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Enjoy digesting your Thanksgiving meal (or whatever meal, I don’t judge) with this comment of the week:

“Wilbur is a ‘diamond in the rough’ in the sense that dealing with him involves immense human suffering, and his value is overinflated.” –TheDiva

These runners up are also something to be thankful for!

“Huntin’? Nope, been hikin’! Haw haw! But in all seriousness, it looks like we ain’t eatin’ today.” –jroggs

“Sarge, you liar, you said you had to ‘go yell at Beetle,’ but then all you did was dully answer a question and then, a few panels later, ask for a progress report. I can excuse the attempted murder of one of your soldiers, but lying to a dog? Unacceptable!” –Joe Blevins

“So …. Angus is the strongest baby in the world? From now on I’m going to interpret his ba’s as ‘I could kill you,’ ‘I could so kill you,’ and ‘Your whimsical observations would not prevent me from killing you.’” –jenna

“I think it’s probably worth noting that this poor, beaten Viking not only offers Hagar sage advice about the future, but also appears to be wearing the same outfit. Is he perhaps receiving a dire vision of things to come? This may or may not be supported by how this other Viking does not appear in the first panel, and in fact seems to surprise Hagar with his response. I say maybe because regular human interaction does seem to be lost on Walker-Browne most of the time.” –Manjack

“The moral: Neither hypnosis or psychology will help you if your offensive line sucks.” –Little Blue Bicycle

“Mary mixes up another batch of ‘Meddlin’ Muffins’ as she cooks up the next plot development in Wilbur’s relationship with Estelle. She sets the oven for 550 degrees and the timer for seven hours. ‘I do believe they will be badly burnt,’ she breathes with a smile.” –Charterstoned

“It’s Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. Things will have to move pretty fast, especially for a comic strip, but there’s still enough time for Wilbur to get swept up when an unnamed federal agency storms Pets R Us for blatantly violating the trademark of a failing-but-still-extant toy chain. If he’s disappeared somewhere deep in a black-site detention center at an undisclosed location by Thursday, we will all truly have plenty to be thankful for.” –Doctor Moreau

“Is this what it will be like if I still have my wits and I end up living with a person with Alzheimer’s? No, I absolutely refuse to do such ludicrously unnatural expository dialogue. If they don’t remember who I am, I’ll just tell them I’m the UPS guy or something.” –Peanut Gallery

“Good thing we’re doing the ‘right’ thing and exploiting our young daughter’s skills to a corporation instead! Now there’s a group that’s known for respecting artistic talent in an ethical fashion!” –2+2=7

“At some point you’ve made enough muffins.” –Professor Well Actually

“Bow tie-wearing thug with a dame in a cabaret, boss in a gimp suit using ridiculous code names to talk about coworkers, owl-like bodyguard outside the door with a bullwhip, and all I can think is that most ridiculous thing in this strip is the idea that you can send texts in bold.” –pastordan

“Heavy-lidded expression? Baking? California? I’m not sure if I’m more disappointed in Mary Worth for getting involved with pot or in pot for getting involved with Mary Worth.” –Irrischana

“Harry has bodies in the basement! But they’re frozen turkeys! Human bodies would be tastier.” –Ettorre

“A comic strip called Funky Winkerbean has to remind you who or what a ‘Funky Winkerbean’ actually is, and now there’s no room for a joke.” –Rosstifer

“Absolutely dying for this plot to end with the revelation that yes, fish were too great a responsibility for Wilbur. He needed to sprinkle flakes in water once a day and occasionally clean a glass box, and wound up just shouting at them that his girlfriend left him, do you understand, no it’s always about you and your problems, god even these fish don’t like me. ‘A diamond in the rough,’ Mary chuckles as Wilbur dangles fish #2 over the toilet.” –Dan

“‘The Dinkles host a super-spreader event’ is not a plotline I expected to see here but is one I am very much looking forward to. Get closer, everyone! Talk right into each other’s mouths!” –pugfuggly

