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Once again, I put off Sunday’s strips till Monday, but I do want to start your week off right with some sweet, sweet comment of the week action. This week’s top comment:

“Near as I can tell, Gil Thorp’s idea of basketball is judo-chopping a ball into a large basket of gingerbread men. Finally, something in this strip that makes sense.” –Rhekarid

And the many funny runners-up:

“A3G makes sense once you realize that everyone’s in eighth grade!” –AppleGirl

“Crankshaft is a lot like those Taco Bell commercials where hip young late-twentysomethings talk about the latest disgusting food offering from Taco Bell in that I hate both of them. The similarities pretty much end there, but I needed to get that off my chest.” –Joe

“Tommie’s outfit is hot … if she’s wearing a skirt with a bustle and high-button shoes and it’s 1892.” –gnome de blog

“Also, that ‘DAYS LATER’ in Gil Thorp really threw me for a loop. It’s a bold insight into the workings of the Thorpiverse. It could have been just minutes after the game, it could have been DAYS LATER, sure; but couldn’t it just as easily be a thousand generations hence, on some distant planetary colony? Apparently, yes, it could. You can’t tell the characters apart, anyways, so this supports my hypothesis.” –Foobar

“Bil Keane on Drawing. Today’s lesson: perspective. ‘When you draw the smug, angry face on your basketball-headed caricature of a son, only give his bulbous pig nose one nostril!'” –Steve S

“If there is justice, then the precipitation in Gil Thorp is nuclear fallout.” –Analyzer

“MW: Until this strip, I never realized how very very hard it is to draw Asian people. I can almost see the tongues sticking out of the artists’ mouths and the sweat beading on their foreheads as they labor over those ever-so-tricky Asian features.” –Poteet

“Of course, who could sleep with Aunt Rachel and Groves going at it hammer-and-tongs with the screams of ‘Here comes the butter for YOUR scones!’ echoing through the apartment. Brrrrrrrrrrrr.” –willethompson

“Of course, [Cedric]’s only working for Rachel for a week. Which means he’ll soon be looking for other temp work. Which will probably involve working as a life model at Neddy’s school, much to her embarrassment and titillation. This being Judge Parker, he’ll turn out to have a physique like the original GI Joes — buff, ripped and lacking a penis.” –cheech wizard

“What’s up with Gina? Disturbing hairdo and tendency to leer mischievously at her friend making out with Timothy Dalton aside, in previous strips she is always depicted as shorter and more petite than Tommy. Now, in today’s installment, she suddenly looms over her Victorian-garbed friend like a pigtailed Colossus of Rhodes. Is she standing on a box or something? Maybe she abruptly put on some platform shoes? Or is she just a woman with freaky hair who has a super-power that enables her to change her size?” –Lyman Returns

“A3G: I know it’s no ‘Theodore,’ but I just like calling Neil ‘Jacuzzi McDude.'” –Red Greenback

“If Bandar medicine is anything like Bandar livery or Bandar haberdashery, I’d say Mozz is in some deep shit.” –SmartPeopleOnIce

“I typically comment about how manly the women are drawn in GT, but it strikes me that Lisa Wyche isn’t only manly here, she also looks like an android. Lil’ Orphan Annie didn’t have pupils, but at least she knew to smile so that she didn’t look like a horrible pod person who had come to destroy us all. I know a few sports fans would argue that Lisa is ‘in the zone,’ but her look says ‘I will destroy you and eat your heart while you sleep.'” –King Folderol

“‘Have you ever seen a Wurlitzer?’ might actually be a great pickup line. Depending on what you want to pick up.” –Old Fogeyette

“In addition to Mary Worth, Judge Parker also features an aged crone nursing a paramour back to health. All the soap comics lately have characters on their deathbed. The metaphor is perfect.” –yellojkt

“Mark is a journalist, not a forest ranger, despite all evidence to the contrary.” –Gabe

“Yes, I’m doing a ‘boy, is the artwork in Gil Thorp terrible’ comment. But it really, really, is!” –HBGlord

“Points are not the only metric for a point guard. Guarding counts too. And, in Gil Thorp, keeping your general appearance from one panel to the next should count for a lot.” –ohyes

And I must thank our advertisers, whose cash helps keep the big comment-posting machine running:

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Faithful reader MonkeyPants, who (I shall only say mysteriously) has reason to know, sent me the following tidbit today:

I believe that the color people use blue as a placeholder to remind themselves that they still have to color that segment.

This goes a long way towards explaining yesterday’s oddness with Lt. Fuzz along with last week’s smurfification of the Phantom’s evil day traders. Apparently the coloring staff are now also using blue to remind all of us that they still have to color that segment.

Update: I originally typed “Faithful reader MonkeyHawk,” who is in fact a different faithful reader and has no inside knowledge of comics coloring (at least none that has been shared with me). I apologize to both MonkeyPants and MonkeyHawk for the mix-up, now corrected.

