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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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Luann, 1/30/08

Advancing character development in a comic strip is actually a fairly tricky thing to do, and so I give props to Luann for getting Brad out of the house and the fast food industry and into the Fire Department a few years ago. And real-life firefighters face seriously traumatic situations, which, combined with a no-doubt prevailing tough-guy ethic, means that seminars like “Your Mental Health” are important. But could we please see Brad and/or Tony attending fewer seminars and elementary school safety presentations and instead, you know, putting out fires now and then? Chopping through doors with axes, pulling screaming children from burning rooms, leaping out of second-story windows as the smoke billows — and then, when they get back to the firehouse with adrenaline still singing through their veins, letting nature take its course? Even Herb and Jamaal has featured firefighting scenes this month, for Pete’s sake. It would sure be a hell of a lot more interesting than this “saving Toni a seat at the mental health seminar” crap.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/30/08

Hey, let’s check in with our friends in the whimsical Winkerworld! Now-near-deaf former band leader Harry Dinkle and his wife have decided to check out the bright lights of Las Vegas and see what all the fuss is about! But Harry doesn’t gamble, and for some reason he can’t really enjoy himself as he wanders the casino floor, seeing the dead-eyed elderly pouring the last of their savings into bleeping electronic devices designed by teams of experts to fleece them. Then Harry makes a pun! And his wife smirks, or she may just be suffering a stroke.

Gasoline Alley, 1/30/08

Speaking of whimsy, in Gasoline Alley our postal protagonist imagines that if he were murdered by his wife in an argument over money, that would be for the best. This sort of logic is why so many post offices have bullet-proof glass in front of the counters.

Mary Worth, 1/30/08

Ha ha, I like Drew’s pissy little face in panel one, but I love his “Groan!” thought balloon in panel two. It of course puts him in fine company with tweaker Tommie, one of the greatest Mary Worth characters in recent memory. Let’s hope we’re witnessing stage one of his slide into drug addiction!

As for our ad agent lovebirds, is there any dumber romantic scenario than a whirlwind public romance with your boss, particularly if your boss is a possessive weirdo who “accidentally” shows up two hours early for your date? No, nothing good can come of this for anybody involved except for Mary, who is almost certainly at home lining up the platitudes she’s going to unleash once this whole thing goes south.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/30/08

Al Scaduto held back his most politically charged work, asking that it only be published after his death.

Also: Thanks to a faithful inside tipster for this story detailing the shocking truth about Gil Thorp’s Andrew Gregory!

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Curtis, 1/28/08

Continuing on my residual fumes of Curtis-directed niceness, I have to say that I find Chutney’s exaggerated body posture in panel two really adorable. Panel four, on the other hand, disturbs and horrifies me: Curtis’ mouth appears to be sliding around the side of his uncannily ovoid head! Perhaps his mind and heart have finally opened up to the possibility of smooches from Chutney, but his mouth still won’t have any of it and is trying to escape.

Gasoline Alley, 1/28/08

The current Gasoline Alley plot, involving people who have never appeared in the strip before, surreptitious phone camera photography, and numerous end-runs around the grievance procedure laid out in the collective bargaining agreement between the U.S. Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union, is, as you might expect, meandering and dull. But I have to admit that I love love love the exchange in panel one today. Any and all questions lobbed at me that are even vaguely along the line of “You know what your trouble is?” will be met with “The system” — though ending not with some lily-livered question mark but a defiant exclamation point.

Mark Trail, 1/28/08

Mark Trail’s nemeses are in fact just flying around to get a better shot; the fact that Mark is severely overthinking their motivation just goes to show how dumb Mark Trail villains are. Mark’s contingency plan is of course foolproof, since any jurisdiction that would release a suspect with overwhelming evidence damning him as murderer based on outrageously unlikely hearsay from Mark would of course do the same if said outrageously unlikely hearsay was scrawled on a piece of paper attached to a dog that wandered into the police station.

Anyway, I’m mostly posting this because I wanted to share a couple funny graphics sent by faithful readers. First up is this note from faithful reader Daniel:

While my wife asked ‘What are you planning to do today?’ I came up with this. I think it’s the most productive ten minutes I’ve spent since getting laid off last week. I figured people could print this sign out, and place it in their car windows, or at least xerox a dozen fliers and post them in their neighborhood. People need to know the facts!

Ha ha, all fun and games — or so you think. But this note and pic, from faithful reader Gal Friday, will blow your mind!

As seen at Sundance!!! What does it mean?!

It means that folks on future Wes Anderson productions need to watch their backs, that’s what.

Mary Worth, 1/28/08

So it turns out that maybe Vera didn’t summon her ex-boyfriend to this hell cafe for the sole purpose of having her new boyfriend beat him up; rather, she’s just too lazy to make dates in separate restaurants with her various bits of emotional baggage. She also appears to have planned a two-plus hour lunch or something — I’m sure that goes over well with the head honchos at Disturbing Lack Of Affect Ad Agency. Anyway, Ryan’s bizarre way-too-early appearance, combined with his weird neck fondle in panel one, spells C-R-E-E-P-S-T-E-R to me. Or maybe V-A-M-P-I-R-E.

Of course, I’m less and less concerned about these boring humans and more and more interested in the bizarre series of identical bright orange donuts/bagels/round whatevers behind them. When we first saw these sweet (or possibly savory) treats, they at least had shelves to sit on. Today they appear to be simply glued to the back of the display case, or possibly nailed there.

Family Circus, 1/28/08

Dolly’s ultra-smug facial expression shows that she’s feeling that deep sense of self-satisfaction that only reinforcing traditional societal gender constructs can provide.

Pluggers, 1/28/08

I was going to accuse Pluggers of just slapping a new caption on art first drawn for a submission from faithful reader gh, but a quick trip to my archives revealed that said panel actually featured an entirely different drawing of an entirely different human-animal hybrid species, albeit one also featuring polka-dot boxers and obesity. Turns out that the Pluggers creative team just likes drawing huge-gutted furries in their underwear. Who are we to judge?