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Here’s your comment of the week — the best of a particularly strong bunch this time around:

“Fare thee well, Cathy. I will pour a 40 of Tab on the curb in front of the Weight Watchers for you.” –Plinko Commie

And the hilarious runners up!

“What your husband is too sensitive to tell you, Beth, is that the government put up the fence in an attempt to keep your progeny from ever meeting the Trails’ adopted troll. The end result of a mating between the two would be too hideous to contemplate.” –terrapin

“Notice how Rabbit jumps gracefully over the Elrod ball. Careful, Rabbit. That Elrod ball is sharp! Why, it is at the cutting edge of humor.” –The Check is in the Male

“Is that an actual morgue? In the Tracyverse, ‘MORGUE’ is probably a commonly-used name for a nightclub.” –Baron Bizarre

“I confess that I am in love with the delicate, moneyed, pinky-extended way Mrs. D’Buckworth holds a cell phone. I kind of wish cartoon millionaires would start holding everything like this … not just wine glasses and brandy snifters — pencils, chopsticks, steering wheels, fruit roll-ups, hamsters … the effete, plutocratic possibilities are endless!” –Dan

“The wife in Pluggers is obviously performing a cost-benefit analysis in her head: ‘I could stab him in the throat and claim it was an accident. But he’d bleed all over the place, and I just mopped the linoleum.'” –jvwalt

“Is Pluggers such a hard strip to draw that you need a vacation? All you do is copy out a suggestion from a reader, draw some obese animals in plaid, and die a little inside.” –Citric

“Say what you will about Cathy but she never killed her dog, finger-banged a Nazi, or used time travel to spread misery and cancer.” –Ed Dravecky

“What exactly is ‘Spotlight on…’ meant to signify in Pluggers? Because I’m thinking that when a plugger shines a spotlight on something, he intends to shoot it.” –wagmore

“I kind of wonder if this A3G strip is the writer’s way of screwing with the artist’s head. ‘Here, design a fashion show! That’ll teach you to draw my characters in Han Solo outfits!'” –JB

“Lu Ann has learned that asking ‘What does that mean?’ buys her a little time and, if she’s lucky, a one-syllable recap or simple diagram.” –Uncle Lumpy

“It looks like everyone sees a different celebrity in the Rorschach test that is Dr. Mike’s dad, and my vote is for the skin of Chevy Chase as worn by Willem Defoe.” –bunivasal

“No, really, what does that mean? Sorry, I’m having trouble comprehending. The speed just kicked in and life just kind of blue-shifted for a second there. I CAN SEE THE UNIVERSE.” –Erin

“Isn’t that sad. Jeffy thinks a pair of discarded boxers is his mother.” –Mac

FW: “When life gives you lemons, move your mouth over to one side of your face.” –This Guy

“I look forward to Kat and Kitty attempting to break Margo by forcing her to wear an outfit constructed exclusively out of designer handbags.” –Windier E. Megatons

“Is Margo planning to grab six pairs of shoes, or twelve pairs of shoes? Or is she going to just grab twelve random unmatched shoes on the principle that the last option would be the most likely to enrage Mama Kat?” –Poteet

“Josh, at first I thought you may have slipped up by not writing ‘outfitting a child in a urine-soaked banana suit,’ but then I saw the clever drain hole at the bottom.” –Red Greenback

“I think that outfit is perfect for Tommie’s job. She does work as a whore on a 19th century riverboat casino, right?” –Joe Blevins

“It’s always fun to return to Mary Worth’s downtown. It’s even more fun than Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown,’ with its smashed store window, littered sidewalk, handy 2×4, and awkwardly-posing yet stylishly casual rubbies in matching pants. Even the lamp post and residential-style garbage can (or perhaps it’s the world’s fattest fire hydrant) go together. Truly, everything’s waiting for you!” –Mooncattie

“Thursday Kit-Kat threatens to dye Lu Ann’s hair. Today Lu Ann complains that Kit-Kat wants to cut it. Those … those aren’t the same thing, honey.” –Anonymous

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Shoe, 8/16/10

Upon first glance, you probably found this Shoe comic pretty depressing! After all, it reveals the fact that our hero Cosmo is such a slob that he spilled enough spaghetti sauce on himself to soak through his clothes, or maybe that he simply sits around eating spaghetti with no shirt on, to make cleanup easier; furthermore, it appears that he was so numb to his own slovenliness that the resulting mess went unnoticed for hours or perhaps even days. However, I would argue that he still clings to a shred of dignity, in the form of that towel around his waist. Someone who had totally given up on life would just stand there in the nude while rambling to his doctor on his cell phone, but some feeble sense of modesty causes him to cover his lower bird bits, despite the fact that, given that he’s describing his symptoms verbally, he is presumably not speaking on some kind of advanced picture phone.

Crock, 8/16/10

I first saw this comic as a somewhat smaller graphic, and in that form the Desert Sage’s eyes looked sad to me, and the strip seemed quite poignant: the Sage knew he had to clear the bats from his sand-cave home, but he had grown to love them, and would thus do them one last kindness before euthanizing them. But in this larger version of the graphic, his eyes look downright sadistic, as if he’s cackling with delight at the prospect of drawing the bats’ last days out as long and as cruelly as possible. Then I realized the real tragedy, which was that I was trying mightily to discern human emotions from the meaningless scribbles that make up a typical Crock strip.

Marmaduke, 8/16/10

Ha ha, don’t be silly: nothing resembling “democracy” could possibly be happening in a pack of dogs surrounding by Marmaduke. No, those dogs are raising their paws because they’re pledging their allegiance to their Dark Lord, who will soon lead them in an assault on the poor townsfolk that will leave rivers of gore in its wake.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/15/10

Poor Slylock! He’s an expert at fancy deduction and ratiocination, and a savant at picking out seemingly insignificant details from a crime scene that may be important, but it appears he’s not cut out for the rough and tumble of real crime-fighting. For instance, some member of the strip’s rogues gallery — Harry Ape? Slick Smitty? Reeky Rat? — has trashed Slylock’s home, sending a message that he’s not safe anywhere. And yet all Sly can do is obsessively try to figure out the exact time when this act of intimidation took place. Do you think whatever thug wakes you up tomorrow with a well-placed fist to the snout is going to be impressed by this, detective? You’re officially in over your head.

Apartment 3-G, 8/15/10

Oh, dear, we appear to have reached the point in the storyline that I most feared, when the makeover would reveal the limitations of Frank Bolle’s ability or willingness to depict clothes worn by human females in the year 2010. The dress Margo is holding up in panel four would in fact make Lu Ann look old, and not cute, if by “old” we mean “a reanimated zombie of a woman from the 1910s in her burial dress.” And speaking of age, Tommie’s dress in the final panel looks more to me like “overdramatic prom dress” than “sophisticated thirtysomething professional.” At least her facial expression of forced sultriness barely masking profound discomfort is pretty accurate.

Blondie, 8/15/10

Here again is an instance of a Sunday strip whose top row of throwaway panels changes the narrative’s entire complexion. In those papers where the strip appears without the throwaway panels, it’s just a dumb joke about Dagwood getting a bowling ball stuck on his hand. With the throwaway panels, it’s a poignant story about a man whose best friend doesn’t remember his birthday, and tries to make up for it by just giving him some bowling ball he found in his basement, the finger holes clearly drilled for somebody else.