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YOU GUYS, every year when I come back from my Christmastime voyage I’m all like “I’m just going to quickly look over the continuity strips from the past week to make sure I didn’t miss the 45 seconds of Judge Parker strip-time in which something happens,” but then every year I end up finding a slate of delightful nonsense that I feel compelled to share with you all. So before I get to today’s strips (in another post), here’s what you might have missed if, like me, you took a comics vacation over the past ten days or so.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/24/12

Greg Cooper, the next actor to play James Bond and thus one of the most visible and famous movie stars in the world, got dissed on Christmas by his own mom.

Family Circus, 12/25/12

Over at the Keane Kompound, unto us an extremely smug savior was born.

Panel from Mark Trail, 12/26/12

Otto decided not to take Mark and Bill Ellis’s ransom money, but will instead force Mark to lobby on his pirate kingdom’s behalf, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Panel from Spider-Man, 12/26/12

Spider-Man, a superhero with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals, was disabled with a quick blow to the back of the head, something that’s happened to him on multiple occasions.

Panels from Gil Thorp, 12/28/12

Oh, yeah, there’s a Gil Thorp basketball-season plot happening, I guess! It involves this basketball player, Scott, who is sad (and therefore not as good at basketball as he should be, which is the most important thing, obviously) because his little brother “Jay-Bird” died of leukemia. I had a brief hope that the horrible noise in this final panel was little Jay-Bird bursting out of his grave to feast on living flesh, but instead it was just a mysterious peacock that only Scott can see, which may in fact be Jay-Bird’s soul, which has come back to this mortal realm in bird form to feast on living flesh.

Panels from Funky Winkerbean, 12/29/12

Cayla and Les are already pretty sick of each other’s company, to nobody’s surprise.

Panels from Judge Parker, 12/30/12

In Judge Parker, Sam Driver shows that he knows the golden rule of lawyering: snitches get stitches.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/31/12

Back in Apartment 3-G, Evan has finally revealed himself for what he truly is! …which appears to be a member of some kind of medieval craft guild, I guess?

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/31/12

John Dill’s entry has been accepted into the Santa Royale cake contest, and the excitement appears to have caused a massive stroke event.

Curtis, 1/1/13

Oh, right, Kwanzaa! This year’s nutty Curtis Kwanzaa tale involves an African village where an evil never-seen witch makes all the handsome young men mysteriously disappear when they reach marriageable age. Our hero, Maya, awakes in her lair only to discover that, despite evil witch stereotypes, she’s actually pretty sexy. “Well, uh, you’re not rich!” says Maya, but then she demonstrates that she has piles of gold and an elephant servant. “Hmm, tell me more,” says Maya.

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Apartment 3-G, 12/18/12

Aw, yeah, improbable Apartment 3-G Hollywood-yet-somehow-also-New-York publicity agency war plot: You get as weird as you want! So our double agent Evan is a bit resentful of all the sharp-tongued women in his life, either for having sex with him or for ordering him to have sex with someone else, I guess. And Greg, for good measure, for being too “pretty.” I’m assuming that Evan plans to solve all his problems and/or petty resentments via murder, but since he’s not actually as smart or clever as he thinks, probably this will be hilariously botched.

Mary Worth, 12/18/12

Whoops, sorry I made fun of your weird cake yesterday, Mr. Dill! I understand that tasks that require meticulous craftsmanship can help distract you from grief, so your cake-diorama makes perfect sense, emotionally. And once you get a taste for the glamorous cake-making life, well, obviously you’ll want to turn pro! Although … he doesn’t seem that broken up about his wife’s death, does he? He’s just jumping right in with the professional cake designer talk. Maybe his lifelong dream was to become a cake designer, but his late wife was always holding him back, nagging him to pursue a duller, more financially stable career, one that did not involve designing beautiful cakes? And now she’s conveniently dead? What is this Mr. Dill person hiding? There is no secret that Mary cannot uncover, Mr. Dill.

Crankshaft, 12/18/12

Crankshaft is one of the last literate people in America, and he can’t even spell “mojito.”

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Mary Worth, 12/17/12

Oh boy oh boy pool party pool party POOL PARTY, everybody! This is great because (a) it means that the long, eternal slog of Dawn’s Quest For Meaning And Love (But Not Love Like That, Just Friendship-Love) is finally over (I mean, it will only really end with Dawn’s mopey death, but at least we won’t have to look at it for a while) and (b) we get to see a pool party, and those are always awesome. In today’s strip, Mary doesn’t even bother coming up with a specific reason for why she skipped her neighbor’s wife’s funeral. “I had a … thing, you understand, it was more important than your grief. Why don’t you cheer yourself up by gawking at that weird cake over there with everyone else?”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/17/12

To give those of you who don’t subject yourself to Funky Winkerbean daily a vaguely succinct summary of what led to this: Crazy got laid off from the Post Office, and in a desperate attempt to not starve to death decided to sell off his beloved collection of comic books and sci-fi novels to Comic Book Store John, and then Comic Book Store John decided to hire Crazy, to sell his own stuff. Thus “It wasn’t about greed, it was about need,” makes sense if we read it as “He needs an income to live on,” but I think we’re supposed to understand it as “It’s really the emotional satisfaction he’ll get out of seeing his beautiful collection dismembered, that’s why I hired him.” Although maybe it’s more about John’s need to see the citizens of this hell-town that’s always hated him debase themselves for minimum wage, for his amusement.

Apartment 3-G, 12/17/12

Oh man, the story of Evan the Sexual Spy is just getting weirder and weirder! Remember, Evan got Margo to summarily reject Skyler by making her believe that the young starlet was a rival for his affections. So he’s going to send Greg over to Aunt Cathy … how? “No, it isn’t above my skill level! I can do the bisexual jealousy grift! I’m ready for this!”

Hagar the Horrible, 12/17/12

Hagar and his Viking band seem to engage in no productive economic activity of any kind, and instead subsist entirely on the violent looting of a hapless late-Carolingian Europe. Will the fact that this castle is inhabited only by children and an old woman stop their awful depredations? Enh, probably not. Enjoy being sold into slavery to some monstrous Norse chieftain, kids!

Mark Trail, 12/17/12

Mark generally verbalizes literally every thought that passes through his square, immaculately Brylcreemed head, which makes his silent stare in the second panel here all the more hilarious. “Huh, so, cruel leader of a pirate band, kidnapping the innocent and holding them for ransom, ruling this tiny island by fear, tried to feed me to sharks … and ‘strange man,’ that’s all you got? Huh.”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/17/12

You probably think that today’s Herb and Jamaal is ripping off a joke from zany church signs everywhere, but in fact it’s just ripping off a joke from a Herb and Jamaal strip from 2007.