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Hello, joke-enjoying humans! Would you like to see me and many other funny people tell jokes about the Internet one week from today, as is our wont? Well come to the Clubhouse in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California, and all your needs will be met!

Your needs for a funny COTW, however, will be met right now:

“Dick Tracy gently eases readers into its world with the Crimestoppers Textbook. ‘Never trust anyone! Never let your guard down for a second! There are criminals everywhere, just waiting to prey on you! Okay, now here’s our hero gunning down some guy we don’t care about in a dump. Enjoy!’” –Joe Blevins

Also? Your runners up? They’re funny too:

“This is inappropriate for Easter. People were happy when Jesus returned from the dead.” –nescio

“So Bonnie Tracy gets asked out to a nice restaurant by a successful sportswriter, and Dick shoots him dead, halfway through their first date. ‘Oh Dad — again???’, sighs Bonnie, as she stares wistfully at the pack of condoms that she has kept in her purse since 2003, and that she knows she will never, ever get a chance to use.” –seismic-2

“Anyone who’s been to Hoboken in the past quarter century knows that its high rents and well-to-do young professionals have transformed it from its former image as a rough, unglamorous, working-class town. Using that stereotype of Hoboken already stopped making sense by 1990. The fact that the strip got this wrong is the most Pluggers thing about it.” –Larry McAwful

“…and I mean a really lousy shot! Did you see yesterday’s comic? We were less than ten feet apart and not moving! I know some people criticize us for being too blasé about the deaths of our fellow human beings, but when you see ineptitude like this, does the guy even really qualify as human?” –JJ48

“Thank you, narration box! ‘A quiet afternoon at the Morgans’’ is the summary we all needed of the snoozefest that Rex Morgan, M.D. has become.” –pastordan

“Just realized Free Comic Book Day isn’t until May 4 this year, so we have another full 2 weeks of FCD jokes to come. Looking forward to the next mini arc where Atomik Komix realize they’re getting too many Starbuck Jones returns, so they hastily staple new covers on the old issues, add in a 4 page sponsored story where Starbuck Jones says ‘The only thing faster than my jetboots is your weekly fresh meal kit delivery from Blue Apron!’, and unleash their deeply disappointing free comic on an unsuspecting public.” –Schroduck

“The central angel’s puckered mouth is unsettling. Everything else around it is drawn with the same loose carelessness we’ve come to expect from Six Chix, but that mouth is a perfect, circular void of emptiness.” –TheDiva

“It’s very hard to imagine how anyone draws that picture of a balding, goateed, overdressed man with his hands clasped together and thinks, ‘this is my story’s main protagonist’ instead of ‘this is the stuffed shirt character who accidentally gets a bucket of something disgusting dumped on him for quick, cheap laughs.’” –Dan

“What’s really sad are the presents. Sure, this is Heaven and your every desire will come true instantaneously, but because we know how ridiculously insecure and in need of constant reassurance you are we’ve conjured a mountain of ‘gifts’ that hold no intrinsic value whatsoever. No, excuse me while I water ski on the back of a shark in a river of pure, molten gold in a human pyramid including perfect facsimiles of every girl I’ve ever had a crush on. Enjoy your brightly wrapped boxes of knickknacks and gaming systems your parents refused to buy you when they were still new.” –WLP

“It looks like sunbeam has indeed been taking vitamins. Specifically, draining them from Trixie’s increasingly exhausted and unhealthy father.” –jroggs

“Comic strips remember a simpler time, when bullying and making people cry were done in person and in the open, not on Twitter! Also, it involved older kids at worst, not thirty-year-old influencers promoting their paid newsletter.” –Ettorre

“This is the date Estelle will remember as the day she made the choice to go all-in for love, which resulted in her losing her retirement savings and living the rest of her life in her grand-niece’s basement. It’s also the date Mary will always remember as the day she found those deck shoes that go so well with her favorite scarf on Zappos.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“I like how it looks as though Mary’s phone isn’t even on, just a prop she uses when she wants to give her musings a bit more weight. ‘Oooh, and look here, this article says that pastel purple is the hottest thing in fashion right now! Isn’t that interesting?” –pugfuggly

“Just wanted to say I am totally here for the apathetic Narration Box. ‘Just got a back massage. Or whatever. They could have said this out loud, but then I wouldn’t get paid. Speaking of, it’s time for my smoke break. Narration Box OUT!’” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“My name is Martina, and I am good old all-American molodezh’, I mean youngster, da. I am enjoy fine town of … of … not Sverdlovsk, nyet, fine town we are in here now! I am in America to run and skip and jump like frivolous child, not karlik assigned to sleeper cell, nyet! So, do any of your papas work in defense or intelligence?” –Voshkod

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon!. And we need to give a big shout-out to our advertisers:

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Pajama Diaries, 4/26/19

I’ve got a solid five months of reading the Pajama Diaries under my belt, and I feel comfortable in saying that I pretty much know what its lane is, and that lane is “anxiety-ridden parents of teens try to enjoy life but can’t, really, because of anxiety.” Their lane is not “middle aged suburban lowkey kinksters.” That lane is occupied by Arlo and Janis. Sorry, Pajama Diaries, I’m going to have to request that you stay in your lane.

(Also, the strip’s Wikipedia page claims that it takes place in Ohio, so I’m going to assume that “safety word” is a regional variation for “safe word,” like how my cousins in Columbus thought “sneakers” was the dumbest word they ever heard but said “tennies” like it was totally normal.)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/26/19

I like Sarah’s pensive look in the first panel here. She seems to be thinking, “Wait, I know I have amnesia, but I have this feeling that I’m the one who’s supposed to be getting free stuff from some person of inexplicable means. This doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel right at all.”

Hagar the Horrible, 4/26/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Lucky Eddie’s uncle was injured, leaving hin unable to continue the violent means by which he gained sustenance in his medieval environment. Probably he’s going to die in poverty, and soon!

Beetle Bailey, 4/26/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Beetle got mauled by a bunch of raccoons! There’s a good chance he has rabies now?

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Dustin, 4/25/19

Sorry to youngsplain at you, Dustin’s Boomer Dad Whose Name I Refuse To Remember Or Look Up, but on the social networking service Twitter, a “tweet” is a post that’s publicly visible, or, if you have a locked account, a post that’s visible to your followers; a “direct message,” as the name implies, is private message visible only to the sender and recipient or recipients. Getting dumped in public has a very different emotional valence than the relative privacy of a direct message, so your “Dear John tweet” joke is inaccurate, and isn’t even as charming as wordplay as the more correct “Dear John DM” would be. Also, your son appears to be experiencing a real emotional crisis, as many people of all ages would if the romantic relationship they were in abruptly came to an end, but sure, the thing to focus on here is the website via which the message happened to be sent, so laff it up.

Mary Worth, 4/25/19

I love that, as Estelle unravels emotionally, Mary is just making unbroken eye contact with her phone while dropping this scam knowledge. “Look, Estelle, I know your boyfriend is on your phone and you think everything on phones is real. Well, my phone is telling me that your boyfriend is probably a fraud! Really makes you think, doesn’t it?”