The dudes who think up the Sunday morning comics – I think they call them “comicazes” – are really just writers with good penmanship, storytellers with a picturesque imagination. Every Sunday they give the human race the rare chance to walk on the sunny side of the street. I always seize that opportunity. It’s the highlight of my week, actually, a fact that is either a sad commentary on my life or an indicator of a guy preoccupied with stick figures and captions.

Of course, to appreciate the funny papers, you need to appreciate newspapers, an admission that makes one look hopelessly old and analog. There’s a comics section in the newspaper because the rest of the paper is routinely a bummer. Publishers figured out a long time ago that after maybe seventy-five pages of crime and punishment, they needed something to lighten the mood, something to bring a smile and the realization that life is not all muggings and corruption. And so the funny papers were born. I get that there are serious comics and a political cartoon in a newspaper, lampooning a politician or weighing in on a social issue, has its place … but not in the Sunday comics. Reading the comics for gripping commentary would be like watching the NFL for political discourse. There needs to be some separation of church and state. So I don’t read the complicated strips, I look at all the pictures though. Like Prince Valiant, it’s beautifully drawn, but the stories are typically over my head. You can learn a lot from the funnies, just not about medieval folklore.

I only indulge in the comics on Sunday, as reading the comics on any other day is like gorging yourself on chips and salsa before Thanksgiving … save your strength, my friends! Sundays begin with Peanuts. Their round heads, tough luck and that badass Beagle known as Joe Cool provide a grade school philosophy lesson that’s timeless. Garfield prepares me for the buttheads in life, Bizarro makes me smarter in a way that’s demented, Family Circus reminds me that my kids can be kids forever if their memories live in my soul and Marmaduke barks at cats, digs holes, drags whoever walks him and thinks he’s a lap dog in every single episode. Zits modifies the generation gap, Pickles shows how your sense of humor can live to a ripe old age and Willy ‘n Ethel prove that a perfectly good marriage can be based on beer, fatty food and unemployment. Broomhilda makes a compelling case for occasionally resorting to witchcraft, Dennis the Menace is living proof that the neighborhood will fear you if you always keep a slingshot in your pocket, Drabble reminds us that “home” is that awkward place where your family lives, Fox Trot points out that the youngest amongst us are often the smartest little bastards of the lot and Red and Rover is drawn to tell us that a boy and his dog are a life force that starts off in a green field and ends up in heaven.

Comic relief. Comic genius. Good clean fun.