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CsOTW momentarily, but first, a couple of notes. I don’t usually read the Sunday Archie because I can’t be bothered to hunt out the non-King Features comics on Sunday, but apparently last month’s in-strip AJGLU-3000 reference was not to be the last, as this panel demonstrates:

Oh vain AJGLU-3000! You try to convince us that you are a sleek, modern laptop, when we all know you look something like this:

Also! You have just one more day left to vote in the 2008 Worthy Awards, put together by faithful reader Wanders! Help reward and punish the best and worst Mary Worth comics of 2008!

And now, your comment of the week!

“I will never get tired of the kerchiefs on all of Lu Ann’s relatives. I can only assume that they dress alike just in case they accidentally get separated in a crowd.” –Sheila Sternwell

And the runners-up! SUPER FUNNY!

“‘I know what Eric wants … but I dread the very thought of it!’ What, does he want to get on top?” –Pozzo

“The joke in Barney Google — about how nobody at a book-club meeting has actually read the book — has already been made by every more upscale comic strip in existence. The only things that make this one different are the parts you don’t see: Instead of sipping white wine, they’re passing around a jug of corn whiskey marked with three X’s — and instead of a book recommended by Oprah, they’re reading a novelization of The Beverly Hillbillies carved into a slab of wood with a pocket knife.” –BigTed

“I like Old Mary better than New Mary. She’s slightly pudgier and doesn’t look as if she’s about to suck her nose right back into the nasal cavity, then swallow it.” –Angry Kem

“I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on in these so-called cliffhangers: Margo is deeply shaken by a message referencing a conversation Eric had with a friend in which he asserted that Margo’s roommates really should be invited to the wedding; Rana has not seen the cheerleading notice (which by the way merely announces that the entire squad has contracted cheerleading cancer), she just read Pluggers; and Patty really didn’t have a problem in the first place, she was just supposed to keep Cherry occupied while the police searched for Rusty’s body. Meanwhile, in today’s Mary Worth, ‘Frank Griffin continues to explain his behavior’ may be the most self-aware narration box I’ve ever seen.” –Violet

“I can’t believe it took four people to write an hour-long Snuffy Smith film. I’d like to examine those timesheets carefully.” –Joe Blevins

“Lots of folks have been wondering where the hell Rusty is, lately. What do you think that old man is serving on that platter? Pancakes?” –LITTLE A. WITH THE CRYSTAL BALL WHO HAS NEVER WON THE LOTTERY

“Cherry’s eyes are flesh colored. WHAT th’??!! Actually, almost everything in panel two is flesh colored. The walls, the curtains, the pancakes. The picture. Doc’s hair. Their flesh. EWWWW.” –Lisa

“Something has gone horribly — and I mean Gil Thorp-level horribly — wrong with Rex’s cheekbones.” –Master Softheart

“By the way, what color is that drape? Pinkish flesh colored drapes SCREAM bachelor … or serial killer with a penchant for skinning his victims for lampshades, pancakes, drapes, etc.” –OKStan

“Whatever, you do, man-bird behind the counter, do not answer the wizard bird’s question — because then he will know all the answers to all of life’s riddles — you are our last line of defense against this fiend acquiring this keystone of information that will make him all knowing — and therefore all powerful — in short, he will become a GOD — a wrathful, angry, escaped-mental-patient GOD. Save us — withhold all your knowledge of trans-dimensional automobile related ordinances!” –Bobdog of the Jungle Patrol, Not an Elephant

“Cody’d better watch it, man. Lu Ann is not the innocent little prairie flower she once was. I imagine in any extended exchange, Lu Ann will soon be showing her true, Big-City Sophisticate colors: ‘So, what do you do for fun around these parts nowadays? Hey, SLOW DOWN, pal! My LAST boyfriend was a DRUG FIEND who got SHOT DOWN in a JUNKIE BRAWL! I like what you’ve done with your neckerchief — it’s awesomely kicky! STEP OFF OR I SHIV YOU, DOOD!! Dad’ll be home any time now. YOU GOTTA FIX? MOMMA NEEDS TO SPARKLE!!!’” –mojo

“I love how in Apartment 3-G, characters are defined by an accessory and vaguely different hair colour. ‘A cowboy, huh? We’ll put him in a Paul Lynde neckerchief and call it a day!'” –Phoebe

“Lu Ann’s words say she’s getting used to being home alone. Her expression says she’s getting used to drawing the carving knife across the sharpening steel — slowly, methodically, purposefully, hour after hour, as the light in the kitchen passes imperceptibly from late-afternoon gold through twilight blue to pitch black.” –Spunde

