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Kids, we have a number of ITEMS! for you to get through before we reach the beloved COTW, but I think you will find them worth your while!

First off, long-time readers of this blog are well-acquainted with The Fart Party, one of my favoritist Web comics. But for everyone who’s been all like “Man, reading stuff on the Web is for suckers,” now you can get the second volume in book form! Julia Wertz chronicles her happy-go-lucky drunken cheese-oriented self-loathing, for your entertainment! Buy it now if you know what’s good for you, sucka!

Also! Faithful reader McManx draws my attention to this image, recently added to Wikipedia’s Mary Worth article, from the cover of a 1956 comic book compilation of our favorite meddling biddy’s adventures:

So, first, yes, Mary Worth once had its own comic book, and was identified on the cover of said book as “One of America’s great newspaper comics,” despite which obviously false claim the Comics Code Authority still deigned to grant its seal of approval. But as McManx points out, isn’t there something familiar about this scene? Angry Mary … weeping dark-haired beauty with small scrap of paper, possibly with a phone number written on it … menacing stripe-shirted figure — good lord! Could the Charley-Delilah plotline be spooling out again, decades after its origin?

Also also! Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish there were a blog that does for terrible rock lyrics what Josh’s blog does for comics?” Well, now there is, in the form of Awesomely Bad Lyrics. Go forth and enjoy!

And finally! If you would like to help a blogger who’s blogging a blogathon for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, check this out!

And now, after all that, your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“What’s going on? What was that loud noise? And why is blood coming out of the front of your shirt? Are these two events related? Oh, how I wish Andy were here to explain this to me!” –buckyswife

And the runners up! Many funny ones, this week…

“Now that I’ve looked at it again, I’m thinking that the jack-in-the-box is just to get Ziggy on his back, from where he is unable to rise without help. Help which, one prays to god, is never forthcoming.” –Muffaroo

“Doesn’t this panel prove once and for all that Ziggy IS, in fact, wearing pants? Footie pajama pants, to be precise. So, now can we please stop worrying about getting a glimpse of his pudenda? And start worrying that maybe he has the kind with a flap in the back that could suffer a wardrobe malfunction at any moment?” –Brett

“Joey, those people you are involved with are gangsters … they will ruin us and the company if you don’t stop them now! So, quick, talk to Mark Trail, who I know as a person who takes photographs and emphasizes words peculiarly!” –Chip Whittle

“Funky Winkerbean: We put the ‘GI’ in ‘turgid’!” –Uncle Lumpy

“So as each Phantom is named Walker for ‘the ghost who walks,’ then each Judge is named Parker, for ‘the sexless lawyer who parks carelessly’?” –Ed Dravecky

“Brad’s flirting reminds me of a bad joke I will re-work: Q: What’s long and hard on Brad? A: The third grade.” –Rusty

“Brad, Brad, you degenerate cad! Don’t think I can’t follow your eyeline in panel one, mister! Did you really think you’d get away with eyeing Toni’s collarbone like that? Her eyes are up here, thankyouverymuch. And her eyebrows are way up here, kind of floating in the abyss. See ’em?” –Joe Blevins

“I don’t see how anyone can resent the years-long, go-nowhere sexy banter between Brad and Toni. I can only hope it continues for decades to come, finally leaving Brad an old man on an unrumpled deathbed, ruminating on the fact that in the heady rush of all the double entendres, he forgot to have sex.” –Dan

“Mommy gives me a bath by dropping me in the water and then leaving and passing out with a bottle of wine on the couch.” –Rob

“Is it just me, or are Wolverine’s mutton chops getting muttoner and muttoner by the day?” –Roto13

“MJ, on the other hand, will be pleased to discover that sex with Logan involves actual penile penetration, as opposed to Peter’s ejaculating onto webs and, after a lengthy courtship dance, furtively inserting his seldom-depicted pedipalps into her vagina before running away, lest she eat him.” –Comrade Denny

“The 7/16 Mary Worth is making me want to pull a 7/16 Trixie.” –KarMann

“Isn’t that Larry King, dressed like Colonel Sanders, speaking to Margo? Is that why she looks flustered? I know I would be.” –Jumper

