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Kids, tomorrow we depart for our multicity, multifamily Christmastime sprint. Since trying to do a post every day from the road will pretty much kill my holiday cheer, the site will be on hiatus until the new year. However, as a holiday send-off, I present, a bit early, the COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“Brooke McEldowney is obviously a big leg man, so I guess he doesn’t have much time for jaws.” –Artist Formerly Known as Ben

And the runners up! Despite the abbreviated week, there’s an awful lot of them that struck me as funny…

“Boy, that Deanna’s some quick thinker, huh? ‘How will Santa get in without a chimney?’ ‘Uh — magic!’ ‘What kind of magic?’ ‘It’s a secret!’ She could at least have come up with something involving Ned Tanner and the toilet.” –rich

“Why do Mary Worth storylines start with so much promise but end with this boring talking business? It’s like if the sexy plumber came in to the hot lonely housewife’s place spouting cheesy double-entendres, and then they spent the next hour discussing plumbing rates.” –Citric

“I think Lu Ann’s stunning attractiveness (to the paper people in the little boxes) is based entirely on her being a blonde. Just like Margo is a bitch because she has dark hair and wears it up and Tommie is a deeply-closeted lesbian because she’s a redhead with a boyish bob.” –Jonathan Bogart

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this horny docent guy comes back, and that his name turns out to begin with the letter ‘D.’ I just want to refer to him as ‘Dave the Doughy Docent’ so bad.” –Trilobite

“Given all the aggravation Gary Dent is going through, you’d think that Ella was manufacturing light trucks in her apartment. Dent’s hissy fit stretches the credulity of the idea that he could impress a minimum of two women — his wife and a mistress — to the breaking point.” –King Folderol

“But I shouldn’t mock. It’s these literary devices — inexplicable pronoun use; deus ex punching in the mouth; fundamental struggles like Bear vs. Man, Bear vs. Nature, Bear vs. Its Own Kind, and Bear vs. Hostility; tight POV on Lucky the Beaver — that separate Mark Trail from the other nature-based comics featuring a character called Ranger Rick on the market today.” –Laura

“Even before I read Josh’s comments re A3G, I wondered why everyone thinks Lu Ann is so dang attractive. She’s clearly special needs, what with her wide-eyed innocence and constant need to vocalize her inability to find her way around large buildings. Those tricks would never work for me, but then I’m a brunette.” –velouria73

“I’m kinda hoping Becky winds up having her baby on the floor of the comic book store. It’s probably the only time a guy with a ‘Frodo Lives’ T-shirt is going to be in the same room as a woman who isn’t wearing pants.” –SmartPeopleOnIce

“What’s with the emphasis on ‘see’ in Rex Morgan panel 3? ‘I see where this is going?’ What are you trying to clarify, that you don’t smell where this is going?” –Sam L.

“You walk into the room/ with your fishbowl in your hand/ the doctor points to you and he says, what’s that man/ you try so hard/but you can’t understand/ just what you will say to your fish bones/ because six things are different here/ but you don’t know what that is/ do you mister Jones?” –dramashoes

“Beetle clearly suffers from some pretty serious narcolepsy. It’s a good thing he lives in Beetle Bailey, where nobody will ever laugh at him even by accident.” –Rhekarid

“I like to imagine that the books in Deanna’s hands are examples she’s culled for him. ‘Look, this is a real novel! It has a plot! And very few adverbs! Nobody exclaims anything! And you went back in and saved that piece of crap while I had to deal with two hysterical children. God I wish they weren’t yours!'” –MaryAnnTheRest

“To all those who feel a little guilt about enjoying Michael Patterfoob’s demise — yeah, I agree, I felt a little weird getting up every day to read the paper and root for ‘fire.'” –mumbles

“Oh, yeah, Crock’s the real thing, where ‘real’ is a euphemism for ‘sad, actually, and kinda off-putting.'” –Michael

“Once again, we see that human emotion is completely alien to Margo. It’s not a scream of terror, it’s not begging for mercy, so she has no idea what that disgusting sound is.” –Trent

“I wonder how this Mark Trail storyline will finally conclude. My god … is it possible to type that without dying a little inside?” –Joe

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

2006 has been a pretty amazing year for this blog. I’m getting more than twice as many daily visitors today than I was in January, and if you go back to the archives for that month, you’ll see that it was a rarity for a post to get more than 75 comments or so; the last post I put up has gotten more than 100 comments in just a few hours! I’m glad you all enjoy the site and the community that’s grown up around it, and I’m looking forward to having fun with all of you in 2007!

