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Every week I read the week’s comments and pick the best one. This week is no different! Here you go!

“Sure, a trade school can teach the mechanics, but a general education in the liberal arts with a focus on communications allows for a richer implementation of torture. Any man with a hot poker can burn a prisoner, but it takes a deep familiarity with Foucault to know that torture is a ceremony — a public spectacle, really — meant to make the results of the secret investigation public and to reflect the violence of crime in the body of the accused.” –Sam Greelee, on Facebook

Also: runners up. They’re funny! Enjoy them!

“Heathcliff kills a fish, well, that’s just something cats do naturally. But in the very next panel, it’s a little disturbing to see a cat fucking a birdcage. (‘Little’ as in ‘hugely.’)” –Bruce Arthurs

“Oh–hee-hee! ‘Ms.Powers,’ that’s my mother. Call me Cilla. How’s your tea? Are you drowsy yet? Forget that I asked that last part.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“Dennis is menacing us all with the antiquated notion of the gender binary!” –adhesiveslipper

“I was born here! I never lived anywhere else! I died here, back in 2007, and my body is buried in the basement! I’ve been haunting it ever since, and I’ll continue to do so until it burns down. Now, let’s talk about the closing costs!” –seismic-2

“Seems like dad has the right tactic: act as disinterested and obstinate as you can early and you’ll probably lose custody.” –pugfuggly

“The sheet of paper is a script. Camp Swampy is staging a production of Herb and Jamaal: The Musical.” –A Concerned Reader

“I scheduled you an appointment with a marriage therapist. Not me though. My half of the marriage is fine.” –Doctor Handsome

“I’d rather read a hundred Marvin strips about his dad’s hemorrhoid than one in which Mary Worth thinks about achieving simultaneous orgasms with Jeff.” –nescio

“Theory: the balloons are disappointed in their custodian and are trying to sell him at a rock bottom price, to no avail.” –Funkula, on Twitter

“Talking animals are one thing, but Boog’s familiarity with the legal system terrifies me. Has he been studying the law searching for loopholes? What potential crimes are being developed behind those black soulless eyes?” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“‘They won’t believe an owl’s testimony! No one gives a hoot about what you have to say! Whoooo do you think you are, anyway?’ [screaming begins as talons rip into eyeballs]” –Voshkod

“Did you know that owls participate in their own form of scrapbooking? They regurgitate pellets of undigested parts of their prey: bones, fur, feathers, hair, etc. Each pellet, like a scrapbook, tells a unique story of the contents of an owl’s recently eaten meals.” –Ned Ryerson

“I think the torturer was probably trying to tee up a question about his student loans, so he could heat up the brand and drop a ‘feel the burn’ pun, and now he’s all mad that he couldn’t follow through. ‘Fine. My major. It was communications. Look, piss off, I’m gonna go torture this guy.'” –Dan

“For a second I thought the glass of water on Jeffy’s nightstand was symbolic, like a ‘half empty, half full’ perspective kinda thing. Then I realized a glass of water is probably the best present someone like Jeffy deserves.” –Irrischano

“They say that if you rub Jerry the Waiter’s dome, your odds of scampi poisoning will decrease!” –Lacey Wootton, on Facebook

“What’s worse than being a man in your 50s still working in a wood-paneled casual seafood restaurant, providing $11.99 Salmon Specials to people who are far more financially comfortable than you? Having to do so in an ill-fitting tuxedo.” –BigTed

“Well, Crankshaft isn’t here, so I guess I’ll have to deliver a really labored malaprop myself. I want you to know in advance that I don’t feel good about this.” –Joe Blevins

“Rex is so bad at genuine human interaction he hasn’t noticed he’s wandered into a serial killer’s lair or that the little old lady is actually a middle aged man in a drooping skin mask. But hey, free antiques!” –EscapeZeppelin

“Claudia is once again made tremendously uncomfortable as the only woman in a car full of men talking about women’s bodies. ‘If that’s how they talk about Blondie, what do they say about me? And is Dwitzell leering at me or just trying to join the front seat alpha men with his eyes?'” –Adam Menendez

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And let’s give thanks to our advertisers:

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• Oh, yes, and my novel is something you should buy, in hardback, paperback, or ebook form! It’s called The Enthusiast, and it’s about trains, comics, stealth marketing, capitalism, and joy

If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/16

Wow, we’ve gotten to the “people give Rex free stuff” phase of this storyline much more quickly than anticipated! This nice old lady simply must vacate her charming Victorian home, and all her carefully curated possessions will simply clash with her daughter’s charming modernist home. And setting up an estate sale will just be a huge bother. So much easier to simply hand them off to whatever handsome doctor wanders in off the street! Now, let’s go upstairs and let me show you the “birthing chamber.” You can still see the placenta stains on the floor!

Blondie, 3/11/16

Uh, guys, have you seen Blondie’s waist? If she lost seven pounds in a week, you’d notice, because she’d probably be in the hospital.

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Mary Worth, 3/10/16

You’d think that after eleven and a half years of literally commenting on soap opera comic strips for a living, I’d be inured to their narrative quirks by now, but honestly, it never gets old to me how weird they are. Years ago somebody told me that continuity strips are written so that people who only read them two or three times a week (i.e., most people who read them, probably) can still follow the storylines more or less, which explains the glacial pacing, the constant repetition of points, and straight-up time-filling strips like today’s, in which Mary and Jeff take time out to explain to one of the Bum Boat’s employees how much they love the Bum Boat. It’s the sort of weird dialogue that in another context I would assume was paid product placement; but, of course, no actual restaurant would bother to pay for placement in Mary Worth, though a restaurant that did might be so cluelessly marketed that it would be named something like “the Bum Boat.” Anyway, Jerry is no doubt tired of Jeff and Mary’s shtick, but he knows he’s got to hide his contempt if he wants that sweet, sweet 12.5% tip.

Crankshaft, 3/10/16

Let’s ignore the ostensible plot action here and just focus on how delightfully angry Rose looks in panel one. She probably only has the vaguest idea of what’s going on or who this young woman is, but that isn’t stopping her from thinking “Fuck these people. Fuck all of these people.”