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I spent part of my vacation urinating behind this filthy abandoned desert shack, and believe me, I wasn’t the first.

Hi everybody! I’m glad everyone had such a good time with Uncle Lumpy during my week away. I told our good avuncular stand-in, who was all chomping at the bit and posting comics just after midnight on the day they were published for much of the week, that I would start doing my duties again today (Sunday), except that the day sort of got away from me and now I don’t feel like it. So you’ll get Sunday (and Monday) comics tomorrow (Monday) at some point.

Yes, that’s right, it’s my first day back, and I’m already falling behind. You’ll take it and you’ll like it, people!

To soothe your ire, though, I do have this week’s comments of the week for you. First, the winner:

“Mary Worth: This calls for a second opinion, but where can I find a white doctor at this hour?” –Smacky

And some sweet, sweet runner-up action:

“You think Curtis’ dad’s day has gone badly? Just think about mine — I was unable to avoid reading Curtis today!” –reader-who-posts

“Why is Tommie getting kissed? Has the strip shifted into some alternate
universe? Because it’s kind of scary, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.” –Wocket

“Is holding hands in bed sweet or creepy and weird? I vote the latter. Though to be fair, everything a Patterson does is creepy and weird, including but not limited to: eating eggs, whistling and playing checkers.” –Plinko Commie

“Hello? One person gets money and props, while another person gets kicked in the teeth, and somehow that’s ‘even’ in the Foobiverse? What, are the Patternsons a single organism like ants or something?” –Sheilagh

“‘Canada is my mistress,’ declared Harvey Rood, ‘and Ontario is her shapely arse!'” –PeteMoss

“Michael’s first published line: ‘Dear Forum: I never thought it would happen to me…'” –Dave

“‘Beavers can be a real problem in some areas.’ Geez, Elrod must know he’s doing a crude Vagisil commercial.” –PeteMoss

“‘What makes you think I’m going to have more beavers?’ Well, after all, nobody can eat just one.” –Pozzo

“‘This is Tommie. She saw the play.’ That sort of sums up the redeeming qualities of our nearly invisible heroine. Gina might as well have said, ‘This is Tommie. She has pocket lint.'” –Coffeeclash

“I never saw any of Stalin’s cartoons, but I bet they sucked. Of course, no one was gonna tell him that.” –True Fable

“MossMoses raises the intriguing possibility that there is some sort of nested series of bullies in Curtis, each of which is named after the last one in the series. That is, “Onion” is named after `Onion’, and likewise there is a bully named after “Onion” named “`Onion”’. All of this raises the possibility of there being a level-zero bully, or ur-bully if you like, whose name is simply Onion. Of course, it may be that even Onion isn’t the ur-bully, and that he himself was named after some other bully who called himself Leek or something.” –Craigers

“Foob: Why does everyone go around in their socks? This whole comic strip smells like stinky feet.” –Ham Gravy

“Crankshaft: Actually, his blood type is O so very negative!” –Mibbitmaker

“(DT)GT: ‘But then she backslides like a class clown.’ Buh? Do class clowns have some sort of 12-step program or something?” –True Fable

“Whenever I see someone say the word ‘hope’ in Funky Winkerbean, I imagine some crusty old prospector leaping into town all crazy and excited, only to find out that his haul is nothing but Fool’s Hope. And then he dies of black lung.” –Rhekarid

“Exactly what does Curtis’s dad do anyway? I’ve always assumed he has some kind of classic comedy generic office job but upon closer examination of that enormous sculpted melon of his, he might be an Easter Island statue impersonator. Although I can’t imagine a gig like that pays enough to keep a guy in smokes.” –Badly_Computer_Animated_Boy

“Re: Sally Forth. Have no fear. There won’t be another comic strip character party/shindig. The birthday will just be Sally tossing back the bourbon and hurling out the obscenities. After all, that’s how I plan to ring in 40 this year.” –Ces

And of course, I’m never too busy to kiss some advertiser butt:

• Pixelgirl Shop Loves You!: Hot gifts for you & the ones you love!
• The Ultimate T-shirt: A feat of engineering! A wonder to behold! Not to be trifled with!

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

And! I must give EXTRA BIG thanks to everyone who participated in Uncle Lumpy’s (totally not suggested by me) bake sale! All the recipes look delicious, and everyone who sent in a donation to my tip jar will get a personal thank-you note from me tomorrow, promise.

Finally, we all really need to give “mad props” (as the kids in Curtis say) to Uncle Lumpy for his admirable fill-in curmudgeoning. This was the first time I’ve done anything like this in the 2+ year history of this site. The blog is my baby, and I was a little nervous about it, but I think it turned out to be a smashing success. So three cheers for our noble Uncle, who is more prompt than I! And more comics action and less jibber-jabber from me tomorrow, promise.