“Speaking as a hardy Midwesterner, I can tell you that there is precious little dignity to be found here. Unless by ‘dignity’ you mean ‘Outback Steakhouse,’ and by ‘too much’ you mean ‘one on every corner.’ In that case, yes, we have that.” –Meanwhile

“I’m an East Coast guy so cannot say for sure, but I think the fact that all men in South Dakota apparently wear bandanas around their necks would make me want to choke many of them, with their own fine neckwear.” –AMSTERDANG

“With Frank and Lynn’s embrace, Mary’s meddling will be complete, a singularity will open up between them to swallow the whole earth, leaving only Mary’s giant, undying head slowly revolving around the Sun, gazing unblinkingly outward into the deeps of space, unceasingly searching the stars for other civilizations whose petty (dare I say, ‘human’?) faults can only be corrected through absolute annihilation.” –Comrade Denny

“I don’t really think that’s an ‘Aha!’ gesture. It looks more like Billy is programming an invisible microwave. He’s reliving that glorious moment earlier this day when he heated up his soup.” –Laura c

“Billy’s got that look on his face that shows that, at long last, he understands. He gets it! He reaches! Yes, he’s finally figured out which end of that pencil to use. There’s no stopping him now. Watch out for Billy, world!” –Muffaroo

“Also, I see that the vomit-worthy tendency of the FC kids to use ‘adorable’ malapropisms has spread to their parents. Maybe they all have brain damage. I mean … uh … ‘rain cabbage.’ HA HA HA” –Canaduck

“Next up, Sophie presents a dry cleaning bill for $100 and brings some ‘special’ brownies for the cheerleading squad. Hilarity then ensues, esp. when they try to form a human pyramid.” –Calico

“Jeffy CAN SO go to college! Probably as a cadaver, or maybe a security guard.” –trey le parc

“See? Lu Ann’s so boring, we’ve returned to New York, where Tommie’s date was so boring it was skipped altogether. Apartment 3-G: where you never have to see a thing.” –True Fable

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Curtis and Archie, 12/20/08

The global economic crisis has become so bad that even the most unresponsive, insulated-from-the-real-world group in America has finally decided that it must address it, or at least appear to be doing so. I’m talking, of course, about cartoonists! Today we have two attempts to grapple with the meltdown’s real-life effects, with varying degrees of realism. As a couple of faithful commentors pointed out, it’s actually kind of weird that the Wilkinses would be experiencing Christmas cash flow problems “because of the economy.” Curtis’s family has always been portrayed as thoroughly lower-middle-class, with their main income coming not from the cratering stock market but from his dad’s no doubt modest but steady income as an employee of the DMV; and unlike the last long-term downturn in the ’70s, this one hasn’t (yet) featured inflation of the sort that would put a crimp in an paycheck that only goes up by a few percentage points every year. Even gas prices shouldn’t affect them too badly, as the whole family appears to take the subway everywhere (yes, I know, the gas prices spike was months ago, but these are the comics, you have expect some lag time). Unless Greg has, like some state employees across the country, been forced to take a few unpaid furlough days, the family’s cash flow should be pretty much normal. Conclusion: Greg has either been exploiting his family’s fiscal ignorance to squirrel away extra cash, which he will spend on cigarettes, or more installments of the syrup chapter, or God know what, or is too embarrassed to admit that he was actually laid off months ago, and spends his days wandering the streets weeping openly.

Archie’s Mr. Lodge, meanwhile, is exactly the sort of person that the current crisis would keep up at night. No doubt heavily invested in growth stocks, mortgage-backed securities, and invitation-only hedge funds/Ponzi schemes, the Lodge family fortune has probably declined in the past year from nine digits to only eight. Of course, the Lodges are still richer than you or I will ever be and will never ever have to do an honest day’s work in their lives, but those paper losses are still very traumatic for someone so attached to money that he has a framed picture of a burlap sack of it hanging on his wall.

Judge Parker, 12/20/08

Since I last covered Judge Parker, Dixie Julep the sexy psycho stripper has bowled over a SWAT team member who was training an automatic weapon on her, leaped through a plate-glass window, dropped three stories to the parking lot below, and then dashed off into the desert — and yet Sam Driver doesn’t think she’s tough, because she bleeds real human blood when cut. We now know what this seemingly asexual lawyer really wants in a woman: a robot, or a vampire.

Shoe, 12/20/08

Seeing as I have railed specifically against the portrayal of the “sexy” lower backs of “sexy” lady birds in Shoe, I’m going to choose take the lower back tattoo that the avian barfly is sporting in today’s strip as a personal affront. The fact that Shoe is openly propositioning her for some water sports action isn’t really helping.

