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Hey all! I am running a bit behind on this weekend’s comics — probably won’t get to them until tonight — but here are your Comments of the Week to tide you over. First, the top choice:

“Ella is like the Main Street buildings at Disneyland, all cute and gingerbready and three-quarter scale.” –AppleGirl

And! Runners up!

“The creepiest thing about the 12/9 Family Circus is that the kids are in this cavernous white-walled room that is empty save for an ugly couch and one picture on the wall. Apparently the Keane family is living in my college apartment.” –NJP

“If only there were one solitary gay man in the Charterstone complex to Garanimal-tag Ian’s clothing so that he would know which shirt and jacket went with which pair of slacks. We’ve all wondered how he landed Toeby. Must’ve run over her seeing-eye dog.” –Dingo

“I’d really hate to think what Al Scaduto’s children are named.” –UnkleSam

“If Blondie ever Flapped in the ’20s, there would have been physics involved. Ugly, graduate school physics.” –Craig Shergold

“The coolest thing about that news story is that Tinsley is first described with the adjective ‘Hoosier.’ WTF? You midwesterners keep it real.” –Rusty

“I call bullsh**t on Luann! If I’m a real postman and a dog strolls up and starts up a trite conversation about Santa Claus, ol’ Puddles is getting a ‘special delivery’ of industrial mace by the third panel.” –Captain Blimey

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d freak the hell out if I came into my boss’s office and he was feverishly nailing a board. Look at the look on the poor old man’s face. It’s like his eyes are screaming.” –RoboMax: Agent of C.U.R.M.U.D.G.E.O.N

“I don’t like how smug Mark Trail looks in that last panel. It’s like he thinks he’s the king of Lost Forest or something, just for saving a beaver from death. What, Trail, you’re all modest and whatnot after punching out some guy but saving a beaver makes you all high and mighty? You sicken me.” –Mike P

“I must be getting soft or something, because I find Totally Got Laid Margo sweet, in a way. I’m sure it will all end in tears, but I am enjoying her totally over the top HOORAY LOVE high. It’s like she read a book about how to express joy over finding a partner you like a lot, and is following it to the letter.” –Sjofn

“I guess Denton prefers having the president punch him than the awful alternative: the Phantom hiding behind a horse.” –reader-who-posts

“Actually, I think Mark Trail is going to involve a lot of beavers, and Mark will go about punching all sorts of beaver. That is obviously not innuendo, as Mark Trail is repulsed by sex.” –dan b

“Yeah, and you gotta love that ‘sanctity of Charterstone life’ b.s. Those folks are a long, long way from fetuses.” –Uncle Lumpy

“Dennis: Saddle Shoes. Joey: Chuck Taylors. ¿Que es mas menacing?” –rafael

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Dennis the Menace, 12/15/06

I’m not sure why Dennis’ persistent and willfully non-menacing behavior makes me so mad, but it does, it does. Dennis, you had damn well be heading right for the aforementioned closet with the intention of sorting through all the presents, determining that most of them are “lame,” taking them back to the store where Mom bought them and exchanging them for cash, using that cash to buy the most powerful BB gun they’ll sell to a child, and then heading down to the overpass to shoot out the windshields of innocent motorists. That’s being a menace, by God.

By the way, if it’s December, any child with even the most basic concept of how numbers work knows exactly how many days there are left until Christmas. In America, that’s how most of us learn to subtract.

Mark Trail, 12/15/06

So is this it? Is Mark Trail just going to be all lonely, confused animals in the woods all the time now? Is it going to turn into Mutts? Is that it? No punching, just Mutts with a slightly broader species range of adorable creatures?

Rusty is looking more and more hideously deformed every day, and his front teeth are looking buckier and buckier. I’m beginning to think he’s caught beaver.

The Phantom, 12/15/06

Right, so, um, yesterday? When I said it would be awesome to see the president personally beat somebody up? Well, I was pretty much just joking. Turns out it actually makes me kind of uncomfortable. In President Luaga’s defense, though, Denton did take his glasses off in panel two, which totally means that he’s asking for it.

Family Circus, 12/15/06

“And Easter came before Halloween so that Zombie Jesus had a chance to get good and hungry for brains by October 31.”

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Apartment 3-G, 12/14/06

You know, I’m not the sort of person who just applies DSM-IV diagnoses to people in the comics … oh, no, wait, that’s exactly the sort of person I am. Anyway, I think it’s pretty obvious that Margo is bipolar. I’m sure Eric is enjoying happy manic Margo right now, but he’d better hang on, because as Tommie and Lu Ann know all too well, he’s in for the ride of his life, and not in the fun, sexy way. The cocaine, of course, does not help.

(Could it be that I’m overdoing the “Margo loves nose candy” jokes? Is such a thing even possible? I’m going to say “no.”)

There’s something very unsettling about the perspective in the first panel. Either that tree really is huge, and it’s about ten feet away, which means Margo couldn’t be gently fondling its branches, or it’s about three feet tall and the bottom of its trunk is floating mysteriously somewhere around Margo’s sternum, or we’re just seeing the very tip of it, pointing downwards, and, in a fit of superhuman strength, Margo’s trying to stuff it into her shopping bag.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/14/06

Note to cartoonists: if you need to have a character in your cartoon explain your joke, your joke has not been deployed successfully.

Mark Trail, 12/14/06

You know, I’m pretty sure that the only reason that Mark adopted Rusty (other than to avoid having ICKY SEX with an ICKY GIRL) was to have a victim for his twisted head games. “Hey Rusty, let’s rescue this wounded beaver! Hey Rusty, what do you want to name your new friend, the beaver? RUSTY! WHY DID YOU TAKE THIS BEAVER OUT OF ITS NATURAL HABITAT? IT’S MISERABLE HERE AND IT HATES YOU!” No wonder the poor kid is so depressed. He looks like the subject of a Margaret Keane painting in that last panel.

The Phantom, 12/14/06

Bangallan President Lamanda Luaga is my second favorite cartoon president (after Teenage Girl President, of course). He already gets mad style points for wearing morning dress at all times; now it appears that that he’s taking off his morning coat in order to beat the crap out of this guy, and I love it. If wanting to see the president personally physically assault a civil servant makes me a Republican, then so be it.

I’m curious about which two laws the president is about to suspend. I’m guessing one pertains to not beating up a government official without a trial of some sort, and the other forbids the president from appearing in public without his morning coat on.

By the way, I know I said I wouldn’t touch the whole Bruce Tinsley thing again, but I would be very much remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to this.