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Here’s your comment of the week. Hopefully you like it, because this is what peak performance looks like.

“‘I was thinking we could take a trip to New York City over the holiday weekend.’ ‘That’s a nice idea, Leroy! Wait, you’re not just setting up an elaborate punchline at my expense, are you?’” –digamma

And here are your hilarious runners up!

“Looks like someone finally got my letters demanding Slylock ‘show scalp.’” –Windier E. Megatons, on Twitter

“I also like that there’s no ladder or steps on the lifeguard chair, so you can imagine Leroy awkwardly climbing the side.” –rrh

“My head canon is that Dustin’s dismembered body is inside that recycling bin.” –Joe Blevins

“I’m sorry, but you lost me. None of this makes any sense. I just asked you why you mistrust me, and you feed me something that sounds like a cross between Bugs Bunny and David Lynch that I cannot recall at all. I don’t even buy that I named my daughter Moon Maid, of all things.” –made of wince

“A middle-aged incel, a pompous pseudo-intellectual and his much-younger trophy wife, a hen-pecked boyfriend and the manipulative, victim blaming shrew who’s got her claws in him — Quintessential. Moving in its simplicity, American as apple pie. June Brigman is truly the Norman Rockwell of current America. Beautiful!” –Dunkelcopter

“Uncooked hotdogs in buns and frosting-slathered cake with no utensils? Mary, you shouldn’t have! No, seriously, this is a terrible and disgusting thing you have done!” –jroggs

“A scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 10-minute student film, To Catch A Moron.” –But What Do I know

“I have no idea what ‘Gregg gets rocked’ means, but I choose to believe it means he pitched so badly that they pelted him with rocks and garbage.” –Peanut Gallery

“‘Oh, absolutely you should have come here,’ Rex recites, directing a knowing glance at the audience. Taking only a moment to shift his pose from his patient-pointing hand to his audience-pointing hand, he continues with his PSA. ‘Where are you looking, Doc?’” the patient inquires.” –Austria

“Jess unfortunately has a long history of abuse to process, starting with her parents giving her and her sister rhyming names.” –TheDiva

“Why is it that the birds in this strip have eye whites but the people don’t? This is truly the land that God forgot, or just got bored of, more likely.” –pugfuggly

“Considering how protective Abba is of their copyright, I bet the dad in Dustin could have the whole call center wiped out just by forwarding the number to the band’s lawyers. Real power move for any spite-driven boomer type.” –Inanimate Carbon Ron, on Twitter

“[Later, back at the Hamm house] Gregg’s Dad: ‘Good news everyone! We don’t have to hide anymore!’
[Goes out side and pries the second ‘m’ off of the ‘Hamm’ sign on the mailbox]” –Kevin On Earth

“A paunchy, middle-aged journalist who has inexplicably survived wave after wave of layoffs and consolidation in regional television confers with another middle-aged writer who has no idea that literally no one cares what writers do. That’s it, that’s the joke. Ain’t that zany enough for you?” –pastordan

“The thumbs up on the poster is an unironically good touch. That’s right, Dagwood; non-union Batman heard the whole conversation.” –Dan

“I know that Dagwood’s peculiar … let us say, ‘anatomy’ … has been mentioned on this blog before, but just what in the sweet holy fuck is up with this posture? He is a) leaning back on an invisible Barcalounger while b) holding his arm at a 90-degree angle as though he’s the doyenne of country club life balancing his purse on his elbow and c) shuffling along, Groucho-Marx-like, with his knees caving in on each other. No wonder Blondie has his arm in a death-grip; she has to physically yank him along before he falls the hell over in an unholy tangle of limbs and sciatica.” –els

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Crankshaft, 7/8/22

Look, obviously this blog is about 15% by volume me slamming on Funkyverse strips, so I’m just going to get ahead of things here and say that today’s strip is very, very funny, and the time-reverse gimmick is a good one that makes it funnier. Was it worthwhile spending 35 years writing the comic strip Crankshaft in such a way that we all hate him enough to get a genuine belly laugh watching him flee in terror from angry bees? Probably not, but in this moment, I appreciate it.

Blondie, 7/8/22

It’s extremely not new to remark on how much modern filmmaking is dominated by superhero franchises, but that doesn’t mean the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie can’t bring anything new to the table. In this case, it’s “late-middle-aged-and-older dudes find superheroes sexually threatening,” which I have to admit is new to me at least.

Dick Tracy, 7/8/22

Oh, right, I had forgotten that the Moon People in Dick Tracy had to leave the Moon for some reason and relocate to an undisclosed location (that turns out to be Antarctica) and Dick pretended to care about his family so he could sniff out the answer to this puzzle, because he’s the world’s greatest detective and also an asshole. I was going to do a joke about him conquering Moon Valley, but he’s a cop, annexing territory isn’t really his bag. I guess he could arrest everyone for violating the Antarctic Treaty System, but enforcing international law isn’t really his bag either.

Family Circus, 7/8/22

Gotta respect the thought process here, which was apparently, “Sure, we establish in dialogue that he’s still drinking his soda, but comics are a visual medium, we need to show that with a big disgusting blob of spit coming out of his mouth. Those grandmas who cut the panel out to hang on their fridge might not like it, but this one’s just for me.”

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Gil Thorp, 7/7/22

I guess the most disappointing thing about this baseball season in Gil Thorp is that there’s usually zany A and B plots that we pingpong back and forth between, which gives this strip the vertiginous excitement that we crave, but this spring the two plots were that Gregg was hiding the fact that he was tragically blind and Gregg’s dad was hiding the fact that he was a notorious disgraced plagiarist. While this combo may have delivered thematic unity, it was honestly kind of boring, which is why it’s fitting that the A plot ended with Gregg flaming out of the playoffs and Gregg’s dad learning that literally nobody cares about the secret shame he’s been carrying around with him for so many years. It’s only Thursday, so I can’t wait to find out two more reasons why nothing matters over the rest of the week!!!

Slylock Fox, 7/7/22

Man, it seems unfair that you suffer for eons under H. sapiens domination, then abruptly achieve sapience and rise up against the humans in some terrifying, inexplicable Event and take your rightful place as the dominant group on Earth, only for the entire biosphere to be wiped out by series of massive asteroid impacts. Sorry, animals, the apocalypse is your problem now.