“To Wolverine: Sorry bub, but in this strip, shiny blue hair that shapes your face like an autobot cannot compete with Peter Parker’s gay-Elvis forelock. Chinbeards only get lovin’ in Mary Worth.” –teddytoad

“1. Protagonist is introduced. 2. Protagonist’s trivial problem is revealed. 3. Problem is blown way the hell out of proportion. 4. Anvils — a lot of anvils — are dropped on protagonist. 5. Protagonist, having seen not only stars but also good sense, obligingly dances on strings held by soulless inhuman puppetmaster. 6-29. Pastel food montage. 30. Choose one: (i) pool party, (ii) fiery death.” –One-eyed Wolfdog, on how a typical Mary Worth plot could be fit into 30 panels

“I just assumed that all characters, not only the Alzheimy ones, wanted to escape RMMD.” –Anthony

“That’s the Alzheimer’s enclosure behind us! We call it ‘Charterstone’, and nearly every one of the residents wants to escape!” –Naked Bunny With A Whip

“Better Otto pondering the Bhagavad Gita than General Halftrack’s investigations into the Kama Sutra.” –zerowolf

“Is one of Wolverine’s mutant powers his utter lack of table manners? Maybe that’s why most ‘non-mutes’ shun him — no one wants to be sprayed with bits of food as he chops up his meat and stuffs it in his mouth with both hands. For MJ, of course, anything is a change for the better from Peter’s passive-aggression and prissy neuroses.” –Lawyerbob

“Peter would shoot his webbing to pick up his own food wad, but even that little bit of excitement would overwhelm him, and he’d need to lie down on the couch.” –Steve S

“I didn’t think Margo was necessarily against human happiness, per se. I always just assumed it failed to interest her, unless it affected her plans in some way.” –boojum

“The first Spider-man panel makes sense if you consider the context. Between MJ’s direct-to-video starlet lifestyle and Peter’s utterly gutless inability to stand up to Jameson (coupled with the proportionate photographic talent of a spider), the Parkers can only afford to eat at the worst restaurants in New York. Such eateries often have insufficient flatware sets during peak hours and the pork chops are so dry and underprepared that nothing short of unbreakable adamantium combat claws can cut through them.” –Birthmark Hal

“Your desperation has led you to forget everything you know of either seagulls or Marvin. Death pecking is not a possibility. A relentless diarrhetic war of pitiless, sphincterless attrition is indicated.” –Jp

“I just like that the assassin has remembered to wear blaze orange. Safety first!” –Orange Cactus

“It would seem that the sniper in Mark Trail is using some kind of Giant Word Gun, as it appears Joey Williams is actually being knocked over by the word ‘WHAM!’” –Digger

“I love how that second MW panel is labeled ‘Meanwhile’ but there’s nothing going on. ‘Meanwhile … Delilah exists.’ ‘Meanwhile … Delilah walks.’ ‘Meanwhile … bamboo slowly crowds out all other flora in Charterstone and begins plans to go after the fauna.'” –the angry black woman

“Mark Trail: even when a long-hair wants to go straight, he still has to die.” –Ktrout

“It is hard to watch Bill degenerate into senility, hollowly shouting disjointed passages from a comic book, insensible to the fact that his children have left his side long ago. His mental degeneration has progressed so aggressively that he is no longer able to support his family; poor Thel has obviously been forced in her middle age to moonlight as a hotel maid while nursing and patronizing her doddering husband. ‘HOW’S YOUR BOOK?'” –Greenbrastic

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Family Circus, 7/19/09

You might have noticed the title of the book Big Daddy Keane is reading to his little ankle-biters, Rat and Pig Get Lost, which is an installment in a good-natured back and forth between the Family Circus and Pearls Before Swine. More intriguing, though, is what this cartoon reveals about the Keane Kids: not only are they illiterate, but they can’t even sit still to be read aloud to, and rather will wander in the direction of the hypnotic, glowing picture box, the better to move their brains past their current gelatinous state and straight on into liquidity.

