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Stupid work will delay Monday comics until the wee hours, but I didn’t want to deny you the joy of the comment of the week.

“It’s tough to get yourself into the rhythm of a street fight when you spend so much time on exposition: ‘Look! It’s the teenager with sallow skin whose membership in a higher socioeconomic class I resent! And the now-teenager who tormented me in first grade, leading to a long-harbored animosity on my part! Get them!'” –Hubris

And the runners up! A particularly hilarious batch.

“Or else Pitfall Harry is Ted’s stripper name for himself. That would make more sense.” –The Uncola

“But why does Ziggy even want cable? Other people watch TV to enjoy movies without leaving the house, or to escape their daily troubles, but Ziggy can’t even see a gum wrapper on the sidewalk without it somehow serving as a reminder of what a loser he is. I’d say the best thing for him would be a sensory deprivation chamber and massive doses of lithium, or maybe thorazine. There is also a definite possibility that this has already happened, and what we see is the result.” –Donald The Anarchist

“Francie’s right. Everything does smell like legs.” –Red Greenback

“Ah, Brad and Toni — it’s like Tracy/Hepburn for imbeciles.” –Uncle Lumpy

“What the hell does that mean. It makes no sense. It makes negative sense. The Family Circus owes us sense, and a lot of it, too.” –Lord-z

“The face of utter despair on daddy Keane clearly indicates that those papers are of the paternity tests he does every month. Today’s papers, as every time, indicate that Jeffy is indeed his son.” –Wili

“Whenever Mary says the ‘important’ (using the term loosely) line of the day’s strip, she always looks up as though something is on the ceiling. I like to think that the drivel she spouts is actually written on cue cards, and she’s just forced to say whatever is pasted on the ceiling. It makes me feel slightly better when I read the strip.” –Jemmy

“I think it would be a cosmic act of mercy if a giant flaming meteorite landed right on top of that gingerbread house while Brad and the perpetually-grinning TJ were sound asleep and could be instantly flambeed. The funerals would provide material for a couple of weeks and add some much-needed gravitas to the strip. And the mournful eulogies about TJ’s perpetual smile would actually be true.” –Poteet

“‘What’s with the Santa hat in the office, Bumstead?’ ‘I thought it would make things a little more festive, boss.’ ‘It’s not festive! It’s black, you feckless slop-gobbler!’ ‘So is your soul, you withered old crustacean! [fisticuffs]” –Keg of Curd

“Just because I don’t completely understand [the second panel of this Gil Thorp] doesn’t mean I don’t find it completely awesome! Spider-Man and Phantom take note: this is action! I think.” –PeteMoss

“It looks to me as though Mary is accosting random passers-by with her inane platitudes. ‘Hey, you with the ball! Who knows what tomorrow brings or takes away? You there in the jeans, let’s just enjoy today! Don’t walk away from me like that! I know you can hear me!'” –Cheese-n-Pear

“Look, kid, I already expelled you from my uterus. Can’t you take a hint?” –cheech wizard

“In the third panel of Funky Winkerbean, I can’t tell if Pete’s black pen is meant to signify the little black cell phone on which a lady would make a booty call, or Pete’s little putrefied penis, which he enjoys cradling at a 45-degree angle, to brush against the various covers of his comic books. Either way I hope he never contacts me on J-Date.” –RaJ

“‘Wombo’ is the most disturbing name ever in the They’ll Do It Every Time canon. ‘Are you disobeying me? Have you forgotten where you came from? I don’t see how you could, considering I named you after it. My womb, that’s right. So unless I’m mistaken and you didn’t come out of my body, you’ll do what I say. Now go tell your sister Utera that it’s time for dinner.'” –Francis

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You were all good, so now you get your delayed-by-one-day comment of the week!

