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It is Friday, and therefore time for your comment of the week!

“Today’s Mark Trail really captures why the Victorian explorers called Africa ‘the Bright Continent.’ As Livingstone wrote in his journals, as he travelled up the River Zambezi into the heart of whiteness: ‘All around us, scorching white light. So bright, it washes away the background. People just feet away seem little more than colorless shadows.'” –Voshkod

And your very funny runners up!

“Ha, Billy *did* include ‘DISA POINT’, eerily foreshadowing our reactions.” –grayangora

“Loretta feels nothing but terror at Leroy’s desire to become a Vulcan. Having to have sex with him every seven years would be far too frequent.” –Christopher

“‘Is she for real?’ That’s a rather mild reaction to being confronted with your palette-swapped doppelgänger, but Apartment 3-G is all about the mild reactions.” –TheDiva

“Is Happiness Falls an Old Order Mennonite community? I’m wondering if that might explain why Jack rode off on a horse (without a cell phone) and no woman in town ever bares any neckline below her clavicle. God willing, the next storyline will send Margo to South Padre Island.” –Oregonian

“Well, the full-front mugshot is taken care of. Now for a profile shot, and then the cops will be all prepared once Sarah’s inevitable serial killing spree is launched.” –dmsilev

“Greetings, little girl. I am not an angel. I am a fairy! See how I wave! I am the Heroin Fairy and I was on my way to Tommy’s room when I walked into yours by accident! I guess that’s why they say you shouldn’t sample your own sales, huh? Ha-Ha! But seriously little girl, I couldn’t help noticing that you bear a strong resemblance to a tween Rosie O’Donnell. Sturdy with a good constitution! And I hear your going back to New York City soon, So how would you like to be the Heroin Fairy’s special ‘drug mule’ — I mean ‘helper’. How many balloons do you think you can swallow comfortably?” –gelded wildebeeste

“I love how unabashedly, psychotically enthusiastic Olive is about receiving direct contact with a literal agent of the divine. In the the Bible, angels generally preface their appearances with some variant of ‘Be Not Afraid…’, presumably because a being formed from pure holy radiance is pretty damn scary. But Olive just looks at the inexplicably grandmotherly visage suffused with God’s glory (she imagines the divine in Mary’s image?) with the same expression of generic excitement she directed at the flower fairies, the ripples of the Charterstone pool, and Mary’s unidentifiable contribution to the potluck. What I’m saying is that we’re actually dealing with a Rex Morgan storyline about the dangers of over-medicating kids.” –Master Softheart

“Oh, right. Like the Queen of Hurleyburg would reign in a little black cocktail dress and heels. That is so unrealistic: everyone knows that get-up is only for a secretary on a military base.” –Dr. Mabuse

“If you want your team to have better pitching strength, you should add the knuckleball to your bag of tricks. Having trouble perfecting the knuckleball? Try removing a finger or two so you have a large knuckle stump like the kid in panel two.” –Chareth Cutestory

“OK, what the fuck am I looking at in panel one of today’s Mary Worth? It looks like the goateed dad is the subject of a modern Salvador Dali surrealist project, in Dali’s common theme of sleep and unconsciousness. He holds the cup unknowingly to his lips, with no hands; even in his waking hours, he is only present in a crude state of physical flesh, without mentally being present. Truly a metaphor for all of us who slog through the endless repetition of 9-5 white collar work.” –HAnzMFG

“‘Uncle Cosmo, what was life like back before television?’ ‘Cant … talk … now … watching … butter.'” –Red Greenback

“The angel also warned me not to run with scissors, and that I should update my vaccinations before the next school year. He was kind of a drag, actually.” –pugfuggly

“Flower fairies? Sure. Big-ass Angel O’Premonition? You bet. But if Wilbur Weston saves this girl from drowning I am done with this strip. Suspension of disbelief is great, but there is a line.” –Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 6/20/14

Good news, everyone! Everyone’s shared love for Judge Parker Senior’s unreadable book has helped broker a truce between warring factions, and now the wedding reception can continue. Now we can focus on the important questions, like: did Randy get married in a mint green suit? For real?

Mary Worth, 6/20/14

Wow, this is a disappointing revelation on a number of levels. First, it seems kind of lame that the heavenly prophecy Olive received was just “don’t go near the pool, kid.” But even worse is how casual she seems about it. “Mommy, mommy, a glowing, heavenly messenger of the divine with huge, terrifying wings came down from heaven and whispered in my ear and told me never to go swimming!” “That’s nice, dear. Say, do you want to take swimming lessons?” “Enh, maybe, let me think about it.”

Mark Trail, 6/20/14

Welp, looks like Woods and Wildlife’s expose on rhino poaching has been derailed because their African contact has been kidnapped or killed or something. But don’t worry, Mark’s glommed his way onto some white couple’s safari, so he’ll be coming back with a bunch of wildlife pictures that look exactly like the wildlife pictures available from wire services or Wikipedia. He’ll still be expensing the whole trip, of course.

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Shoe, 6/19/14

Someday in the far future, when the only relic of 21st century human culture is a multi-volume hardcopy of TV Tropes, laboriously hand-copied and bound in a post-apocalyptic monastery, I will be chiefly remembered for coining the word nephewism to describe a scenario where fictional characters live with their aunts and/or uncles for never-quite-explained reasons. The relationship between Skyler and his Uncle Cosmo seems like a particularly grim version of this. Cosmo grudgingly supplies Skyler with a roof under which to sleep, thanks to blood ties and a ghostly memory of affection for a presumably deceased sibling, but that seems to be about it. Certainly we never see the two of them eating anything resembling a family meal; usually the Perfesser sits too close to the TV eating off his tray and and Skyler is left to fend for himself. There isn’t even another chair in the living room for the kid to sit on. I guess he’ll be eating his TV dinner in his bedroom, assuming he has microwave privileges.

Mary Worth, 6/19/14

There have been some hints so far in this storyline that Olive’s parents have been less than thrilled with her wild imagination, presumably to set them up as the villains, so you’d think that they’d be rather horrified by this pronouncement, and yet they seem to be giving each other pleased knowing glances in panel two. A possible clue: note the WOW CHIPS in the background of the first panel. WOW was a brand used by Frito-Lay in the mid ’90s to identify products that contained Olestra; Olestra, if you’re too young to remember, was an artificial fat substitue that had some less than pleasant effects on the human digestion system, leading to a tortuous negotiation between the food industry and the FDA over a vaguely commercially viable synonym for “anal leakage” that could be used in an on-package warning label (the compromise arrived at was “loose stools”). Anyway, Olestra never really took off, for obvious reasons, so I’m guessing the WOW brand is now being used for chips with similarly dodgy ingredients — mild hallucinogens, say — and so Olive’s parents are glad they’ve finally fed her enough of the stuff to get some marketable visions out of her.

Gil Thorp, 6/19/14

The past six weeks of Gil Thorp have focused relentlessly, and crushingly boringly, on the love affair between Amy and Lucky, and both kids’ inchoate ideas about good and bad luck and how they’re stealing it from each other, and it’s been so super boring that I barely made it through that sentence. Anyway, I just want to point that Gil somehow getting his players SUPER REVVED UP about clawing their way into a tie for second in the conference neatly summarizes the Mudlarks’ usual sports competence.