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COTW coming momentarily, but first, a fun link from faithful reader CK! Comic artist R. Sikoryak has put a book of classic tales imagined in the style of various comic artists! You’ll enjoy the whole thing, but you’ll particularly want to move forward to page three to see role Mary Worth was born to play: Lady MacBeth.

And now, the COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“The damage this week’s Luann is going to do to countless naive teenage boys is almost unbear — wait, I forgot teenage boys would rather swallow a bottle rocket than read Luann. You dodged a bullet there, little friends.” –Marion Delgado

And the many runners up! Very funny!

“I like how Archie is envisioning changing into a long-sleeve shirt before he punches Reggie in the face. Though perhaps it’s not Archie at all, but Mark Trail making a crossover appearance. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pictured Mark getting all punchy on someone who’s pissed me off. Well, actually I never have, but I probably will now.” –kevinbapp.com

“MW: I can’t really see where this story is going, apart from an increasingly bizarre series of spontaneous walks.” –Mooncattie

“The Dalai Lama wishes to give you a blessing, Margo. And by ‘blessing’, I of course mean ‘exorcism’.” –seismic-2

“Next week, in a very special Apartment 3-G, Margo grabs the Dalai Lama by the balls and yells in his face for six straight days.” –Lolsworth

“Exactly what kind of ‘story book‘ is Connie talking about here, The Soporific Non-Adventure of the College Acquaintances Who Eventually Became Neighbors and Made Desultory Conversation While Watching Their Kids Not Play in the Park? Sometimes ‘gripping’ seems like such an inadequate word.” –Violet

“I did nature programs at a summer camp for a few years, and I never saw kids standing around outside with expressions quite like that. Are they on wee little downers, or what?” –Poteet

“I plan to keep on reading Mark Trail no matter WHAT happens.” –True Fable

“It bothers me that characters in Judge Parker are constantly shrouded in mysterious and dramatic shadows while they say and do utterly mundane things. Meanwhile, the characters in Gil Thorp are invariably well-lit, despite their totally incomprehensible behavior.” –Trilobite

“Oh, Gil Thorp! How I love your giant manly knuckles, and your large slablike faces and guyish locks of hair falling over intense mysterious sunglassed eyes while you speak in deep tones of incomprehensible things! Oh my. I need to sit down.” –Bootsy

“Dear Lord! It’s 2019! ’Shaft should be hooked up to fully immersed VR Porn simulation until his kidneys and spleen give out! Please give him an honorable death!” –AeroSquid

“‘Unofficial P.I. Bob Kazinski gets to work’ is the greatest intro ever, assuming that you’re cool with ‘getting to work’ meaning ‘asking your unofficial client an awkward question’ and ‘leaping to an unjustified conclusion from said question and relating it to Kelly.'” –Cranky

“I just can’t look away from the Ringo the Ringmaster’s sad, soulful eyes in Panel 1. You can tell he didn’t think his life would turn out this way. He didn’t want to get involved in circus-themed crime. He just wanted to make children smile, and now Dick Tracy is going to punch out his spleen, shove it down his throat, and throw him into the tiger cage.” –Comrade Denny

“Kaz is so baked. Next he’ll be calling athletic supply companies: ‘Did somebody order a lot of balls? Like … a lot of them?'” –Donald The Anarchist

“There are three suspicious people with baseballs down at the county park. They’re easy to recognize as they have no facial features.” –zerowolf

“That’ll take care of any evidence I left behind! Now to walk back to the city on foot with a sniper rifle.” –Dagger

“And here I was, left without anything to bring my friend to her suicide party. A Ziggy cake will work great!” –Ista

“I figured out why Cindy looks twenty years younger than her decrepit peers. She escaped Westview years ago and thus no longer eats Montoni’s Pizza every single day. Maybe she even occasionally eats a vegetable that is not an oil-drenched topping.” –anty a

“Nothing ever sounds less stilted in the original German.” –Packherd

“I can’t believe Kaz keeps letting ‘Gil’s balls’ fly past him without taking a double entendre swing at them. C’mon man: ‘Made any progress today, babe?’ ‘Big Time, Princess Leia. No professional has ever touched Gil’s balls.’ It’s fucking T-ball, dude.” –lunarhalo

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave/ Something something Delilah’s a skeeve.” –Sir Walter Greenback

“Mary Worth is making the classic mistake of dealing only with the popular half of a quote. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave … when we practice to deceive.’ Except Delilah’s not deceiving anyone. Not only does her ex-boyfriend know she’s married, but she practically announced to Mary and her husband that she’s about to go shtup the moron, and will undoubtedly break down and confess exactly 0.3 seconds after seeing Mary tomorrow morning. Really, the only thing this half-quote has accomplished was to make me picture Mary Worth as a multi-eyed, multi-limbed spider-human hybrid. Thanks for that, Sir Walter Scott. Thanks a lot.” –Black Drazon

