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OK, kids, I’m going to post a weekend’s worth of comics later this morning, but first: this week’s COTW runners-up:

“Death is clear cut/It’s life that isn’t/The gorge took Aldo/but mine has risen/BURMA SHAVE” –mdrew

“You guys can keep ignoring it all you want, but no one — and I mean NO ONE — is exploring the many, many ways the word ‘punchbowl’ can be used for humor like TDIET’s Al Scaduto.” –gump worsley

“I’m so glad Sam and Horace are taking the high road, keeping the campaign focused on the issues — like Reggie’s fat, rich, alcoholic wife.” –Dennis Jimenez

“I’m sick of mustachioed foob characters using their lips for things (kissing, trumpet mouthpiece playing). It grosses me out.” –anne

“Meanwhile, random crap just spontaneously happens in Gil Thorp.” –RoboMax

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Other times, it is a disturbingly inappropriate prop trying to compensate for the lack of visual excitement in Judge Parker: Tales From the Closet.” –Decker

“I was unaware of One Big Happy until tonight, which shall forever be known as ‘Black Tuesday.'” –Joe

“If they made a movie about Gil Thorp they could just use chunks of firewood. It would be no less lifelike than the characters, and since all the action happens offscreen it really doesn’t matter that they’re inanimate.” –RentedMule

“I’m concerned about the lumpiness of the chaplain [in Beetle Bailey]. His head is nothing but tumor on top of tumor. And I’m guessing that odd crescent-wedge below his nose is his mouth, but the mechanics of his jaw frighten me.” –Blueline

“Then they could have a domestic disturbance, because a plugger marriage counselor is an episode of Cops.” –Steve S

JP: “‘You know what the doctor said about cigars!’ …Dr. Freud? Yeah, we know.” –Mibbitmaker

“Mary’s going to try another route to reach Dr. Jeff Cory? I think I get what’s intimated here but the way she said it it sounds like she may have just realized that the world is in fact round. ‘He’s so far away! But I can try another route, heading west to get to the Indies instead of our usual eastern trade route! That will show you all.'” –arlo

“‘Your husband can’t walk and has the mind of a child.’ ‘Then at least he’s happy.’ Yeah, happy as a child who CAN’T WALK!” –Ran

“And Horace’s wife is a fox. He doesn’t care if she is 15. And his granddaughter.” –smacky

“Are those… things… on either side just above Olive Oyl’s negative-space hips supposed to be her breasts, sagging and torn after years and years of over-zealous manipulation at the spinach-fueled fingers of her cyclopean beau?!” –Wirrrn

“I think Mark Trail has honestly stopped caring. For the past three days, it’s, ‘We should save Molly … yep … any time now. Ah, forget it. Lets just drink beer and talk about how they’re going to horribly mutilate her.'” –Monkey’s Paw

“Can’t you see that the poachers are going soft? Molly can melt her way into anyone’s heart. It’s Reverse Stockholm Syndrome. First they won’t be able to kill her, then they will save her from a giant mallard and everyone will have a good cry. Then Molly will eat them. Or french them, whatever.” –ben

“So, I know this is a problem that comes up periodically in the horrifying Dr. Moreau-meets-Git-R-Done world of Pluggers, but a chicken owning a pet cat is just asking for trouble.” –Cold Eels, Distant Thoughts

“So, when Dr. Jeff doesn’t return her calls, Mary Worth heads down to his kids’ workplace to harass them about it? I’m pretty sure this is covered in the definition of ‘stalking.'” –Donut

“This is Mary Worth and so disappointment is inevitable.” –Dactyl

“I’ve already given my ass to Margo, but Tommie has stolen my heart with her adorable self-doubt.” –dramashoes

Also! A fab new Comics Curmudgeon merch photo has arrived from faithful reader Non-Shannon. She’s working it like a claw here with her beloved bearded dragon, Sir Hubert Cumberdale.

You too can be like Non-Shannon by (a) buying stuff from my store and (b) (this is the important part) sending me a picture of you wearing it.

Finally, in a new weekly feature here at the Comics Curmudgeon, I’d like to thank this week’s advertisers:

• Very Funny Ads (powered by TBS) (link includes sound, so turn the volume down if you’re at work)
• PETA’s Boycott KFC video (starring Pamela Anderson)

If you’d like to join these fine advertisers on the site, click here to get started.

