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Today is the day when I pick the top comment of the week and honor it publicly, and I got your comment of the week … right here, buddy.

“I’d be pondering this cosmos too, given its nearby gas giant with a full set of rings and enormous stars capable of overwhelming the light of a full moon. Or is that a distant sun? You may be murdered by the Space Viking yet, King, but don’t sleep on the methane rain and background radiation. Hope your planet has its own magnetic field!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

And that’s not all: I also have some fab runners-up!

“Who knows how many blunderbuss pistols could be carried in those fancy pants? The Phantom knows…” –Dennis Jimenez

“Small act of mercy for the singles bar to have a band playing so no one can hear anyone else. If you haven’t scored by 10PM it’s probably best to accept that it’s not your night and you might as well just move on with your life.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Call it a deli because they’re serving cold cuts.” –nescio

“Why would Dagwood say ‘not exactly’ rather than ‘no’? Is he eating the candles? Was he eating them? In the latter case, did he stop because gumbo-scented wax doesn’t have the taste and texture of true gumbo, or because of mouth and throat burns?” –Lauralot

“Daisy, loyal as ever, is keeping a watch on Dagwood in the all-too-likely chance that he ODs on soup fumes and starts drowning in the bathtub.” –pugfuggly

“I thought that snowmen might not feel pain, so it is no great harm to remove a piece of their body, but if they don’t feel pain they should also not feel pleasure, and then what’s the point of ice cream?” –Ettorre

“Looks like Camp Swampy got a new … [squints at badly drawn rank insignia] captain! Farewell, previous captain … [checks Wikipedia] Sam Scabbard! Sorry you got court martialed or fragged or whatever!” –Schroduck

“That’s not a pickup line. Dustin leads with ‘I got my haircut today’ because he gets 10% off his next haircut for every new client he sends the shop’s way.” –Hibbleton

“Perhaps the butcher in the background finds Dennis’ bon mot amusing. Or maybe he’s just thinking of cutting the child into pieces and selling him by the pound. Either could explain the smile.” –Joe Blevins

“The contrast between Hagar’s resigned recognition of how terrible the joke in his strip is to Dennis and co.’s desperate denial of how much theirs sucks is palpable.” –ectojazzmage

“I’m not signed up with a dating service! I find my casual hookups on Tinder like a normal person! What are you, eighty?” –matt w

“While he wouldn’t kill anyone himself, I’m getting the feeling Dagwood wouldn’t be averse to trying cannibalism just once. He would definitely be the first to bring it up after surviving a shipwreck, plane crash, or fender bender.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“With a quick twist of her neck, she flashed her ponytail across the room with the crack of a whip. A deep bloody welt appeared on the rude man’s cheek. As he ran out, she turned with a smile toward her companion. ‘You wanna see what else it can do?’ she purred.” –Voshkod

“I reset Sarge’s alarm and painted his window black. Oh, and yeah, I murdered the bugler. Kinda buried the lede there, didn’t I?” –seismic-2

“Ah … look, mate, I appreciate the theatrics and all, but I’m just an unlucky sod who got pressed into service on a British warship and mutinied to be free … maybe you could bury me and send word back to my family of my demise? No…? Oh … I’m going to be a decoration in your cave? Well, that’s lovely. No, Nigel couldn’t possibly have the freedom in death that he never had in life. Got to be physically tied to a dreary cave with a drama queen forever. That’s rich. Stupid bloody afterlife…” –Old Man Shadow

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Beetle Bailey, 2/7/25

Unfortunately, Beetle’s little prank happened to fall on the morning when the coalition of America’s enemies finally launched their long-planned invasion. With Camp Swampy’s main NCO out of commission until hours after the alarm was raised, and its commanding general blind drunk, the 13th Infantry Division was undermanned, unprepared, and unable to hold the left flank during the decisive Battle of Hurleysburg. Sarge never did forgive Beetle, but they were kept in different internment camps — Beetle and Killer had predictably gotten separated from the rest of the company during the chaos and were captured miles away from the main battle front — and never saw each other again before Beetle died of dysentery two years later.

The Phantom, 2/7/25

Not to be outdone by the Sunday Phantom doing a flashback to the adventures of an early Phantom in 16th century Africa, the weekday Phantom is doing a flashback to an even earlier Phantom, specifically the very first one, seen here swearing an oath over his father’s killer’s crab-eaten corpse. He’s only spent a little time in Africa at this point, but in the second panel you can see that he’s already very sunburned, and it’s a little disheartening 22 generations of Phantom decided the solution to this problem was to focus on advances in skin-protecting lycra technology so they could keep importing white brides from Europe.

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Hagar the Horrible, 2/6/25

I think the joke here is supposed to be “Lucky Eddie, who is notoriously soft and weak, is a cat guy,” and as a cat guy I’m not going to take the bait. I am going to point out that, as depicted in the strip, Lucky Eddie is much less a cat guy (are there really any running jokes about him liking cats?) as a fish guy, or more precisely a fish–lady guy. Which leads me to ask: what’s his mermaid girlfriend’s bathroom situation like? In the strip where they’re hanging out together and she’s floating in a fish tank, is the fish tank the equivalent of her litter box? Much to think about, if you like thinking about mermaids peeing and pooping, and I apologize because you probably don’t actually like thinking about that and it may be that I did get mad about the cat thing and took the bait a little bit.

Blondie, 2/6/25

Do you like those odds, Elmo? Because I don’t, actually. I mean, I think the set of pizza ingredient combos that anyone would want to eat are relatively limited and covered by the standard menus at most pizza places, and we don’t need to go that far beyond the limits. If you want to explore the possibilities of “infinite kinds” of pizza and call up some hapless restaurant and say “Yeah, gimmie a pizza with [spins wheel] bakelite crust, tomato sauce, and [spins wheel again] deuterium” be my guest, but I don’t think you’ll enjoy the results.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/6/25

Yeah, what is the deal? What the heck is the deal with Rex Morgan, exactly, or just, like, the deal in general? I for one would like to know! Like, really, earnestly, please explain the deal to me. Glad to see we’re getting to the bottom of what the deal is, finally.