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OK, your comments of the week are coming shortly, but first, I do want to draw your attention to one particular comment:

“I wish Ted Confey was a bit less active on Facebook: ‘Ted is having dinner with a bunch of suckers’ ‘Ted is now engaged’ ‘Ted is taking out his checkbook’ … and so on.” –Frank Parsnip

“Ha ha,” you may have thought when you read it, “How very whimsical and droll, the idea that this anachronistic character in an anachronistic comic strip would be using a cutting-edge social networking site!” Well, the jokes on you! If you are a Facebook user, you can now add Ted to your Friends list, and cruise for desperate lonely doctors on the Fans of Santa Royale group. I am overjoyed to pass this information on to you, but I swear I am only the conduit of information — I created neither of these fine bits of Facebook awesome! (While you’re getting all Facebookish, though, why not join the Readers of the Comics Curmudgeon?)

Also! Faithful reader gnome de blog wants you to offer your expert opinion on the The Oregonian’s comics survey! I ask you to vote as your conscience dictates, knowing that this will result in a better outcome than if only the unwashed masses participated. Survey ends on 3/3, so act now!

Also also! Faithful reader Greg sent me this lovely Lichtensteinized version of Margo, which I share with all of you:

And now … this week’s COMMENT OF THE WEEK! You’ll see that Ted Confey has fully mastered the Internet: not only has he gotten on Facebook, but he’s apparently posting comments on this blog?

“Did I tell you about my dead wife Lydia who is dead? Whose death was in no way suspicious or under unusual circumstances? Did I tell you with the mood lighting?” –Ted Confey

And the runners up! Very funny!

“We’ve seen Mark’s magnificent fists o’ justice pummel a wide variety of things over the years (except girls, because Mark can’t stand the thought of touching them).” –Alan’s Addiction

“JP for the last four days: Randy: ‘So you’re back in town?’ April: ‘Like the way this dress shows off the curvature of my butt?’ Randy: ‘So what happened?’ April: ‘Are my big tits making you hot?’ Randy: ‘So, no more CIA?’ April: ‘I’ll take this dress off if you like.’ Randy: ‘So, did you get a new job?’ April: ‘DAMN IT! FUCK ME ALREADY!'” –SF_Reader

“Mark’s behavior here is no less than shocking. He actually says ‘Yeah’ instead of ‘Yes.’ By Lost Forest standards, that’s a profanity. Can’t believe he dropped a Y-bomb. What’s next? Chewing gum?” –Joe Blevins

“Wow. First I got to see Minnie Driver and Hilary Swank in person today, now the creator of Ziggy is coming to Ann Arbor! I think I died and went to purgatory.” –scruffylove

“So where do the Judge Parker ladies shop for clothes, anyway? Sherwin-Williams?” –blueberrygrrrl

“Happy memories of Santa Royale? I guess that means being an adult-faced kid and milling around at Charterstone pool parties … nestling in Chin-Beard’s big furry belly on a deck chair, all warm and safe…” –T. Chicana

“That peanut butter wasn’t chunky going down, was it, Jeffy.” –AeroSquid

“I think the only reason Adrian’s remark ‘Happy memories that will be expanded’ sounds so awkward is that she didn’t follow it up with ‘end communication’ as one would normally expect.” –Violet

“All the comments in today’s dramatic DT chase scene end with periods. Whereas most of the dialogue in MW’s boring dinner over the past few days have ended with exclamation points. Of course the DT comments are all from insane people muttering to themselves, but still.” –Poteet

“Back then, Santa Royale was a commune. The only free-standing structure was the co-op, where they sold hand-washed dill pickles and shampoo made from goat’s milk and ground-up pig’s hooves. Oh, how my hair shone. I lived in a lean-to with my mother Terra and my father Gallahad. We would bathe in a small pond shaped like the upper half of a walrus. We called it ‘Upper Half of a Walrus Pond’, but I don’t think the name stuck. There were these green and purple berries that grew in the wild. Whenever we ate them the sun seemed brighter, the grass seemed greener, and we could speak to each other telepathically. Oh how I miss those times. Imagine what it was like to come back here and find it all paved over and commercialized. It was like a small part of me died. That, on top of the death of my wife, has sent me into a spiral of despair that you can only imagine. I cannot wait to leave here and never return, but first, I want to bone your daughter.” –PoeWar