“Mark Trail sounds like Keanu Reeves, without the emotion.” –ltrftp(not so first time)

And let’s not forget the runners up:

“My God, Lu Ann is actually, literally excited to watch paint dry.” –Yahtzee

“From now on, Funky Winkerbean is going to focus on the basics: No talking. No plots. Just smirking.” –Francis

“A porn of Gil Thorp would just bomb/ even if filmed for your palm/ You’d painfully watch/ through what might be the crotch/ of a one-legged stud going GLOM!” –lunarhalo

“Awww. Tommie gets kissed. In 2012, Tommie will get laid, thus fulfilling the ancient Mayan prophecy of the end of days for planet Earth.” –True Fable

“Anthony is so creepy looking. Here I thought it was the ‘stache; turns out, no, it’s his face.” –Groovymarlin

“Well, it looks like we’ll finally see what it looks like when Mary Worth dumps a boyfriend. Based on how everything else gets done in this comic strip, I’m guessing the best adjective to describe it will be ‘anticlimactic.'” –Trilobite

“Alternately, it could be that ‘Let me tell you something…’ is Mary Worth’s way of segueing into a grandly produced musical number which, knowing Mary as we do, would likely consist of a high-pitched, incapacitating shrieking noise and subsequent devouring of Dr. Jeff’s juicy ligaments. But with jazz hands!” –Tats

“Apparently, Mary et al. are sitting in the no-eye-contact section. Welcome to the Bum Boat! Try the As-burgers.” –SmartPeopleOnIce

“In an attempt to put himself into the unknown murderer’s mind, Mark uses his finger as a fake mustache.” –Wili

“Unless there was a very long pause between panels, the couple in the background apparently managed to travel about 20 feet in a span of a half-second. They’ve obviously overheard Dr. Jeff’s criticism, and they know the walls will soon be dripping with blood. It’s a reaction not unlike what you would see in a Wild West saloon just before a gunfight.” –Eric the Grate

“Dr. Jeff would be better off, and safer, back in the godforsaken jungle from whence he was plucked by Our Mary, winner of the Nobel Prize in Smugonomics.” –jvwalt

“I think it would be interesting for a strip like [Hi and Lois] to suddenly have its characters move, but instead of following them, stay in the same house and start following the adventures of the new, and presumably more fiscally responsible, family that moves in. The Flagstons can drop by occasionally to look around ‘for old times’ sake,’ surreptitiously sliding silverware and small electronics into their pockets as Trixie distracts them with her babyish squalling and her soiled baby clothes, both of which are all the disquieting now that she’s nearly forty.” –SecretMargo

“Luckily for Mary, she has at least 3,000 lavender pantsuits, so Chester eating one isn’t too big a deal.” –Citric

“I’m going with a major sedative. Abbey will wake up in a bathtub full of ice with a phone and a note on Monday. Will her organs be sold on the black market for transplant or sold in the farm store?” –Kaitlyn

“I had such a sheltered childhood. Believe it or not, I’m 24 years old and until this day I never knew the true meaning of April Fool’s Day. I thought it was some sort of practical-joking spree, but evidently it’s really the day when a seven-foot tall demonic snowman comes to your door, which you must slay by stabbing a well-waxed pair of skis through its frozen heart. I missed out on so much!” –Jordan

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Just a quick note: As several commentors have pointed out, the blog of cartoonist Mike Lynch reports that They’ll Do It Every Time artist Al Scaduto passed away yesterday. There are no further details and I can’t find any other source for the news, but it seems that Lynch knew him personally, so I don’t have reason to doubt it.

TDIET is one of the few comics that I have become more affectionate towards over the course of doing this blog. It’s always enjoyable to poke fun at the strip’s anachronisms and patois, but it created a world that many of us found fun to visit, like the house of our favorite and slightly crazy uncle. Perhaps the biggest sign of that is the sheer number of Comics Curmudgeon readers who submitted their ideas to the feature. I was very excited about the fact that there are no less than ten TDIETs from our readers coming up in the next six weeks; now the prospect is tinged with melancholy, but at least I hope they can serve as an extended tribute to the man, who probably won’t get the mentions on NPR and in the New York Times like Johnny Hart did.

It will be interesting to see if King Features gets anyone else to do the strip. Scaduto was the third artist for a strip that was actually only a year younger than he was, and had only been the lead artist on it for the last 18 years (though he had been an assistant for years before that). It might be interesting to see what someone with a more modern sensibility would do with it, but, based on numerous email exchanges with him I’ve had reported to me (including one with my wife, who’ll never get to see her idea worked up now), it will be hard to match his good nature and generosity of spirit. Best ever, Al.