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If there’s one thing I’m always ready to do, it’s take credit. Thus, I don’t know for sure that my pleas for justice — and the resulting outpouring of wrath on the part of IRTCSYDHT readers — had anything to do with the Baltimore Sun’s decision to restore Apartment 3-G and The Phantom to their rightful place on the funny pages as of today, but I’m going to choose to believe that they did. Of course, it saddens me that poor dear Mary Worth and fightin’ Mark Trail are still in exile, but we must take what we can get.

Meanwhile, this blog has seen a massive upswing in traffic in the past seven days or so. Last week I was linked to by The Morning News and Bookslut. This apparently brought me to the attention of the mainstream media, as I in short order received links from pop culture blogs at the Houston Chronicle, Masslive, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Then today all hell really broke loose as I attracted the notice of the good people at Metafilter. I’m a huge egotist, so I love the attention, but my bandwidth bills are climbing rapidly — I had more visitors in January 17 than I did in all of December. [This sentence redacted in accordance with the Google terms of service.] And keep an eye out for an exciting development that will be arriving here in the not-so-distant future: IRTCSYDHT-branded merchandise!

I’ve been so slack on doing linkbacks, and have built up so many here, that I’m afraid I’m only going to pick some arbitrary highlights; apologies if I skip your fine blog or home page. But I must give special props to Killinki (because it’s in Finnish, or possibly Estonian), Dukakis Hugging Moon Maiden (who proposed marriage to me), Comics Worth Reading, The Official Mark Trail WHAT TH’ Page, Andertoons Blog, and The Whiteboard (the last two are both real live cartoonists!). Also worth noting is some kind of “Hottest Cartoon Women” contest over at Wanderlist.com, which links to my Blondie archive to illustrate Mrs. Bumstead’s ample charms. Irony, people, you must learn to comprehend irony.

And what rambling metapost would be complete without some amusing and alarming search terms? From Google, we have “keeping a man satisfied” and “‘sally forth’ horrible” (they said it, not me); from Google Italy we have “inuit big tits,” and from Google Japan we have “mustache cat.” Moving down the evolutionary ladder, at AOLSearch we have “WOMAN RAPED BY ALIANS” (you people disgust me, and so does your spelling). And finally, from the Wal-Mart Connect search, we have “tijuana bibles snuffy smith.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Wal-Mart has a search engine?” Well, I have no explanation for that, but I can provide an answer to your next question: “What’s a Tijuana bible?” In a comment on an older post that you may not have seen, faithful reader LabRat explains all: “Back in the thirties and forties when Blondie was in its heyday, a popular form of pornography was dirty comic books, often featuring popular comic characters like Popeye or Minnie Mouse. They’re called ‘Tijuana Bibles’ if you feel like Googling it for retro-flavored trauma. Blondie Bumstead almost certainly had her turn in one or two.” The fact that anyone wants to see bootleg pornography based on the characters in Snuffy Smith — and that those people are using Wal-Mart for their search engine needs — provides such an obvious set-up for cruel commentary that I can’t even bring myself to follow through on it.

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For Better Or For Worse, 1/17/05

You know, I’ve been on plenty of long, dull car trips with my mother, and I’m pretty sure that she’s never subtly encouraged me to pursue someone else’s spouse. Mostly we just play word games (“My name is Cathy, and I live in Cleveland and I sell … canaries!”).

I’ve been told (and as usual am too lazy to do the actual research to back this up) of a charming tradition in Mexican telenovelas: when the series is about to end, all the stops of these usually ever-so-subtle programs are pulled out, and all the main characters meet melodramatic, often fiery and violent, deaths. For Better Or For Worse is in fact going to wrap up in the near future, and perhaps that’s the plan for the strip. Elizabeth ends up in a vicious catfight with the hugely pregnant Thérèse for Anthony’s love. Michael and Deanna are pursued through the Northwest Territories by the Mounties after finally killing Deanna’s mother in a fit of wholly justified rage. John starts prescribing himself potent opiates and spends most of his days staring at his train sets in a blissed-out haze. And Ellie and April join forces to finally track down Kortney and give her what’s coming to her.

Elizabeth’s paper coffee cup is a nice visual touch. Presumably they’ve taken time out from plotting adultery to make a quick layover for supplies at the Stop N’ Go/Arrêtez Et Allez.

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The Boondocks, 1/16/05

Did you ever notice that whenever Martin Luther King, Jr., appeared in public, he almost always wore a suit? Well, Aaron McGruder (or a member of the team of artists over at Boondocks Enterprises) apparently did. I’ve always noticed that as well, which is why this cartoon amused me as much as it did with its departure from the seemingly iron-clad halo-and-wings-and-flowing-robes conventional cartoon depiction of the dearly departed. The contours of the suit make the fanny-shaking in panels two and five all the funnier.