I’m going to buy at Ikea with the money this afternoon. And megahuge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for guest-blogging so much these past couple of months. I am back full-time now for the indefinite future, but he’s hilarious and deserves recognition and approbation. And he lovingly hand-picked some CsOTW for the past couple weeks, out of which I have hand-picked with similar love this top comment:

“I love Gil’s nameplate. No ‘Coach,’ no ‘Mr.,’ no ‘Gil.’ No complexity, layering of meaning, or beating around the bush. You, Mr. Standish, are in the presence of an elemental THORP of nature.” –Spunde

But these other comments are not to be sneezed at!

“When you’re done with ‘Words With Pals’ and ‘Scrumble,’ maybe you’d like to play some ‘Hungry Birds’ or ‘Cookie Crush Saga’ or ‘Gim Gardashian’s Gollywood Game.'” –BigTed

“When my daughter used to play Oregon Trail, her party would dwindle disturbingly through serial occurrences of the events ‘Hunting accident! Lose a party member!’ and ‘Fresh meat!'” –Cloudbuster

“Hmmm — free drinks, eh? Not bad, but if I hang out with Kapuht, I might get heroin. Decisions, decisions…” –Pozzo

“Wait, did Rocky Ledge just spontaneously grow sunglasses on his head? That counts as a super power. Was he bitten by a radioactive David Caruso?” –Joe Blevins

“I used to break hearts. Now I just break mirrors.” –gelded wildebeeste

“Even Count Weirdly can’t take this thing seriously. ‘That’s not even supposed to be a dolphin. It’s a shark, and I pulled its teeth out. I pulled the teeth out of every single shark in the ocean. Why? Because duh, I’m cruel and I don’t like shark bites. Does that matter? No. Do you even have a warrant? I doubt it!'” –made of wince

Mary Worth and Judge Parker: “Two phrases that will never escape my lips: ‘I am surprised that you have such an abiding penchant for country music!’ and ‘You know what was recently revealed about him?'” –Écureuil Écumant

“Country music? You like country music? That is the music of the poor.” –Liam

“It could be worse. Someone could paste a copy of Apartment 3-G onto a cover of ‘Action Comics’, as the ultimate act of irony.” –seismic-2

“Bear in mind people have been practically giving Holly rare and valuable comics left and right. She probably thinks that’s how it works now.” –TheDiva

“Acting on an ‘unshakeable feeling’ from ‘deep within’ is how we get all those fake quotes on Sundays. –Jean-Paul Sartre” –pastordan

“Action in Apartment 3-G? Is that a perk for premium subscribers? –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“Luann seems shocked that nothing has happened. As a regular reader of Luann, I am not.” –pugfuggly

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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FAITHFUL COMICS CURMUDGEON READERS! You see before you the last set of Comments of the Week that I will write as a resident of Baltimore! I’m spending the next two days in a frenzy of packing, and then over the next week and a half or so my wife and I will be driving across this great land we call “America.” Uncle Lumpy will be in the (metaphorical) driver’s seat on the blog until about … September 3rd? Sure, let’s say that. Subject to change! But probably September 3rd. Anyway! See you on the other side of the continent, guys! But first, the promised comment of the week:

“In Rex Morgan today, Judith Martin aka Miss Manners agitates for industrial action. The bourgeois Morgans turn their heads from the plight of working academic nurses now, but come the revolution they’ll answer to the sisters whom they forsook in their hour of need. Solidarity! I can’t wait to see Rex up against the wall, his blindfold pressed in a perfect French pleat.” –Jessie

And the usual array of hilarious runners up:

“Mary Worth is such a hipster. ‘I was an Indigo Child before it was cool.'” –CanuckDownSouth

“No, but just look at panel 5! June really is sorry about what happened to Suzanne and the others. She is sorry about what happened to Suzanne and the others. She is sorry … sorry … sorry … I do not want my wallet. I should give it to June. June will know what to do with it. June is very helpful.” –Spunde

Mary Worth: “I may have saved Olive’s life … But in all modesty, I have to point out that what I saved is incredibly valuable! Yay, me! Wait, is that modesty or the other thing?” –Peanut Gallery

“The writers of Pluggers have hit the sad realization that their target audience is dying off and they needed to reboot the concept. ‘Kids like extreme sports, right? This’ll get them off that interwebs and x boxers. Dear God, please don’t let them cancel us. I can’t go back to teaching cartooning at my local community college. I can’t'” –Bono Vix

“I see the bank robber has a gun. I imagine a doughy, bespectacled casually clad man suspended on ten foot metal stilts will make an easy target at twenty to thirty feet.” –Optimus Prime Rib

“If Spider-Man wasn’t already jealous of Doc Ock, he sure will be when he sees that pretty blonde in the last panel. No attractive lady ever gazed up so admiringly and longingly at his crotch, in spite of all those years he’s spent splaying his spandex-clad legs high above the city streets!” –Perky Bird

