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As America’s Thanksgiving weekend winds up, I just thought I’d give thanks for a few things:

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 11/28/08

I’m thankful for the greatest Apartment 3-G narration box ever. “As Margo’s despair deepens…” should be placed at the top of every panel in which Margo appears, and at the top of many in which she does not.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/28/08

June is thankful that Sarah hasn’t noticed that “loud older people alone time” mostly happens when Daddy is out “playing golf.”

Luann, 11/28/08

I’m thankful that we got to see T.J. talking to his parents, swatches of whose scalps he keeps in his wallet at all times, about at last finding a new set of victims.

Panel from Spider-Man, 11/28/08

I’m glad to at last see hard evidence that excessive TV watching can reduce your attention span.

The Middletons, 11/30/08

I’m glad to see that America’s funny pages can provide comic relief for those with loved ones suffering from senile dementia. Ha ha, she’s so far gone, she doesn’t even know what time of year it is!

Beetle Bailey, 11/30/08

I’m glad we got to see Beetle in charge of a whole soldier, instead of the dismembered soldier-bits he usually bosses around.

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Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace, Blondie, and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/24/08

Hey, remember a while back when Blondie hit its 75th birthday party and the whole comics page was forced, apparently at gunpoint, to celebrate that achievement of inertia? Well, today is the 90th anniversary of the launch of Gasoline Alley, and its longevity is being celebrated by the entire industry these three insanely long-running legacy strip: Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (almost as old at 89, though Snuffy Smith himself did not appear until 1934), Blondie (now 78 years old, showing itself still classy with this reach-around), and Dennis the Menace (a relative baby at 57).

The Gasoline Alley strip itself rather nicely gives us a look at the first three men who worked on the feature; we shall know current artist Jim Scancarelli only as a enormous and terrifying disembodied hand, at least until the strip’s 120th anniversary in 2038. Of the tributes, Blondie wonders if it will be on top of its game, with side-splitting joke after side-splitting joke about giant sandwiches and workplace abuse, fifteen years from now; Barney Google transforms beloved Gasoline Alley patriarch Walt into some kind of pinheaded monster from the depths of your worst nightmares; and Dennis the Menace is too boring to merit further typing on my part, so I’ll stop right here.

Mark Trail, 11/24/08

Say, remember last year when Mark had some kind of extremely half-assed flirtation with Sam Hill, sexy biologist, that was entirely one-sided (and not on Mark’s side) and led to absolutely nothing? Well, apparently it elicited lots of angry letters to Mark Trail headquarters about the sanctity of marriage and whatnot, because now every time we get even a glimpse of what I guess is supposed to be the quarter-assed flirtation between Mark and Sue the Confused Industrialist, one or both of them reflexively start blathering on about his joyless, asexual marriage. Today Jack Elrod has decided to dedicate his artistic skill to one of those awesome crabs with one freakishly large claw, and who can blame him when his other option is to draw these two dopes totally not coming on to one another?

Aren’t those giant crab-claws the result of sexual selection? Perhaps this symbolizes something about this slow-motion love triangle — like, maybe Cherry is about to show up and bludgeon Sue to death with her enormous forearm.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/08

Well, our long-promised Morgan Family Cruise Boat Adventure is finally here, after a brief interlude for yachting hijinks (this being Rex Morgan, three and a half months really does count as “brief”). Anyway, we’ll soon find out what sort of nautical medical drama Rex will have to deal with on this dreadful voyage — Legionnaires’ disease? nausea? boredom? — but for the moment, I’d just like to point out that in the world Rex Morgan, M.D., the taxicab industry is dominated by Rastafarians, or at least by dudes in rasta hats.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/24/08

Ha ha! It’s funny because Mexican food makes defecating uncomfortable!

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/11/08

Every long-running narrative form drifts towards its own extremes, which explains how Funky Winkerbean went from being an occasionally melancholy strip about high school hijinks to a charnel house. Hopefully today’s near-wordless installment is about to take things to the next level: instead of being struck down by alcoholism or cancer or garden-variety despair, Montoni is going to be devoured by the rampaging Tyrannosaurus Rex that has escaped from a secret underground genetics lab, and is now eating everything in sight. Hopefully, the new accelerated pace of death will kill off all the strip’s characters in short order, opening us up for a new, happier beginning, or at least three blank panels a day in which nobody weeps openly.

Crankshaft, 11/11/08

Meanwhile, over in the “fun” Funkyverse strip, the complex issue of Afghan poppy cultivation — which is the only means that many impoverished Afghan farmers have to make a living, but which fuels terrorism and religious extremism in the region and desperate addiction in the United States — provides the source material for a terrible joke about pastries for Crankshaft to squint angrily at. Crankshaft is irritated by this news report, naturally, because it promises that the smack that makes his life bearable will be more expensive in the coming months.

Apartment 3-G, 11/11/08

The third-stringers continue to stink up the field here in Apartment 3-G, as Gary, completely rattled by a little razzing from Dr. Kelly, flails emotionally at Tommie for no reason. “You two work together. Is he always a little … ODD???? Hey, don’t walk so far away when I’m shouting paranoid nonsense at you!” It’s just as well that Tommie found out that Gary can’t deal with difficult people now, before she took him home to be terrified by Margo.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/11/08

“Seriously, no more! Your heterosexual shenanigans repulse me.”

Marmaduke, 11/11/08

“Guess who’s got rabies! Me, soon enough.”

Pluggers, 11/11/08

OH FOR THE LOVE GOD NO PLUGGERS AND GARAGE CLEANING NOOOOOO

(For you Johnny- and Janey-come-latelies who don’t know what “garage cleaning” is code for, travel back in time.)