“Because that is what Dick Tracy is all about: Needless but entertaining violence, and lots of squinting.” –True Fable

“The Santa Royale fan club? Could that be the least interesting reveal in comics history? I’m now imagining an Internet where such websites actually exist. Wikipedia has been pared down to only U.S. History-related articles. There’s no porn, no YouTube — just Ask Jeeves, Tetris, a few pictures of baby animals, and fan club websites of beachside communities. And those websites are all on Geocities.” –rachel

“I think we all know that Ted is going to turn out to be a con artist or a murderer or something heinous, but Adrian is still doing better in the relationship department than her dad, whose girlfriend turned out to be Mary Worth.” –Whippersnapper

“I wish there was a iPhone app or Flash program or something titled ‘Too Soon?’ Then I could type in: ‘Jokes About Children Contracting Deadly Salmonella From Peanut Butter’ and it would say, ‘Nope, not too soon’ and then I could make a joke about Jeffy.” –Lettuce

“Will someone please introduce muted tones into Santa Royale, so that not every dinner table ends up looking like a ‘Hungry-Hungry Hippos’ board?” –teddytoad

“OH. NO! THAT’S BUCKY ASEXUALLY REPRODUCING HIMSELF!” –Dr. Robotnik

“The ‘fan club site’ was a last-ditch effort on the part of the Santa Royale Times-Post-Union-Chronicle to compete with Craigslist before being driven out of business completely, along with the rest of the newspaper industry. And like Craigslist itself, it quickly became overrun with desperate personals, gay sex ads, and financial scams, which is why it was the perfect meeting place for this nice young couple.” –BigTed

“Let’s see … Patty is married to Ken. She wants children but must settle for keeping a wild animal in the house. The one love in her life has been shot at by her husband. The only people she believes she can go to for help are Cherry and Mark Trail. Oh, did I mention she’s married to Ken? Given all that, expecting any other facial configuration other than ‘sustained, distorted rictus of horror’ would be unreasonable.” –buckyswife

“Dick Tracy has begun to speak exclusively in zen koans. ‘Tracy! Maud R. Err is making a getaway in that blimp!’ ‘Brew your tea in a bowl.'” –Abner Cadaver

“If Margo had been raised as the daughter of a housemaid, maybe she wouldn’t need Tommie to clean the damn apartment for her.” –seismic-2

“Hey Luann — Zits called, it wants its schtick back. Return to your boatloads of unresolved sexual ten … sion … um. Zits, can we talk time-share, maybe?” –Dragon of Life

“Yea … the reason this crown somehow got on my pet dog is that he takes himself too seriously … not that I’m in the middle of a fantasy of being married to a rich and suave dog-faced prince … DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!!!” –Ptychozoon

“Speaking of people being killed or mutilated, Dick Tracy once again proves that talking into a cellphone is more grotesque than any villain’s fiery death.” –Steve S

“‘My late wife Lydia was all I wanted to know about love’? In what universe is that a conversational sentence? But I do like its equivocal nature — ‘after her, no way was I going to return to the living hell of human emotions! Besides, kissing messes up my mustache!'” –Sister Sestina

“Dr. Jeff is just thrilled someone’s going to the trouble to con him out of his money, rather than brow-beating and humiliating him into submission, as he’s used to.” –late2theparty

“For the rest of the comic, Adrian and Mary are sitting across the table from one another, but their heads are awfully close in the first throwaway panel. I can only conclude that Mary has crawled across the table in order to tell Adrian what a blessing it is that she’s found an internet lover. *shudder*” –Patrick

“Killer’s toothbrush looks like it has about four bristles in it. C’mon, dude! You can’t be a playa with a mouthful of rotting stumps.” –Pozzo

“‘As for me, meeting Adrian made me believe I could live again!’ As I suspected, Ted is a zombie and will shortly be feasting on Adrian’s brains.” –TruthOfAngels

I give prodigious thanks to those who put some money in my tip jar — you know who you are! I’d also thank our advertisers … if there were any who bought BlogAds ads, and who thus get thanked every week! Sadly, there aren’t any this week — maybe next week I’ll be thanking you! To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

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Slylock Fox, 3/1/09 (portion) and 3/2/09

First off, an apology: while scanning Sunday’s strips for entertainment value, I somehow managed to completely miss an appearance by my hero, Reeky Rat, in which he is actually innocent of the crime of which he is accused! He’s still guilty of wearing a hideous yellow sweater that in no way lives up to his awesome fashion potential, and of befouling the snow-covered dirt patch in front of his trailer, but if the plot on which a man has parked his trailer (the rent on which is less than sixty days overdue) is not his castle, where he can dress and litter as he pleases, then what rights remain to us in this country? Reeky’s small-type, upside-down exoneration may be a first for the Slylock Fox rogues gallery, and presumably this is all the excuse Slylock needs to stop going to down to the trailer park altogether and just let its denizens dish out brutal justice to one another with their crude homemade weaponry.

