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Hey, everybody! Ready for this week’s top comments? Here’s #1:

“I like the fact that in Santa Royale, nothing says drunkenness like loosening one’s tie ever so slightly.” –Andrew Leal

As my wife says: “I know it’s easy to make fun of Mary Worth, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.” Also satisfying is collating the list of runners-up:

“A3G: Aaargh!! Sunday’s strip was no more than a synopsis of all the previous week’s crap, and Monday’s is a synopsis of Sunday’s. I mean, how much torture can one woman take? And by that, I mean myself, of course, not Lu Ann.” –Kronkina

“Dagwood is disturbed by the fact that he had a sex dream about Blondie. They’ve never done it — just look at their children, who are creepily identical to them. Clearly the Bumsteads reproduce via mitosis, possibly by releasing a cloud of spores.” –Steve S

“I’m having a real problem with Mark Trail. He says most of his stories are interesting, which means, by his own low standards, some are not. Much like ‘Can God make a rock so heavy that not even he could lift it?’ the concept of a story so uninteresting that even Mark Trail calls it boring is a paradox that experts in the field of logic, and college students high on pot, will debate for the foreseeable future.” –Missy

“Perhaps Hi is simply such a poor golfer that he won’t even be able to achieve par on his children’s mockery of a course, and with the entire venue in view of the window, his atrocious failure will be public fodder for jokes for years to come. But more likely he’s simply afraid his children found the bodies.” –minosbull

“I think that Mark Trail is actually the Elrod Repertory Cartoon Company, in which many different characters are played by the same toons. For example, George Spelvin played both Bo Jones in ‘Andy Kidnapped by Rednecks at the Ivory Billed Woodpecker Woods’ and is now playing the role of ‘Buzzard’ in ‘Oh, Those Crooked Airport Pols.’ The same toon plays Cherry, Kelly Welly, and now Sam Hill. Those years of study at the Old Vic certainly paid off.” –Islamorada Girl

“Mrs. Lockhorn is right, life is not like a box of chocolates; chocolate goes straight to your hips, and Leroy hasn’t paid a visit to that region in years.” –andreavis

“If Milford’s Poorliest-Drawn Kidz Klub is going to help cure cancer, I bet their plan involves standing around like 1970s Sears mannequins in a lab and freaking out the scientists. ‘Oh, hey, are you kids here on a field trip?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘I said, are you here on a field trip? Do you want to watch me titrate this sample?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘Oh. Oh, no.'” –Yitzchok

“When Mike says ‘I’ll get it gassed up and ready,’ he’s actually referring to the Pattersons’ secret basement death chamber. The poor realtor will regret the day he sold them that tree-magnet of a house.” –Steve S

[On Funky Winkerbean]: “Doomlarity will ensue.” –Jym

“Don’t you just love the look on Heather’s face? Her internal thermostat has run up from ‘Nanny’ to ‘Au Pair’ to ‘Governess’ to ‘Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS.'” –willethompson

“I’m off till Tuesday, secure in the knowledge that, when I return … county commissioners will still be behaving like typical liberal politicians who think any problem can be solved simply by throwing more birds at it.” –gh

“For someone’s who’s never had to drink from a glass without his butler’s assistance, Von’s a quick study: ‘Perhaps if I pour it on my forehead? Hmm, that didn’t work. No no, let me be, Jeeves, I want to puzzle this out for myself. Ah, what about into my ear? Unsatisfactory. It can’t be too difficult, surely. Poor people seem to manage it. Think, Von, think!'” –Old Bean

“I wonder if this was sent in by a dentist or a denture wearer. If it was sent in by a dentist, I find it very endearing that, when confronted by an obvious lie about broken dentures, the dentist’s vision of the awful truth is a brushing accident, and not the insane meth-induced BDSM/tooth breaking fetish nightmare that I would naturally lean towards. ‘Spongecake” indeed.” –evie oh oh