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Judge Parker, 10/20/06

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SAM, HAVE SEX WITH YOUR WIFE! Jeez, how clear to she and her left breast have to make it to you? Because if you don’t service this hot, mature, mulleted woman, that job is going to get “outsourced to India” when the kids get home from the party, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Blondie, 10/20/06

I think what everyone is thinking in panel two is not, “Ew, this kid hasn’t washed his hands?” but “What is this kid doing here?” Elmo sometimes drops hints about his home life, but I think it’s all a front: my guess is that he’s secretly living a Dickensian existence as a street urchin, and that the food that falls onto the floor out of Dagwood’s structurally improbable sandwiches is all that stands between him and starvation. If he is a hobo-boy, it would explain his unfamiliarity with basic hygiene skills. This is the first time I can remember him actually conning his way to the family table though, though the presence of the bathroom step-stool in the Bumstead household, where everyone is over the age of 16, indicates that he probably at least washes his one set of clothes in the sink there from time to time.

Against all logic, Dagwood seems to treat Elmo like the son he never had, something that must make Alexander die a little inside every time he sees it.

Mary Worth, 10/20/06

Speaking of children someone never had … the fact that Dr. Jeff reproduced, and managed to go two for two on doctors, is news to me, and I’ve read Mary Worth pretty much every day for the last four years. Since that represents about an month and a half in Worth-time, I suppose it makes sense that I’ve never met these two before. It does seem a bit creepy to me that the two siblings AND the dad all work at the same hospital, which I assume is called Our Lady of Perpetual Cory (Messrs Haim and Feldman could both check in for rehab stints).

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the relationship between Mary and her non-sexual beau’s children ought by right to be painfully awkward. The facial expressions in the second panel give me hope. While Adrian just looks garden-variety confused, Drew’s face appears to me to be caught at the moment when the polite smile he’s put on for his father’s girlfriend is starting to crack. “God damn it, I told dad that I don’t care if he wants to spend the next six months in a whorehouse in Phnom Penh, but I don’t want to have to lie to his old biddy about it!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/06

Lucy is a master of psychological warfare, and Ted is her unwitting bagman. I can’t wait to see Tommie try to tart herself up.

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Blondie, 10/19/06

I think this may be a first for this blog, but I have to say that I really like the job the coloring drones did in today’s Blondie. The color of the leaves, with the red gliding into yellow, is quite lovely, and a nice change from other instances where the coloring seems to be done by people who don’t know that fall exists. Unfortunately, the colorer was so keen on the yellow that it got slathered all over the car, too, leaving it a hideous mustard. With colors, it’s all about context.

Question: Does Dagwood (or Herb, or what’s-her-name) ever drive in the carpool, or is it always glasses guy? Isn’t the point of a carpool that you rotate the driving duties? Jeez, he’s late all the time and he never offers to drive. Plus he often dozes off in the back seat, snoring and drooling, and probably smells like sandwiches. What a hump.

Popeye, 10/19/06

For longer than I care to remember, Popeye has been following a bizarre “generation gap” storyline whereby Sweet Pea (the Sailor Man’s adopted charge, who is capable of normal adult speech despite being incapable of walking upright) left home after a spat, finding his way back after many tedious adventures. Today, however, things perked up when Olive Oyl violently turned her years of suppressed sexual frustration on the hapless child. A brutally honest look at how having a baby can affect your relationships with other adults, or just deranged insanity? You be the judge.

Mark Trail, 10/19/06

The Perils of Molly just got more gut-wrenchingly perilous! As Mark and Officer Exposition continue their grindingly slow witty banter, the awesomely named Jake and Snake prepare a grim fate for our favorite bear. What puzzles me is that the rhyming duo seems to only now be waking up to the possibilities inherent in the lucrative overseas bear-organ market, yet they still took the trouble of putting a collar on her and keeping her in a pen rather than just killing her for their sick kicks the moment they found her. Maybe even for low-lifes like Jake and Snake, you have to be in the mood to murder a lovable bear in cold blood — like, you have to watch a bunch of bear-baiting videos first or something.

For the faint of heart, I’d just like emphasize that MOLLY IS GOING TO BE FINE. Mary Worth may have killed off Aldo, but the world of Mark Trail is too relentlessly Manichaean to allow evil (in the form of a mustachioed mullethead and his orangey friend) to triumph over good (in the form of a fuzzy, adorable bear who is so incapable of hostility that she can’t even understand it when it’s directed at her). The only question is, who is going to save her? Mark, dishing out patented Right Hooks of Justice? Hoyt and his dogs, redeeming himself for his chicken-kicking crimes? The giant talking duck, pecking out Jake and Snake’s eyes with his razor-sharp bill? I vote for the duck, personally.