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Your comment of the week coming shortly, but first: enjoy this fine video, sent to me by faithful reader Mr.???. Stan Freberg urges you to read the Sunday comics … if you know what’s good for you. Featuring the Spectacular Spider-Ass!

And now, your comment of the week:

“If you need your wife’s permission to be a poacher, you probably aren’t cut out to be a poacher. Just sayin’.” –smacky

And your runners up! So funny!

Re: Marvin’s apparent lack of genitals: “Sadly, I suspect Marvin procreates by other means, probably by implanting his larvae in the brain or chest of some poor unsuspecting human.” –TheDiva

“I believe Adrian’s boyfriend has mistaken her for some kind of gigantic whiskey decanter and is trying to unscrew her head to get at the sweet, sweet liquor inside her neck.” –Joe Blevins

“Aristotle Papagoras/Sees the trees, but not the forest/ He’s just a drug-prescribin’ monkey/ For every eyebrow-batting junkie.” –Uncle Lumpy

“Who would have thought that the cop from the good family would prove to be a modern day Salome? Too bad we missed the Dance of the Seven Ugly Neckties.” –Nekrotzar

“In a further effort to reach out to its target audience, today’s Momma was specifically drawn to be enjoyed by people with cataracts.” –NoahSnark

“I think it’s funny that several people chose to assume the gender-neutral names were those of guys, even though there’s plausible deniability. Francis’s possible bisexuality doesn’t manage to make the strip funny or interesting, but it’s like we’re desperate to get it there somehow.” –junk science

“I don’t ever do the Jumble. I just go holler the four scrambled words out my front door and pretend I’m a trailer park Mom on Mars.” –Dancing Bear

“Look, if she’s staring at the wall while she’s talking to you, maybe you ought to think twice before prescribing narcotics.” –commodorejohn

“Fascinating. We all know it only takes your average man a few seconds to ‘turn’ his ‘microwave knob,’ while women usually require a bit more time. But this is the first information I’ve seen on the sexual proclivities of shapeless orange blob-things.” –ratnerstar

“The Professor recommends that Ms. Merrill double the dosage of her drugs, so that she will forget seeing his name and face on that ‘Wanted’ poster in Athens, where he is being sought for crimes against the electromagnetic spectrum by wearing that necktie with that jacket.” –seismic-2

“First compliment his physique, then get him drunk … is Brock reading directly from Handbook for the Desperately Closeted Teammate? ‘Duncan, I rented a dirty movie, wanna see? Oh my God, they the rental store must have totally mixed up the tapes! Hey, let me show you my new wrestling moves!'” –teddytoad

“Ooh! First sexting came to Milford, then stalkers and now it’s hipsters! I can’t wait to see see the poorly-drawn confusion on Gil’s face as he learns that Duncan doesn’t actually like Sonic Youth and is just wearing the t-shirt ironically, and also that Sonic Youth is some sort of rock and roll band.” –Rachel K

“Poor Dick Tracy; normally his cases are so easy to solve. Just find the person with some freakish genetic abnormality who has a name that describes that abnormality and make sure they die in some agonizing fashion. Now that he’s surrounded by freaks with corny pun names he might actually have to use real detective skills to crack that case. Well, at least after today we know someone will eventually be eaten by a tiger.” –Rob

“Whatever that shirt says under Duncan’s grotesquely oversized hand, there’s no way it’s ‘Sonic Youth.’ I’d say it’s ‘Comic Mouth,’ a condition that afflicts Duncan’s freakish friend.” –Steve S

“I don’t think ‘yeah I guess I pumped a little iron’ is so much carefully calibrated ambivalence, as it is a more sanitized, newspaper-friendly version of ‘uh … dude, is that a boner?’ Meanwhile, Brock/Robb’s attempt to cover (let’s go drink some heterosexual beer like heterosexuals) is as transparent and awkward as his naked ‘excitement’.” –edp

“You have to give the AJGLU credit when it’s due, and I really like how Reggie is such a complete douche that the fires of Hell are already beginning to consume him during his preamble, before he even gets to his douchey punchline.” –Edgy DC

“The longer I look at this Mary Worth strip the more insanely glorious it becomes! I just hope this time the Nazis manage to actually shoot some of those yodeling Von Trapp urchins.” –sugarpie

“Why is the police chief standing in front of FLOOR PLAN? When he says ‘infiltrated,’ how literal is he being? Are there heroin dealers in the ducts?” –OtherOpus

