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OK, kids, you know what time it is! Here’s this week’s top commment:

“GT: I guess the lesson is that girls shouldn’t play sports because they don’t think it’s okay to beat your own skull in and pin it on some other guy. Hey ladies, it wasn’t that kind of can’t-do attitude that made this country great.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

And the runners-up, hilarious as always:

“Who knew you could get hassled by the man for walking while black in Africa?” –Mac

“Pentagon Briefing, 3/31/07. Gen Halftrack, CO of Camp Swampy, was observed painting furniture on his porch by civilians. Recommended action: Assassination.” –reader-who-posts

“I see Mark’s friend, Dan, somewhere on a beach. A well-built man next to him says something in French; Dan doesn’t understand. The man repeats, in English: ‘It’s hot, no?’ Dan glances at the man over the top of his Ray-Ban sunglasses, takes a sip of a tall drink, and utters, ‘Yes, it’s hot.’ As the sun sets on the horizon, past tropical trees and ocean waves. Back in Lost Forest, Andy digs up the bones of Sally.” –Dingo

“Speaking of Albert Pinkham Ryder, I was fascinated by that Death on a Pale Horse painting as a kid. I had no idea the guy who painted it was so damned annoying. And boring.” –John C Fremont

“I love how Dennis’ mom’s face just reeks of epiphany. ‘Say…maybe birthing and cleaning the clothes of this poor man’s Fritz Katzenjammer ISN’T the pinacle of my existence!'” –Mack

“Were Margo to die, the decomposition of her rotting corpse would be more entertaining than Lu Ann.” –TurtleBoy

“Poor April. Now that she’s 16 she’s obliged to dress like a cross between Nikki Sixx and Ivana Trump. It’s Canadian law.” –Motorposus

“It’s nice to see that the ‘raising a little hell’ April’s birthday song referred to means ‘remaining a complete prude.'” –Tats

“GT: Those two may put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, but we all know it’s Mary Worth that adds the ‘unction.'” –Foobar

“Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can — as long as someone else does it.” –Lizardmess

“Yeah, Liz seems to be in a Schrodinger’s Cat thing of simultaneously unresolved frump or babe. If we open the box, she … Heh. Open the box.” –Jack Parsons

“I say, bring back Gary Dent. He didn’t hide behind word balloons. He let his hands do the talking.” –True Fable

“The guy in panel 3 of Gil Thorp has some interesting glasses, insofar as you can’t see his son’s hand through the lenses. Maybe they live in Reversistan, where the whites of eyes are black and glasses are for not seeing.” –Steve S

“The holes the Mudlark baseball team have to fill include shortstop, middle reliever and gaping plot-.” –t.a.m.s.y.

“You know, other families stage interventions when somebody’s in a self-destructive spiral of booze, drugs, gambling, sex, or other debauchery. The Pattersons have staged an intervention to try and convince a grown man with a wife and family and over $25,000 in the bank that it’s time to buy a house and let his baby sister have her bedroom back.” –No Evil Monkeys

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B.C., 4/8/07

Johnny Hart, creator of B.C. and writer (or co-writer? I’ve never been able to nail this down exactly) of Wizard of Id died Saturday. Today’s Easter strip is perhaps appropriately typical of his later work: infused with his religious beliefs, and largely idiosyncratic and inscrutable (numerology?). He liked to take potshots at atheists, Darwinists, and Jews, and as an interested party I have a hard time not taking those personally, but I’m not going to write anything mean about him today. Instead, I’ll just note that the dude died at his drawing board. That’s hardcore.

Here’s the obit from the AP via CNN. One of the things that struck me was this bit:

Richard Newcombe, founder and president of Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles … said Hart was the first cartoonist to sign on when the syndicate was created 20 years ago. “Traditionally, comic strips were owned by syndicates,” Newcombe said. “We were different because we allowed cartoonists to own their own work. It was … Johnny’s commitment to this idea that made us a success.”

This is the end of the CNN version of the story, but faithful reader pesch (who works in a newsroom and has reason to know) adds this from a version of the story he’s seen:

Newcombe said B.C. and Wizard of Id would continue. Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart’s drawings to work with, he said.

If I have any pull at all in the comics industry, I have to beg and plead for this not to happen. Say what you will for good or for ill about Hart’s work, but it has always struck me (despite that note about help from family members) as being indisputably his work. The best way to honor that would be for it to stand on its own, not to be continued by assistants cutting and pasting new dialogue into scans of old strips. Because of the way that comics publishing works, there will be a few weeks worth of Hart-authored strips still to run, but after that it should bow gracefully out. It may be hard to believe for younger folks, but Hart was one of a generation of young turks who shook up the comics page in the 1970s, and letting his strip continue in other hands denies that chance to others and diminishes what went before.

Some folks have already used other comment threads to argue vociferously about the best way to honor (or not) his memory. Feel free to work out your aggressions here; doing so elsewhere will get you sent to The Cockpit.

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You know, faithful readers e-mail me stuff all the time, or post links to things in the comments, much of which I’d like to feature but often forget to. I’ve had a pile of stuff sitting in my in-box now for a while, so here’s a bunch of funny stuff all at once!

First off, there was some discussion in the comments a while back about a long-ago National Lampoon newspaper spoof that targeted several of our favorite strips. Faithful reader Moon Mullins dug out his copy, scanned the strips, and sent ’em to me, and I repost them here for your memory-lane-travelling-down needs:

Also, faithful reader commodorejohn mashed up two of our favorite targets in They’ll FOOB It Every Time:

And hey! Did someone say “wacky YouTube videos”? Here’s a couple that found their way to me. The first is a super-surreal film school project called Rex Morgan, M.D.: The Motion Picture:

The second, Protectors of the Earth, answers the long-standing question, “What if Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, and Garfield were a crime-fighting team?”

On an actually sort of educational tip, if you’re fascinated by those uncanny spoof editorial cartoons in the Onion, you might be interested in this story, in which LA Times opinionista (and faithful reader) Tim Cavanaugh tracks down the artist.

And finally, a faithful reader known only as “J.” felt I should see this (he claims it’s been floating around the Internet forever), and so I share it with all of you. Happy Tuesday, everybody!

UPDATE: Faithful reader Sakurai also did this awesome TDIET spoof: