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Hey, kids! Are you ready for the comment of the week!? You bet you are!

“Margo will be in for a surprise if she thinks that this blonde Sally Field character is going to just crumple before her in the manner of her usual victims. Look at the bewildered shock on her face there. ‘But … she’s pointing her finger at me! I don’t understand this at all! Can she do that??'” –Joe Bftsplk

And how ’bout some runners-up? You know it!

About Mary Worth: “It must be a challenge to have to think of the dullest possible conclusion to every series of events you introduce.” –Citric

“That’s some high-falutin’ language wasted on describing big trees, when meanwhile Mark talks like a slow, angry fifth grader Monday through Saturday.” –King Folderol

“Far above some hills or waters/ Proudly stands on high/ An institute of higher learning/ With buildings named for guys/ Local U, Local U/ Ever loyal we will remain/ And sing peans to our Alma Mater/ The U without a name. Go Fightin’ Vague Shapes! Yay!” –Dr. Mad

“What is Slick Smitty’s deal? He never really moves beyond the children’s prank stage of criminal behavior, and he antagonizes giant, man-sized animals that could effortlessly disembowel and devour him. I think he must be very depressed.” –Christopher

“If Crankshaft thinks that poetry is boring, he should try reading the poetry in The New Yorker. Of course, since Crankshaft is small town folk, the only New Yorker he knows is the kind he tries to hit with his bus.” –Steve S

“THAT IS NOT KARAOKE GET YOUR DEFINITIONS FROM THE DICTIONARY NOT FREE ASSOCIATION” –concrete_d

“With all that ‘girl’ business, Eva is clearly auditioning for the part of ‘Overly And Unnecessarily Sassy Friend Who Dispenses “Real” Advice Because She Has Family Issues And May Have Been Date Raped By That College Guy That One Time’ in She Said No, But He Said Yes. She’s already got the perm for it; all she needs now is a good pair of acid washed jeans and a flannel shirt.” –kat

“Dinner at a lousy restaurant, with no chance at sex? Sounds like a date to me, Dolly!” –andreavis

“Probably the most amazing thing about today’s strip is the box in the upper left corner which reads ‘Several Days Later…’ Considering the glacial pace at which things usually unfold in the MaryVerse, I can only guess that there must have been a fire at the syndicate office, and about six years’ worth of MW strips were destroyed.” –AhClem

“Obviously, Dr. Drew Cory, MD, has to put on his Elvis wig to call up women and make dates. Twenty years of intense therapy have done nothing about this fetish.” –Islamorada Girl

“Careful, you’ll spoil me by taking me to ‘Cafe.’ I hear it got four stars from Eponymous Eating Establishment Weekly.” –DaveyK

“The thing that most offends my sensibilities about this Crankshaft is neither the punning, nor the smirks, nor the deathly pallor, but rather the fact that the writer couldn’t be arsed to set up his punchline with anything remotely interesting. I mean, ‘look at the cows’? That’s it? You might as well just substitute the entire first panel with a placard that reads ‘PUN ABOUT COWS TO FOLLOW IN SECOND PANEL.'” –Darth Paradox

“I’m trying not to picture the second panel as Hekkie now living with his white-haired mother, whose social security check has supplemented his wife’s meager earnings as back-alley notary public. ‘Mother! Your incontinence is exceeded only by your lack of laundry skills!’ Wait. I guess I have pictured it.” –AeroSquid

Also in the comment department was a hilarious Zagat takeoff by faithful reader t.a.m.s.y., but I was afraid the quote marks wouldn’t really reproduce right if I put it here, and they were the key to the joke; fortunately, he went the extra mile to reproduce it in graphic form.

And, of course, the ongoing comment wackiness on this thread and others on Gail Martin’s life and times collectively deserve some kind of lifetime achievement awards. There’s even a Gail Martin wiki!

