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Hey, if it’s Sunday, it must be time for the Comment of the Week!

“Um … Rusty? The Lollipop Guild called and you’re to report back to work tomorrow.” –Dingo

And also time for the Comments of the Weeks Runners Ups!

“Man, you wanna see pure shattered heartbreak summed up in a single drawing, check out Tommie’s face in the last panel of today’s 3G. She looks like she just saw Lassie get shot.” –Tats

“The way Amos is sitting in the first panel of 9CL makes my clitoris wither and die.” –Anonymous

“I appreciate Vera’s haunted look of resignation in Tuesday’s Mary Worth. She’s trying hard to convince herself that anything would be better than her room in a condemned tenement, even an apartment in the Charterstone House of the Damned, right next door to Meddlin’ Mary. Personally, I think I’d rather dodge falling plaster and fight rats for my dinner, but I’m not going to make fun of Vera for choosing a different path. Instead I’ll make fun of her ghastly balloon-shaped head and her impossibly flat face.” –Trilobite

“MT: Yessir, we’re just going to have to forget all about old Dan. Gotta get our minds on something else. Hey, I know, let’s clean Dan’s boat! What’s that stuck to the bottom of the boat there, Rusty? OH MY GOD, A HUMAN HEAD!!!” –Ham Gravy

“So the guy in Gil Thorp hit himself on the head several times, then said he didn’t see who did it, in order to … play first string on the basketball team? Through the power of innuendo? At least he’s got the balls to be an arrogant dick about it. Maybe that attitude will make him a starter. ‘That dick who clubbed himself … watch out when he’s guarding you, stupid!'” –ohyes

“Why the [Margo] do these three dames keep rooming together? I realize NYC housing prices are high, but are they THAT high? I would think the therapy required to cope with Margo’s emotional abuse would be expensive also.” –Poteet

“I think the ‘vibration lines’ being emitted by Tommie in the first panel of today’s 3G are simply being ‘bounced back’ to Margo in the third panel, like bats communicating in screeches and sonar. Perhaps they’re dolphins, or better, vampires.” –Gabe

“When Anthony and Liz end up getting together, I may end up kicking the computer screen, karate style. For that reason, I plan on reading all future adventures of the Foobs on my boyfriend’s computer.” –Adah

“A Ziggy who needs to wipe is funny/ But you can bet your house and money/ That you’d be singing a different song/ If you had to see Ziggy’s dong.” –Kurdt

“I mean, seriously, has Ziggy — after 30-some years — ever elicited even half a ‘ha’ before? This is an amazing precedent. And then you think of him chasing the dog around with his tiny pants around his meaty ankles, his butt only from its position barely distinguishable from his head, and your half a ‘ha’ comes screeching to a nauseated halt.” –Edgy DC

“Well, yeah, Tyler, we do think you’re stupid. You’re still the guy who intentionally hit himself in the back of the head with a stick until you bled. There are no winners here.” –NJP

“Without an adorable animal in love and/or peril, Mark Trail is just a lifeless, soul-sucking waste of time.” –Squid Countess

“Wow, a guy running a family pizza joint in 2007 thinks a smoking section is a good idea. This will result in bankruptcy, followed by Tony Montoni’s silent Mafia partners beating him to a pulp when he can’t pay his monthly dues, followed by Tony becoming a smack addict. He will still be above the median happiness for a Funky Winkerbean character.” –Steve S

“I hope Neddy appreciates the options life can offer her. She could be a Ph.D. candidate AND a hooker! ‘Cause in the Judge Parker universe, women CAN have it all!” –Donald The Anarchist

“Holy shit, something happened in Spider-Man! I look forward to a week of Dara Dorset being pulled into the limo. ‘I didn’t call for a limo!’ ‘Just get in the limo!’ ‘Who are you? I didn’t call for this limo!’ ‘You’ll find out soon enough!’ Dara Dorset, who claimed to be Spider-Man’s wife, is being forced into a limo! ‘Help!’ ‘Shut your mouth and get into the limo, lady!’ ‘Just get in the limo, lady!’ ‘Who are you? Help!’ Then Spider-Man falls into an open manhole or something.” –LV

“Has any human being in history ever said, ‘I’m from Brooklyn, New York’? As we all know, if you’re from a borough of New York you automatically a) assume everyone else in the world is constantly thinking about your borough and about how cool your borough is and therefore b) it would never occur to you in a million years to add ‘New York’. It’s like saying ‘I like spaghetti pasta food.'” –Albtraum

“Ah, scheming Margo, how I love thee … and thy thrusting finger of mischief.” –Hogen Mogen

“The combination of cloying fake maudlin sentimentality over Mike’s book combined with the brain-dead leaden foreshadowing for Liz makes one physically ill — it’s like being force-fed badly made cotton candy and funnel cake with bits of cinder block added for fiber.” –Professor Fate

“Well, you’d obviously learn a lot about human nature by having sex with an endless stream of unwashed Frenchmen. But I’m surprised they actually hand out a Ph.D.” for it.” –cheech wizard

