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Rosy-fingered dawn is here, and she’s brought the comment fo the week!

“Diane is cosplaying and posing for no one in particular, and the boys are backlit while she isn’t. The only way this makes sense is if Chip and Boy Not Named in Wiki Entry are in the dark garage watching a projected slideshow of potential girls to be rejected by.” –Lee Sherman

She’s brought these fun runners up as well!

“If the Mitchells would stop gossiping about their friends and coworkers in front of Dennis, they’d have something to talk about when he’s not around.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“Why should Marvin care about reading books? His generation will all experience, say, The Count of Monte Cristo in virtual reality, with the words beamed directly into their brains from their iPads or something. Best of all, no one will know his actual body is pooping the whole time.” –BigTed

“Maybe you lost your watch inside a patient. I haven’t known you all that long, but seems pretty in-character.” –Pozzo

“Marvin’s family is grotesque in any number of ways, but I’ll say this for them: they’ve never forced their unwilling friends to hear about their wife’s failed attempts to spark up their dead marriage with a bit of adult-baby play, unlike some people.” –Schroduck

“I appreciate that Marvin’s grandparents are playing a game named for both a food and an orifice. It fits the theme” –Mr. A

“If it takes you a minute to realize that that punchline is supposed to be wordplay, you’re probably reading Crankshaft.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“I love the idea that this guy’s parents are sitting just out of frame, patiently waiting to spend time with their son while he stares captivated at a phonebook-sized letter he won’t even open. ‘Seriously, your mom is starting to get really upset…’ ‘Just five more minutes, honey. I just want to smell the stamps a bit more.’” –pugfuggly

“Drew today: ‘What has become of my cherished watch, which my dying mother gave me before she passed away?’ Drew last week: ‘Hey, what happened to my Rolex™?’” –jroggs

“Beetle, you know what is also copyrighted? The character played by William Holden in Stalag 17! But satirical works enjoy an exception to copyright, and let us be very clear that satirical does not necessarily mean ‘funny.’” –Ettorre

“Drew: ‘She was buried in a matching watch.’
Ashlee: [grabbing shovel] ‘Go on.’” –Donny Ferguson, on Twitter

“At this point, Crankshaft wakes up, tangled in his sweaty sheets, gasping for air. ‘What a nightmare!’ he thinks. ‘Me, on a date? Having a heartfelt conversation? Horrible! I should’ve known. Since when have there been drive-in movie theaters, and since when were movies abstract pencil drawings on a white background? Well, at least now I know I’m not too old to dream.’” –made of wince

“So apparently if I see a bird-man with an aggressive pompadour, a Reservoir Dog suit, and a one-ball scrotum hanging under his beak I’m supposed to think ‘carpenter’ rather than ‘one of nature’s more tragic mistakes.’” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Are women after Chads or are they just golddiggers? Dustin enters the hottest debate in /r/incel history!” –Jerp+Jump

“A teenage boy who’s completely bald except for a single tuft of curly hair growing out of his forehead (?!) might need to lower his standards a bit if he considers ‘conventionally attractive girl who’s a little too into the Red Sox’ beneath him. Or honestly even if he doesn’t.” –Dan

“I’m just relieved Ashlee is wearing flip-flops so she doesn’t get tetanus from that sofa.” -Malaclypse

“You can Tell Ashlee’s on hard times because not only is her wall plaster and couch all torn up, she can’t even afford color for her apartment. Not to get all socialist about it but you have to ask whether she would have turned to petty larceny if she hadn’t been reduced to life in a greyscale flophouse while the residents of Santa Royale luxuriate in their vibrant washes of salmon and ochre.” –BananaSam

“Nice rendering of the down-at-the-heels People’s Clinic. I guess it’s Shithole Week at Mary Worth.” –Ned Ryerson

“Drew has two practices: the hospital, where he draws money from an exploitative healthcare system, and the People’s Clinic, where he draws money from people’s charitable donations. If Ashlee just hangs with him awhile, she could learn a thing or two.” –richardf8

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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FOLKS … it’s time again for the comment of the week

“In today’s semifinals of the Who Can Pour More Coffee in Their Lap tournament, we see the different strategies of the three contestants. Drew stays with the traditional tip your full cup approach, while Sophie, perhaps relying on new analytics, goes with pour the coffee over the edge of the cup. My money, however, is on the old pro Dr. Jeff, who is skipping the cup altogether for the direct carafe to crotch spill! Well played, Dr. Jeff — go big or go home!” –Lawyerbob

Also time for your very funny runners up!

