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Welcome back, everybody! Did you enjoy your holiday week off? I did, but as ever I must submit to the siren song of the comics! How did our favorite characters spend the week?

Apartment 3-G, 12/27/10

Well, over at Apartment 3-G, Lu Ann realized with a sinking feeling that she never should have trampily exposed that shoulder if she expected to win the heart of his altar boy. Would she just burst into flames if she entered Paul’s church? Better not risk it!

Apartment 3-G, 12/29/10

Also, just FYI, never, ever speak ill of Margo’s building if you want to live.

Curtis, 12/29/10

Curtis’s annual Kwanztraavaganza is featuring less insane hallucinogenic ancient African magic and more depressing modern American unemployment, which is a bummer. But at least the protagonist has a horrifying jawless lamprey-dog as a pet. That counts for something, right?

Mark Trail, 12/29/10

Over in Mark Trail, our hero seems to be learning about this thing called “flirting.”

Funky Winkerbean, 1/1/11

And in Funky Winkerbean, Les’s two ladies finally realized that he’s in love with a dead woman, and now they will give up their fruitless and baffling pursuit of him. (Ha ha, just kidding, they still want to sex him up for reasons no sane person could ever comprehend.)

Mary Worth and Spider-Man, 1/1/11

2011 brought us not one but two wonderful weddings: one solemnized under the watchful glower of Mary Worth, and one made more festive by an endless river of silent, inhuman monsters. Happy New Year, everybody! The bestial fiends of Subterranea are coming to devour you!

Panel from Dick Tracy, 1/2/11

Back on the surface, Dick Tracy’s Crimestoppers Textbook seems to be really, really reaching for crimes to stop.

Anyway, expect 2011 here at the Comics Curmudgeon to bring you basically the same awesomeness that you’ve been getting for nearly seven years now, unless of course the newspaper comics industry completely collapses, in which case I’ll turn the whole thing into a Mary Worth fetish porn site. Happy New Year to you all! And check those receipts! ERRORS DO OCCUR.

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Mary Worth, 12/24/10

“I know! I’ll warn her that marriage is a scam and that Scott will betray her! And if she doesn’t believe me, I’ll just punch him in the face! It’ll be all like, ‘Merry Christmas’ — KAPOW!”

Folks, by the time you read these words, I’ll be off my on multi-city Christmas journey! I’ll be back with 2011 comics by January 3, but until then, enjoy your last comment of the week of 2010!

“Apartment 3-G! The daily soap opera comic strip about three independent young single women, living on the town in New York! In tonight’s episode: the best and only Christmas party they could get invited to was thrown by one of their aunts. 8 p.m.!” –Black Drazon

And the very funny runners up!

“Obviously the Keane kids are taught a different version of Christmas carols, emphasizing the terrible fate that awaits the blashphemers who secularize the day of Our Lord’s birth.” –Truckasaurus

“Jill sure does look ‘high on a cloud’ in panel one. ‘A cloud’ is slang for ‘a fuck-ton of MDMA,’ right?” –Doctor Handsome

“Ah, those carefree days back at Califugly Brutalist Architecture U.” –Edgy DC

“Clearly we have all been too hard on Jill, for our own depraved amusement. Even at a glance one can tell Jordan was her soul mate. ‘Let’s get a jug of wine this big, then go home and have sex.’ he says. ‘No!’ Jill replies with a rapturous gaze, ‘Let’s get a jug of wine THIS big!'” –DaveyK

“OH MY GOD, this explains why nobody at Camp Swampy ever sees combat! Otto has an ‘in’ with defense contractors!” –Dan

“The pies are trophies in Mary’s lair. ‘One pie for each ruined life! Bwah ah ah ah!'” –Another Kiwi

“By the way, how about that fucking Mary Worth? Can nobody from Santa Fucking Royale even summon up a black person from memory to stick in a flashback crowd shot?” –Edgy DC

“Whatever happens, I’m sure June will icily disapprove of something.” –BERTMARCH, on the current Rex Morgan, M.D., storyline

“I wish I had Lex Luthor at power forward as well.” –Bud

“I thought my husband had magically arranged the ultimate birthday surprise — no more Les! Disappointed, again. I hold out hope that the Wally & Rachel murder-suicide story line will wrap up in time for Mother’s Day.” –Lisa

“Wow, Tommie got hot! Now pass me that cup of bleach. I neither wish nor deserve to go on with this paltry existence.” –TruthOfAngels

“So who all exactly is going to be in attendance at this little soiree of Iris’? The girls from 3-G; Trey the bicycling architect, who raises the intriguing paradox of how someone could be simultaneously that weird and that boring; Prissy the cat; and, if we’re really lucky, Ari Papagoras might swing by for a drink. This shit’s going to make Charterstone look like Studio 54.” –Violet

“So Spidey feels that his actions are constrained by matters of extradition law, but not by such niceties as common decency? Sounds about right.” –Nekrotzar

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Mary Worth, 12/21/10

Ever since she successfully cured Dr. Mike’s inability to love, Mary’s fancied herself something of an amateur therapist. Today we learn just how far she’s going with her little hobby: she’s apparently developed some extreme form of rational-emotive behavioral therapy where patients use their thoughts to control not only their emotions and attitudes, but their memories as well. “Jill, you were only abandoned by your fiance at the altar because that’s how you choose to remember it! If you simply rethink your memories, then perhaps you’ll realize that he did show up after all, and you’ve been happily married for the past seven years! If you go home and find your house still empty and lonesome, it probably just means that you’re not trying hard enough.”

Gil Thorp, 12/21/10

Notice that Gil actually gives Marty a straight and substantive answer about sports, — in response to Marty’s hesitant attempt to establish emotional intimacy with his long-term frenemy. “Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t tell him that what I wish I had but don’t: recognition from my journalistic peers and my parents of how hard I work on my sportswriting craft. Christ, I feel like an asshole now.”

Apartment 3-G, 12/21/10

Hmm, the girls are already dressed in their best party clothes — Margo in an actually rather fetching little black dress, Tommie in her Star Trek: The Motion Picture-era Starfleet uniform, and Lu Ann in [artist’s duty to think of third party outfit avoided by crafty foreground figure placement] — and Iris has gotten out the punch bowl and traditional balloon wreath, and yet this seems to be the first our trio of protagonists have heard of this party. The possibilities: either we’re in the last scene of an ’80s comedy and all Iris needs to do is mention a party to summon the various accoutrements thereof out of thin air while a Journey soundtrack blares in the background, or she was planning on throwing a swell party and not inviting the 3-G gals, a plan they ruined by stopping by unannounced on their way someplace else.

By the way, it’s nice to see that Iris is planning on repaying Mrs. Bloom’s kind offer of a free place to crash by trashing said free place with endless partying.

Mark Trail, 12/21/10

“Yes, just put your boat near his boat! I am ‘interested’ in being within seeing distance of him! This is because of something I will explain later. It certainly not because I am on a secret government mission, so do not believe that! I am, uh, interested in making sex with him! Yes, that’s it! That’s something humans say, right?”

Ziggy, 12/21/10

Since the mice in Ziggy are generally portrayed as anthropomorphic wisecrackers, the sight of one dead and dangling limply from a cat’s grinning mouth is fairly startling. What could make this worse? Oh, right, the thought of the stench of searing mouse flesh, the hint of which will always linger on the coils of the toaster’s heating elements! Yes, that will do nicely.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/21/10

Oh, look, despite a mysterious phone call from his dead wife warning him not to get on his flight, Les did not in fact die in a fiery plane crash. I know, I’m just as disappointed as you are.