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Comment of the week? Comment of the week!

“Wilbur looks less like he’s out for a brisk morning walk and more like he’s practicing for the Santa Royale Community Theater production of The Music Man.” –TheDiva

Runners up? Hilarious!

“Hey Spiderman! You either managed to find the last nurse in North America to wear a skirt on the job since the ’70s, or you’re talking to a themed stripper.” –Peter of the Norse

“Peter has found a way to be useful which requires him sitting on a comfy chair without taking active actions. This is the best day of his life!” –Ettore

“You’d think Baxter Bat would be the one solving all these mysteries, since the solution is always printed right-side-up from his point-of-view.” –Duke of Earl Grey

“And the coffee pot never tells the truth! You may ask ONE question.” –Windier E. Megatons, on Twitter

“We can assume Jeffy is the one trying to use a sled on level ground.” –nescio

“Take it down a notch with the one up-man-ship, Coach. It’s polite convo over dinner prep, not the Debate Team Shout Offs or what have you.” –Tonya

“There actually was a Puerto Rican ballplayer named Jorge Padilla; he was a right fielder for the Washington Nationals in 2009. Meanwhile, a woman named Paloma Padilla acted in a short Mexican horror film called Sexxxion Premium, which could explain her anger.” –BigTed

“I can’t help but like Wilbur, especially in today’s comic where I imagine he’s strutting through an empty park while quietly singing the Bee Gees’ ‘Staying Alive’ to himself.” –Escape Zeppelin

“I guess Camp Swampy is backwards enough that they were assigned a phrenologist as the camp’s doctor. Killer should be happy; I’m sure at least one of those bumps will improve his chances with the ladies.” –Dr. Dread

“IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE OF ALL THE CONCUSSIONS!” –Lorne

“Although the choice of a manual-transmission pickup, the uninterrupted diet of RC Cola and Moon Pie, and the callous dismissal of common-sense precautions in the operation of a motor vehicle all help to identify the lifestyle of the driver, what is really telling is the vanity license plate PLUGR. Pluggers have a very low bar of ‘vanity,’ and they can’t spell.” –seismic-2

“‘The history of every war ever fought’ sounds like a fun topic for elementary school history. Are they doing it in chronological order (maybe starting with the Kish-Elam War between rival Sumerian states, or the Nubia Campaign of Pharaoh Hor-Aha), or alphabetical order (jumping from the 9th century Abbasid Civil War to post-Soviet Abkahzian War to the British Empire’s Abyssinian War, all the way to the Zulu War and the Mongolian Zunghar Invasion)? Either way, learning the history of these wars seems pretty open-ended. Elmo will probably have to start learning about the Syrian Civil War by studying the Sunni-Shia schism of 632, but maybe the nice teacher will let him off easy and begin with Sykes-Picot in 1916.” –Schroduck

“Oh, sure. Pluggers multitask behind the wheel and everyone’s raving about how quaint and clever they are. I play Pokemon Go while driving one time, and everyone’s all, ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ and ‘That man had a family, you monster!’” –JJ48

“I, for one, am very much looking forward to finding out how Jimmy Buffet managed to claim the title of King of the Moon.” –pugfuggly

“I’d like to think that Thel is straight-up changing PJ on the kitchen counter while Jeffy apparently prepares to do his duty down the basement steps.” –lumaca morente

“That’s a guy he’s grabbing in panel 2 and a woman in panel 3. The Lizard will go amok, taking pulses of the entire hospital staff, and revealing this information out loud, in clear violation of HIPAA.” –Hogenmogen

“Yes, Wilbur, Dawn’s history of pursuing extremely unhealthy yet strangely asexual relationships with much older men certainly speaks to what a wonderful job you’ve done as a father.” –Aphthakid

“Roz has always been drawn as incredibly buxom, almost as lovingly detailed as Aunt Fritzi. I assume there is an audience for this type of thing.” –Rusty

“If you are trying to convince me that holding ostrich races with monkey jockeys would be a bad idea, you have failed, Mark Trail.” –Dread

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Mark Trail, 1/19/18

Welp, looks like those giraffes Rusty spotted last week are actually part of a whole herd of exotic animals freely roaming around Lost Forest, presumably because after the Tingling Bros. Circus farewell tour the circus’s creditors ordered the entire menagerie to be simply released into the woods rather than making an expensive attempt to find new homes for the beasts. You’re probably thinking that this uniformed monkey is in charge of all these creatures, but in fact he’s a mere lieutenant for their true king, the Great Wilhelm, who’s holed up in an inaccessible forest lair screaming out his orders.