Mary Worth, 7/19/09

While this installment might seem to be taking place immediately on the heels of yesterday’s, with Mary tidying up and thought-ballooning like mad and Delilah wandering aimlessly around the grounds, note that both ladies have changed into completely different (though still hideous) outfits, so this could be days or months later. But apparently enough time has passed that Delilah is finally ready to make a call … to her dealer, if her freakishly enlarged pupils are any indication.

Slylock Fox, 7/19/09

The main mystery panel in today’s strip is fairly bland — another fox-mouse double date leading up to some drunken partner-swapping that the radical differences in size will make incredibly awkward — but I’m pretty intrigued by the scene over in Six Differences. Are the woodland herbivores engaging in some kind of Druid ritual to call down a lightning strike against their predator-enemy, the terrible wolf? I hope the pagan magic will keep the beavers safe, as I’m not sure the open water is the best place to be in a thunderstorm.

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Garfield, 7/18/09

Some years back, some friends of mine got married at a little camp they had rented in lovely Big Island, Virginia, in the rural foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. After the reception, they headed over to a nearby bed and breakfast, while most of the guests crashed overnight at the camp; the next day, the happy couple came back to the camp to have lunch with us, with a tale to tell. Apparently, there was one other couple also spending their wedding night at the bed and breakfast that night, and at breakfast the next morning, they looked like they were in more or less a state of shock — as my friend put it, they appeared to have experienced “a night full of terrible discoveries.” That’s what popped into my mind here when I saw John and Liz’s traumatized faces. Have they crossed some line, gone someplace from which they can never return? Will they ever be the same again? Was there a lot of tongue involved?

I’m amused, meanwhile, that Garfield feels a need to euphemize a disgust-prompted quantum of vomit as a “hairball.” Perhaps Paws, Inc., believes that the newspaper comics morals police would accept a reference to the sort of regurgitation natural to the cat lifestyle, whereas straight-up barfing would be forbidden. Clearly, they hadn’t seen this.

Mary Worth, 7/18/09

Speaking of people who have just experienced a night of terrible discoveries, check out Mary and Delilah’s devastated facial expressions here. You’ll have noticed that, while I breathlessly kept you up to date two weeks ago on every aspect of the interaction between Mary, Delilah, and Charley, I have been silent in the aftermath; that’s because the aftermath was boring, consisting of Mary and Delilah having the same pointless conversation, about how Delilah should get back together with her husband and Delilah saying she’d like to but she’s not sure, that they had for like three solid weeks leading up to the wonderful Charley episode. Mary is now washing her dishes with a look of defeated resignation on her face, her meddling having apparently failed to break through Delilah’s thick skull. Delilah, meanwhile, has chosen to wander unescorted around Charterstone in her revealing outfit, which will surely result in Charley leaping out of the bushes and wooing her with more transparent sleazy banter. Thus are the punishments the gods dish out to those who ignore Mary’s sound advice.

Gil Thorp, 7/18/09

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp: The Stalkening, it appears we just might have a worthily bonkers summer storyline. WHO could hurling these baseballs at Gil and/or leaving them in his mailbox, since Shep Trumbo is “on vacation” (i.e., in prison for loosening the caps of all those saltshakers)? Who has Gil wronged in a baseball-themed manner, leading him to lurk in the shadows, wearing a Phantom of the Opera-style half-mask, cackling evilly and plotting revenge? Could it be Elmer Vargas, now condemned to work for the Kalamazoo Kings for all time? Clambake, whose dreams of baseball coaching glory were forever ruined by his ugly season with the Mudlarks? Everyone who’s played on the baseball team for the past six years and failed to go anywhere in the playdowns?

Mark Trail, 7/18/09

I’ve never had anyone assassinated by a sniper right in front of me, but I’m willing to bet the resulting noise would really be more like a BLAM or a KA-POW or a neeeeerrrMMP than a WHAM. However, the more important question is: what sound effects will the bullets make as they are punched out of the air one by one by Mark, as he slowly and deliberately makes his way back to confront our sinister villain?