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You guys, I normally do my ad love bit at the end of this post, but this week’s ad should get better treatment, because it’s for a book written by One Big Happy scribe and faithful Comics Curmudgeon reader Rick Detorie: The Accidental Genius Of Weasel High! Kirkus Reviews says: “No accidental work of genius, this — Detorie’s carefully crafted novel is an engaging experience.” And Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine says “This book gets the highest rating I can give a book without actually being paid to say so.” Well, I’m being paid, but I still think you should check it out.

And now, your comment of the week!

“Wait a minute! It has been amply demonstrated that Liza does not love Mountview Hospital. Are we to understand that she is a mug thief along with everything else?” –Violet

And your very funny runners up.

“I do like the drug metaphor. ‘I AM WHO I AM. Specifically, I am like heroin. Sweet, sweet heroin.'” –Neigedens

“Having successfully integrated the messages of his new corporate sponsors into a sermon, the preacher in Gasoline Alley proceeded on to phase 2 — replacing the sacrament with Diet Pepsi and Necco wafers.” –NoahSnark

“I hope when we finally see John Fucking Thrasher that he’s dressed in a hoodie and aviator glasses. And pants, too, I guess.” –Maggie the Cat

“Clearly, the purpose of Rick’s head examination was to select an Easter bonnet to go with his peach suit.” –Fashion Police

“I’m hoping that Rick’s statement ‘I was busy having my head examined’ is a euphemism for ‘trepanning.’ Gruesome, outdated medical procedures can only improve Apartment 3G, especially after Margo learns how to use them to further bend Tommie to her will. Failing that, I hope that ‘I was busy having my head examined’ is a euphemism for ‘seeing a phrenologist.’ Because 19th century pseudoscience is vastly preferable to seeing Rick go on for weeks about his numerous insecurities. Also, because I’m interested in any sort of explanation for all of his weird extra facial clefts seen in the second panel.” –Alan’s Addiction

“Liza is obviously flooding Facebook with iPhone photos of her half-eaten cafeteria sponge.” –Patrick

“Of course this nurse doesn’t have any information on this patient – it’s a little difficult to accurately diagnose a problem when the only equipment in your patient’s room is two IV stands and a cash register.” –Scott Bot

“Who gives a shit about this no-name gomer and his stupid fever when that crazy fucking nurse is releasing General Zod from the Phantom Zone?!” –Doctor Handsome

“Liza’s not a good nurse because she hasn’t got the patients. Get it? Huh? Patients = patience? Ha! Also because she lets them die while she plays Fruit Ninja.” –Esther Blodgett

“My favorite thing is how royally pissed the Python looks. ‘A freakin’ open-air cage? Anyone here ever hear of the rainy season? Happens every year? Hello!!?'” –boojum

“Remember that Morbius bit Spiderman during their battle. In most vampire mythologies this means that Spiderman would come under the vampire’s power. However the power is reversed here, as it is now poor Morbius who can’t keep his eyes open and can’t tell whether he’s awake or asleep. At their next encounter Morbius will meekly submit to Spiderman’s whims, which will involve a couch and widescreen plasma TV.” –Bill Thompson

“I dunno. I just assumed sandwich was code for ‘threesome’ personally.” –Jobrill

“In the third panel, who is the guy behind the sheriff? It looks like Mark in a bad ’70s porn star disguise. Maybe that is how Mark will get to talk to John Thrasher — either by delivering a pizza or say that he is there to clean the pool. –Liam

“Shouldn’t that be ‘2nite’? C’mon, girlfriend, that’s how all the hip texters talk! Oh, well, at least she hasn’t found a way to dot her i’s with little hearts.” –Pozzo

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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Archie, 4/29/11

So, the Archie newspaper strip got a new artist this week! Despite having written a blog about comic strips for like the past six years, I actually don’t have a very good vocabulary to describe what I like and dislike about art, so I’ll just say that the new style looks more … cramped? All the features have seemed smaller, less detailed, seen from farther away — until today, that is, when we’re treated to the horrifying closeup of Professor Flutesnoot in panel two, with the bags under his eyes and the terrifyingly realistic shading on the huge fleshy proboscis jutting out at us from the middle of his face. From now on, I want the viewpoint of the strip to stay as far away from the characters as possible to spare us such horrors.

Also, isn’t Professor Flutesnoot a chemistry teacher? I distinctly remember people fiddling with test tubes in his class. Damn it, do I have to keep track of continuity for the Archie universe? Because I don’t think I’m ready for that.

Mark Trail, 4/29/11

Of course, Professor Flutesnoot isn’t one tenth as terrifying as Nightmare Sherriff there in panel three of Mark Trail. What’s the most disturbing thing about him, do you think? The fact that the distance from his eyes to his upper lip seems disproportionately long when compared to the distance from his upper lip to his chin? His “hair,” which looks like someone else’s scalp that he’s wearing as a hat? His soulless orange eyes? The unexplained figure standing behind him, whose anxious expression seems to be saying “Watch out! I can’t control him when he’s like this! Oh … oh God!”

Gil Thorp, 4/29/11

At last, someone has the guts to cut down Milford’s bloated budget! I can see two directions where this story might be going. Hobart McMustache could demand cuts to the athletic department, particularly to sports that are boring and/or involve girls; on the other hand, he might hold the Thorps up as examples of good fiscal stewards of public money, since they tend to get assistant coaching duties for no charge from the janitorial staff or from cantankerous old weirdos who just show up at practice one day.

Mary Worth, 4/29/11

Oh look, Liza got a taste of Drew’s love and now has instantly become a psycho stalker, what a surprising development. Frankly, I’m much more intrigued by Drew’s hideous phone, which appears to be a cheap Vietnamese knock-off of a Dell PocketPC from 2004 or so. Still, you have to be impressed that it auto-hyphenated “tonight” to keep the lines of text formatted properly, unless we’re meant to understand that Liza did that to interject a charming faux-Victorianism into the midst of her awful txt-speak.

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Apartment 3-G, 4/28/11

Gosh, I don’t know, Tommie, maybe it’s because he’s drawn to look exactly like every other non-Dan Diller walk-on male character in Apartment 3-G? I’m much less interested in you déjà vu/first inklings of the extreme shallowness of your universe’s gene pool than I am in Dan Diller’s suddenly obvious sandwich addiction. As this picture shows (and, side note, don’t browse through Wikipedia’s American sandwiches category while you’re hungry, by the way), the reuben is not a sandwich to be treated lightly, and surely most people don’t order their next reuben with the Thousand Island Dressing from the previous one still moist in their beard. Like Wilbur Weston, Dan needs a serious sandwich intervention.

Peanuts, 4/28/11

Yes, it’s a slow day in the comics when I’m tackling Classic Peanuts, but … Linus should really be thankful for his frizzy hair, as nobody likes it when a little kid shows up to a party looking uncannily like Hitler.