“The funny thing with Margo and Lu Ann’s exchange in the final panel is that usually it’s the other way around. ‘It gets easier, I promise’ is what Margo whispers to her lovers during their unspeakable sex acts.” –Mr.Death

“Is it correct police procedure for Detective Aryan Butterscotch to pull his weenus out in a restaurant for Adrian, claiming it will make things ‘one step better’? Or is he just reaching to ‘jiggle the handle’ so to speak?” –True Fable

“Just wait until Crankshaft finds out about Marvin’s bee-killing ways, given his known pro-bee sympathies. Maybe Batuik will put together a strip where Crankshaft invites Marvin and his family to an apiary conference to learn more about bees, and sadly they all die from Legionnaires’ disease. Except I won’t be sad at all! Hahahahaha!” –Brock Simpson

“I’m a bit surprised by Dr. Papagoras. Sex for drugs seems rather pedestrian. I figured his usual M.O. to be to get his patients hooked on his own special cocktail of lithium, diamorphine, and mescaline and then, using a combination of operant conditioning, hypnosis, and readings from Nietzsche, disable his ‘patients” moral center and impulse control, turning them into amoral, drug-fueled killing machines. Tommie and Lu Ann, of course, were early subjects of his, and he only succeeding in completely incapacitating their frontal lobes, but Margo — Margo is his masterpiece.” –Comrade Denny

“The key to Spider-Man is surely that the narration box doesn’t say how many seconds. It’s probably at least 3600. Enough time to ‘get her to safety,’ if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Oh wait. This is Peter Parker we’re talking about isn’t it? Make it 300 seconds. That’s probably enough time to get himself to safety anyway.” –fnord3125

I give prodigious thanks to those who put some money in my tip jar — you know who you are! I’d also thank our advertisers … if there were any who bought BlogAds ads, and who thus get thanked every week! Sadly, there aren’t any this week — maybe next week I’ll be thanking you! To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

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Thing one: Do you enjoy Julia Wertz’s Fart Party comic? Would you like her to spend more time drawing new comics and less time avoiding collections agency people from the hospital? Go to her fundraiser party, if you’re going to be in New York on September 18, or just give her money through the Paypal link on her site.

Thing two: Would like for a totally awesome panel about blogging to be on the agenda at next spring’s SXSW Interactive, which panel I might be on if I can afford to go? Well, vote for it here, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you! It will be great whether or not I’m on it.

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Well, sprinting through three days of comics in only a few hours was fun, but now I must wrap up the evening’s activities with your comments of the week. I promise not to leave you to your own devices for so long until Christmas! But before we hit the week’s top comments, I have a little merch plugging to do. Faithful reader Dingo writes:

I was the grand prize winner of the Canada Great Outdoors contest and won a weeklong fishing trip to northwest Ontario for me and a guest. I took my father. The highlight is that we weren’t just fishing; we were fishing with Babe Winkelman and it was being videotaped for one of his shows. The episode will air sometime in January. I, of course, could not pass up the opportunity to wear Curmudgeon clothing.

That’s an official Gail Martin t-shirt, which Dingo himself designed (see here for the backstory). And now the shirt (and its creator!) will be on the TV! How exciting!

But perhaps even more exciting is … the COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“Wow, Rusty … Sassy stopped publishing, like, 14 years ago. Someone should break it to the kid. Gently.” –UnknownEric

And the runners up! Super thrilling!

“WTF is up with Toby’s face? Was ‘the trip to Scotland’ really code for ‘went for a facelift by a barber in Tijuana’?” –Farley’s Revenge

“West View Singles are highly heteronormative. Your options are ‘man seeking a woman,’ ‘woman seeking a man,’ ‘depressed loser seeking a cancer patient,’ or ‘widow/er seeking misery.’ There is no ‘person seeking cancer’ as everybody there is soon to get it anyway. But are we to believe there are no gay people in West View? Maybe they all buggered off, figuring that if ‘gay’ has any connection to ‘happy,’ they’d best get out of town.” –Les of the Jungle Patrol

“What could possibly be on (the habitually-unemployed) Ziggy’s resume? ‘Hostility Sponge (1968 – present). Duties include soaking up the anger and resentment of my fellow human beings, essentially acting as a sentient Sham-Wow for the negativity and alienation of the modern world. Special skills include not killing myself.'” –Joe Blevins

“The very next panel from Apartment 3-G better be Margo rising from her coffin. I will accept nothing less.” –spazmodeas

“Dagwood is a slender man who consumes 3000+ calorie sandwiches in one sitting. I’m thinking there was more than just caffeine in his regular coffee.” –skullcrusherjones