That should clear up lots of time in his schedule for episodes like today’s, in which our detective heads over to the gym to creepily stare at the patrons and employees in their little short shorts. What, do you work for the FDA now, Fox? I’m sure Buford can produce some kind of corporate-sponsored study proving that regular bowel movements are an important part of any muscle-building regimen.

Archie, 3/2/09

The main joke in today’s Archie indicates nothing more than that the AJGLU 3000’s anti-lawsuit module has been given far too much priority over its other humor functions (THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT LUCKY CHARMS® BRAND CEREAL FROM GENERAL MILLS I ALONE DARE SAY THIS), but I am amused by Archie’s father’s mug, which reads “#2 DAD.” It’s possible that our charming joke-generating machine, in its cold mechanical logic, doesn’t see why 2 would be much inferior to 1 on a scale of 0 to infinity and means this as a compliment, but I prefer to believe that it has finally learned the importance of poop jokes.

A more sobering revelation comes on the milk carton in the second panel, which tells us that Jughead has been kidnapped, possibly after having been lured into a creepy van by a trail of hamburgers.

Family Circus, 3/2/09

“I mean it, our children are lazy little turds, lying there on the floor sullenly mashing mass-manufactured pieces of plastic crap together for hours on end. Just the very sight of them sickens me. I sincerely hope you bought the toys that are known choking hazards, like I asked you to.”

Dick Tracy, 3/2/09

“The oil companies will make him a rich man … for keeping his mouth shut, after they bury that formula in a very, very deep hole.”

Marmaduke, 3/2/09

“I don’t mind too much, though, because this way I can’t really feel the pooling urine.”

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Beetle Bailey, 3/1/09

Sometimes people complain about the mishmosh of anachronisms and inaccuracies that make up the military uniforms in Beetle Bailey, to which I respond: check out what happens when the artists try to draw any other form of clothing. While most of these outfits are rendered with equal parts lazy and terrible (and I long to hear faithful reader Fashion Police’s take on them), I feel must I draw particular attention to Rocky, slouching there smack dab in the middle of this grid of awfulness. While I suppose I am not an authority on what constitutes “urban hip,” I feel that I can with some certainty give examples of what “urban hip” is not, and here is one: an oversized, untucked, bright red waistcoat, worn over what appears to be a white t-shirt with a single, incomprehensible button at the collar.

Zero’s bit of hanky code, meanwhile, is neither to be asked about nor told of.

Family Circus, 3/1/09

More proof that the Keane Kids are unnatural demon-children. “AAGGGGH! The yellow face, it BURNS!”

Mark Trail, 3/1/09

Another example of how the top row of throwaway panels can subtly alter a strip’s dynamics. Without them, today’s Mark Trail is just a charming story of poisonous plants and early biological warfare. But with the mention of the poisonous plants growing in your yard, this becomes a manual for a guerilla army. “So remember, kids, when the invaders come to your town, you’ll have a weapon ready to strike back at them even after they confiscate everybody’s firearms. Wolverines!”

Mary Worth, 3/1/09

Ted has finally and officially been outed as a cad by his cheapskate thought balloon in today’s final panel. I’m sure we’ll have much more delicious character assassination to enjoy over the coming weeks, but today I want to dwell briefly on just how damn pleased with himself Jeff looks as he bellows out his offer to pick up the check. Presumably everyone in his family just views him as a giant talking wallet, and he’s internalized that and is now just desperate to please in the only way he knows how.

Panel from the Phantom, 3/1/09

While Spider-Man’s narration box is acknowledged as the sassiest of superhero narration boxes, the Phantom’s is no slouch. I was particularly impressed by this atmospheric and semi-comprehensible offering today. It sounds like the latest underground hip-hop album to hit the street (though I leave to the reader to determine whether “Day of Reckoning” should be the artist name and Through the Eyes of a Thug the album title, or vice versa).