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Your COTW in just a second, but first: we’re all consumed by Apartment 3-G makeover mania, am I right? Obviously we’re all very curious about what the gals will look like, once they’ve been made over. Some commentors thought that the King Features About The Characters page offered a clue, but in fact the pics there are from the days of Alex Kotzky, the original artist. But now, I have an exclusive look, courtesy of faithful reader Brenda Starr Destroyer, of the future of 3G!

AHEM. And now … your comment of the week!

“SSmith: Every time you picture that guy from today’s throwaway panels having sex, take a drink. No, that’s not part of a game. It’s just sound advice.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

And the very funny runners up!

“This is what I love about the Batiuk-verse. Even if you’ve been in a car accident which has sent you back in time (!), you still have the presence of mind to make a terrible, terrible half-joke to an uninterested second party.” –Joe Blevins

“I don’t know what Mike and Jenna are on, but whatever drugs make you pick a pumpkin-colored jacket and matching Sansabelt slacks are drugs I want no part of.” –Patrick

“Tommie’s humiliation is somewhat spoiled for me, due to how much she’s obviously enjoying it. She’s the worst bottom ever. No wonder Margo is in such a bad mood all the time.” –Les of the Jungle Patrol

“Did anybody know about the reward? I used a newspaper ad so nobody would read it. Now, it looks like Rusty might get that dog back.” –Renee J

“Is Tommie really a singer now? Or was that all a ruse to get her on stage? I need to know so I can tell if this whole story is just mean or heart-breakingly cruel.” –AndyL

“I for one am disappointed that the naked Gunther storyline was dropped after just two weeks of fake ribaldry. Wouldn’t it have been great if the strip had become a single-joke comic called Luann Saw Gunther Naked? Okay, maybe not great, but better?” –FE

“Oh man, if you take all of Herb’s lines out of that strip it becomes an exceptionally creepy ‘Imma kill you for insurance money’ comic. Just look at Herb’s hideously bulbous eyes light up in the second panel when the idea hits him. He grapples with himself darkly in the third panel before clutching the coffee cup to himself, preparing to bash it off his mother-in-law’s head. She gives him a look of utter disdain … Mere porcelain can’t kill her, oh no Herb, you fool. Nothing can.” –Tophat

“Hey, Stan Lee writes what Stan Lee knows. In 1963 it was social anxiety. In 2010 it’s napping.” –SDL No More!

“This story arc explains so much. Obviously, Puppet Master also has a Spider-Man doll. He bought it years ago, and it’s still in its box, on a shelf.” –seismic-2

“Slim may have gotten ‘rocked’ after pulling an all-nighter moonlighting as a musician, but the true sports-hero’s-downward-spiral narrative comes with Mark Trail, as a closer examination of the dognapping neighbor reveals him to be former Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez.” –Harland

“You don’t think Mark Trail can hear facial hair? Guess again.” –Walker of Dog

“This isn’t Funk to the Future or It’s a Funkerful life. It’s The Cancer of Oz.” –Thomas B.

“Margo is bristling less at being called frumpy than she is at people thinking Lu Ann and Tommie are her friends.” –NoahSnark

“If this makeover results in fewer shirts buttoned all the way up to neck, I will be pleased as punch. However, if it means Margo stops dressing like Han Solo periodically, all the exposed clavicle in the world will not quell my rage.” –Business Pyjamas

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And we must of course give thanks to our advertisers:

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Apartment 3-G, 7/12/10

Our terribly dressed makeover artists can insult our girls all month, as far as I’m concerned, but I think their barbs might be missing their mark to a certain extent. Sure, Margo looks like an old-fashioned schoolmarm — the sort of old-fashioned schoolmarm with sex appeal smoldering just beneath the surface, not least because she’s teaching in an old-fashioned schoolhouse, where corporal punishment is still permitted. Lu Ann may be a blonde, but she has far less depth and intelligence than the average Barbie doll. And, of course, nothing about Tommie could possibly be described as a “hot mess,” as that phrase is generally reserved for spectacular failures in aesthetics and personal habits, not sad, desperate attempts to fade into the background so that nobody can see you. “Hot mess” will presumably be what all three of these girls will look like once Kat and Kitty are done with them.

Dick Tracy, 7/12/10

Man, is Dick Tracy actively trying to get kicked out of the paper now? Apparently showing mangled corpses at an oblique angle wasn’t enough, so now we’re being treated to a woman more or less cut in half by a falling airplane, her face frozen in the look of terror that came over her when she realized her death was imminent, her hands raised up in a feeble attempt to stave off the inevitable. Delightful!

Gil Thorp, 7/12/10

With the Mudlark spring teams finally, in the second week of July, eliminated from contention, at last we can launch into Milford Summertime Wackiness™. This year’s zany summer story looks like it will revolve around the Thorps’ divorce. “Thanks, but what are you still doing here? You know what the judge said, and my lover Carlos will kick your ass if he catches you. I’m sorry you don’t have any containers at your sad apartment; just take the pitcher and get out.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/9/10 and (panels) 7/11/10

I have to admit to having been scandalized by Friday’s Snuffy Smith, in which a local young woman casually admits that her paramour has left her to enter into a polygamous relationship with sisters. What could be the cause of this attack on traditional values in Hootin’ Holler? Could the male population have been so reduced in number by moonshine still explosions that the women have to share them? The throwaway panels, in which another local admits to fathering more than a dozen children with who knows how many women, points in the same direction. It’s also possible that some multinational chemical conglomerate is using whatever fetid lake serves as Hootin’ Holler’s water supply as a illicit disposal site, with the noxious substances causing a freakish increase in the libido of the male inhabitants.

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 7/11/10

Was this all that Tommie ever wanted — shared humiliation? She knows that her own world of sadness will never end, but now that Lu Ann and especially Margo have been dragged down with her, she allows a brief smile to cross her face.

Hey, everybody, do you know what today is? It’s the sixth anniversary of the beginning of this blog, which in Internet years is several lifetimes! Look back in wonder at my first-ever post, in which I talk about Non Sequitur (something I would almost never did again) and break my own (later-instituted) Don’t Talk About Mallard Fillmore Rule right in the title. I think I have come a long way in my writing skills and comics appreciation in the 2,400+ posts that have followed, and both my skills and my appreciation have been honed by the 369,000+ comments that readers have added to the site. Thanks to all of you, whether you’ve been reading for six years or six days — it’s only knowing that so many of you enjoy the site that keeps me doing it. And don’t worry, I plan to carry on until the Internet is replaced by something even more irritating and time-sucking.