“My fingernails are made of … tightly matted hair? Like on my head? Excuse me, I have to go throw up like 50,000 times.” –Chyron HR

“All I can say about today’s Mark Trail is that one’s pupils should never, ever be larger one’s ears.” –Alan’s Addiction

“Jittery?? Haha. Not me. Why, what have you heard? Blondie was fine when I left. Did something happen to her? What? I’m just wondering. How do you get blood stains out of a carpet? No reason. Hey, who’s got a sandwich? Haha. Jittery. Me. Ha.” –Buddy Hopkins: Music Cartoons

“Isn’t ‘fishing trip’ code for ‘birds-and-bees talk’? I’m looking forward to several weeks of Mark explaining to Rusty that when a man loves a woman very much, he goes off into the woods to punch bearded men in the face.” –Dagger

“YES, RUSTY, IT IS TIME. LET US THINK ABOUT A FISHING TRIP. CLOSE YOUR EYES, COME WITH ME. YOU WILL SEE WHAT I SEE. DO YOU SEE THE STREAMS? STEP INTO THEM. DO YOU SEE THE GIANT FISH? SO FREE, SO PURE, THEIR LIVES ENTWINED WITH THE — SO MUCH BIGGER THAN THE — THE HOUSES, THE OTTERS DIVING IN, THE ONES WHO STAND BY AND ONLY FILM, LEFT IN THEIR…THEIR WASTE..LEFT BY THE…humans…The…ACK!..the, (PUNCH), yes, the free, fish…es….the PURE ONES, THE (so much waste, so much wasted waste) FLOATING ONES! DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE? NO….Facial…hair….
YOU WILL SEE I WILL SHOW YOU!
oh, don’t cry, don’t cry your face is smooth like the otter.

YOUR FACE WILL ALWAYS BE OF THE OTTER!

oh dear god what have i done” –peabody

“After weeks of shameless plot-stretch to wrap up the tired saga of Delilah and Lawrence, we are now being treated to an extra bonus week of ‘Mary and Toeby talk about what already happened.’ I’d definitely read ‘Hey, Toeby, remember when you got your identity stolen from a phishing scam?’ ‘Mary, can we not talk about that?’ ‘But it was hilarious!'” –hogenmogen

“I pity those background characters [in Apartment 3-G], too, but at least they orbit bathed in the dark heat from Margo’s sun. Imagine what it must be like for, say, the blond guy who carpools with Dagwood.” –Uncle Lumpy

“Mary, I understand that you’re a-hundred-and-eighty-seven and all, but a black woolen jumper and a blouse buttoned up to your eyebrows still seems like an odd choice for a pool party. Were your ski mask and nun’s habit at the cleaners?” –Violet

“I was lucky. I had a PRO as a coach. Unlike you who had a negligent high school whistle-sucking moron whose inept coaching killed a promising career and created a stalker. Oh, too soon?” –Johnny Knuckles

“Keep working, young man. I like your arm! When you ruin it just like Marty did, I’ll buy it from you for a buck and put it in my display case.” –Steve S

“Also, Elwood’s cosplay interests are just bikini-clad ESPer warriors and not horrifying empty-eyed pig fursuits.” –commodorejohn

“‘Literally and figuratively’ is about as sexually explicit as I want my Mary Worth to be. It’s like I’m a teenager again and my mother is explaining the physical mechanics of intercourse in code so as not to embarrass herself by mentioning any actual body parts. I bet Tobey says ‘bajingo.'” –StoutHearted

“I thought it might be uncomfortable for Francis to lie on his stomach on the beach without a towel, until I realized he needed to dig a hole in the sand to hide his erection from Momma.” –Patrick

“Momma should just be glad that her sons are attracted to women with normal-shaped bodies. From the looks of the older generation, I’m pretty sure ‘Hobbs’ was shortened from ‘Hobbits’ by an immigration official on Ellis Island.” –BigTed

“Lois has to put little hearts and XOXO’s on her note, so she’ll be sure Hi knows she wants to have sex. Otherwise, Hi might say, ‘Start a family? How does one ‘start’ a family? Do you use a key? Or do you pull a cord, like on a lawnmower? And what do they do once you start them? So many questions! I think I’ll just go trim the hedges instead.'” –Perky Bird

I give prodigious thanks to those who put some money in my tip jar — you know who you are! I’d also thank our advertisers … if there were any who bought BlogAds ads, and who thus get thanked every week! Sadly, there aren’t any this week — maybe next week I’ll be thanking you! To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.