“Who are those babies? Are those the miscarriages and scarlet fever victims? A grim reminder of why vaccines are so important. I respect it.” –jerp+jump

“If they’re implying that Jeffy is going to eventually get laid I’m not buying it.” –nescio

“At no point in the past week was Drew wearing a watch. I guess this means Ashlee stole it during their impromptu pizza date and Drew only checks what time it is a few times a month.” –jroggs

“Gotta hand it to Drew, the bar for ‘young person’s romantic mishaps in Mary Worth’ was set at ‘Dawn’ and he still managed to sail right under it. That’s weirdly impressive!” –Dan

“I know that the strip club comment is probably just a sad endnote on this plot, but I really hope it’s more. Like I really hope Max gets hired by the strip club and convinces them to keep all the old theater seats and popcorn machine for nostalgia’s sake, and helps the strippers cater to the specifics tastes of the community and eventually they open the Starbuck Jones All-Nude Review to great success. Please please make me this comic.” –pugfuggly

“It’s going to be awkward trying to explain this to the pastafamilias.” –Peanut Gallery

“I will wager that the Valentine Theater will get a last minute reprieve from being turned into a strip club, thus enabling it to exist 9 years in the future. Maybe the dead church organist left a substantial bequest to the theater. Maybe a valuable comic book will be found stuffed in one of the seat cushions. Maybe Ed Crankshaft will finally retire from driving a school bus, freeing up the town’s financial resources previously devoted to repairing the trail of destruction he left behind. So many possibilities!” –GeoGreg

“Panel one seems to be the sort of optical illusion I’d expect to find in Slylock Fox. ‘Which of these two over-privileged white women is larger? Turn your screen upside-down for the answer.’” –Pozzo

“Watch it, Drew. As soon as Ashlee casts covetous eyes on your dad’s Mr. Coffee machine it’s as good as hers.” –Guillermo el Chiclero

“Going for a walk every morning is a sign of great emotional distress! Either that, or it’s a sign that someone is fairly wealthy, and extremely relaxed.” –BigTed

“For lack of a watch, Drew is hours late for his date with Ashley. Fireworks are avoided, however, because Ashley sold the watch and is at home in a cocaine stupor. It’s like a seedy Gift of the Magi.” –Dean Booth, on Twitter

“Drew is so happy eating his Roundwich™ and thinking about happy times with his dad.” –Malaclypse

“‘You’re the only adult guy I know who still lives with his father!’ Truly, no strip has ever gone this far out of its way to demonstrate that it doesn’t understand millennials, not even Dustin.” –pastordan

“Alternate joke: ‘Cargo shorts? Gross.’” –Joe Blevins

“Sure, Ashlee’s dad is being chased by police at 120 miles an hour in a car with what appears to be a canvas tent draped over the windshield, but he’s got those hands on ten and two. Criminal he may be, but this is Mary Worth, where Driver’s Ed rules are king.” –els

“Ugh, the single-use plastics are here. Or maybe the acid just kicked in. Am I me, or am I a jar on a shelf filled with Cheerios. The jar is filled with Cheerios, not the shelf, that’d be crazy. I am a jar. I’m ajar. My whole life was ajar, a door slightly open, but now I’ve thrown the doors of perception wide open, and I’m just a jar. Someone’s gonna come along and take off the top of my head and scoop out my Cheerio brains and eat them with milk and … and … and I hope they have strawberries too. Man, the single-use plastics are dancing now, celebrating their eternal life, a brief moment in the sun filled with food and a long afterlife in the Hades of the dark landfill. Man. I gotta get a new dealer.” –Voshkod

“Dagwood’s car is clearly too old to have an autopilot, and yet he’s driving Herb home with both hands on his burger, eyes closed. Good thing they’re wearing seatbelts.” –DNH

“Rex is absolutely trying to see if he has heat vision that will put an end to that damned letter.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“The most interesting part of this meal is not the conversation but the bite mark that Dr. Drew has imparted to his hamburger. It is a single bite, in the form of an absolutely perfect semi-circle of only one quarter-inch radius. Drew himself is apparently morphing into Jimmy Olsen, but he retains the delicate dentifrice and the ultra-precise biting skills of a top-flight surgeon!” –seismic-2

“Kids will be who they’re going to be. Adopting fatalism helped me as parent, since I no longer believe I am responsible for the consequences of my actions. Of course, it helps me even more as a doctor.” –Ettorre

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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Folks! Your comment of the week in a moment, but speaking of comments … faithful reader/Joshreads dot com tech guy Adam Norwood updated my server and the WordPress software that runs this site to the latest versions of everything last night, and that may have caused a little weirdness with the comment moderation bot, combined with the fact that I put the letter sequence “ex ex ex” in the title of the this morning’s post despite the fact that that’s exactly one of the letter sequences the modbot hates the most. Apologies! I do want to gently suggest, however, that if you find your comment moderated, you should email me at bio@jfruh.com rather than doing endless tests to see what the modbot will do, because (a) if you keep doing things the modbot thinks are spam, especially if you do them over a short period of time, it may decide you’re definitely spam and make it more difficult for you to post in the future, and (b) I will eventually get to the modbot queue and if I find a bunch of “test!” “will this work?” posts, what am I supposed to do with them? Free them and leave them on the site where they’ll look odd, or leave them as spam and count them against your modbot karma? Anyway sorry to be cranky and I know it’s annoying, but that’s my advice to you!

