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A reminder: there are still 16 of you who gave money to my fundraiser but haven’t replied to me confirming your address and/or desires for rewards! Please email me at bio at jfruh dot com, if you are one of these people!

Meanwhile, April is really here, and it’s nice, at least where I am! Here, enjoy this spring-y comment of the week:

“Jack seems to be overly fixated on Tommie’s turtleneck. He’s half-heartedly carrying on this nature vs. nurture debate, but on the inside he’s thinking, ‘Is that from Ann Taylor Loft?'” –Joe Blevins

And the runners up! Very funny!

“There’s a lot going on in this little dream sequence, but I think it’s especially interesting to note some of the outfits. Marylou has on a decidedly un-white wedding dress (because she’s a slut!), her moneybags husband has on a tux, and Momma is dressed in black. Like what you’d wear to a funeral. A funeral for your newly married daughter and son-in-law who mysteriously fell into the ocean on the way to Moneybags Island. And who would suspect the little ol’ lady who just came along for the ride?” –pugfuggly

“It’s so edgy the way Apartment 3-G continually subverts the notion that the comics are a visual medium.” –Ed Dravecky

“Stanley should just text the nurse a photo of himself at that moment, with one eyeball so swollen that it’s overlapping the phone. No one could deny that this man shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house.” –Guts Dozier

Mary Worth: “I am glad that we’re not being shown what we’d see dropping in on most able-bodied 19 year olds without girlfriends home alone when they’re fresh out of prison ‘Wha? What are the cameras doing here? This week’s story line was supposed to be at that sandwich place! This wasn’t on the production schedule!'” –hogenmogen

“I just might be able to finish it before the sun burns out. Which will be in a week or two. Stage four cancer of the corona. The astronomers thought those sunspots looked a little off, but we had no idea how far along the disease was, and you know the Sun — so stubborn, didn’t want to see a doctor.” –Voshkod

“‘She looks like those pictures in your browser’s history file, Dad, except with no arms.’ #betterdennislines” –ratnerstar

“Speaking of freaks, Tommie, is there some reason why you keep walking around me in circles backwards?” –Christopher

“The thing that really interests me is the young cop on the left. Sure he looks cool with his mirror shades and no-nonsense expression, but there are hints of amazing depth here. First, his right arm. It is clearly shriveled and atrophied, possibly from a mishandled breech birth like the one that permanently maimed Kaiser Wilhelm II. Does he have to jam a gun into his barely-functioning right claw at the beginning of the day and hope for no firearms accidents? Has he compensated, again like Kaiser Wilhelm, by overdeveloping his opposite arm into a hypertrophied bulge of muscles and nursing a burning resentment toward his mother, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter?” –Master Softheart

“Today we do see the limits of the Parker’s wealth: the best celebrity wedding officiant they could scrounge up was 70’s-era Don Ho. ‘But I wanted 90’s Freddie Prinze, Jr.!’ whines a petulant April.” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“I was going to make a joke about how that’s Dagwood’s couch, but then it got all Suessian in my brain: ‘Who said/ that Souphead/ could nap good/ where Dagwood/ Bumstead is normally/ Jughead is ornery/ The forthcoming knife fight is gonna be porn to me.'” –Doctor Handsome

“I saw a movie one time with another character who called himself Prof. Jugs and he also sold a potion that promised guaranteed animal attraction. It was quite different from what’s happening here.” –Chareth Cutestory

“If the old man turned off his hearing aid HOW DID HE HEAR HIS WIFE TELL HIM HE DOESN’T LISTEN TO HER UNLESS THE ANSWER IS HE READS LIPS REALLY WELL IN WHICH CASE HE WAS IN A SENSE STILL LISTENING TO HER WHICH MEANS NOT ONLY IS THE JOKE NOT FUNNY BUT IT IS ALSO LOGICALLY SELF-DEFEATING SO ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS A RETURN TO THE PANT-SHITTING HUMOR WAIT WHAT AM I ASKING FOR?” –Flippin Arkansas

“Heathcliff isn’t Bat Man. He’s appropriated the costume design for his career as a superhero championing the virtues of nothingness, with his blank logo displaying his contempt for the idea of needing a symbol of any one phobia to strike dread into his enemies. We will forever remember the ‘Meh’ flag as the initial warning sign of his descent into nihilism, recognized as such far too late.” –Enlong

“And as her grandma, you should probably give her the money you would have given her on her birthdays. $120 should cover it.” –Kevin on Earth

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And, just as an advertising program note, I’ve started using BuySellAds as a platform for you to buy ads directly on my site on a CPM basis. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Family Circus, 4/11/14

This would be some Garden Variety Family Circus Treacle were not for a couple key details: the expressions on the faces of Kathy and Grandma. Kathy is nervous, unsure of herself: she’s heard about Grandmothers, knows vaguely that they’re older, friendly types, but has never met one in the flesh, doesn’t know what they’re really all about. And Grandma … well, Grandma looks coldly triumphant. This one will do, she thinks. We’ll have to shave her head and put her on bread and water for a few weeks, but she’ll soon adapt to the Program. Don’t worry, dear. You didn’t have a Grandmother before, but you sure have one now. Whether you like it or not.

Better Half, 4/11/14

Haha, that Stanley, taking his love for his wife and turning it into something vaguely unpleasant, as a little passive-aggressive joke! Seriously, though, his blood pressure situation is troubling. Look at his grotesquely swollen fingers! I think maybe he should see a doctor?

Crock, 4/11/14

Sometimes your comic includes characters whose individual personalities have been built up over years of strips, and the humor from each day’s installment comes from the interplay between those long-established characters. And then sometimes your comic is just an excuse to have random people in your strip tell jokes to each other! My advice in the latter scenario is that the joke should be funny in some way.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/10/14

If, like me, you’ve reached the Stockholm Syndrome stage of your Funky Winkerbean readership, you’ve no doubt come up with some little strategies to derive enjoyment from the unrelenting murk of gloom. What gets me through several panels a day is the knowledge that said gloom may be unrelenting, but is not without texture; we still have the opportunity to discover how exactly the characters will have their dreams crushed and their spirits broken. When it comes to Jessica, whose new motherhood is impelling her to complete her quest to document the father she never knew, her trajectory of sadness is now clear: she will slowly learn, over the course of her project, that her father was an asshole and nobody liked him.

(This is as good a context as any to note that the inimitable Chris Sims’ March Funkywatch is available for your enjoyment!)

Heathcliff, 4/10/14

I’m less concerned about the protection of Heathcliff’s secret identity (why did he even wear his superhero outfit to the vet in the first place?) than in his ongoing and rapid menace decay. Specifically, it bothers me that he’s wearing what’s obviously a Batman costume but the yellow disc on his chest conspicuously lacks the bat-symbol. Is Heathcliff worried about trademark violations? Is he suddenly all about respecting the intellectual property rights of DC Comics, Inc.? Is he afraid of Warner Bros. Entertainment’s lawyers? Pathetic.

Marvin, 4/10/14

“I tried to explain to her that ever since we stumbled onto that witch’s coven and our eyes were blinded and turned eerie, milky white by the burst of dark magical energy they cast at us, our other senses have become much more acute, plus we have the power to read minds! But she didn’t even listen to me, though I have a hard time distinguishing between thought-speech and voice-speech anymore, so perhaps I wasn’t actually speaking aloud to her.”

Archie, 4/10/14

Reggie is somewhat oversexed and not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I find it unrealistic that he’d be so desperate for romantic attention as to be an easy mark for Jughead’s scam. Still, if this is the setup we need for him to disappear screaming into a swirling, furry vortex of hungry hungry cats, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.