“If you Google ‘bear on roller skates,’ the first results you get are videos from North Korea and China. Which can only mean that pluggers’ worst fears have finally been realized: The last domino has fallen, and they’ve succumbed to the influence of global communism.” –BigTed

Crankshaft: “Note the date: today noted skeptic and science-hater Ed has confirmed his belief in anthropogenic climate change. Not only that, but he’s going to write a letter! So I guess the joke here is that while we’re all responsible for the state of the earth, our individual actions are so meaningless in the grand scheme of things that we might as well not bother.” –pugfuggly

“Maybe this isn’t a pickup line, but it is the end of a longer explanation. ‘Your siren song lured my crew to dash the ship upon the rocks, and they all drowned. Eddie and I somehow swam to these desolate holds of cold stone surrounded by miles of empty North Atlantic waters. If you have the tiniest shred of decency, how about a nice, warm hug?'” –hogenmogen

“I hope True Standish changes his mind about going to Valley Tech. He’s a quarterback who’s so lackadaisical about the sport that he hasn’t touched a football all summer, he’s so clumsy that he can’t step off a curb without hurting himself severely, and he is so uncoordinated that he can’t even shake hands. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the sports hero that Milford deserves!” –seismic-2

Funky Winkerbean: “How delightfully clever! By unrealistic authorial fiat, two lackluster storylines that were staggering to unsatisfying conclusions — each notionally developing an unpleasant member of the regular cast by having them do things they initially despised but sort of came to appreciate in the end — are revealed as merging into one amorphous mass of narrative waste product.” –Master Softheart

“Desperate to talk to literally anyone about literally anything, Roz asks the Perfesser an inane but open-ended question only to have the Perfesser immediately turn to his electronic device so as to avoid even that most basic of social graces — small talk with acquaintances. Is this simply a new level of passive-aggressiveness or has the Perfesser finally found an addiction that suits him, the female voice in his smart phone?” –Flippin Arkansas

“What TV program could possibly be provoking the wide-eyed, blissed-out wonder we see from every member of the notoriously jaded Miller clan? I can only imagine that the Discovery Channel finally went and green-lit A Guy Jangles His Keys in Front of the Camera.” –Joe Blevins

“I am looking forward to seeing Parker covered in effluvia and exiting through some storm drain 300 yards from the bank a half hour after realizing sewers do not provide easy access to buildings.” –Anonymous

“Say what you will about his oppressive, magic-supported reign of terror, the King of the Idiots has amazingly good spray-painting skills if he can do six lines of words in New Century Schoolbook without a stencil.” –Chip Whittle

“The procedure went well! I’ve always wanted to be a Morlock!” –Marcus Theory

Mark Trail: “I guess they call him ‘Dirty’ Dyer because ‘Beady Eye Flop Sweat’ Dyer doesn’t scan as well.” –Voyage of the Oversnark

“Mommy, you didn’t cook P.J. enough — he crawled out of the roasting pan! Can we order a pizza now?” –AhClem

“Why, if you rearrange the letters of ‘Starbucks,’ erase some, add a few more, you get ‘Hitler.’ Our records show that he’s dead … or is he!?!” –Dr. Mabuse

“PJ didn’t understand. There were five places set at the table, and six Keanes. This was the way the nightly game went, and at long last, he had beaten his father out. He was just inches from dinner. Who was Dolly to deny him his victory? The hunger he had learned to accept long ago, but even he was surprised by the rage and frustration that built within him. The worst part of it — he knew this even as an infant — was that when the cops grilled him about years later, it would no longer make sense. Even to him, the motivation for his horrific actions would remain obscure.” –pastordan

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Family Circus, 8/22/14

Sure, we’ve always joked about the way the Keane Kids are drawn in this strip, with their hugely spherical noggins. Called ’em “melonheads.” It’s always been in good fun. We just figured it was a quirk of the artists’ style. But what if we’ve been wrong? What if these children are an intermediary stage in a selective breeding program with the goal of producing a monstrous post-human superbeing with the largest, roundest head possible? “No, PJ,” Dolly admonishes. “That chair is not for you. It is not for any of us. We are mere forerunners of He who is to come. That chair is a throne for the megacraniumed God who will eventually arrive to rule humankind. He will place it atop a pyramid of his enemies’ skulls. Their puny, puny skulls.”

Crankshaft, 8/22/14

Never forget that the central “joke” of Crankshaft, the “fun” Funkyverse strip, is that Ed Crankshaft is so terrible at his job that all the parents in town actively seek out information on school district transportation staffing decisions that in most jurisdictions would be of interest to nobody, because they fear for their children’s lives. Today we see that his reign of awful bus driving terror has concrete and negative economic impacts on this poor city’s real estate market.

Dick Tracy, 8/22/14

SORRY PROFESSIONAL CRIME-SOLVERS BUT I THINK YOU FIND THAT IF YOU TAKE AWAY SOME OF THESE LETTERS AND RE-ARRANGE THE REST YOU GET THE NAME OF SOMEONE WE ALREADY DISLIKE WELP GUESS WE’RE DONE HERE