Anyway, nobody could possibly moderate this delightful top comment of the week:

“Keep it up, baby, keep it up! Atlas is dead and only you can hold the sky, preventing Uranus from copulating with Gaia once again and producing monsters.” –Ettorre

These runners up could only annoy the most unfeeling artificial intelligence:

“I’m kinda bummed that Dustin’s sister made that quip, mostly because it sucks ass, but also because we don’t get to see the follow-up on Dustin’s Dad’s comment. You know, where he asks a store employee to get involved in a personal discussion about the tastes of a family member of theirs who isn’t present? Really wanted to see where that was going.” –pugfuggly

“Apparently, people void their bowels at the point of death, so Marvin will at least die doing what he loves.” –Rosstifer

“They don’t call jealousy the green-eyed monster for nothing, but did she have to be so precocious and annoying?” –pastordan

“Just calling my shot early. Somehow, Vidpa plagiarizes Sarah’s letter and his next book is Kitty Cop Says Thanks To His Godlike Creator.” –Victor Von

“‘Call me ACE OF SPADES!’
-Taken
‘King of Spades?’
-Taken
‘Ja…’
–Taken” –Lorne Hanks, on Twitter

“No cell phones, just vibing (by which I mean that Loretta has brought someone over to watch Leroy humiliate himself in person instead of making it into a viral video like anyone else would).” –matt w

“The joke is that they’re getting Dennis neutered? Right? Right!?” –The Rambling Otter

“Today’s Lockhorns also explains why they live in a featureless void: any time he tries to decorate the place, Leroy suffers a grievous injury.” –Thelonious_Nick

“Apparently, June likes to display blank plates that say absolutely nothing and have no artwork whatsoever. It’s a shout out to let us know what this strip is about.” –Sequitur

“That’s just great, you get home from your Fashion Police job only to find out your wife is wearing a pink blouse with a red belt. Will she never learn to respect the badge?” –made of wince

“‘Indian princess burned at the stake’ seems like it’s going to be a little … problematic on Instagram.” –Tom T.

“Birds eat cicadas, so this strip is not going to end well for someone.” –Pozzo

“Not rendering judgment on anyone’s artistic abilities, but I do think the current Mary Worth art has a tendency to depict its characters as more fluid and, well, conventionally attractive than many other strips. So I was initially disappointed that we would not get to experience panel one — in which Ashlee appears to be anxiously following orders to ‘do the sprinkler, but with more hip dislocation’ issued by a sniper somewhere to Drew’s left — in the pure Dadaist glory of, say, old-school Dick Tracy art. But on reflection I think it’s even more effective this way. Would we even understand how awkward that scene is, if the artist had not mastered both perspective and biceps? Does not a diamond gleam most brightly against black velvet? Well done, Moy and Brigman. Well done.” –Skedastic

“In Drew’s ‘Salute to America,’ we have blue ‘spacious skies’ as a backdrop. The clouds play the part of ‘purple mountains majesty’ while Ashlee fills in the ‘fruited plains’ and her outfit conjures ‘amber waves of grain.’ It’s patriotic, over-the-top, and over-sexualized. It’s awe- and laugh-inspiring. It is America.” –Voshkod

“Is this the library or just a literary-themed singles’ bar with a really bad drink selection?” –jroggs

“We were led to believe that libraries were needed for poor people such as Zane since his family can’t afford a computer at home. However, it’s because his house is so small that he can’t get any privacy and needs public services such as libraries for a quickie. I’m no Kellyanne Conway, but I believe that platform will resonate with the electorate.” –Scratchy Scrotum LXIX

“Joke’s on the boss; he made the mistake of speaking to Leroy at a party, and is now forever trapped in an endless void of infinite nothing. Sometimes he’ll make out half-realized shades of other people, smiling and enjoying drinks far away, but mostly he’ll wander through a pink and purple mist for eternity as Leroy obliviously huffs his way home to complain about Loretta’s roast. Good luck, Boss! Enjoy retirement.” –Dan

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!