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“Rusty is developing faster than Mark and Cherry realize. That is not the dewlap of a child, is what I’m saying.” –AhClem

Your hilarious runners up: also here!

“One detail Slylock will not include in his report was his inability to keep pace with a tree.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“The tree’s inevitable groans of ‘kill me’ will also fail to keep it well camouflaged.” –tb4000

“Blondie had sent the children to her mother’s house. She had fled, leaving behind the obligatory sacrifice for the unfillable void of which Dagwood was but the incarnation. She had taken every precaution, but once again, her post-Super Bowl plans would involve hiding the gruesome remains of a human being.” –Dread

“I guess the best thing to be said about that Pajama Diaries strip is that it wasn’t three separate Pluggers strips.” –Anonymous

“Newspapers get their ‘police blotters’ from the official records of the local police department. This means that any story in the paper is at least several hours behind the department’s record. The police department’s record is, of course, normally available to its employees. I can only assume that Dick is required to wait until the stories are in the newspaper in the vain hope of the city’s liability attorneys that this will give the suspects enough time to turn themselves in before the next inevitable police brutality lawsuit.” –Where’s Rocky?

“Tip for working at home: You wouldn’t develop ‘house bladder‘ if you didn’t keep sipping from that glass of ‘house vodka.’” –BigTed

“Why should he be invading my dreams?! There is no oil there!” –Ettore

“By which I mean, I will collect the copay in advance, so keep $75 in your wallet at all times.” –Foodar

“Making a wine reduction seems like an awfully complicated step for a couple who decide to outfit their enormous kitchen with a mere 2-burner stove. Maybe she’s drinking straight from the bottle because they don’t actually own any glasses?” –Dmsilev

“This strip has hit peak Funkyverse. It has everything; truly terrible wordplay that would absolutely not be appropriate even if it did make sense, the fucking smirk, and the looming spectre of death.” –Rosstifer

“Everyone knows puberty only happens if you talk about it.” –FeralCanadian

“Some other guys on the team did it! They abducted the other team’s mascot, thought it would throw them off their game during the playdowns. But we … but they didn’t know how little air there is in a car trunk. I … they remember … opening the trunk and realizing … oh god … what we … what they’d done. They … weighted it down with bricks and threw it in the quarry. It took forever for the body to sink, it was just bobbing in the moonlight like an accusing ghost. One of us … them … I had to go down and poke it with a stick until it sank. It was such a clear night, and the moon was so bright, I could see it all the way to the bottom … and I’m not sure … we weren’t sure … I mean they weren’t sure … it was dead even then. Oh, you said induct. Yeah, that’s great. Just don’t let there be any mascots at the ceremony.” –Voshkod

“Ah! Denial quickly followed by blaming someone else. Is that truly the Scapegoats’ way?” –tallyHO

“That is totally unbelievable. A real ham radio guy would just sit there and talk about ham radio.” –Mumblix_Grumph

“Toby is going to talk with Ian and find out how stupid the whole incident was, and then somehow think even less of Ian than she does now.” –JJ48

“Jannie, this is no time to stop doing what you do best. I want you to tear into Michael with every bit of savageness you can muster. ‘Girlfriend?! Ha! What kind of pathetic, no-self-esteem bimbo would agree to be seen with you?! By the way, you shouldn’t play pocket pool! I hear the referee’s a prick!’ And then walk away, all cool and dignified.” –Joe Blevins

“It appears that Jannie has stumbled across the casting tryouts for the spring campus production of Rebel Without A College Diploma.” –Just John

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Mary Worth, 2/8/19

Oh, wow, looks like we’re finally learning the real message of this storyline. Jannie had her chance with Michael, but instead wasted her most reproductively fit years in a dangerous game of psychosexual manipulation with her older professor. That whole thing blew up in her face, so now she’s come running back to her handsome age-appropriate classmate, only to find out that in the intervening … what, like, a week, maybe? two weeks? … he’s formed a stable pair-bond and is off the market. The lesson is to nail down that MRS degree as soon as you can, ladies! You don’t want to get to graduation only to realize you’re doomed to be an old maid!

Mark Trail, 2/8/19

I’m pretty sure a clear sign a tween is blowing you off is when they ask to “trade email addresses,” since nobody born after 1999 has ever sent an email address in their life. Mara is about to change phone numbers and set her Instagram to private, while Rusty has several forlorn weeks of watching emails bounce back from mara_totally_real_address@hotmail.biz bounce back to him.

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The Phantom, 2/7/19

So I was roundly and correctly roasted last week for not being up on the Phantom lore and realizing that it’s Heloise who has a Great-Uncle Dave (a terrorism expert, natch), not Kadia. I may not know much about ancillary Phantom characters, but I do know about international diplomacy, enough to realize that giving teenagers cabinet positions and admiralships in order to spirit them out of the country and avoid talking to the police is pretty dodgy, and I also know enough about storytelling to know that it’s kind of weird to spend this much post-climax strip time talking about the mechanics of how President Luaga is spiriting Heloise and Kadia out of the country. Really, it’s only interesting to nerds who are curious about the details of Bangalla’s governance and external relations — and I cannot emphasize enough that I am very much one of those nerds. Why do you think President Luaga is doing this himself? Are these sorts of appointments exclusively made by the president in person, according to the Bangallan constitution? Or is Luaga just here on a lark because he’s kind of bored with the day to day of Bangallan governance, which, for the record, I as a nerd am also eager to learn more about?

Mary Worth, 2/7/19

I’m pretty sure that Mary Worth is the person that Toby spends the most time with, which is profoundly sad, for both of them really, but it’s clear here that at least it means she’s building up an immunity to Mary’s platitudes and has gotten to the point where she can now just ignore them altogether. “Don’t worry about how you appear. Just talk to him.” “When I do, the most important thing will be how I appear!” I’m not sure how long Mary will accept this state of affairs before she takes her meddling to the next level (hypnosis, binding court orders, etc.).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/19

You ever see one of those sentences that has been run through some kind of automatic translator and while grammatically correct makes no sense? In unrelated news, here’s today’s Rex Morgan, M.D.!