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Okay okay okay! Last Saturday’s post asked

where are the hot guys in today’s newspaper comics?

And you responded — in bulk! Seriously, the range of response confirms recent research that folks are more, er, refined in selecting men than men are in selecting women.

No room to list them all (and “Original Brawny Towel Man” is not a comic-strip character, dammit!), but here’s a tasty sample:

Judge Parker 10/20/2006

Judge Parker, 8/5/07

Hunky dimwit Sam Driver is curiously immune to the thrusty charms of women, including his wife.

Slylock Fox, 2/19/07 and 9/3/07

¿Quién es más macho? Buford Bull o Slylock Fox? Oh — I think we know!

Li’l Abner

Several people expressed a hankerin’ for uncomplicated beefcake “L’il” Abner Yokum, wisely favoring him over jailbait brother Tiny.

9 Chickweed Lane, 8/3/07

Everybody’s front-runner, Seth. Generous, confident, and chinly — all qualities thin on the ground in 9CL. Oh, did I mention pauciloquent? See, Brooke? I own a thesaurus, too!

Traditional “male” stereotypes — Mark Trail, Dick Tracy, even o’l stripey Phantom — received a resounding “meh” from our faithful readership. Surprise contenders included Rob Wilco from Get Fuzzy, the Grampa from One Big Happy, and Ted Forth. One person suggested that Margo was more of a man than anyone in the comics. I think the person who suggested Leroy Lockhorn was joking.

And here’s a dark horse, from the very darkest of stables:

Funky Winkerbean, 6/9/07

Comic John* went to the prom with Chien, had a good time, and probably earned himself a slot in author Tom Batiuk’s scheduled (and most likely written and illustrated) Great Leap Forward. And in the words of faithful reader Three or Four, “Seriously. Whoever gives him a charity lay is gonna get the surprise of her life.”

mmmmmmm. . . . Original Brawny Towel Man. They really sold out with that second guy.

— Uncle Lumpy

* Observant reader Al notes below that this is not, in fact, Comic John, but Mopey Pete. Please make the appropriate substitutions.

This just in!

For the ladies: Thanks to the diligent Intertube research of faithful reader Godzooky, we have this rare image of our Man of Mystery, his Black Orchid, and the Love of his Life. Go nuts!

Brenda Starr, Reporter, 1963

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Apartment 3-G, 8/24/07

“But if you won’t have dinner with me, I swear to God it’s all you’ll hear about for the next six months. Choose wisely.”

Gasoline Alley, 8/24/07

His elaborate meteorite scheme having failed to rid his neighborhood of African-American youth, Slim resorts to Plan B: Killing and eating them.

Judge Parker, 8/24/07

If Judge Parker went in for dramatic NEXT! boxes like Spider-Man and the Phantom, this strip could have one that read “NEXT! Render unto Caesar!” Or it could just play to its strengths and say “NEXT! More of Trudi’s ass!”

Pluggers, 8/24/07

Pluggers are a danger to good, honest citizens, and our weak-kneed liberal court system can’t protect us from them. Vigilante justice is the only answer.

Oh! Also, faithful reader Dub Not Dubya wants you to know that she got that picture of the Ziggyfish that I put up yesterday from this Website, which you should visit if you like pictures of odd-looking animals.

Also also! Chicago-area readers! Would you like to help faithful reader Dingo turn his talent for song parody into a free trip to Austria? You bet you do! Click here for details, and yell loudly!

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Apartment 3-G, 8/11/07

WOO-HOO, ALAN’S BEATNIK BUDDY IS BACK! If you don’t remember this bad-news countercultural type, check out his first appearance, from more than a year ago. Crazy kick! I don’t know if we knew before today that his name was “Jones,” though. I wonder if this fellow is actually the Archie gang’s resident nonconformist, Jughead Jones, all grown up, who’s traded his first name and his felt crown for a soul patch and a gig dealing weed (“good”) and smack (“bad”).

Momma, 8/11/07

I was going to write a screed about how if you weren’t a dedicated Momma reader, you wouldn’t get the “joke” of today’s strip, which is that Francis doesn’t really have a steady job and so “getting up and going to work” probably means putting in applications or working at one of his various menial but otherwise not particularly stressful jobs and that based on the level of dishevelment in his hovel, you might assume that he did literally work in a salt mine, albeit one with complimentary wake-up calls, and that furthermore this meant that nobody would get the “joke” in today’s Momma because there was no such thing as a dedicated Momma reader, but then I realized that I was a dedicated Momma reader and that I got the “joke” (keeping in mind that “getting” is not the same as “being amused by”). Then I was sad.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/07

Good news, everyone! Hugh’s conscious and his histrionics levels are back to normal!

Judge Parker, 8/11/07

All right, Judge Parker, you’ve been waving those things around all week trying to get my attention, so here it is: boobs. BOOBS. Boobs boobily boobs boob. BOOBS. Are you happy now?

Mark Trail, 8/11/07

Speaking of boobs: You’d think that Sam, who’s been through a lot with Mark, would take the lead in thanking him for his help in saving this small-town airport, which help mostly took the form of violence and threats of the same, but it’s her dad who’s doing all the jawing here. Still, in panel three it does sort of appear that she’s about to thank him … visually.

And now, a little something for the ladies…

Gil Thorp, 8/11/07

Legitimate questions were raised about whether yesterday’s crotchtastic Gil Thorp was really as crotchy as all that, or if it was perhaps just the view through Bill Ritter’s boxing gloves. There’s really no doubt today, though. No, sir. That’s quite the crotch shot. Yep.

By the way, if Bill were holding a pack of cigarettes and wearing chaps, panel three would look uncannily like an enormous Marlboro billboard that loomed a mere two blocks from my high school when I was a kid, I swear to God.

The Lockhorns, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because Leroy has a crippling problem with alcohol! Funny!

Beetle Bailey, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because General Halftrack has a crippling problem with alcohol, and is so drunk that he’s managed to intoxicate his golf ball, in defiance of all the laws of biology and physics! Funny!