It’s COTW time! Here’s that top comment!

I cannot begin to express how high my anxiety level would be if I received a call or voicemail or even a text that began with the words ‘Hello, [INSERT NAME HERE], this is Mary Worth…’ Sweating bullets about why my name is not in bold but ‘hello’ and her name are.” –Drew, on Bluesky

And here are those hilarious runners up!

“Me seeing a maladjusted character spying on Gil Thorp from a distance and judging him and building elaborate scenarios about him to distract himself from the problems of his life: ‘So relatable!’” –Ettore Costa, on Bluesky

“I’ve always loved that social interaction where someone is trying to stir up curiosity — in this case the cryptic mention of ‘my side business’ — hoping to draw the other party in. In this case, Sharon realizes immediately just how little Mary Worth meant by ‘How are you?’” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“‘It’s about your father’ is usually a lead-in to him being dead, which will be such a letdown to Sharon when it instead turns out he’s squandering her inheritance. Maybe Sharon can persuade Mary to kill him.” –Scratchy Scrotum LXIX

“Weirdly enough, I really understand Bernice’s anxiety here: an out-of-the-blue text with just ‘you available?’ is either a request to witness a passport application or an invitation to an orgy, nothing in between.” –pugfuggly

“Mary’s polyester pull-on comfort slacks will not long withstand Muffin flexing those pointy claws. Let the pilling ensue!” –Charterstoned

“Is … is getting beaten down by comic strip amazons a remarkably niche fetish? Because if so, Bogdan, God bless his concussed little soul, is in hog heaven right now.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“He had a girlfriend, now he doesn’t, and he’s upset about it. He had 200 large, now he doesn’t, and YOU should be upset about it.” –Anonymous

“I am going to be disturbed all day by the second panel’s revelation that Thirsty’s nose is a spherical lump that’s barely attached to his face. I don’t know if he has a ‘good side,’ but this view sure ain’t it.” –nescio

“Gil Thorp is engaged in reckless foreshadowing next to a bus that’s been subjected to reckless foreshortening.” –Shoe Substitutes

“After a long talk with a lawyer who was up for a challenge, Thirsty Thurston became TSquare Industries. It enjoyed corporate existence for about a year before hostile takeover by Conagra Brands, who quickly broke the corporation apart in various sales. The brains were kept by Conagra for use in scarecrows, the heart went to Rio Tinto Mining, and the ineffable courage to Amazon Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The liver was bought at a steep discount by Brown-Forman to be used as a filter at the Jack Daniel’s distillery.” –Voshkod

“Aren’t travel mugs the ones with lids and insulation that you take, you know, traveling? Those are mugs that have destinations on them, simple souvenirs. Thus his featureless cup is all too appropriate, as clearly he has journeyed to the Void. The Nothing is freedom in the end, guy.” –A Grave Mind

“Whoa, Los Angeles AND Las Vegas? No wonder she’s got wanderlust. Why, one day they may even dare to travel the rest of the I-15 to buy the travel mugs of that exotic Shangri-la, Salt Lake City.” –Schroduck

“That isn’t a headline on the man’s newspaper. They’re tally marks, one for each morning he’s dissociated through his wife’s existential crises.” –Lauralot

“Shoe is asking us to contemplate how and if bathrooms work in a treetop-based society, and frankly, I won’t stand for it! The only way to purge this question from my mind is to give us a viable answer! Most birds can’t really control when and where they poop, so I assume the avian beings in this strip fly around for a while when they think ‘nature’s call’ is upon them. Maybe they have an elaborate timekeeping system based on their most recent meal, or maybe it’s just a feeling deep inside them? Either is fine. So yeah, I don’t like it, but that’s the storyline I need from you, ghost of Jeff MacNelly. Thanks!” –Victor Von

“Come to think of it, I do make use of A.I. with some frequency, but in my case, it stands for ‘Avian Idiosyncrasy!’” –Bob Tice

“[sigh] Of course the laptops in the Crankiverse are Pineapples. God damn it, they’re all got PinePods and PinePhones, don’t they? Either that or this is a brand of, I dunno, ‘Individual Computer’ where the best-known commercial is a guy with frosted tips exclaiming, ‘Dude, you’re getting a Dole!’ (I hate that joke too, everybody.)” –els

“The young woman looks up from her tablet, then back down, then smiles. Target confirmed. Jughead feels bad about luring Archie here, and worse about using such inane patter to stall for time, but he really needs the money, and Archie only needs one kidney anyway.” –Abram Beazer

“I find today’s strip pretty funny, although not for the intended reason (and to be quite honest I’m not completely sure there is an intended reason it’s funny). Hi’s just so sad about the death of elevator music. ‘It used to be they would pump in least-common-denominator trash whether you wanted it or not, and you had to listen to it for the duration of the ride! Now we all carry amazing futuristic devices that let us hear exactly the kind of music we want to hear instead! It fucking sucks!’” –Vulpes

“Even the cat is anxious to see the expression on her face when she learns her sole inheritance will be an antique ascot collection.” –Dennis Jimenez

“At last, Mary’s plan is revealed. Here we thought it was about the immorality of online dating, or penetrating Harv’s delusions about his fake girlfriend, or getting back the money since it’s just unfair some people could give away $200,000 and get nothing for it. But no, it was the daughter all along. An adult woman having a busy life in another city doesn’t have all the time in the world for her widowed father? That won’t do. Doesn’t she realize he’s lonely? Time for them to reconnect.” –Amelie Wikström

“Hi and Lois, the comic strip about bipolar disorder, is definitely in a ‘depression’ phase lately, huh.” –a.

