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Hey all! TONIGHT, the Internet Read Aloud, my free monthly comedy show in Los Angeles, returns to the stage in Los Angeles and is free! We’ve got a great lineup, and, I’m just going gently whisper, “a special robot guest star.” Here’s the Facebook event!

AND, as a certified Internet expert, I’ve officially determined that this whole “Facebook” business is “here to stay,” so I made a standalone Facebook page for not just this month’s show but the show as, like, an abstract concept. Please “like,” “share,” and “enjoy” if you want updates on future shows and random Internet-themed jokes over the course of the month!

And now, with that out of the way: it’s time for the comment of the week, y’all:

“If this storyline doesn’t wind up with Wilbur shooting a stranger on a beach, that Camus quote will have been wasted.” –Truckosaurus

The runners up are similarly hilarious!

“And my shower radio doesn’t work! Now the soundtrack to my showers, and my life, is the sound of my own heaving sobs!” –Roto13

“Seeing that everyone is in their underwear, at least it’s a fair fight.” –Rusty

“Noooo! If I don’t take my pills I turn into a decent human being!” –Peanut Gallery

“What I love about Ed Crankshaft is his stubborn refusal to learn from his mistakes. It’s not his fault that his whip-the-open-pill-bottle-towards-your-flat-palm method results on so much spilled medication. It’s the useless doctors never giving him enough extra to cover his losses and the darned interior decorator that put the refrigerator too close to his pill-taking spot.” –jroggs

“The Flagstons’ attempt to become one of the happy Italian-ish families in an Olive Garden commercial has only made them more miserable. Maybe it’s because Dad is ‘home from work’ (i.e., probably fired) at 4 p.m.” –BigTed

“All I can think about is how large and spacious those aircraft seats look. Forget First Class; nature magazine writers fly Zeroth Class!” –JJ48

“Dennis would prefer to hunt live prey, sink his fangs into the living, wriggling bodies, hearing their spines snap against the force of his jaws, and taste their still-warm, spilling blood… or he can just finish his plate of chocolate chip cookies that he’s having for dinner.” –Hogenmogen

“Marvin’s production of The Lion King was not well received. Reviews ranged from ‘A tepid interpretation’ to ‘unspeakably offensive.’ All audiences agreed, the increased scatological content was a serious misstep.” –Dan

“Oh, Dennis, you need to focus on the true existential horror: that all of us are a collective of billions upon billions of small animal lives and any sense of self you have is an illusion that evolved to ensure their survival and reproduction. Amateur.” –Dread

“Aside from the hairstyle the girl Rusty is speaking to looks exactly like his mother, which, aside from the Oedipal overtones, makes sense since she’s the only person in Rusty’s life who actually spends any time with him.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“Dear Pete: You’re being a little ambiguous. I suggest that sentence should read: ‘Comic shop owner Rusty Staples was working late in his comic shop, when a wall of water smashed into the comic shop that he owned, where he was working late, with comics.’ You’re welcome.” –Tom the Sailor Man

“Mopey Pete hasn’t come up with an origin story for a character, this is just how his friend Rusty died. He looks excited when telling the story because he’s the only person Pete knew who didn’t die from cancer.” –Rosstifer

“Hagar isn’t the least bit curious about why his wife is talking to Lucky Eddie about ‘the way to a man’s heart’? I’d be curious.” –Joe Blevins

“‘Where’s Wilbur?’: a question nobody else has ever asked or wanted the answer to.” –Ekudamram

“They say that comic strips are always years late to topical events, but this Mary Worth storyline is perfectly on time for ‘sympathy for incels week’ among serious journalists.” –Ettore Costa, on Twitter

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Hagar the Horrible, 5/4/18

I really have to question Hagar’s theatrical eye-roll in the final panel here. Lucky Eddie is often depicted in this strip as too soft to be a Viking warrior, but today, in failing to grasp a metaphor, he seems to understand a deeper truth: the places where we are most needy and open to love are also the spots where we’re the most vulnerable. He also knows that the heart and lungs are protected by the ribcage and sternum, but the belly is exposed to attack. Look for the trail of agonized gut-shot foot soldiers writing in agony as Hagar’s band makes its way inland looking for monasteries to plunder!

Gil Thorp, 5/4/18

Ahhh, the Milford Trumpet, the school newspaper you might remember from Gil Thorp plotlines like the one where a reporter suppressed the information that one of his athlete pals had a dangerous heart condition, and also the one where it seemed like an athlete had beat up his girlfriend but then it turned out he hadn’t, and then probably some others that I can’t remember at the moment. Anyhoo, it seems that the Trumpet staff assumes that, like me, most of the student body at Milford has forgotten that Barry Bader still goes there, so they’re commissioning a hard-hitting investigative piece: “Barry Bader: Does He Still Go Here, And Is He Still An Asshole?”

Mary Worth, 5/4/18

I think we can be … reasonably sure Wilbur hasn’t hurled himself off a cliff in a paroxysm of drunken despair, right? Right? Surely Mary would look just as overwhelmed as she does in panel two upon discovering, say, Wilbur loudly singing country music tunes into a grassy puddle of his own sick. PLEASE DO NOT KILL WILBUR, MARY WORTH CREATIVE TEAM, I ENJOY HIS SUFFERING TOO MUCH

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/3/18

Hey, you know how Funky Winkerbean is extremely up its own asshole about comics? Like, it’s a comic and one of its main locales is a comic book shop and many of its characters are either comics obsessives or comics obsessives who managed to snag actual jobs in the comics industry? And now those guys (who, to reiterate, are themselves characters in a comic strip) are being given the opportunity to create their own fresh new comics characters? Well, get this: what if this comic-within-the-comic had its origins in [pause for dramatic music sting] A COMIC BOOK SHOP????? Really makes you think, huh?

Mark Trail, 5/3/18

So for some reason Mark has spent the last several days recounting to his family the plot of ¡Three Amigos!, a 1986 Steve Martin-Chevy Chase-Martin Short vehicle that is widely remembered with a certain amount of warmth, but apparently Rusty has checked out from this lesson in pop culture to go talk to a girl. A girl! This is what happens when you leave the compound! Mark’s weird sidelong glance in the last panel shows that he knows that, in theory, it’s important for someone Rusty’s age to learn the basic social skills necessary to interact with another human outside of his immediate kinship group, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.