“I believe Delilah’s raven hair signifies her status as a fallen woman in the Worth-iverse. In recent storylines, Mary Worth has interfered in the lives of vacant blondes (like that ice skater and the other one who was married to Santa Claus) whose light-colored hair signified their status as naive innocents. Mary’s own hair, of course, is perfectly white as she is without sin.” –Joe Blevins

“Our last night in the pass was bitter cold, which is why I was wearing a windbreaker over my turtleneck, just in case.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“The facial expression of Gil Thorp’s culprit betrays his intention to soon commit Seppuku. ‘I have brought shame upon my family! Quickly, hand me that letter opener!'” –Disingenuous Penguin

Huzzah to those who put some cash into my tip jar! And thanks must also go to my advertisers:

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Mary Worth, 7/27/09

Faithful reader Baka Gaijin has been agitating for folks to come up with a nickname that will forever serve as a shorthand for this Mary Worth plotline; I’m always hesitant to prematurely elevate any plot to Aldomania status, but today’s first panel, in which Charley lunges forward ravenously as his purple-jumpsuited lust-object-of-the-moment hesitates coquettishly on the threshold of his badly decorated apartment, goes a long way towards convincing me. I have no idea why he’s assuming this particular position — presumably one of his previous conquests told him that his chin and his chest were his best features, so he always tries to lead with them, and damn the consequences to his posture. Also of note is the bizarre perspective in this panel; it’s as if we’re watching our lovebirds through a camera mounted on Charley’s ceiling. That’s probably because we are watching them through a camera mounted on Charley’s ceiling, and the whole sordid coupling will be uploaded to CharleysLoveDen.com in short order.

Meanwhile, in panel two we get a hilarious view of Delilah crossing her fingers behind her back. Because everyone knows that if you keep your fingers crossed as you methodically work your way through the Kama Sutra with some dude who isn’t your husband, it isn’t really cheating.

Judge Parker, 7/27/09

But hey, Lawrence, even though seeing your wife making a pass at stripey-shirted Charley may make you question her judgement, look at this way — at least he isn’t, you know, a horse.

Gil Thorp, 7/27/09

OH MY GOD GIL THORP’S STALKER IS … uh … this guy? Whom Gil apparently recognizes (‘You?”), meaning that he’s probably a beloved character from the past, but maybe from before the current artist took over, which is why none of us can recognize him? And even when we’re talking about characters drawn by the same artist, it’s kind of hard to tell all the teenagers apart? See, Gil Thorp team, there’s a reason your characters are referred to as something like “five foot eight left guard Dan Grabowski” the first twelve times they appear in the strip. On plus side, though, this strip does present us with the image of Coach Kaz pedaling up the street all stealthy-like on his silent ninja-bike (a low-rider? maybe? please?), which is deeply pleasing to me.

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/09

Oh, I can see where this is going: Eric refused to put on his hat to protect his ears from the frigid Himalayan air and caught his death of cold, just like my mother always warned. Fortunately the young lama has his magical Buddha powers to protect him.

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Sally Forth and Marvin, 7/26/09

Hey, guess who’s a fancy intellectual elitist book-readin’ guy in addition to the writer of a suburban middle-American comic strip? Ces Marculiano, that’s who! The opening lines of today’s Sally Forth are also the opening lines of Thomas Pynchon’s 760-page modernist classic Gravity’s Rainbow, and a tiny bit of high culture is slipped under the skin of comics readers everywhere.

But really, does Hillary’s soliloquy (good name for a band: “Hillary’s Soliloquy”) really challenge our settled, comfortable mindset the way Pynchon’s novel did? Consider this: despite the myriad kaleidescoping themes covered by the book, if you ask most people who were assigned to read it in college English what they remember about it, the first thing they’ll come up with will probably be the shit-eating. And what strip spends more time contemplating the symbolic meaning of poop than Marvin? Today’s installment is a particularly fine example, in which the title character, an absolutist on the subject of free will, insists that one can only truly demonstrate maximum personal autonomy by walking around with so much putrefying feces in one’s pants that it attracts swarms of flies. So, sorry Ces, but I think you’ll have to push the boundaries your art further if you plan to smash bourgeois sensibilities.

Mary Worth, 7/26/09

Two word-pairs you probably never anticipated seeing in juxtaposition: “Mary Worth” and “booty call.” I particularly marvel at the one-word-per-panel thought-ballooning sequence that serves as this strip’s centerpiece. Is it just an attempt to stretch limited action out over a longer Sunday strip? Does it instead represent Delilah’s grim determination to find succor in the worst way possible? Or does it simply indicate that she thinks … very … slowly?