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Your top comment this week is about 9 Chickweed Lane — trust me, it makes sense if you follow along:

“Hoo boy, will all you people feel silly when this strip goes back to unicorns and finger-fucking. ‘Bring back the Nazi!’ you’ll say, but too late.” –Buck Ripsnort

And the runners up! Very funny!

“Jenna must be a good accountant if she’s able to detail the Johnsons’ finances on a single sheet of paper. I imagine she simplified their money problems down to the basics: Income: $84,000 (very good!) Miscellaneous expenses: $56,000 (not bad!) Hideous pastel outfits: $49,000 (whoopsies!)” –BigTed

“Meanwhile in Trailville, sideburns have arrived.” –Sheila Sternwell

“Is there some kind of drug that you can inhale that makes basic budgetary details seem interesting? If so, financial counselor Jenna Thomas has been sniffing it off her right index finger all week.” –nescio

“The hostility coming off the clowns probably has something to do with Dagwood’s ridiculous hair and giant yellow button. I’m guessing they thought he was betraying his clown heritage, like some sort of clown Uncle Tom.” –BananaSam

“I’m pretty sure Mark Trail is just working its way down to advocating a return to a completely lawless, survival-of-the-fittest society. ‘This social contract, it only serves to rob poor, innocent, old women of their animal companions. Laws did this.'” –Dave

“‘Margo and Luann love lasagna, and they can’t bicker with their mouths full.’ I was praying that panel two would be a cut to Tommie sitting at the dinner table, covered in half-chewed lasagna that is shooting at her from either side.” –Grump

“Oh now that’s just ridiculous. You can’t arbitrarily stick a C3 (Commercial/Light Industrial/No Dogs Allowed) designation in a block full of R2s (Cheesily Sinister Snobbish Residential).” –Hogan

“[Wilbur] is stuffing food in his face in the least graceful way one can stuff food in one’s face without involving a pie cannon or spray cheese rocket.” –Chip Whittle

Too long to reproduce here in fall, but also worthy of your attention, is this epic Luann fantasy from Old School Allie Cat.

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And here’s where we could be giving thanks to advertisers like you! 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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Mary Worth, 6/14/10

Well, thank goodness: the new Mary Worth plot is being heralded by a Charterstone Pool Party, so the world does in fact still make some kind of sense. Kudos to Jenna for spicing things up by shouting potentially sensitive information across a courtyard full of her clients’ friends and neighbors. “I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR REFERRING THE JOHNSONS TO ME AS CLIENTS! BONNIE’S COMPULSIVE SPENDING ON HIDEOUS CLOTHES IN UNDER CONTROL FOR NOW, AND HER HUSBAND HAS GRUDGINGLY AGREED NOT TO LEAVE HER! I STILL DON’T THINK THEIR SEX LIFE HAS REALLY RECOVERED, THOUGH!”

Say, check out Wilbur in the background of panel two! Presumably he’s recovered from the pain of being abandoned by his lying not-son. No longer hiding in his apartment, shoving sandwich after sandwich into his mouth, he’s decided to come out into the daylight, mingle with his fellow condo dwellers, and chow down on a raw potato instead.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/10

You know, any comic can show you a character telling another an awkward, unfunny joke; in fact, one might argue that this is one of the things the American newspaper comics pages do best! But only high-quality strips like Funky Winkerbean have the craftsmanship to show you the uncomfortable aftermath of those failed zingers: the confusion, the sheepish smiles, the half-hearted apologies on both sides. Tomorrow’s strip should just be three panels of these two silently brooding over their continued failure to forge an interpersonal bond, despite their game efforts.

Mark Trail, 6/14/10

Panel three’s closeup reveals that “Sally” is clearly just character actor Ernest Borgnine in a not terribly convincing wig — which bodes ill for our mustachioed dog-hating villain. Don’t let Borgnine’s “lovable loser” persona from his Oscar-winning turn in Marty fool you; he’s a decorated World War II naval gunner, so that nosey neighbor and his politician friend may find themselves under attack by ship-based artillery in the near future.

Dick Tracy 6/14/10

Oh, right, Dick Tracy: it still exists, and is still insane, etc. One particularly odd and hitherto unexplained aspect of this storyline is that the play-gone-haywire at the heart of it is being staged at the Science Museum, which is not the sort of place one usually imagines as a theatrical venue. But now we’ve learned the narrative motivation behind this: with the action established at the Science Museum, we’ve been set up for a dramatic conclusion within a restored submarine! Because when you think “Science Museum,” you generally think “historic naval vessels.” Anyway, long story short, that submarine’s deck and walls are about to be decorated with blood, as Dick guns down his antagonist at point-blank range.

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Some quick one-panel entries from the Sunday funnies to begin your week!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 6/13/10

In classic A3G Sunday style, today’s strip rehashed the last week’s worth of story and then gave us exactly five additional seconds of action — in this case confirming my guess form yesterday that this returnee was Gina. I’m feeling more than a little validated by this, because I am a sad and pathetic little man!

Panel from Curtis, 6/13/10

Today’s Curtis features the title character, who has been rockin’ exactly the same fly style since he first appeared on the comics page in 1988, offering a sneering discursis of the admittedly fairly goofy droopy-pants fashion epidemic that has been gripping America’s inner cities for the better part of the decade. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found this throwaway panel, in which our hero was dwarfed by a boxer-shorted ass looming menacingly in the foreground, fairly delightful.

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/13/10

One of my favorite Lockhorns tropes is when the titular pair manages to lure some other poor couple over for some kind of no doubt hellish double date. These people never appear in the strip more than once, since presumably a single evening spent with the Leroy and Loretta’s psychodrama is more than sufficient for an entire human lifetime; by the time we actually see them in the strip, the poor victims are generally sitting on the couch staring numbly ahead, waiting for the horror to be over. Today, though, the female half of the non-Lockhorns couple seems intrigued by Loretta’s fiery feminist talk. “Right on, sister!” she says, with her barely perceptible smile.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/13/10

I know I’ve been terribly neglectful in following the Rex Morgan drama of late, right when it’s gotten vaguely interesting (no doubt a manifestation of my recurring Rex Morgan Problem). Still, I felt it was important to update you all on the following fact: nobody calls Brook a bimbo and lives. Have any of you been calling Brook a bimbo, in the comments here, or just to your friends and family members, or even in what you assumed was the safety of your minds? Better make your peace with your God now, my friends.