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The comments of the week are nigh! But first, a few intriguing links for you:

• Faithful readers Wanders has a blog called Mary Worth and Me, which shockingly I’ve only become aware of in the past few days. Lovers of the Iron Lady of Charterstone will definitely want to check out this post, which collects Mary’s entire flashback monologue into one horrifying blob of dullness!
• In other single-comic blog news, faithful reader gkl has started one dedicated to Gasoline Alley, entitled Going Antisane with Gasoline Alley. Good coverage of the current deranged and somewhat offensive storyline, which I haven’t been bothering to cover but boy, it’s dumb.
• And then there’s the mysterious and wonderful Family Circus Is My God Now, which combines Family Circus captions with current event photos to cast a spell of awesome.

And now, the comment of the week:

“Wow, they’ve even given up on having backgrounds in Crock.” –commodorejohn

Short and to the point! And also the runners up:

“The irony of a guy called ‘Mooch’ bitching about not getting paid for helping someone move is … well, not actually all that interesting, so that’s probably why it ended up in Funky Winkerbean.” –Trilobite

“Does the typical American family really keep a golf club next to the door in an umbrella stand? Maybe it belongs to Lois for times like these when Hi splurges on a ‘nice’ bottle of Night Train wine and subsequently spends the rest of the week ‘working at home’ in his bathrobe.” –minor flood

“I was just thinking that a ‘nice’ bottle of wine can be interpreted so many ways. Hi probably figures ‘nice’ = free. As in: ‘It was so nice that it rolled out of the grip of that wino, and I’ve nearly gotten his spittle wiped off the neck.'” –Frank Parsnip

“Meanwhile, it looks like the Milford boys are getting the world’s saddest blowjobs.” –Manos

“As for The Persuader, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a no-foolin’, eyes-rolled-up corpse in a Spider-Man strip. I certainly hope it’s not the last. I have a list.” –Sock Puppet

“Mary, ‘love’ and ‘acceptance’ are not the same as ‘butting in’ and ‘telling people what to do with their lives.'” –cheech wizard

“Hey, look. Jeffy’s got a dinosaur praying to the god of Creationism. Isn’t that just too cute for words. You know what this strip needs? The Spanish Inquisition.” –kippetje2000

“Toby is just a Mary-in-Training. She’s two steps away from the neckerchief, which we all know is an unsuccessful attempt at hiding your wobbly, liver-spotted neck, Mary.” –Old School Allie Cat

“Unless I miss my guess, Jeffy’s God is the Open Window. Some might call that a subconscious sign of his desire to escape the Keane Compound. I call that a rather obvious sign of his desire to escape the Keane Compound.” –DaveyK

“Love it when Alan glares out a window. It’s like all he ever does, whenever he’s not backing out of his responsibilities, sixth-grader style. You know Luann is wondering why he thinks she’s down there on the sidewalk. ‘Should I … take the elevator down there? To talk to him up here? I might be an airhead, but Christ this is some autistic shit.'” –RaJ

“I agree with Curtis’s dad too. After seeing those gawdawful ‘cheezy melt’ commercials — that’s gotta be what drove dad over the edge — I’m not lactose-intolerant, but I’m becoming lactose-irritable.” –Buck Ripsnort

“The funniest part about about Family Circus is that Jeffy is obviously forming a fundamentalist cult for toys. This will only end with one thing: jihad. Dolly’s Malibu Barbie beach house will be the first target, as it is a sign of degrading decadence.” –WillieO

“Mary Worth is a better superhero than Spidey. Just in this past storyline, Spidey came out on the short end of two confrontations with non-powered Persuader; enabled a state prisoner’s escape; was suckered into approaching a booby-trapped car; lagged two steps behind his wife’s kidnappers, invaded and destroyed private property, and got his hash saved by both MJ and Persuader. In the same time period, Mary provided medical care, food and shelter to a runaway dog, meddled whiny Drew off to Viet Nam, gave Charterstone partygoers a break by walking off with Toby, withheld a toy from an annoying baby, and passed a thorny rose to a pesky child. Is that a tear in Uncle Ben’s eye?” –Godzooky

“200 years from now, somewhere in the desolate pancontinental post-apocalyptic wasteland that once was North America, a lone figure stands, crumpled-up old newspaper in hand, and weeps silently at the carelessness of a time when water was flippantly priced at less than 2 dollars per flask by a cartoon fox.” –auRa

“I must admit I barely noticed the lameness of ‘In another room,’ because I was so busy admiring the euphemistic potential of ‘Dick Tracy broke into my sanctuary.'” –Mollie

