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What’s that? Is it comment of the week time? You know it is, baby:

“I think today’s Mark Trail is the clearest evidence yet that the recent emergence of ‘Suave Rusty’ has been an act of actual and deliberate transformation, and that it requires every ounce of Rusty’s concentration to maintain his handsome form. He really doesn’t want to scare off this potential lady-friend, but the prospect of exploring nearby ruins for skeletons or arrowheads or whatever is overwhelming him. The cracks in the facade are showing big time in panel three. You can actually see him trying and failing to maintain form. He’s about to be exposed for what he is, and heaven help the witnesses.” –livingonvideo

Love to party with some sick as hell runners up!

“Why not be picky? Iowans already suffer floods, blizzards, tornadoes, dust storms, and locusts. Why not give them something to restore their spirit and boost Iowa pride? Demand they show some Iowa grit, and go for having the world’s largest frying pan!! They’ll thank you for it.” –Paula Gehringer, on Facebook

“I was going to comment about how Peter crawling up the building and forcing open a window to ‘sneak a peek‘ made it sound like he was trying to peep on some woman, but then I realized it was far more likely that his TV simply broke, and that he was hoping a bedridden patient would be tuned into The Price Is Right.” –JJ48

“Look, if staring at metal strawberries is the price we pay for remaining in this strip without having to interact with any of the other characters, then prepare to be kitsched out of your mind!” –Le Chein D’Amour

“Have the Harwoods visited the Morgans’ house yet, to see the world’s longest wrap-around sofa?” –seismic-2

“We joke about Spidey doing stupid stuff, but he’s never done anything half as idiotic as a flying jump kick straight out of the 14th floor window of a hospital.” –Schroduck

“Freda’s, as we can tell from the monochromatic stock, only sells astronaut food purchased in bulk back in the ’70s when NASA scaled back its manned space program. I’m giddy with the prospect of Tommy’s new addiction to freeze-dried meatloaf and Tang.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

” Question: Your partner is dangling precariously over a dangerous ravine on the remains of a rope bridge — what do you do? Answer: Throw a rock at him! Question: You don’t like your partner very much, do you? Answer: Nope!” –BigTed

“Spider-Man again exercises his true superpower: mouthing off to people who are in a position to kill him.” –matt w

“This is why artwork matters in comics. I can’t tell if the dog is holding a normal pistol, a phone with an ‘app’ that turns it into a pistol, or a phone set to post all those closeted dogs’ Grindr interactions directly to Facebook and there’s just incidental shadowing behind the phone that looks like a pistol barrel.” –jroggs

“The whole premise of The Addams Family is that despite rejecting societal norms the Addams are a kind and supporting family bound together by love and mutual respect. I guess what I’m getting at is that Bird Senator has my vote in November.” –Escape Zeppelin

“Hey buddy, if parading around in a crimson-red crushed velvet jumpsuit doesn’t get you looked at, I don’t know if anything’s gonna work.” –Dennis Jimenez

“I see Thel’s human form is breaking down. Instead of maintaining a skin-like façade between nose and chin, her mouth flows freely in a soup of flesh-like gel that’s just beginning to ooze from her head. Sam is wise to look away.” –Voshkod

“Spider-Man 101 is apparently not a physics course, as, given the weight and momentum of Peter Parker, his angle and distance from the building, and length of the web he just shot onto the wall, Spider-Man is about to swing back and go crashing through that hospital window.” –Tristan Olson

“The fact that a mid-afterlife is possible suggests that the afterlife has a midpoint, and thus doesn’t go on forever. I can’t determine whether this brings on anxiety, since it means I’ll have to face another death at some point after my first one, or possibly blessed relief from the crushing, oppressive tedium of eternity. Maybe tomorrow’s Rhymes With Orange will address this. I hope it does. I don’t want to have to resort to prayer.” –Larry McAwful

“Tune in tomorrow, when Slim’s package is returned to sender for insufficient postage.” –Pozzo

“Oh gracious, how I used to masturbate over those comic books! Heh heh. Good times.” –Alter Ego

“Though Earl ribbed her for ‘slumming,’ Henrietta had made some good friends by venturing outside her privileged existence. Yet as she struggled with the heavy boxes, she wondered whether it had been wise to befriend so many of the ladies in the Tyson plant.” –Herr Ausländischer Vögel

