Momma: Please your son with something nice from our store!

This comic would be hilarious enough if it were just about a loving mother buying her son some quality time with a prostitute. But because of all the effort Mell Lazarus has put into fleshing out these characters, we know that this comic is even more hilarious than that, as it is actually about a loving mother buying some time with a prostitute so that she can engage in an incestuous ménage à trois with her son, who has up until now been reluctant to accept her many sexual advances.

And that is why characterization is so important.

Shoe: and then ... our eyes met across a smoky room.

This Shoe makes an excellent point. Hack writers having access to lame clichés is absolutely more important than people not dying of cancer.

Ziggy: If you can read this--you're hopelessly lost!

This cartoon is hilarious and heart-warming because Ziggy is going to die of exposure and wild animals are going eat his rotting flesh.

Pluggers: If the ring tone on your cell phone is accordian music, you're a plugger.

It is now apparently perfectly acceptable for a plugger to own a cell phone and understand it enough to change its ring tone. This is surprising given pluggers' previous aversion to such advanced technology as DSL and disposable razors and wheels. While I suppose this acceptance of gadgetry was inevitable--given that for every old plugger that dies, a younger person will have to join the ranks to maintain the strict 80% of the population quota--it is nonetheless sad to see the plugger name watered down in such a way.

I am also surprised to learn that 80% of the population enjoys accordian music. But nobody has his finger on the pulse of the populus like Gary Brookins, so I'm sure it's an accurate estimation.

Family Circus: If you put 42¢ on it 'stead of 44¢, how far will the mailman take it?

This cartoon is hilarious because Dolly does not understand how postage works.

Garfield: There isn't a security camera there, is there?

This comic is hilarious because Garfield murders young children.

Bloom County: How ya doin', Blobbo?

There's so much funny in this Bloom County rerun that I hardly know where to begin. But let's run it down:

1. Opus in prison garb.
2. "How ya doin', Blobbo?"
3. "A drug crazed 'Hell's Angel' ate my mattress."
4. "The homosexual gang war in the weight room."
5. All of the dialog, really.
6. The tension slowly building in the first three panels.
7. The tonal shift in the final panel when Opus finally snaps.
8. The sign declaring that there is to be no kissing.

There's still a lot of Bloom County that I haven't read. I should endeavor to correct that.

Family Circus: If anyone's looking for me, I'll be in the backyard explorin'.

And by "explorin'" Jeffy of course means "digging up the mutilated corpses of past victims to play with."

Marmaduke: Naw, he's not sleeping. He's storing up solar energy.

This cartoon is hilarious because Marmaduke lacks both genitalia and an anus.*

*Even Jeffy has an anus!

The Fusco Brothers: Permission to undress the witness with my eyes, your honor.

Oh, sexual harassment, when will you cease to amuse?