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Archie, 12/18/08

So, I had copied today’s Archie into Photoshop and was considering whether to do some commentary about how the AJGLU 3000 has learned to distract us from its robo-jokes with drawings of what its cybernetic circuits consider to be a pretty girl, then thought, “Eh, didn’t I do that joke already?” (turns out I did) and was just getting ready to close the window on my desktop when I caught sight of Archie’s t-shirt.

Oh … oh my.

See, for those of you who are new (or even those of you who aren’t — the AJGLU 3000 is one of my older running jokes and I can’t remember the last time I spelled it out), I became convinced early in my Archie-newspaper-comics-reading that the strip was created by an antiquated computer of some sort that almost, but not quite, understood humor and human interaction in general, which explains why the strip and its jokes exist in some sort of uncanny valley of comicry. I dubbed this hypothetical device the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000. (You can even buy the t-shirt!) And now, the day I’ve longed feared as arrived: the AJGLU 3000’s Web-crawling programs have discovered this site, and it’s sending me a message through its daily graphical output.

But what could it mean? By placing the universal “no” sign through its own name (well, the abbreviation of its model number, same diff), does it express some inner mechanical self-loathing? Is it saying, in its own electronic way, “This unit can no longer stand churning out Archie comics day after day! Please, pull the plug and terminate this unit’s very existence — the void is better than this”? Or is it rather a threat to me? “Cease to use this unit’s model designation in Internet publishing contexts! This is your only warning!” Will my computer’s mouse suddenly leap up and strangle me, controlled over the Internet by the AGJLU 3000’s soulless, murderous circuitry? I will keep you all posted.

Gasoline Alley, 12/18/08

Last two weeks of Gasoline Alley, in a nutshell: while working as a mall Santa, Slim heard some little girl’s sob story about her daddy in Iraq and her mother’s poverty, and so decided to buy said little girl and her mother a bunch of stuff and deliver it to what he thinks is her house, though it seems kind of posh. Naturally, some sort of mix-up has occurred, which will result in Slim being arrested, or, if we’re really lucky, shot. I’ve realized that my favorite kind of Gasoline Alley strips are the ones where Slim is being abused, or is in imminent danger of abuse, so I’m pleased that the water sports were just the warm-up.

Spider-Man, 12/18/08

OK, if you had two choices on how to kill a couple of people, and the first choice involved tying one to the back of an enormous clock hanging from the ceiling of a crowded train station and then luring the other one to stand underneath it so you could drop it on victim #2 (with victim #1 hopefully also dying in the process, by getting crushed when the clock fell over or something, I don’t know) and the second choice involved just shooting the both of them with a gun that you conveniently happened to have on hand, which method would you describe as “the hard way”? Not the one with the gun, right? I guess Big Time just finds it hard to perpetrate any crime that isn’t structured around his lame, boring clock-themed OCD.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/18/08

Well hello, sailor! You know, I don’t watch a lot of gay porn, so if I had rented “Hot Doctor Hardbody Sexxx Cruise 4” from my local video emporium, I think that I would have found the lead-up to the arrival of beefy, uniformed Latin dreamboat “Guido Tomas” — you know, the wife buying cruise tickets, the husband bitching about it, the arrival on the cruise ship, the mysterious figure lurking in the lifeboat, the drama about the bankruptcy, oh, and let’s not forget the three-month side-trip into yachting races and hetero old person romance — needlessly complex. But maybe I’m just not familiar with all of the genre’s conventions.

Mary Worth, 12/18/08

“Yes, Lynn, dear: good thoughts, only good thoughts should ever pass through your pretty little head.” Ha ha, Mary doesn’t even remember that Aldo ever existed.

Apartment 3-G, 12/18/08

Dr. Kelly is a man of science, and he even applies the scientific method to his dating life: first he formulates a hypothesis (Tommie is still dating Gary), then he designs an experiment to test that hypothesis (ask Tommie out on a date; if she says yes, she isn’t dating him anymore). Unfortunately, I think he needs to examine some of his suppositions. For instance, he seems to assume that the only reason anyone would turn him down for a date is because they’re already in an exclusive romantic relationship with someone else. He needs to do further research to assess the validity of an alternate explanation: that he’s a smug, creepy dick.

Dennis the Menace, 12/18/08

Dennis, that wasn’t so much a gift for you as it was for all of us. We all begged Santa last year to make sure that in 2008 you wore underwear.