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Mark Trail, 12/22/06

Damn you, O cruel gods of Mark Trail! Can’t you let our beaver friends maintain their newlywed bliss at least through Christmas? Must our orange-teethed rodents be face uncomprehendingly with hostility on the day the Prince of Peace was born to redeem the original sins of irate property owners and furry tree-gnawing beasts alike? Is there no justice in this world?

Is Lucky and/or Mrs. Lucky holding a rock in his/her adorable little paws in panel one? Because I’m, um, pretty sure that never actually happens.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 12/22/06

OK, I’m going to pass lightly over the fact that the “parent can’t put together kid’s toy” joke is passed beyond “classic” and “dated” status and gone right on to “musty,” and the fact that little Loopie’s “space ship” looks like a roller skate wearing the Tin Man’s scalp as a hat. What mostly amazes me here is that this TDIET was published on December 22, and yet the ground-based UFO in question is portrayed as a birthday present, rather than the more obvious Christmas gift. Did we need the urgency of the party being tomorrow to really bring home the stress of dad’s “living on the edge” lifestyle, but there’s already something lined up for the 12/24 panel? Or is TDIET in the vanguard in the liberal media’s implacable War On Christmas?

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/22/06

The first use of “playing the cello” to describe this position that I’ve encountered was in Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan: Homicidal lesbian terrorist comic series from the early ’90s. Sadly, since Mother Goose and Grimm appears in family-friendly publications, this strip had to be censored, since the phrase clearly refers to a cat licking its ass. If a child saw a feline applying a tongue to that part of its body in a cartoon, that child would obviously go blind and insane, so it’s a good thing that this bowdlerized version was used instead.

One Big Happy, 12/22/06

Part of Ruthie’s charm is that she straddles the line between “imaginative” and “delusional,” but the phrase “I know the smoke detector is really one of your hidden cameras” is clearly the product of the mind of a budding paranoid schizophrenic. This kid will be in a straight jacket in a rubber room by the age of 13. Presumably she’ll have a heart-warming malapropism ready for the situation.

The Phantom, 12/22/06

In case you’re wondering, Undersecretary Denton’s extrajudicial beatdown has now entered its eighth day. It’s been pretty rough going, though I suppose more so for Denton than for me; today President Luaga manages to get three POK!s out of a single left hook somehow. Anyway, this comic amuses me mostly because of panel three, in which Denton’s administrative assistant gets to live out every white-collar underling’s dream by punching her boss in the face.

Apartment 3-G, 12/22/06

Drunk, jilted Margo + lonely, emotionally needy Gina = SEXIEST CHRISTMAS EVER.

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Mary Worth, 12/21/06

So a mustachioed malcontent has a beef with Charterstone’s power clique. After a confrontation in which he is humiliated by them, he stalks off, despite one of their number’s feeble attempt to end things on a good note. I think we all know where this is going: The liquor store. The road. The cliff. The end.

This is what Aldomania hath wrought, everybody: every Mary Worth plot from here on in is going to end with the meddling condo creeps driving some new character to a self-inflicted death. There’ll be an awkward funeral visit, some murmured platitudes, and then on to the next victim. They aren’t just murderers; they’re serial killers. I sure hope you’re happy.

Apartment 3-G, 12/21/06

You should not, however, harbor similar worries about our girl Magee as she prepares to rock Christmas the way only an angry, drunken, jilted young woman can. Margo is no danger of harming herself. Margo will only harm others. Many, many others.

Mark Trail, 12/21/06

As an antidote to the above, I offer you the continuing love story of Lucky the Beaver and his mate. I’m not a biologist, but I’m pretty sure that beavers do not actually put their paws tenderly on one another’s shoulder; still, I can’t deny how heartwarmingly adorable it all is. In the larger scheme of things, though, this whole thing is starting to freak me out. I’m a relative Mark Trail newbie, having only read it for the last four years or so; can any longtime Trailheads tell me if the strip has ever dropped its boring, stilted humans before to focus on the improbable anthropomorphized antics of adorable forest creatures? My guess about the current scenario: the word came down from King Features that a heart-warming Christmas episode was required, and Jack Elrod realized that, since nobody has any emotional involvement in any of the oddly shaped human characters, someone appealing was required, stat.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/21/06

Awwww, look at how sad June is in panel three. She just wanted her garage painted, Rex; is that so much to ask? Shouldn’t the lengths she’ll go to achieve that end trouble you at least a little?

Crock, 12/21/06

I’m pretty sure this comic strip is about masturbation. Me is the gift I can give myself all year long!