“Does the government keep a list of people aroused by reading Slylock Fox? Just looking at the strip makes me feel bad inside. It’s like getting off on the Junior Jumble.” –Flealick

And it’s satisfying to give mad props to our advertisers as well:

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“Dog Haiku: The cat is not all/ Bad; she fills the litter box/ With Tootsie Rolls.” –AAckTTpth

(Update: Faithful reader AAckTTpth writes me to note that this haiku is not in fact his original creation, but was discovered here. Duly noted, but it still made me laugh a lot, so I shall not attempt to understand the past in order to change it, Mary Worth-style. For more information on why 5-7-5 isn’t exactly the be-all and end-all of haiku, see here.)

The other comments chosen weren’t haiku, but were almost as good.

“The dynamics of a Daddy Keane/Mama Hagar mating, meanwhile, would probably be about as disturbing as Sammy Hagar as the lead singer of Keane.” –Plinko Commie

“Near as I can tell by squinting, Blondie’s ‘favorite meal’ consists of an egg and a baked potato. I’m guessing she was forcibly defaulted to that as her favorite because it’s her only meal, being the only two food items in the house that don’t get used for sandwiches.” –Rhekarid

“Anyone who thinks Jack Elrod is just mailing it in these days should take a second and ponder how difficult it would be to come up with a sentence that shows less understanding of current American politics than ‘If we can get the people all fired up about the birds, they will vote to build a new airport!'” –gump worsley

“GT: Look how disappointed the girl on the right is that her coach didn’t tell her that she got a mammogram. I don’t know what she’s upset about. If one of my basketball coaches told me they had gotten a mammogram with empty, soulless Gil Thorp eyes, I would have sued for sexual harassment.” –kat

“Judge Parker (the comic strip) has a villainous son in it, who is currently sitting down talkin’ smack about his allegedly crazy mom and sharing mullet-maintenance tips with Abbey. (‘I like to use bear grease to style mine, it gives it that stringy quality that just screams “roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd.” Plus, the NASCAR babes frickin’ love it.’ ‘That’s cool. I usually just dump a bunch of hair dye on mine and blow dry it for like an hour.’)” –Trilobite

“It seems to me that faking a rockslide would be easy compared to faking a bird problem at the airport. What are the hairy-faced villains going to do, sprinkle shelled peanuts and mealworms all over the landing strip? Reflood the drained wetland? Unclean the landfill? And the worst part is that we’re going to find out.” –Poteet

“Sally Forth: I can’t believe Ted stole a computer from his office. How in the world did he lift it with those tiny little hands?” –AppleGirl

“TDIET: My prayers and thoughts go out to J. Posener’s son, Winthrop, who was brutally beaten in school today after saying, ‘Oh, WHAT he said, tsk-tsk!'” –Darkefang

“I’m liking the quiet cruelty over the last week, like Neddy’s last panel silent reaction shot. ‘No, Rachel can’t just go and live out the rest of her days peacefully with her wrinkly lover on some rich person’s island paradise! She’s meant to die horribly so I can inherit all her stuff! Everybody’s always so mean to me!'” –lesles

“So, is the bearded guy an evil villain or just trying to help Luann learn a lesson? His actions say ‘evil’ but his words say ‘tedious didactic plot device.'” –Prehumous

“Getting people fired up over non-existent problems is 75% of politics. If you don’t know that by now, generic county commissioner, then maybe you don’t deserve to be sharing a crappy office in the basement of County Hall.” –King Folderol

“Spider-man can’t plug up Kordork’s gun with his web shooter because he has a woman next to him? This has to be the lamest thing we’ve ever seen out of Spidey…except maybe when a brick knocked him out. Come to think of it, when he went to the doctor’s office with his costume on underneath his clothes that was really lame too. And when he let a fat chauffeur sneak up on him and knock him out, God that was lame. Screw it, this is perfectly in character.” –reader-who-posts

“Try not to worry overmuch about Vera. Judging from her flashback, clearly homeless = drinking coffee in the same diner as a black person. Hey, just this morning I was homeless too!” –SecretMargo

A couple of other funny thingies:

• Anyone who, like me, enjoys the overwrought NEXT! boxes in the Phantom and Spider-Man, should check out these hilarious reworkings by faithful reader Chaz Larson. (Just click on the file names to see the ‘toons.)
• Should the dim-bulb county commissioners in Mark Trail take their bird-and-airport show over to Fulton County?

