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Hey kids, here’s your abbreviated COTW list! (Not including the awesomely long Thanksgiving weekend post, alas.) First, the week’s top comic:

“‘You were under a lot of stress at the circus … How about a nice relaxing concert’ sounds like the opening lines from a badly-dubbed Czechoslovakian porno.” –Patrick

And the runners up! Very funny!

“In an inspired crossover from Sunday’s MT, Ruby accessorizes with kelp.” –Écureuil Écumant

“After all he’s been through, shouldn’t Scott be a little more … withered? Instead, he has soft, rounded arms, and rosy, fleshy thighs; he’d be in perfect health if he were a 19-year-old girl.” –bourbon babe, unbuckled

“I’m not a big fan of piercings, but on Cue, they seem to work. At least they look no worse to me than Ruby’s hair ribbons, the poachers’ long sideburns, and Adrian’s alleged ‘hands.'” –Poteet

“Let’s give Rusty a big hand! Seriously, anything would be less disturbing than that tiny prosthesis he is currently sporting.” –Victor Von

On the possibility of a marijuana-themed Cue-featuring t-shirt: “Anything mentioning weed reduces the number of folks who can buy it. It’s far more socially acceptable to wear incomprehensibly weird t-shirts than those promoting drugs. Sort of like how smoking weed is less acceptable than choking and punching someone because they don’t know where your mother is.” –Aviatrix

“Brad took one off-screen panel to turn a bowl of potatoes into a glass of wine. I’d respect him more for this if he hadn’t apparently also broken down the table into atomic energy to fuel this conversion process. Where will they eat now, Brad? Where will they eat now?” –Dragon of Life

“Sure, it looks like Bob may have gotten off easy, but as the ominous foregrounds in panels 2 and 3 show, the animals have not forgotten. They know the truth, and they’ll be waiting. Wildlife control, Bob? I think we’ll see who controls whom here.” –Joe Blevins

“The smallest species of squid will barely cover a dime, while the giant squid will stick you with a bar tab for eight. Squid are fucking cheapskates.” –Uncle Lumpy

DT: “‘Impaled by a trombone slide’. I’m calling it right now.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“Got to appreciate Rod Whigham and the class he’s brought to the Gil Thorp artwork. Many’s the time I’ve wondered what All the Right Moves would look like if Tom Cruise’s face began melting.” –Edgy DC

“I believe that the poster is of Spook himself, having been forced into prostitution as part of his entrapment. It was meant to be punishment, but he seems to take a lot of pride in his erotic accomplishments.” –dondie

“I’m sorry, but that is not Toby. Look how little she is next to her Dr. Ian! No, Toby’s off doing girl stuff, leaving Dr. Ian to attend the party with a special made 3/4-scale blow-up Toby.” –Matt Algren

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Mary Worth, 11/30/09

At last, the long, dragged-out saga of Adrian and Scott and Adrian’s Hesitation To Love and Scott’s Many Bullet Wounds is over. (And how did you do in faithful reader 8th Man Fan’s pool? See the results online here, or download them in an OpenOffice or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet!) As is the style of this feature, the details of the new story will emerge at a Charterstone Pool Party, and I’m very excited to see that said new story will involve Mary’s long-neglected neighbor Wilbur Weston, who, for an extra added bonus, has just had his heart ripped from his sweaty, hairy chest (metaphorically), as his girlfriend has skipped town without him. I’m guessing that Mary is oh-no-ing not because Wilbur is sad (as Wilbur’s sadness is hilarious), but rather because, as Charterstone’s resident manager, she was supposed to make sure that Iris hadn’t trashed her apartment before leaving in the dead of night, as one might be prone to do after God knows how many months in a relationship with Wilbur Weston.

Anyhoo, today’s strip is quite satisfying not just because it presages Wilbur’s long-term humiliation, but because it features Ian Cameron in his most outrageous pool party outfit yet. He pays a lot in condo fees and works hard reading years-old lecture notes on Robert Burns to bored undergraduates, damn it, and he deserves to unwind a little, and if that means matching up a Hawaiian shirt, electric blue cargo shorts, white socks, and (invisible, but a pretty safe bet) Birkenstocks, then so be it. Toby has put on her most bland off-pink shirt-dress to make sure that nothing outshines her husband’s aggressive sartorial choices.

Wizard of Id, 11/30/09

Speaking of hirsute humanoids, today’s Wizard of Id contains what I’m pretty sure is another instance of a legacy strip forgetting its own gimmick. Perpetual prisoner Spook, I have always assumed, is portrayed as hairy because he’s been in a dank jail cell, forgotten by the outside world, for decades, and has never been allowed any kind of razor or scissors to cut his hair or otherwise groom himself because he might use them to commit suicide and end his torment. This strip, however, seems to imply that he’s not just someone with long, matted hair, but is rather a member of a particularly hairy hominid species; perhaps his detention is not a result of some long-ago act defined as a crime by Id’s repressive regime, but was dictated by racial purity laws that keep his kind out of the public’s sight. It may be that he is in fact the last of his race, which makes his request for the depiction of a comely she-Spook all the more poignant.

Mark Trail, 11/30/09

Oh, and speaking of soap strips changing storylines, usually in the transition between Mark Trail plots, Mark briefly revisits Lost Forest and spends a few days avoiding his wife’s marital advances before going out on another moronic assignment. Therefore, I’m assuming that what Rusty is warning Mark to LOOK OUT for in eight-gazillion point font is Cherry lying in wait on the side of the road in her attempt to sex-ambush him. On the other hand, they are near the ocean, so it’s possible that their car is coming under attack from a flock of vicious flying squid.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/30/09

Oh look, Peter the Sex Chameleon has made an appearance! He’s normally blond when interacting with his similarly fair wife, but can darken up when necessary to woo a raven-haired beauty. And now that he has encountered a rival for his wife’s affection, his hair has turned red, for anger! Tim’s going to need those throttling-and-punching skills soon enough.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/30/09

Funky is leading Les down into the basement so that he can feed him into the meat grinder and serve him as pepperoni on Montoni’s awful pizzas. Thus Funky Winkerbean’s feel-good holiday storyline begins!

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Gil Thorp, 11/26/09

Greetings, faithful readers! I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving did so with your real friends, a whole bunch of beer bottles, and celebrated as our Pilgrim forefathers did, at a picnic table in some dark, lonely park somewhere.

Mark Trail, 11/26/09

Those of you who are criminals have a lot to be thankful for! Specifically, you can be thankful that in America’s forgiving justice system, you can go from being a law-breaker to being law-enforcement official simply by choosing exactly the right time to kick one of your erstwhile criminal associates in the face.

Dick Tracy, 11/27/09

As for me, I’m mostly thankful that Dick Tracy refers to any concert not performed by the U.S. Marine Corps Band or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as “long hair stuff.”

Mark Trail, 11/29/09

And I’m also pleased that Mark Trail decided to pass over more obvious animals on Thanksgiving weekend and go for the deep’s more terrifying tentacled monsters, offering us in the process a lovely image of a nervous human approaching the rotting corpse of 50-foot-long giant squid and a giant depiction of a living squid of indeterminate size regarding us inscrutably from his watery lair. And, sure, the bottom left panel is a repeat of one from a previous squid-themed Mark Trail installment, but what of it? If I had produced an awesome drawing of dozens of squids flying through the air like a barrage of betentacled missiles, I’d run it every damn day if I could.