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A very brief note to you, pre-COTW, that I am doing three standup shows in the Baltimore area in the next eight days, including one tomorrow. Here are the relavent details! And now, without further ado, your comment of the week:

“Mark seems really excited about the arrival of black flies tomorrow. I think maybe he has a different definition of ‘fly fishing’ than the rest of us. ‘Ha Ha! I caught another one! This tiny fishing pole sure works great!'” –Brad

And your very funny runners up!

“Shelly’s shout-out elicits only a 3 out of 10 on the Meddlegasm scale: small no-teeth smile, no nimbus, no upraised index finger.” –Baka Gaijin

“WHAT does that quote beginning Mary Worth’s strip MEAN? Does silence GLOW? And if so, is it easily confused with other glows? Does silence only glow when awake? Why would awakening silence be a GOOD THING? I don’t understand ANY OF THIS. From now on, I’m going to just throw a bunch of words together and hope one catches on and is someday put into a comic strip red by NOBODY, unless ironically. Here’s a few: ‘From far away, one can barely discern the truth of a lack of knowledge.’ ‘Leaves fall to the ground, but do they fall upwards?’ ‘In space, kittens.'” –Briane Pagel

“They’re not at the Waldorf-Astoria, they’re at the ‘Waldorf Astoria.’ It’s probably a transient hotel called the Waldorf that happens to be in Astoria, Queens. I’m thinking they got the sign and the ceiling about right.” –CaroZ

MT: “These guys do know that arrowheads are no longer generally accepted as currency, right?” –bourbon babe, unbuckled

“Coming soon on Hal Wallis: Real World Lawyer: Hal overplays his hand in the negotiation, takes 3 months to nail down the wording on the college fund clause, and the publisher walks. Hal bills the Morgans $15,000 for their trouble.” –lorne

“You said it Lukey, nothing makes me feel more young an’ strong an’ fearless than puttin’ on my belt of human toes. I wish it was socially acceptable to wear our war trophies more often.” –Hal Mars

“It’s a little late to be starting Sarah’s college fund, isn’t it? I guess the Morgans figure that just when her tuition to one of the major Ivies is due, they’ll suddenly receive a windfall of the exact amount. ‘Why, this World Economies paper of Sarah’s is exactly what we need to fix the national debt! We’ll need six copies; here’s $217,000 for your trouble.'” –BigTed

“Look, Blondie, Paula Deen was no longer available, so just cook us our goddamn yams, all right?” –Anonymous

“The spirit of Walter Matthau materialized in panel two to safeguard Blondie’s zinger and ensure that it was a Grandpa Level Comedy success.” –Chareth Cutestory

“That dress is a thing of wonder – not only does it actually have distinguishing lines and show some skin, but it’s not a hideously undefined shade of pink and/or beige. It fits in so poorly with the A3G aesthetic, it’s literally trying to throttle Lu Ann to death so it can escape.” –The Ben

“Blondie is going to be very upset when she gets paid in Confederate Dollars for this event.” –Doug Wykstra

“‘Maybe you don’t have to.’ [picks up book] ‘STOP!’ [smack] ‘WRITING’ [smack] ‘DEPRESSING’ [smack] ‘SHIT!'” –pugfuggly

“Question: is Lu Ann’s hollow skull in actuality a jingly cat toy?” –Doctor Handsome

“Absolutely, the middle panel is where the action is … right between ‘We’re probably screwed’ and ‘We are screwed!’ comes that moment of reading the title page of the superintendent’s report: Riverdale High Worthless: Close And Burn Building Immediately, File Lawsuit Against Weatherbee, followed by a random string of cuss words.” –Dr Mabuse

“‘I’m prepared,’ said Doc as he stared into the distance, his eyes not seeing, looking inward rather than at the vast expanse of wilderness before him. ‘You might say this is what I’ve been preparing for my whole life. Every breath, every heartbeat, has brought us to this exact…’ The buzz of tiny wings began to crescendo. ‘Moment.'” –Greg

“I don’t read this strip regularly so I’m wondering why Dick is being interviewed by a waitress from a truck stop in outer space. Is this required to get space coffee?” –aphthakid

“Hey kids! Here’s a tip from Mark Trail: When your hands are so riddled with bug bites that you can’t even scratch yourself without doubling the agony, try grabbing a copper kettle from a roaring bonfire with your bare hands. It’ll burn the sores right off!” –Guts Dozier

