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Hello everyone! Many readers have sent me images and other exciting ITEMS that I haven’t had time to go through this week — I promise to feature them in a future metapost. Apologies if you sent me something and I haven’t responded to you yet! Until then, though, I offer only this comment of the week:

“I’m tempted to make a snarky comment about the desperation of dying print media that they’d print something by Trail, but it really is an article the public needs to know. ‘I trespassed onto private property, harassed an armed senator, and punched the future governor — By Mark Trail.'” –Speck

And the runners up! Also funny!

“Today’s Mark Trail takes place in an alternate universe where a small girl and a cute baby deer that you totally didn’t shoot doesn’t constitute the photo op of a lifetime for two politicians.” –JB

“Pet shooting aside, Frank is going to have a hard time selling himself as the ‘family values’ candidate given his total lack of interest in learning or using his step-daughter’s name.” –Thomas B.

“The local obit section, aka ‘Facebook for pluggers.’” –Jake Morgendorffer

“I don’t know why anyone would think Lisa’s Story didn’t have a happy ending. She got away from Les, didn’t she?” –Poteet

“Billy, you’ve only written three large words and some scribbles. Grandmothers around the world are probably posting this on their refrigerators, though. ‘Haha, my grandson is a moron too!'” –Shawn S.

“The bad guy has kicked him twice now, but Lucky hasn’t budged an inch. That little deer’s a fucking badass.” –Doctor Handsome

“He’s right, he may not get to do that much any more, if there is a three-strikes law in his state.” –tbiggs

“MJ: ‘Now I remember! The Moleman once fought the Fantastic Four!’ Peter: ‘What a bunch of chumps! It’s much easier just to let him walk away.'” –Francisco Arrowroot

“I’d be pissed if I was Cody Exner — ripped away from my dad, Cars frontman Ric Ocasek. Paulina smokes to stay thin!” –Sed

“I like to imagine Aunt Iris as having a high-pitched-serial-killer voice when she says ‘Hello, dearie!’ Hello, dearie, would you like to try my pecan pie? My secret ingredient is YOUR BRAINS.” –SamECircle

“Perhaps Bil is holding sweaters while he hides in the bushes because he plans to tackle the trick-or-treaters to the ground and make them put on sweaters, since this is what passes for fun in the Keane Household; they aren’t allowed to play with anything modern so instead they play ‘Sweater Tackle’. I dunno, that seems at least as logical as anything else I can come up with to explain this weirdo’s actions.” –Alison

“I know the perspective in Gil Thorp is generally insane, but does anyone really hang their diploma a millimeter below their drop ceiling?” –Patrick

“I’m betting Tommie walks into rooms saying ‘Where is everyone?’ a lot.” –Paddy

“In the perpetual ’50s of the Family Circus universe, the only people with full Van Dyck beards are Freudian psychoanalysts who came to America in the ’30s to escape the war. This one will evidently be kept very busy.” –Ktrout

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And we must of course give thanks to our advertisers:

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Your COTW in the moment, but first: I want to share some very special fan art I received from faithful reader Brenda Starr Destroyer!

The third panel of today’s A3G was so goddamn amazing that I was inspired to make countless exciting animated GIFs of it, but I am too lazy and suck at computers. So instead I made some MS Paint drawings, and you can imagine that they are fun and stimulating, or you can try dropping acid.

Brenda Starr Destroyer went on to note that “the line, ‘Extensions are AWESOME!!!’ in a cartoon should be followed by a reveal of hilariously extreme hair, preferably of a completely different race or age.” Sadly, until the wrong is righted, we only have these hilarious/horrifying MS Paint drawings console us.

And now your comment of the week!

“I have just made sense of Dick Tracy. Absinthe time!” –Uncle Lumpy

And your runners up! Also hilarious!