“Oh, man, poor Donna Amalfi. Telling Mary Worth to deliver a book cart to a widow is like asking Jason Voorhees to deliver a cart full of chainsaws to a pair of teenagers having sex. It just can’t possibly go well.” –Tats

We must also give a big thanks to everyone who put a bit of scratch in my tip jar this week! And, of course, we give big thanks to our advertisers:

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Gil Thorp, 4/7/08

And so the Frank Bolle era, which was always intended to be transitional, passes on into history, and we meet the new permanent Gil Thorp artist: Rod Whigham! Rod’s reign of terror begins, naturally, with Gil thrusting his ass at his wife as he roots through the refrigerator, desperately looking for some sweet, sweet booze to take the edge off of his Andrew Gregory-blighted existence. I heartily approve of Gil’s awesomely chiseled flattop, manly nose, and protruding Adam’s apple, along with the return of the detached hideous claw-hands (gripping the cold one in panel two), Mimi in a vest for some reason, and a bowl full of unidentifiable ovoids sitting on the kitchen table. Yes, sir, Rod, you and I are going to get along together … just fine. There’d better be some damn earrings on Coach Kaz, though.

Dick Tracy, 4/7/08

One thing I don’t approve of in the new Gil Thorp is the use of Comic Sans for the dialog text, an affliction that seems to have metastasized into Dick Tracy today. While I don’t harbor the same animosity towards the font that some do, I do think that using a font that’s available on just about everyone’s home computer makes a strip look less polished. Admittedly, it’s not my hand cramping up from writing out the completely demented dialog in Gil Thorp or Dick Tracy, but I think the handwritten text looks better.

On the other hand, having Dick Tracy’s dialog all computer-y does makes it look like it was automatically and badly translated from the Chinese, which sort of makes the strip easier to enjoy, for some reason. Also, I think IN ANOTHER ROOM may be the lamest narration box ever. If you really need to make that clear, you always could just, you know, draw it differently.

Mary Worth, 4/7/08

Oh, man, Donna Amalfi in room 305, Mary Worth is going to meddle the hell out of you. She’s probably not actually bereaved at all, but just interested in learning more about a potential new career path while she recovers from routine surgery, but that won’t stop Mary’s relentless attempts to make her realize that life is still worth living, and that inside every cloud is a silver lining, and tomorrow is another day, and blah blah blah YOU CANNOT STOP HER SHE IS A MONSTER.

Family Circus, 4/7/08

“I only know how to think and feel in terms of references to products and corporate marketing! I’m the bastard, malformed spawn of late-stage capitalism!”

Apartment 3-G, 4/7/08

Now that Frank Bolle is done with his Gil Thorp stint, he’s free to dedicate his full attention to Apartment 3-G. Today, using only Blaze’s wordless expressions, he masterfully captures what it feels like to watch some junkie grope your cousin while prattling on with a bunch of nonsense that nobody in the room actually buys.

One Big Happy, 4/7/08

“And the bodies we hid in the shed are starting to smell!”

Dennis the Menace, 4/7/08

[uncontrollable shuddering]

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Curtis, 4/3/08

In the interest of saying something nice once in a while, I will admit that today’s Curtis cracked me up. The “Curtis is obsessed with Michelle” bit is overdone, but I found his dad’s anti-cheese diatribe to be completely hilarious. “Double cheese, melted cheese, cheesy sauce, cheesy sticks, cheesy cheese! Cheese cheese cheese!! It doesn’t make sense!” I mean, sure Curtis’s non-stop mooning is annoying, Greg, but at least he isn’t going to bust a vein about cheese.

Apartment 3-G, 4/3/08

“No, Lu Ann, I believe that women are parasites! And men are junkies! Those are just the core values I was brought up with!”

Actually, Alan isn’t so upset about taking a loan from a woman as he is at taking a loan from an elementary school art teacher. That’s a sign of being pretty darn hard up, that is.

Family Circus, 4/3/08

Jeffy thinks he’ll get in good with his God if he provides Him with new worshippers. IT DOESN’T COUNT IF THEY’RE INANIMATE OBJECTS, JEFFY. YOUR RUBBER DINOSAUR HAS NO SOUL TO SAVE.

Most of these toys I could vaguely buy as things you could fold up into the kneeling position, but that clown looks way too much like a living little clown homunculus. Frankly, it scares the crap out of me.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/3/08

Sure, it seems like this is a joke, but since he’s testing for syphilis, it actually could work.

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/08

It seems that knowledge of “goths” has penetrated into the Walker-Browne compound. GOD HELP US ALL.