“And in the missing fourth panel, smirky Les pulls out a red pen and corrects Lisa’s grammar.” –Lumaca Morente

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/15/13

I don’t know why, but I was under the impression that Lisa’s Forbidden Diary, the one that will help Les get inside his late wife’s head and unlock her cinematic secrets, was from, like, a time in her life when she and Les weren’t married and spending all their time together. Turns out nope! It’s just a record of all the stuff that Les probably would’ve known if he’d been paying attention at the time. Anyway, the very first passage Les reads consists of Lisa making a clunky joke and then noting smugly that the people she made it at didn’t seem to get it, probably because they weren’t smart enough. “That’s my girl,” Les thinks, smirking in her memory, smirking because she cannot. “That’s my girl.”

Heathcliff, 11/15/13

So it took me a while to figure out exactly what’s going on here, mostly because Heathcliff’s jeans have been colored the exact same shade of orange as his fur, and I was going to berate the syndicate colorist for doing this, but really, has Heathcliff ever worn pants before? Wouldn’t his sudden decision to do so cast an unflattering and frankly disturbing light on the years of pantslessness that led up to this point? Anyway, what’s going on here is that Heathcliff, who is wearing jeans that are the exact same shade of orange as his fur (and, side note, imagine leaving the house wearing only garments that precisely matched your own skin tone, imagine how everyone would look at you in mingled fascination and horror), is no-hands eating a turkey leg, and gorged himself to the point of bursting his pants button at exactly the right time for said pants button to hit a dog in the face. It seems like an awful lot would have had to go exactly right here for this plan to work out, but I guess Heathcliff is bored with his usual dog-harassment and wanted to take on a real challenge, you know? “He gets them with girth” says a nearby child, to give an example of another thing I’d rather not think too much about.

Dick Tracy, 11/15/13

I’m sorry, did you think Dick Tracy was an anachronistic square-jawed fascist wholly unfamiliar with American pop culture? Dick Tracy wants you to know that he’s cool, or at least was cool, back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. You know, back when he was young, taking in the post-punk and early new wave scenes in New York, hanging out with all those guys before they were famous, doing coke in the bathroom at CBGB with Patti Smith, what have you. Later he had them all arrested, of course.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/15/13

You guys, there is literally nothing Rex Morgan likes hearing better than “it’s going to cost them triple,” especially when the person reaping those tripled costs is a member of the Morgan family whose finances Rex is responsible for. Look at how pleased he is in that third panel, to hear about all the money his lawyer will be extracting from a local nonprofit arts organization! I’ve literally never seen him so happy. Just for comparison, this is the face he makes when a patient thanks him profusely for saving his life:

Mark Trail, 11/15/13

I take back what I said yesterday about the Mark Trail bug talk being boring — at least, boring in some conventional sense. Now I think it’s boring in a fascinating sense, like a five-hour Central European art house film where a village is increasingly infested with flies that represent the legacy of Communism or maybe just man’s own inherent corruption, and the inhabitants endure the plague with grim stoicism. There’s a shot of several flies on an old man’s face that goes on in silence for nearly two minutes. “Is he ever going to brush them off?” you wonder. He does, eventually. But they come back again a moment later, and he realizes that swatting them away was futile. The moose may seek shelter, but humanity has the self-awareness to know that it’s all hopeless.

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Archie, 11/14/13

I love that Mr. Weatherbee looks nothing but horrified in each and every panel of this strip. Right from the beginning he’s hunched over and anxious and clutching tightly onto his lapel; it’s not like he’s under any illusions that the superintendent has anything good to say about Riverdale High, after all. And yet the actual report is obviously much, much worse than even he had imagined. Sure, the final panel, in which he’s broken out into full-on panic sweats, is great, but it’s the second panel, in which he realizes that he’s only beginning to understand the meaning of terror and his mind won’t stop screaming inside his skull, is one of my favorite things in Newspaper Archie ever.

Momma, 11/14/13

Wait, did today’s strip and yesterday’s get swapped? Or are Francis and MaryLou just going to keep making Momma go out into the snow until she freezes to death for real?

Mark Trail, 11/14/13

These two panels of insect talk are preeettty boring, so just imagine how dull the two days of fly fishing we’ve mercifully skipped over must’ve been!