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The Finger Quotin’ Margo lookalike contest has been in full swing for a week now, and we’ve already received a host of entries! I’d sure like to get more though, because I’m greedy like that. So, I’m going to share the entries I’ve received so far with you all now in the hopes that they will inspire more of you to go for the gold.

(Remember, kids, these entrants are your fellow readers, commentors, and community members, and they’ve shown more guts than you in entering, so BE NICE. By “nice” I mean both “not mean” and “not creepy.” You’ve been warned.)

Let’s start by taking a look at the finger quotin’ original:

And now the contestants, in no particular order. Some of their handles may be familiar to those of you who haunt the forums or the comments. First off is Air Forbes:

Next is RetroVirus:

Then comes Bria:

And finally comes a wife-husband team that wishes to be known as “Lucy Ven Pelt” and “Dr. Jeff Cory”, respectively:

So! Will one of these brave contestants grace the face of a future Comics Curmudgeon product, available for purchase from the good people at CafePress? Or will YOU bust that fuchsia turtleneck sweater out of the closet and claim the crown yourself? The only way to find out is to reach for the brass ring and e-mail me those pictures! The deadline is Monday, June 19 (that’s a week from today), and I’ll figure out the winner by the end of that week.

Oh, and our contest inspired David Willis, the totally awesome cartoonist behind the totally awesome Shortpacked! and Joyce and Walky, to produce this totally awesome Warholified Margo:

Because David is totally awesome, he’s given me permission to use it on a product of some sort, which will be ready by the time the contest winners are announced. So go read his strips, already!

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Dinette Set, 6/12/06

Don’t be fooled … the Dinette Setters are starting their very own meth lab!

Gil Thorp, 6/12/06

We don’t want to know what she says while she’s poking you, Heat Miser.

Mark Trail, 6/12/06

“Yeah, Tony … or Rusty … or whoever … God damn, everybody in this strip really does look alike!”

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Beetle Bailey, 6/11/06

Here’s a strip that manages to completely undermine its own punchline, as near as I can tell. Because we were here to see what went on when Sarge was gone, and trust us, it wasn’t really that interesting.

Still, I am totally charmed by the rather bizarre sentence “We’re playing football with no boundaries!” I’m trying to come up with similar assertions. “We’re playing hockey without caring about what other people think!” “We’re playing baseball with no sense of proportion!” “We’re playing bridge full of contempt for civilization and its works!”

Apartment 3-G, 6/11/06

Here’s a good example of a strip where the throwaway panels in the top row actually have a great deal of impact on the meaning. When I read this strip in my paper today, without those top panels, I assumed that Lu Ann really didn’t care whether Margo came or not, but that sad face in panel two indicates that she knows all to well that Margo loves a party all too much. We readers, of course, can thank our lucky stars that this dark-haired dynamo is going to be crashing this artsy fartsy bash, because it’s gonna be wacky as hell.

I was going to complain that we just spent a week watching Tommie and Lu Ann getting ready for this shindig, and now we have to wait for Margo to primp herself as well. Then I realized that there’s a chance that we might see some Margo-in-sexy-underwear action, so I’m withholding my judgement for now. I don’t know what the hell is going on with her hand in panel four, though. That’s just weird.

Judge Parker, 6/11/06

So we’ve learned that “Raju Mishra” is Bengali for “Brick House”:

I’ve been impressed with the new Judge Parker artist’s work so far, but today he met his ultimate test: Abbey’s hair. Of course, he’s constrained by the fact that his characters have to be recognizable as the people we’ve come to know and love over the years. He’s almost managed to make Abbey look like she’s chosen a hairstyle that a non-insane person would choose to go out in public in … almost. It think that this may be as close as anyone could expect.