“Other comics’ storylines branch. Funky’s metastasize.” –Uncle Lumpy

“The newest Luann has our titular (obligatory hee) heroine discovering Toni Daytona has been at Brad’s bachelor den through the evidence of an abandoned glove embroidered ‘T.D.’ Next week: Luann discovers Toni Daytona’s disloyalty when she finds her fan at Lord Darlington’s apartments! She rushes to tell Brad, but he has already sent Miss Daytona’s father, Sir Roderick Daytona, a lengthy letter of proposal sealed with his own signet ring! Wacky hijinks involving a loveless honor-driven marriage ensue. Also, Brad takes to wearing a cravat and taking snuff, and saying ‘Sink me!'” –Laura

“Judging from the stilted quasi-Victorian English of her thought balloons, Vera Shields must be the lovechild of Jane Austen and C. Montgomery Burns.” –TurtleBoy

And, finally, it’s also time for our weekly advertiser lovefest.

• Pixelgirl Shop Loves You!: Hot gifts for you & the ones you love!
• The Structure of Man: Drawing the human figure from your mind: An anatomy training course.

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

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Lio, 3/25/07

OK, despite the fact that Mark Tatulli has made a few comments on my site, I’ve managed to not cover his relatively new strip Lio here, mostly because it’s good. Still, how could I not share this with those of you who haven’t seen it? (Though based on the number of you who’ve emailed to me, I’m guessing that number is pretty low.) While there’s a long tradition of comics artists good-naturedly snarking on each other in their features (see today’s Pearls Before Swine for another installment in the long-running mock feud between Stephan Pastis and Get Fuzzy’s Darby Conley), I do have to wonder if this will be seen within the profession as crossing some kind of line. Watch yourself if you’re ever in Canada, Mark, is what I’m saying.

Mark Trail, 3/25/07

I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m pretty sure that Mark Trail is a tool of the anti-Christ. Two years ago, the Christmas installment consigned baby Jesus to the throwaway panels and focused most of its energy on that thinly veiled pagan nature spirit, Santa Claus. Now, this ostensibly Easter-inspired strip contains exactly zero crucified saviors, but makes the shocking claims that rabbits are the most beloved symbol of the holiday and that they are messengers of some higher power. Also, it keeps bringing up the Germans, so I think Mark is probably a Nazi as well.

Mary Worth, 3/25/07

What in the good lord’s name is Mary doing to Vera’s hand in the last panel? It’s like she’s realized that Vera is so eager to move into Charterstone that she can get away with all sorts of abuse of the sublettor-manager’s code of ethics. “Yes, Vera, all new Charterstone tenants get a complimentary two-hour knuckle massage! Now, hold still.”

Dennis the Menace, 3/25/07

Mom’s been smiling all day about going to a party that involves “bowls.” I see a heartbreaking Reefer Madness-style future series in which Dennis and his dad must break Mrs. Mitchell from her insatiable appetite for marijuana.

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Shoe, 3/24/07

A thing that I know I shouldn’t get worked up about and yet do is the presence of animals in comic strips where everyone is an anthropomorphized animal. I mean, Roz’s dog is on four legs and doesn’t have humanoid hands, so I guess he’s supposed to be a non-sentient being, and I suppose its species-ist of me to just lump animals all together in one class, but it creeps me out to see a bird who owns a dog. In a world where everybody’s an animal, a hotel with a “no pets” policy is kind of like a hotel with a “no slaves” policy.

Um, not that I’d be really all in favor of a hotel with a “Yes, we love slavery!” policy or anything.

I’m curious about why exactly Roz is checking into this hotel in the first place, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen her not behind the counter of her greasy-spoon treetop diner. Perhaps she’s gotten tired of shoveling food at ingrates and has burned it down for the insurance money.

Mark Trail, 3/24/07

There’s a lot of weird crap in Mark Trail that I accept without too much mental discomfort — Mark’s unsettling lack of affect, his repeated acts of vigilante justice that go unpunished, the giant animals with word balloons coming out of inappropriate places — but I have a really hard time accepting that Mark suddenly deduced Diver Dan’s entire nefarious scheme from a single tiny screw hook, mostly because Mark has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t have the brainpower that God gave a bowling ball. Cherry, meanwhile, seems kind of horrified by the very thought that Dan might still be alive. “HE’S DEAD, YOU HEAR ME? DEAD! I WANT HIM TO STAY DEAD! IF I SEE HIM ALIVE, I WILL DROWN HIM AGAIN!”

The Lockhorns, 3/24/07

I know the central schtick of the Lockhorns is that the title characters are intolerably cruel to one another by turns, but for some reason Leroy’s smugness and Loretta’s downcast expression are especially poignant to me today. Loretta’s unisex getup may not be as sexy as what the lady in the red dress has on, but at least she’s not wearing those crippling shoes. Mr. Cardigan-Turtleneck Combo is about to find that the gal he’s been chatting up is going to fall into his lap, literally.