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Hey there everyone! Your comment of the week shortly, but first a quick note that if you are in Baltimore or are Baltimore-adjacent tomorrow, why not come see me perform in Everybody All The Time, a delightful variety show at the Windup Space in Station North where I will be performing. I am authorized to tell you that I will be unveiling my new character there, Gary the Emotionally Fragile Substitute Yoga Instructor. If that doesn’t put butts in seats, what will?

You can stay in your current seat and still enjoy the comment of the week, of course:

“Ugh, you take us from Tommy straight to Tommie? What a cruel, disappointing arc.” –John Small Berries

And the runners up! Very funny!

“You’d think Plato would be a bit more optimistic, since today was the day when Sarge finally inspired him to mop the sky.” –Tophat

Rex Morgan, M.D.: “The very future of the museum is riding on the assumption that a five year old is going to produce, in four weeks, a book of drawings that is going to generate the necessary revenue, and/or that watching said five year old produce said book will produce additional revenue via increased attendance. If Sarah is actually able to pull this off, her arrogance will grow from merely grotesque to super-human proportions. She will be unstoppable!” –Gladly, the cross-eyed bear

“They were giving things away. I normally don’t get flu shots, but they were free, so I got twelve!” –Pozzo

“Still I admire Reeky’s spirit. He could have claimed to have just got out of jail, something that Slylock might have at least had to check. But our Reeky keeps it classy. ‘Call Queen Elizabeth. She’ll vouch for me. Here, let me give you her cell number.'” –Aviatrix

“If there was ever an underwhelmed reaction to a sudden bear attack, it’s that man reading the paper. ‘Oh man, a bear? Given the statistics, I always figured it would be car crash or a cardiac episode. Well, let’s get this over with…'” –pugfuggly

“As Mother Earth’s creation, I must touch her. I just hope She can feel me through this two-foot thick slab of concrete and all the plumbing and infrastructure that must lie beneath it. Like the Princess and the Pea, y’know? Feel that, Mother Earth? THEM’S MAH FEET!” –DownInTheValley

“Is this finally it? Are we finally at the story where Walt Wallet dies? Because I can definitely forgive the strip for the annoying New Years death fakeout if Walt is violently torn apart by a mob consisting of the types of people who still read newspapers.” –Roto13

Apartment 3-G: “You girls are going to love Jim! He’s such a dear! Wait … dear … dear … deer! OH MY GOD THE DEER I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO FEED IT FOR THE PAST WEEK THAT MUST BE SOURCE OF THE HORRIBLE STENCH IN MY CLOSET!!!” –Perky Bird

“That’s right, Snuffy, lie to yourself. It’s scary to admit your best friend was an inbred old baby man.” –Inkwell

“I love the way Gina’s mom, like all the other adults in this strip, stands in the background with a look that can mean nothing but that she’s thinking of what an asshole Dennis is.” –Dr. Mabuse

“Joey’s fear is misdirected. The noodles are his friends. That brown glop in the drinking glasses — the stuff that’s slowly eating away at the plastic straws? — that’s the Foreign Menace on this happy little table.” –jvwalt

“‘Wilbur will be there’ is Charterstone code for ‘Yes, I’m serving mayonnaise.'” –Dood

“You know, every time you think Funky Winkerbean is as depressing as it gets, it tosses out a little daily like this to remind you: all these people had the happiest days of their life in high school. And it was Westview High School.” –Chip Whittle

Luann: “Admittedly, it’s been a while since I was in high school, but isn’t prom typically at the end of the school year? We’re not going to be talking about prom all the way until May, are we? DEAR GOD, THE DITHERING.” –The Rt. Venerable Pasdordan

“I prefer to think that Crankshaft’s Elderly Neighbor (Rose? Who cares, right?) is recoiling not from the sight of Crankshaft’s shriveled, naked penis, but the hail of gunfire that obviously follows.” –bunivasal

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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Curtis, 2/21/14

Remember when that dolphin swam into Brooklyn’s extremely polluted Gowanus Canal and then died, more than a year ago? The creators of innumerable parody Twitter accounts, along with the creators of Curtis, hope you do! Curtis has been sad about these poor trapped dolphins all week, but now Magical Caucasian Gunk will rescue them with his Flyspeck Island powers, after stripping to the waist! I’m mostly just relieved to learn that Gunk’s nipples, unlike his eyes, are configured in the usual way.

