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This week: Your comment of the week, no fuss, no muss!

“Rusty wonders why the neighbors would put up a fence. Maybe it’s because your dumb dog runs all over the place? Just a thought.” –Flummoxicated

And the very funny runners up!

“I realize this may seem a bit petty for Margo, but our clue to her odd behavior lies in her line in panel one: ‘I’m busting out of this joint.’ Obviously, Margo’s body is currently being inhabited by a Prohibition-era mobster. She no doubt has dozens such damned souls on hand to autopilot her body through boring parts of life while she turns her malevolent gaze elsewhere.” –Warren

“I guess I Dressed in the Dark is sort of like jury duty. They have to keep the A3G girls sequestered lest they pick up a fashion magazine and suddenly they know too much.” –Carly

“Err, Mark, aren’t you supposed to give the kid the explanation that Sally and the dogs went to live on a farm where they’ll be happier? The grownups can handle the truth.” –ScienceGiant

“So I signed up Sally, the old dog lady, up for working on a farm! When I explained to her how much hard, physical labor this would involve she started crying!” –AndyL

“We also wonder if poor Sassy got the bath that she ran away from to start this episode.” –Fashion Police

“I’m betting that this is no training at all, but some sort of army testing of ‘white noise’ subliminal messages. Sure, Beetle is ‘learning’ about the M249. Alone in a totally white room, devoid of anything but a huge machine gun and a crate, with subliminal messages pumping in from hidden speakers as Sarge looks on from a two-way mirror. Next strip is going to show a Camp Swampy entirely covered in blood.” –mgm

“Sam looks pretty menacing in that last panel. ‘Toughen you up, huh? I’ve got something that will toughen you up. These sodas are room temperature … now drink up!'” –Walker of Dog

“I know the big animal shots in Mark Trail are just there for show or something, but something about that fish intrigues me. You can really picture the serene lake just outside Mark’s cabin, gently glittering in the sunlight to denote that all is well in the Lost Forest. Suddenly, this hideous fish breaks the surface, screaming ‘FUUUCK. SOMEONE KILL ME,’ before vanishing beneath the water again.” –Tophat

“There has to be some other way — an updated way — to convey ‘these people are poor.’ Because plaster and lath hasn’t been popular since the 50’s, but then again neither has Mary Worth.” –Thomas B.

“It would appear that Fred is sitting on a piece of styrofoam, possibly the packing material from the dresser next to him.” –Scott Bot

“Man, is Mike going to be surprised when he discovers his father is The Invisible Man and has always been there for him. It will be heartwarming and sentimental, until Dr. Mike completes his transformation into The Wolfman already in progress.” –Black Drazon

“Note to Mike: It takes a pretty special person to pull off an orange suit. You are NOT a special person.” –Aiantis

“That fence isn’t new; it was put there for the Truman Show-esque reality show they’ve been filming in the Lost Forest since 1946 — Who Wants to Punch a Shaggy Communist?” –bunivasal

“An adult movie called NUDITY? Are those people passing through the red light district in Herb and Jamaal’s city?” –Dr. Weird

“I love how every panel of Funky Winkerbean looks like it was lit with a single bulb dangling from a cord in some torturer’s basement.” –Patrick

“It’s nice to see the Dick Tracy artist throwing a bone to his target demographic, which he knows is comprised mainly of dangerously violent hermits and loners unfamiliar with social media devices and new technology in general. He can’t just assume they understand the concept of talking on the phone to another human being. ‘LOOK, IT’S A CELLULAR PHONE. SEE? THERE’S A KEYPAD, AND A SCREEN, AND EVERYTHING. NO WIRES, BUT STILL A PHONE. TEL-LE-PHONE. ALSO, BE GOOD OR DICK TRACY WILL DISMEMBER YOU.” -Krazy Kat

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Judge Parker, 8/9/10

Well, it turns out that Sophie’s cheerleading-driven powers of all-knowingness only give her universal access to cold, hard facts about whose ex-boyfriends are back in town, and whom those ex-boyfriends have divorced. The underlying motivations behind those circumstances are as opaque to Sophie as ever, and it’s kind of heartening to see that the youngest Spencer-Driver foundling is still an unsettling android-child, despite her makeover into a tween fashion plate. “NEDDY-UNIT: THE SOPHIE-UNIT DEMANDS INFORMATION ABOUT LOVE AND THE EXPERIENCE THEREOF! WILL LOVE OVERLOAD THE SOPHIE-UNIT’S CIRCUITRY IF SHE ATTEMPTS TO INCORPORATE IT INTO HER TOP-LEVEL ALGORITHM? THE SOPHIE-UNIT WILL INITIATE THE SENSATION KNOWN AS ‘IRRITATION’ (SUCCESS OF IRRITATION-INSTIGATION SUBROUTINE ESTIMATED AT > 95%) IN THE NEDDY-UNIT UNTIL THE DESIRED INFORMATION IS GIVEN!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/9/10

Ha ha, the chicken has fallen in love with Snuffy, whose main source of food is the chickens that he steals and eats! This has the potential for being one of the funny pages’ great tragic love stories. Let’s hope the artists don’t shy away from the heartbreaking beheading scene!

Dick Tracy, 8/9/10

Wow, usually we don’t get to see the badly decomposed corpses until the end of the Dick Tracy storyline. What exactly is that lump floating atop the body in panel one — is there an alligator lazily feeding on the poor sap, with Officer Hugepelvis gingerly sneaking up on it with plans to taser it? This could be the greatest Dick Tracy plot ever, if by “greatest” you mean “with the highest body count,” which is really the only metric I can think of that fans of this strip would respect.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/10

The best sadness in today’s Funky Winkerbean (because that is how one should evaluate any day’s Funky Winkerbean, by determining which of its many sadnesses is the best) is not Funky’s failure to recognize how his own unquenchable anger has infected every aspect of his life; that’s a theme that’s been harped on a bit too much of late to be fresh. No, my favorite is Crazy Harry’s rage at Funky for selecting a private service for parcel delivery, choosing reliable tracking capabilities over long-standing friendship. One assumes that Harry’s hangdog expression in the next to last panel is due to this betrayal, and not over the psychological implications of the new t-shirt design.

Panel from Marvin, 8/8/10

Unfortunately, this panel does not depict Marvin’s parents watching with bored detachment as their son is carried away by hungry rodents, with Jeff responding to his wife’s earlier question, “What kind of hungry rodents are those, carrying Marvin away to eat?” But I’ve put isolated it here like this, so you can pretend that it does.