Finally, we must thank our advertisers, because that’s how Gail would want it:

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Spider-Man, 7/15/07

I know it gets old hearing me go on about how Spider-Man is an incredible feeb, but … Jesus Christ, Spider-Man is such an incredible feeb. Today’s he’s decided that he’s just had about enough of this terrible secret identity curse, and so he’s going to pack up his things and go retire the Spider-Man identity entirely. Here’s a hint, Spidey: Spider-Man is the interesting one — by comparison, anyway. You know who should be going into retirement? Mr. Peter “Waaaah my wife makes more than me” “Waaah I don’t have health insurance even though I have super powers and don’t need it” “Waaah I can’t reach the remote” Parker, that’s who. Does this happen to all superheroes eventually? Were Rex Morgan and Mary Worth originally crime-fighting mutants who retired their superhero personae but somehow held on to their spots in the comics pages? Because Peter Parker sans Spidey could out-dull either of them.

I do like the leftmost panel in the bottom row, though, which dramatically illustrates the insane mob of camera-wielding maniacs that would surely drive even the most powerful superhero into seclusion. “Look, there’s a guy on the roof — he might be Spider-Man! Photograph, photographers, photograph!”

However, in the long run, even the usually reliable NEXT! box disappoints. Is that Papyrus font? Sheesh.

Judge Parker, 7/15/07

You can tell Mr. Caesar is a bad guy, because he wears a full three-piece suit when he goes to inspect his sinister industrial operation, which probably exists solely to transform crude oil directly into global-warming-causing CO₂ without even refining it into useful gasoline first, because he’s just that evil, you see. So also clearly this “Rusty” will have something really awful in store for Sam and Sophie. I’m guessing that when he makes his arrival tomorrow (tomorrow in Judge Parker time; actual date: June 3, 2008), he’s going to look a little something like this:

“GEEEAAHHH!” Sam will say. “YOU CAN HAVE OUR SHARES IN THE WINERY — JUST STOP POINTING THAT FACE AT ME!”

Sophie, meanwhile, is so worked up about environmental disaster that her left eyeball is rolling into the back of her head. It’s kind of freaking me out.

Crankshaft, 7/15/07

“Wait a minute … damned souls, trapped in trees and begging to be urinated on? Packed swimming pools full of boiling water, with the scent of cooking human flesh wafting over the whole neighborhood? That’s not ‘the past’ … those are my fantasies about the torture of my enemies in hell! Sorry, I’m old, I get things mixed up sometimes.”

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Apartment 3-G, 7/14/07

“I found the legendary Marg-Po idol in a monastery high in the mountains of Qinghai province, just like the old man at the museum said. The monks said that its mystical power was the only thing that could defeat Margo. It seems crazy, but I think it’s our only chance.”

Mary Worth, 7/14/07

Welcome to phone sex, Mary Worth-style. That means it’ll take a year and a half, will take place at impossible angles on hideously colored sheets, and everyone will lose interest about a quarter of the way into it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/14/07

Man, I could just watch hungover Hugh stand absolutely still and blink very gingerly all day. It’s kind of hypnotic. The next three weeks of this strip could just be Hugh blinking as the storyline is advanced by word bubbles coming from off-panel. They could call it The Angriest Hungover Brit in the World.

Shoe, 7/14/07

Possibly the most depressing Shoe ever. I think they’re finally figuring out that if they’re going to have Roz responding to punchlines with huge-eyed horror, they need to make those punchlines truly horrifying.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/14/07

Wow, Hekkie held one set of attitudes as a child, but decades later as an adult holds a different set of attitudes entirely on a number of subjects!

That … that is something they’ll do every time, actually.

Boring technical update: Apologies to everyone whose comments were eaten by the new spam filter over the past few days. I know it’s really frustrating, but believe me when I say it’s also been really frustrating for me to try to figure out how and why it’s happening and how to fix it. I switched back the other filter program; hopefully it won’t cause the site to grind to a halt again or start eating comments like it was doing last week. (For those of you who are computer nerds: I had switched from Spam Karma 2 to Akismet and now back to SK2. If you have any words of advice, I will appreciate them.)

On thing that will definitely increase your chances of getting caught in any kind of spam filter is adding a bunch of links to your post. So, I’d advise you not to do that.