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Sunday comics coming Monday morning, but let’s start off your week with the best of the comments of last week. First off, this week’s COTW:

“Brad’s black walls don’t do much for me, but the fact that he and TJ managed to paint half the room in 10 minutes is pretty damned impressive. I’d let ’em both paint my living room … but only in the very literal sense of the phrase.” –Cornwhacker

And the CsalmostoftheTW:

“LuAnn, I think ‘genius’ is spelled c-r-y-s-t-a-l m-e-t-h.” –AdamBa

“Why has no one commented on ‘I missed you too, Mary!… and the wise advice you dispense!’ Terrible. ‘I missed you too, [name]!… and [your primary character attribute]!’ ‘I missed you too, Reggie!… and your IS JERK!'” –Foobar

“I’m sorry, ‘litter bugs?’ That’s it, Family Circus, I don’t know why, but that’s it. I am now going to do everything within my power to stop you from being syndicated nationwide. Of course, that pretty much just includes this blog comment, so you’re off the hook. THIS TIME!” –Joe

“Did anyone comment on the look on Wally’s face at the end of the Saturday FW? It was like ‘Dead? If only.'” –gh

“What about June’s giant mammary cones of persuasion? She’s got a time machine hidden somewhere around the house or clinic, because the only place to buy bras like that is 1956.” –Squid Countess

“Jeez, not the ‘I am energy’ line. Seriously, I’ve never seen a ghost work harder to get into a woman’s pants. We get it! You’re a sensitive dead artist who can turn into cocaine! Now just bed her already!” –Lettuce

“I thought I was channeling an artistic genius once, but I was just light-headed from my roommate repeatedly farting in our tiny apartment.” –smacky

“If I were Arfo, I’d be more concerned about my exact duplicate, sitting just a few seats down. Maybe he’s Bizzaro Arfo! ‘Me love urban living! Me rent one-bedroom apartment in downtown high rise! Me want to live in culturally diverse area!'” –Lyman Returns

“I’d like to know what Dennis the Milquetoast did to deserve being put in the chair. As usual, all the actual misbehaving takes place off stage. It’s like watching Apocalypse Now with no guns and no Robert Duvall.” –dramashoes

“Why the hell does Dr. Cory’s daughter look just like Mary? Wouldn’t that be creepy? I mean creepier than dating Mary would be normally.” –reader-who-posts

“(DT)GT: This story line reminds me of an episode of Veronica Mars, if Veronica Mars was interminably slow and acted by ugly people.” –Mumbles

“I can’t wait to find out what Elvis shot. My guess is that he shot off one of his toes; what makes this funny is that he probably didn’t have 10 toes to begin with.” –The Avocado Avenger

“So, in conclusion, you’re a plugger if you are producing somewhat awkward syntax.” –Skullturf Q. Beavispants

“I don’t get the joke which, with Crock, is the best thing you can possibly hope for.” –King Folderol

“Yes, Pluggers has a Webpage. And yes, I was on it. WHO WANTS TO TOUCH ME!?” –Prehumous

“If anybody ever wondered what former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would look like in excessively fabulous drag, today’s Dick Tracy will answer your question.” –monkey.dave

“Brad hasn’t been in that house more than two hours before he screwed up his end of the lease. And people say today’s young people aren’t motivated!” –andreavis

“I’m sure Tom Armstrong knows ‘like that popular toy’ is a ridiculous thing to say but gritted his teeth and wrote it that way because he didn’t want to date his comic with a short-lived cultural reference. No doubt he wants future generations to be able to appreciate the message of his comic just as well as our generation. (That message, of course, is ‘babies don’t know how to make jokes.’)” –Francis

“Dan’s scheme is fool-proof; an insurance company wouldn’t drag the lake since it is, in actuality, a near-bottomless plot hole filled with rain water.” –steven

“Having lived in the Cape Fear area for quite some time, I am familiar with things that one might say around large bodies of water. ‘COME ON, DAN, COME TO THE SURFACE!’ is not one of those things.” –uncle balustrade

And of course we must do our weekly offer of gratitude to our sponsors:

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Finally, I would be deeply remiss if I didn’t point that the fine Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has offered up a point-counterpoint debate on whether or not Mary Worth is a decent human being. The case against is written by Bob Braughler, aka faithful reader and commentor Smitty Smedlap (who also has his own fine blog). There’s also an insane defense of Mary Worth’s virtue and an intriguing interview with Mary Worth writer Karen Moy. (Fun fact: Before Moy took over, plotlines routinely lasted eighteen months or more; the current three-stories-a-year pace is breakneck speed by historical standards.)

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Herb and Jamaal and Wizard of Id, 3/3/07

OK, cartoonists, white and black alike, we get it, we get it. Rap music is a defining genre for a generation of young people, black and white alike, but you just don’t care for it. Feel free to intersperse your rants against rap among your rants about the fact that young people don’t seem to find the comics relevant anymore.

At least the admonishment in the Wizard of Id makes some vague sort of sense, since it takes place centuries before the birth of hip-hop. Presumably the rap aficionado is a time traveler from the future, being urged to keep quiet about his aesthetic choices lest he somehow alter the timeline and create a twentieth century Earth ruled by Hitler, or possibly by KRS-One.

Gil Thorp, 3/3/07

More proof that Marty Moon is from Mars and the Lady Mudlarks are from Venus. “Nothing seems to bother the girls”? Jeez, Marty, do you think they always look like a bunch of numb-eyed, emotionally stunted zombies? Oh, wait, this is Gil Thorp, I suppose they do.

Mark Trail, 3/3/07

Mark’s doing exactly the right thing here. When I took a swim safety class in high school, they taught us that you can save a drowning person just by believing in their abilities hard enough. Also, in a situation like this, you should never leave your breakfast unattended, because your bacon might get cold.

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Marvin, 3/2/07

All right, Marvin, listen to me: “like that popular toy” isn’t something that any human being would ever in a gazillion years say. An actual human being would say “like Dancin’ Elmo” (and substitute the actual brand name of whatever animatronic Taiwanese-manufactured hunk of plush crap is being demanded by all the little squallers this year for “Dancin’ Elmo”). The only situation in which you’d say “like that popular toy” is if you had a law firm on retainer that was terrified of angering some major toy manufacturing concern vetting your dialogue before you speak it.

Of course, these are all Marvin’s thought balloons, and I suppose that we don’t really know how pre-vocal infants think, so it’s possible that their internal narrative sounds like it was composed by a committee of overcautious corporate lawyers. But I kind of doubt it.

By the way, Floppet, if the way I’m interpreting that last panel is correct, as soon as Marvin starts walking around and shaking his diapered butt vaguely in time to the Barney song, you’ll be finding yourself in a box at the Salvation Army in short order.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/2/07

I find it charming that Ezekiel’s mom looks so horrified that her son is apparently making the essentially arbitrary choice of underwear style by a somewhat whimsical method. Presumably, if she knew the truth — that Ezekiel had gone through some horribly misguided career-selection algorithm that boiled things down to two possible life paths, one of which involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in education expenses for her, the other involving her son being repeatedly punched in the head until he’s left a near vegetable at the age of thirty, and that he’s using random chance to determine which road to take — she’d be totally fine with it.

Family Circus, 3/2/07

P.J. from the Family Circus + pornstar mustache = my weekend ruined, thanks a lot.