“Shoe: ‘Oh, dear god in heaven! He … he used a word in a secondary sense which actually — choke – means something a bit different from what I may have first expected! It’s like my whole psychic universe is crumbling to bits, making me crave the cool serenity of the gra… we’re done? Okay, paycheck here I come.'” –[Old Man] Muffaroo

“Judge Parker: They need to show a lot more boob if we’re to pretend that’s good French.” –Aviatrix

“Rustina’s eyes are drawn so she appears to be looking down (cross-eyed down, in fact). Is she some sort of misshapen gigantress who could easily put an end to this whole plotline by dropping some size 165EEEEEEEs on the wicked caged-animal hunters? And maybe the giant deer behind her will cap it all off by turning around and dropping some deer-do the size of a Dodge Neon on the evil men while Mark Trail just watches from his hill camp in amazement.” –Apeman

“My spider-sense is tingling like mad! Well, if there’s any danger, at least I’m here in a comfy seat with nachos, not out there with all that danger. Excelsior!” –Ed Dravecky

“This is interesting, today, to me, because when my wife went to look at wedding dresses, she was also carrying her own personal bar of soap.” –Little A.

“If you scroll the Mark Trail panel just enough to cut off the top, you get a terrified little girl screaming ‘Kill the animals — PLEASE!’ as she’s being pursued by an eyeless Deadite fawn, and MT becomes the most awesome strip in newspapers. Like most things in life, fixing comics is easy as long as you know where to slice.” –Vermic

And let’s just take a time out here for some more fan art! Because faithful reader Annie had the same thought upon seeing this panel, and sent in a screenshot:

Uncanny, no? And now, back to the runners up:

“Lu Ann isn’t just happy — she’s jazz-hands happy, and Margo’s coquettish glance in Panel 1 tells me she more than a little pleased to have the old Lu Ann back. Somebody’s going to get bathroomed tonight, and how!” –A Shadowy Figure Fleetingly Glimpsed from the Corner of Your Eye

“I’m pretty sure that last panel is supposed to say ‘amphetamines,’ not ‘extensions.'” –Violet

“I haven’t really been following Mary Worth. Is it a story point that Jill is eight feet tall? Or is she just drawn that way for the hell of it?” –AndyL

“Panel 3 of Apartment 3-G will soon be used in an ad for a penis-enlargement device in the back pages of an alternative newspaper.” –Pozzo

“What is this guy’s deal? Did he run out of grocery money? ‘SHOOT THE @#%# DEER OR NONE OF US EAT TONIGHT!!!’” –Amateur

“Lu Ann got those special, ‘Write-Yourself-Out-of-A-Corner’-brand hair , in ‘Your-Senior-Citizen-Readership-Relies-On-External-Signifiers-To-Tell-Your-Characters-Apart’ blonde.” –late2theparty

“COME ON SENATOR, IT WILL MAKE A GOOD MEAL FOR DINNER TONIGHT, OR MAYBE YOU CAN CURE IT AND PRESERVE IT FOR A SNACK FOR SOME TIME YET TO BE DETERMINED, OR MAYBE YOU JUST CUT OFF ITS TINY HEAD AND MOUNT IT ON YOUR WALL AND FEEL REALLY GREAT ABOUT YOURSELF, so uh anyway, who do you like in the gubernatorial primaries?” –Maggie

“Dance, puppet Lu Ann! Dance to my cynical job offerings!” –gjdodger

“Note the difference between their ages. A jail-‘bait’ pun beckons — but, like the Sirens, remains tantalizingly out of reach.” –Spiny Norman

“I see that Mark Trail was once a wildlife photographer, and is now the Prince of Persia.” –Rumon

“Now I want everyone in class to know that the most important rule of handling firearms is to never, ever stop aiming them no matter the circumstances, especially if you suddenly have reservations about shooting things to the point that you’re shouting them at the top of your lungs. That’s how they get you, kids. That’s how they get you.” –Black Drazon

“Phantom: No wonder Diana is so confident she can jet. Dudes are walking around clockin’ officers (and nobody seems to miss them), people are wandering through the prison wearing purple cowels and shit, blind spots along the fence line allow fools to decorate the barbed wire with palm leaves like he’s at a damn Minnesota tiki bar. Then he wanders BACK into the prison as if he left his wallet on somebody’s desk. Classic. If I ever go to prison I hope it’s one like that one.” –Gregory Earls

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!

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Your comments of the week shortly, but first comes this haunting image from faithful readers Teresa and Joel:

“We were hiking at Judge C.R. Magney State Park in northern Minnesota this week, and came across a chain link fence out in the middle of the woods. Perhaps the current Mark Trail plot is not as far-fetched as we all thought!”