And finally, we must of course give thanks to our advertisers, from whom all blessings flow.

• Support indie artists at Shana Logic: Stylish gifts for you and the ones you love!
• Nathaniel Bright is back: The final episode of Cairo is now on-line. Explosions, heart-break, mummies, and a tommy-gun. What else could you ask for?

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here. You may not be aware of it, but you can also buy ad space at the top of the page, just under the search box, where the Google ad sits now; e-mail me for rates.

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OK, everybody, at long last: the complete list of Self-Clubbing Tyler Lookalike Contest entrants! Let’s start by taking a look at the glorious panel itself in all its glorious glory:

And now, to refresh your memory, the entries you’ve already seen. The first is from a reader who likes to be known as Dr. Jeff Corey. He sent several variations on his picture; this is the one I liked best.

Dr. Jeff’s lovely and talented wife, Lucy Van Pelt, added this Brynna Antenna cameo.

(You might remember Lucy as the winner of the Finger Quotin’ Margo contest. This is one family that just can’t get enough of the comics character imitatin’!)

But back to Tyler. Next up is faithful reader Harold. “I think a few neighbors are probably wondering why I had my 10-year-old nephew taking pictures of me whacking myself in the head with an oak tree branch,” he says.

Faithful reader Johnny Cat uses special effects to capture Tyler’s dead, dead eyes:

Faithful reader Kevin created a Tron-like virtual world wherein his self-clubbing took place:

And finally, here’s faithful reader Lee’s entry. “That orb is actually a basketball, a really dirty basketball,” he notes.

This bunch was indeed righteous and awesome, and it inspired a host of new entrants, who are you seeing now for the first time!

Let’s start with faithful reader TurtleBoy. “It ain’t much for accuracy, but I like the mathematical formulas in the background,” he says. (Does anyone in Milford actually understand math, other than Brick House?)

This one arrived without comment through my smoldering modem:

Faithful reader Gadge Cubic, Mole Preener offers this two-for-one head bash/M!B!S! merch model shot:

Here’s one from self-described “mostly lurker” hypochrismutreefuzz. I’m curious about what appears to be a cage apparatus in the background.

John B. used the power of PhotoShop for his entry (at least I hope so). “Please note the highly accurate hair curl,” he says.

I reproduce for you here the entirety of the note that accompanied this pic from faithful reader Wally Lamb:

Dear Sir/Madame:

I won this contest fair and square. I didn’t do anything wrong. I never filed a police report. I never accused anyone. Everyone thinks I’m stupid, even Brynna. But I got one over on all of you!

And finally, here’s faithful reader Spotted HØrse. He’d like to assure you that photographic trickery, and not Mother Nature’s cruelty, is responsible for the shape of his noggin in this photo.

The inimitable and awesome Dean Booth, you may recall, has created a Self-Clubbing Tyler Action Figure, which is going to serve as the prize for this here contest! Here he is in mint condition in his original packaging:

And this is what the playset looks like when you get it all put together:

And, oh yeah, did we mention that it has mechanical parts that really work? You’d better believe it, buddy!

Still more pics are available on Dean’s Web page, including a good one of the back of the action figure’s bloody head. Anyway, it’s going to be excruciatingly difficult for me to figure out who deserves this most, so look for me to take another week of farting around to do it. Meanwhile, debate the merits of the entrants in the comments on this post! You may sway me! You may not! But you’ll enjoy it!