“Gotta be tough when you have a three-panel strip, but your joke only really takes two, cuz then you’re stuck with an extra one and all you can do is take that zany premise back to reality by having a character say something like ‘No, actually that funny thing that you said is not feasible, so let’s just move on.’” –pugfuggly

“The Amazing Spider-Man Euphemisms, ranked: 5. The Hard Way 4. How Hard 3. Stan Lee/Larry Lieber 2. FWIP 1. Wasting Jimmy Woo” –pastordan

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Spider-Man, 6/15/18

Oh, hey, whaddya know, Spider-Man and Iron Fist’s laudable attempts to find out why Jimmy Woo got stabbed and stop him from getting stabbed again, respectively, have unfortunately been set aside so that they can battle it out on the roof of a hospital while engaging in some of the most cringe-inducing banter this strip has ever seen, which is really saying something. Mostly, though, I’m interested in the third panel here. Like many comics, Spider-Man is extremely wedded to the classical iconography that has nurses dressed all in white and sporting a nurse’s cap, even though that hasn’t been the standard nurse’s uniform in the U.S. in decades. Another change in the nursing profession is that now there are male nurses, who never wore the cap, so putting that kind of retro outfit on them would be pretty silly, which gets you incongruous visuals like we have in this strip, where one of our sinister baddies has taken regular scrubs from the supply closet, and the other prepped for this job by shopping in the “naughty nurse” section at the local Halloween superstore.

Crankshaft, 6/15/18

Bad news, everybody: Crankshaft’s garden club isn’t going to turn into a weekly senior citizen S&M orgy, despite what we’ve all been hoping.

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Mary Worth, 6/14/18

Guys, guys, guys, are you ready for Tommy’s drug-free, Christ-centered summer romance? Because it’s happening! Tommy has chivalrously driven his comely co-worker home so she doesn’t have to take the bus, and I assume from his pregnant pause before “hang out” that her neighborhood was the site of some criminal adventures in his younger “very own meth lab” days. That’s probably where he went to buy — as an ahead-of-his-time entrepreneur, when it came time for him to peddle his wares, he did so in the leafy environs of UC Santa Royale, which unfortunately resulted in his immediate arrest. Anyway, I assume that Brandy lives downtown, which in the ’00s was a seedy, nightmarish hellscape filled with tank-top wearing toughs and abused women who had to suffer at the women’s shelter if they didn’t have a nice lady like Mary to take them back to her condo; but today it has a burgeoning arts scene and is, as Brandy notes, gentrifying nicely. Better not try any funny drug business around here now, Tommy! The cops actually respond to calls downtown these days!

Gasoline Alley, 6/14/18

Good news! Slim has finally received medication to help treat his terrible head injury, and it’s immediately sent him into an erotic desert island reverie. Did you know “play post office” is code for “three-way makeout fest”? I didn’t, and I’m now having to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about the American mail distribution system.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/18

Last week’s Crankshafts were all about how Crankshaft hoarded thousands of “Bean’s End Catalogs” (Bean’s End being like the combination of LL Bean and Land’s End, only … about gardening equipment rather than sensible clothing?) and eventually agreed to sell them off, and then they were purchased by obsessive collector Chester “The Chiseler”; meanwhile, ten years later in the Funkypresent, Chester, now the employer of Darin and Mopey Pete at a doomed comics startup, decided to unload his Bean’s End Catalog collection on eBay in order to bring in some cash to stretch out the lifespan of said doomed comics startup. I didn’t cover any of this at the time because it was all boring, but I am assuming that Funky’s dad lurking around weirdly and overhearing this conversation will lead to him buying said Bean’s End Catalogs as a gift for the now-comatose Crankshaft. I’m not sure how this dovetails in with the few things I seem to remember about Funky-dad’s characterization, which is that he’s an alcoholic and a real asshole, but if he ends up spending the bulk of Funky’s inheritance on a futile gesture of kindness towards a man who won’t appreciate or even notice it, that’s OK with me!

Mark Trail, 6/14/18

“A whole country full of ruins? An entire civilization laid waste by foreign invaders and the alien diseases they brought with them, their people reduced to a subordinate caste for centuries and their monuments left to crumble in the jungle? And now I get to climb all over them and take pictures? That’s amazing! I can’t get enough!”

Pluggers, 6/14/18

You’re a plugger if everyone you know is either sick or dead.