Crankshaft, 2/21/14

Speaking of half-naked people in the icy cold, it looks like Crankshaft has somehow managed to lock himself out of his house wearing only a towel and set off the burglar alarm trying to get back inside, ruining his family’s vacation in the process! Thanks to Big Government, we’re not allowed to print a drawing of Crankshaft’s exposed junk in the newspaper, but panel three uses a clever reaction shot to illustrate what an unpleasant experience it would be for you if we were.

Dennis the Menace, 2/21/14

Ha ha, it’s funny because literally nobody wants to spend any time with Dennis! Looks like the person he’s really been menacing has been … himself.

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Funky Winkerbean, 2/20/14

So hey, remember that lady from Monday’s Funky Winkerbean, who deflected a sexual advance by announcing with dead eyes that, despite the fact that she was beautiful, she was broken inside and she hated herself? Well, turns out she’s Cindy Summers, former Westview popular girl and current national news anchor and Funky’s ex-wife! The whole marriage took place during the period when I wasn’t reading the strip, but faithful reader/disturbing Twitter user name Bat Les Moore assures me that this cheery moment happened during their divorce:

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY! Anyway, the residual effects of having been married to Funky probably explain Cindy’s self-loathing, but at least she still has her physical beauty and high-powered job to sustain her! Haha, whoops, except her boss is telling her that she’s too old to be beautiful and that they’re going to fire her, which, while this is obviously the thought process behind a lot of TV news personnel decisions, I’m pretty sure that if you just say it out loud explicitly like this you get extremely sued for age discrimination.

Anyway, not to dwell too much on this strip (haha, who am I kidding, dwelling too much on strips like this are the entire reason why this blog exists) but let’s examine today’s punchline! “It’s the digital age, Cindy … and digital shows your age.” It’s typically Winkerbeanean in that it uses low-level wordplay to let a character know that their life is changing for the worse. But does it make sense? Is TV Executive Man saying that young people, who like computers and don’t watch TV news, will watch TV news if someone young is on TV? Is he saying that Cindy has repeatedly tried and failed to operate computers, smartphones, and other digital devices on-air, further alienating the coveted young person demographic? Is he making reference to the fact that high-def broadcasts, blown up on a 60-inch screen, reveal the slight lines and imperfections on Cindy’s fortysomething visage, forcing the network to hunt after ever younger and smoother-faced anchors? Is he just being a dick, in a way that, I can’t emphasize enough, is totally, 100% legally actionable? Yes, it’s probably the last one.

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/14

Plato’s subtle shift in his third word balloon is instructive here. At first, with fanciful metaphors, he implies that Beetle can never satisfy Sarge with his work ethic. But then he shifts to an idea that, while still out of the reach of a lowly private, is at least within the realm of physical possibility. Sarge, he implies, can be bought. Now we must discover his price.

Spider-Man, 2/20/14

Oh, yeah, so: J. Jonah Jameson is inside the old Iron Man suit, has rigged it up somehow so his crazed eyes and Hitler mustache are visible through the mask, has gone mad with power, is determined to kill Spider-Man, blah blah blah. As you can see in the final panel, he’ll use the one weapon against which Spidey has no defense: crumbling masonry.

Mary Worth, 2/20/14

MARY WORTH IS INVITING TOMMY TO EAT IN HER APARTMENT REPEAT MARY WORTH US GIVING TOMMY AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE EITHER THEATRICALLY CONTRITE OR HILARIOUSLY INAPPROPRIATE ON HER TURF, THREAT LEVEL: AMAZING

Better Half, 2/20/14

Oh hey let’s check in with the Better Half, probably it won’t be an Oedipal nigtmarAAAAUUUUGGGHHH