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Marvin, 4/10/26

Pixar’s beloved Toy Story movies are about, among other things, the complicated emotional relationship between toys and humans, especially when humans become too old for toys anymore. Marvin has been doing something similar this week, except that the toys and Marvin kind of hate each other, and now his parents have told him that he has to leave them in his toy box almost all the time, and they’re going to die.

Mary Worth, 4/10/26

Despite her fearsome reputation, Mary is, honestly, fairly conflict averse. She’s still reeling over the time Harvey stormed off because she gently suggested to him that maybe he’s not “in love,” he just got horny over a fake lady on his phone. So she’s really trying her darndest to get Sharon to show up at Charterstone without saying the words “scam” or “$200,000,” and it’s really quite impressive.

Hi and Lois, 4/10/26

I feel like this would make a little more sense if this was just a random young person for Hi to be scornful towards, but, you know what? I’m enjoying the scenario we’ve been given here, where he’s taking an elevator ride with his own son, who has turned his back on his father and is listening to music or a podcast or maybe even just white noise rather than trying to interact with him in any way.

Rhymes With Orange, 4/9/26

I assume the intended joke here is that George forgot his glasses somewhere else — at his home, maybe, or maybe just in the other room — but I can’t stop imagining a truly nightmarish scenario where when you die you become a spirit cursed to haunt the world of the living but not be perceived by them, and if you had bad vision when you were alive you still do, but you can’t wear glasses because you’re a spectre without physical form and/or you don’t have a nose. Anyway, that ghost is gonna fuck that cabinet, right? That’s definitely what’s on the menu here?

Archie, 4/9/26

Jughead, sad that his conversations with his best friend aren’t as sparkling as they once were, has hired this high-tech young woman to, in his words, “Cyrano” for him, monitoring Archie’s mood on a tablet and relaying instructions into a hidden bluetooth earpiece. Unfortunately, it turns out she may have overrepresented her talents.

Hi and Lois, 4/9/26

Don’t have much to say about the Flagston twins’ specific conundrum here but I do like the expression on the bus driver’s face. That’s someone who’s extremely sick of these kids’ shit. Not sure if it’s about Dot and Ditto specifically or just children in general, but either way I’m enjoying it.

Crankshaft and Shoe, 4/9/26

Hey, uh. Um. How to put this delicately. I think if you’re involved in the process of churning out a legacy comic strip, maybe you … shouldn’t … do jokes that are like, “You know what’s better than a hack writer? AI! Ha ha!” Just, like … don’t give people ideas, you know? About your job?

Archie, 4/8/26

You know, I had a riff all ready to go about how I hate it when a strip starts with character #1 parroting back something to character #2 that we’re supposed to understand character #2 just said immediately before the action started, and how Jughead in particular would never, ever use the word “proactive,” like he wouldn’t even know what it meant and if he did learn he would find it offensive to the point of blasphemy, but then I caught sight of the fact that Archie has “A.A. L. [for loves, I guess?] V.L.” on his notebook and Betty has “A.A. L. B.C.” and gurrrrrrrrrl, please, rethink some things and have some self-respect, I am begging you.

Pardon My Planet, 4/8/26

Jeez, lady, why don’t you settle down and maybe be more like your husband, who is just walking around with a featureless, blank paper coffee cup in his own home to match his featureless, numb facial expression. Unlike you, he doesn’t feel regret or wistfulness or anything at all. I guess based on the tight grip he has on a paper cup full of steaming liquid, he is feeling a great deal of pain, which at least lets him know he’s still alive, after a fashion.

Shoe, 4/8/26

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that Biz is wearing a winter cap. Is he supposed to have just put it on because, as a bird, he has to go outside to go to the bathroom? They’re already outside!

Hi and Lois, 4/7/26

You know, if, before today, you had asked me which Walker-Browne character would have been the first to declare themselves a sovereign citizen, I would’ve guessed Rocky from Beetle Bailey. I can’t say that it’s a huge surprise to see Thirsty winning this particular race, however.

Judge Parker, 4/7/26

OK, so, when I said that this thing was maybe a fraternity paddle yesterday, I was joking, because where would they get a fraternity paddle? But Randy as an ex frat boy suddenly makes a lot of sense, honestly. He went to Harvard Law but Harvard doesn’t have a Greek system, so where do we think he did undergrad? Duke? Feels like a Duke guy, right?

Gil Thorp, 4/7/26

FORESHADOWING! Which Mudlark golfer will lose an eye when a sudden gust blows a chip shot right back in their face? Who will be found liable when courtroom testimony about this very conversation results in multiple diverging interpretations, Rashomon-style? Stay tuned to Gil Thorp to find out!