Thank goodness you didn’t try to get behind that fence, Teresa and Joel, or your heads would have almost certainly would have ended up on some senator’s wall!

And now, here is your comment of the week!

“Newspaper comics raising awareness of breast cancer? I’m pretty sure people are more aware of breast cancer than they are of newspaper comics.” –Lorne

And your almost as funny runners up!

“‘Well, Mary, Type A personality means someone who likes to tell other people what to do, who has to get their own way, who is just really pushy and sort of a control freak.’ [awkward silence]” –T. Chicana

“Hold on, Jack wanted someone more average than Lu Ann, and he somehow passed on Tommie? What’s going on here?” –Chip Whittle

“Huh. I missed the press release when Willem Dafoe was recast as Aunt May.” –monsieurjohn

“Is it raining in Gil Thorp, or is the sky made of glass because it’s some kind of Truman Show experiment where a bunch of infants were left near a pile of uniforms to see how they’d develop?” –Rhekarid

“That dead-eyed look that both Peter Parker and Aunt May are sporting in panel three is bottomless despair at the thought of spending a night away from the television.” –Judas Peckerwood

“Remember when Dad said that he never, ever wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state, and then he asked for help setting up a ‘DVR’ order? Too bad we just chuckled and rolled our eyes.” –late2theparty

“I really hope Peter and MJ are doing that thing where Peter is pulling his fist forward and MJ is applying opposite pressure and then she lets go, and he smacks himself in the face with his own fist! Because that would be great.” –Bootsy

“I think Crankshaft has been a dream sequence all week because Jeff and Pam are acting as if the malapropisms are funny. We can only hope that in the real world Jeff and Pam are smothering him with a pillow.” –nescio

“I envy Crankshaft right now. He is dead, right?” –TheDiva

“Rex Morgan: Proof that our modern society’s conception of celebrity has gone too far. I can see the Wikipedia page now: Mayor Dalton’s prostate is a compound tubuloalveolar endocrine gland of Mayor Dalton’s reproductive system. It is most famous for having cancer. [1] While most people have never seen it and X-ray images of it are unavailable to the public, Mayor Dalton’s oncologist has called it ‘the most beautiful prostate’ he has ever seen. [citation needed]” –whozitwhatzit

“So Wally drunkenly gave Becky arm cancer?” –Plinko Commie

“Who but communist hobos would warm themselves next to a barrel of glowing uranium bars?” –Patrick

“Dick Tracy is wholly unfamiliar with the hobo gay dating scene. You can’t just ask him to take it out so you can take a looksee, you have play sly. Maybe set a garbage can fire first.” –Taquelli

“I hope to hell that’s a flashback, and not a giant portrait of Becky’s car crash that the coffeehouse has displayed on its wall. On the other hand, maybe that’s why they call the place ‘Jitters.'” –BigTed

“I don’t really understand how Crankshaft consistently misfires so badly with such a potentially awesome premise. Like if someone told me, ‘I have this idea for a comic featuring adorable malapropisms a la Family Circus but instead of being delivered by winsome tots, they’ll be coming from an angry old jerk whom everyone hates,’ I’d be like, ‘Hey, that sounds hilarious!’ I guess it only works in theory.” –Violet

“Is Tommie sleeping in her new shirt? If so, I look forward to the next thirty years of her descent into Miss Havisham-like madness, wandering around the apartment in her faded lilac ruffle and bitterly cursing those who promised to make her interesting.” –A New Day

“The Spider-Man artists love MJ’s name in lights too, because it means half a panel of text in generic free fonts instead of art.” –bman

“This nascent Spider-Man plotline is blatantly derivative of Uncanny X-Men #148, in which the Morlock Caliban emerges from his sewer dwelling to abduct Kitty Pryde (alias Ariel, alias Sprite, alias Shadowcat) and forces her to be his subterranean bride. I expect a written apology on my desk Monday morning, mister Stan Lee, if that is in fact your real name which it is not. Excelsior to you, sir.” –Chyron HR

“Well. That’s okay, everybody. You can all just ignore the gigantic nipple-covered hat in today’s Curtis. You go on having these civilized discussions on the pros and cons of this campaign, and I’ll just be over here silently screaming to myself.” –Caroline

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And we must of course give thanks to our advertisers:

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