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Yes, just because it’s late at night on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend doesn’t mean you’ll go COTW-less!

“Josh finds him creepy, but I think Tongue Kid is the best. ‘Hey, there, what’s up. Me? Oh, I’m great. Just gonna eat this fish, live on an idyllic island. How about you? Reading Mark Trail, you say? That’s great. Look, the fish and I gotta go. You take care. Good luck with that Mark Trail thing.'” –He Brought Queenie Baby Jesus

And our runners up are as ever hilarious:

“Will tomorrow be the first Luann where two characters discuss something that matters? Spoiler alert: No.” –S. Stout

“JP: Maybe Bubba’s pot farm is just a front operation for a far more lucrative career in selling endangered marine life, which is in itself a front operation for trading stolen art, which is in itself a front operation for a snuff film studio.” –hogenmogen

“Heathcliff’s trying to say he’s innocent because of the existence of … REASONABLE TROUT! Ha ha! Oh, I hate myself.” –Dagger

“Look at that last panel of Gasoline Alley. Just look at it. Divorce it from context, and try to imagine that there is any scenario that goes with that image and those words that works unless she’s talking about delicious, tender, human children.” –Johann Sebastian Cock

“The slabs of food-pie are not for eating, of course. Just hold them near your face and FEEL the radioactivity!” –Greg

“Yes, Jim’s losing of an arm and a sibling — those are easy for him to accept. But to be rejected by Dawn Weston? No man can accept that.” –Liam

“Yep, it’s just a typical scene as two grown men exercise and discuss what teenage girls have been doing to their football players. Better add another set, no frustrations here!” –Chareth Cutestory

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And as always, we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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Heathcliff, 11/23/12

Newspaper comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not in a political sense, necessarily, but in the sense that visual signifiers and little building blocks of jokes that haven’t existed in the real world for literally years are still just taken for granted in comics, because they’ve become established running gags during the strips’ decades-long run. Take, for instance, the idea that you’d put your cat or dog out at night. This was, I guess, an unremarkable aspect of pet ownership at one point; but today, anyone living in an urban or suburban area would be judged rather harshly if they just let the dog roam free at night, and while plenty of people do have indoor-outdoor cats, even in the city, plenty don’t, and those that do almost never actively kick the cat out at night. This change in attitude happened long enough ago that, when I was a child in the early ’80s, I had to have my mom explain to me why Fred Flintstone dropped Dino on his front step in the opening sequence of the Flintstones; yet here we are 30 years later, and Heathcliff is still being comically bounced across the lawn, and Dagwood’s suburban cul de sac is haunted by packs of feral dogs at night.

Wizard of Id, 11/23/12

Meanwhile, newspaper comics are apparently forbidden to use the word “hell,” even when it’s the name of a place of afterlife punishment rather than a curse word. There are probably plenty of other perfectly understandable substitutes that could have been used instead (“Hades,” “The underworld”, etc.), but heck, let’s go with “heck,” a euphemism for the swear word that’s never, ever used to refer to hell-as-a-place, just to confuse and irritate everybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/23/12

Haha, wait, what? Greg is the new James Bond? Is he even English? Is he even attractive? Wouldn’t he be able to afford a better apartment than a third-floor walkup in a building where teachers and nurses live? I guess this does at least explain why Margo hasn’t been putting any effort into publicity, because having the new Bond in your stable of clients is probably a license to print money, assuming that the film doesn’t flop because it turns out its new star is a bland American who goes around wearing sky-blue turtlenecks.

Meanwhile, Skyler is the victim of a abrupt hair color shift, but as a young Hollywood starlet this is actually one of the more realistic instances of this typically A3Gian blip.

Gil Thorp, 11/23/12

Gil Thorp’s storyline continues to be not even interesting enough for me to bother summarizing for you, but in the interest in keeping you up to date on what’s really important, here is a sexy closeup on Gil’s sweaty face!

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Hi and Lois, 11/22/12

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! What are you thankful for? Are you thankful that your Thanksgiving dinner isn’t some awful liberal nightmare where the lady womyn of the house forces you to sully this most American of holidays by speaking non-American languages? Such heresy! (Also, we would suggest that if we’re going down this road maybe adding Wampanoag to the list might be appropriate, but, sure, Japanese and French, whatever.)

Crankshaft, 11/22/12

Or maybe you’re thankful for the antics of your elderly relatives, who are muttering inappropriate prayers to open the holiday meal. Worried that they’re slipping into dementia? Ha ha, no, they just had to get drunk, in order to deal with all of you!

Mary Worth, 11/22/12

Personally, I’m thankful that Mary Worth hasn’t taken time off from its edge-of-your-seat plot just to bring us boring Thanksgiving messages. After all, we wouldn’t want to miss even a single day of Mary’s horribly misguided passive-aggressive meddling, would we? “Gee, Dawn, I’m sorry to hear that you don’t want to ‘help’ Jim with his sexual urges! The boy has already lost his sister and his arm, so your rejection of his advances is just one more horrible wound to his fragile psyche that he’ll just have to learn to deal with, somehow!”

Apartment 3-G, 11/22/12

While others may chose to measure Greg by the pound, Greg thinks of his own worth in terms of inches. Interpret this as you will! (I’ll be interpreting it as being about his penis.)