Shoe, 1/19/18

Roz runs what I believe is one of the of the only dining establishments in Treetops (is there also a fancy white-tablecloth French restaurant with snooty bird-waiters? I’m pretty sure there is, but I’m not going to bother to check) but one of the jokes of the strip is that she is actually pretty bad at cooking. Nevertheless, all of the characters continue coming to her diner to order food, either because of their aforementioned lack of other options (but why doesn’t the invisible hand wing of the free market push someone else into starting a rival with more palatable fare?) or because they all love cruelly taunting Roz, and the gastic side-effects of eating her food is a small price to pay for the opportunity to do so. Anyway, what I’m saying is, I guess the joke in today’s strip is supposed to be that, like Roz’s burnt cooking, Roz’s cookbook (but how could someone mainly known for making unappetizing food score a coveted publishing deal?) managed to set off some smoke alarms, but the facial expressions on display here (Shoe all heavy-lidded menace, Roz bug-eyed with rage) imply that maybe Shoe just led a book-burning, right there in the middle of Barnes & Noble.

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Six Chix, 1/18/18

I feel like I need to apologize, because this comic is basically pretty terrible, but I also kind of love it??? Like, I can’t parse its internal logic at all — clearly the “contgratulations, it’s a” balloon is a take off of the gender-denoting balloons for parents of infants we know and love, so did they give birth to this obnoxious teen, or did he spring forth self-living from one of their foreheads, or did he come in the mail, or what — but I still love his grinning, obnoxious teen face. “Hey guys!” he seems to be saying. “Guess what! I’m here, and I suck.”

Mary Worth, 1/18/18

I don’t have kids myself, so probably I don’t get to weigh in on this, but just because your child loves you, maybe that isn’t in and of itself a sign that you’re a good parent? Maybe another sign of good parenting would be if she goes through an emotional trauma and confides in you rather than just never mentioning it, I dunno. Anyway, even Wilbur’s theoretical sticker is baffling, since (a) “sticker” makes it sound like a bumper sticker, but apparently he’s imagining that he’d “wear” it, and (b) “How are my parenting skills?” gives way too much leeway to your interlocutor to just start telling you their opinions. If you’re just looking for a conversation starter that’ll let you boast, try “Ask me about my parenting skills!” But if you’re asking me about your parenting skills, well, this blog is already on the record with some opinions.

Rex Morgan, 1/18/18

So, it turns out the Morgans’ schlubby-ass lawyer is in fact trying to bring together the battling parties to reach a compromise that leaves everyone feeling like they had some of their needs met, instead of just spending as much energy as possible destroying his clients’ enemies financially and emotionally. As panel three makes very clear, this won’t do at all.

Spider-Man, 1/18/18

Oh, uh, it turns out getting an infusion of Hulk blood doesn’t turn Doctor Connors into a Hulk, it turns him into the Lizard, which is kind of weird because it was some other serum that turned him into the Lizard in the first place. Like when multiple different things injected into your body all turn you into the Lizard, maybe the problem isn’t the things being injected into you, maybe the problem is you, you know what I’m saying? Also, I assumed that the whole Lizard situation was a “human transformed into dumb rampaging beast against his will” deal, but now that I know the Lizard can talk, and use his powers of speech to talk about himself in the third person, I have significantly less sympathy for him.

Family Circus, 1/18/18

I am immediately intrigued by the idea of child-proof pants, but I have to imagine there’s a real cost-benefit analysis you have to run with them. Is the danger of Jeffy soiling himself outweighed by the danger of Jeffy exposing himself?

Gil Thorp, 1/18/18

“WOW THESE ISLAND PEOPLE GET ALL THE FREE HAMBURGERS AND BACKUP VARSITY SLOTS THEY WANT JUST BECAUSE THEY GOT SLIGHTLY HURRICANED, IT DOESN’T SEEM FAIR, DOES IT” –the syndicated newspaper comic strip Gil Thorp, I guess????