“From very recent experience, I can tell you that you can cook a meal or you can stand around introducing people, but you can’t do both.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Wilbur’s quest for existential and romantic fulfillment takes a merry turn as he lugs the aquarium down to the ocean in hopes of attracting a mermaid.” –Daisy

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Hi and Lois, 11/26/21

Almost every family patriarch in a newspaper comic is a baby boomer, with tickets to the original Woodstock in a scrapbook and a disco leisure suit in the back of their closet, no matter how improbably that maps onto their current apparent age and/or family relationships. I therefore applaud today’s strip; while there’s still a potential interpretation where Hi is talking about himself, albeit with a modicum of self-awareness, I assume we’re really meant to understand that he’s making fun of all those old fogies, whereas he knows the real year that rock and roll changed the world: 1999, when nü metal hit the mainstream and Korn, Orgy, and Staind all had albums that topped the charts.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/26/21

God damn it Funky Winkerbean, you really had me starting to panic that yesterday’s awkward introductions were setting up yet another timeskip because here’s Wally and Rachel’s son and wait a minute when did Wally and Rachel have a son, who’s like six or seven at least? They got married back in 2014, so if people really are aging in real time, then maybe that’s possible? But thank goodness, Uncle Lumpy had already reminded us a year earlier that Rachel already had a kid when she and Wally met, who has now, it appears, been rescued from the memory hole in order to be introduced to Harry Dinkle. Speaking of kids, Rana is not only Becky and Comic Book John’s kid but also Wally’s kid, so yay for blended families, and also yay for extremely convoluted casts of characters in a syndicated newspaper strip. The official Wally Winkerbean page on Funky Winkerbean Dot Com notes that “My dream is to one day produce a Funky family tree (or family jungle) for the website. The thing about dreams is that they don’t always come true, but I haven’t quite given up on this one just yet. Fingers crossed.” This was written in 2018, so keep crossing those fingers, I guess.

Family Circus, 11/26/21

I don’t really even have a joke about this, it just really is one of the saddest things that’s ever appeared in the Family Circus. I hope that kind-hearted grandparents/Family Circus trufans are cutting this out of the paper to hang on the refrigerator, chuckling softly to themselves and saying “Oh, Jeffy, you really are a huge loser.”

Mary Worth, 11/26/21

Ha ha, check out how those two fish are looking at each other! Those are definitely “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, about a murder-suicide pact?” facial expressions.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/25/21

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! If you’re looking for something to be thankful for, maybe you should give thanks that you don’t have Funky Winkerbean’s entire family showing up at your front door and explaining to you who they all are, for some reason, as if it were very vital for readers at home to get a full accounting. I have to wonder if the Funky team has forgotten that Mort, the sex creep in Harry’s band full of old people, is supposed to be the same person as Morton, Funky’s dad? The band member in this month’s “Mort from Harry’s band is horny for Lillian” sequence sure looks like Funky’s dad in the “Funky’s dad is horny for Holly’s mom” sequence from December 2018:

And maybe it’s just the angle, but Funky’s dad’s head looks pretty differently shaped today? Plus why would Funky feel like he has to introduce his dad to Harry, since his dad is in Harry’s band? I guess it’s possible that, having put his dad in a home specifically so he could think about the old man as little as possible, Funky has not bothered to keep up at all with his dad’s hobbies or activities.

Gasoline Alley, 11/25/18

Gasoline Alley also went in for a crowd scene, but in a way that is frankly a lot less tasking for me. Do I recognize these people as mostly Gasoline Alley characters? Yes. Could I name them? Some, but definitely not all. Does the strip insist on telling me what they’re all named, because it’s a good bet that I’ve forgotten and it wants me to double down on remembering them? No, it doesn’t, and I appreciate that.

The Lockhorns, 11/25/18

Speaking of things I’m thankful for, I remain thankful for the acidic purity of The Lockhorns. A lesser strip would depict a character burning furniture for heat, whereas this one depicts a character burning furniture out of spite.