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To Rachel, IL "That rat wouldn't have stayed if she had plastic surgery" threw me off too. I think you need to read it in a different tone - ie, read as: "Nothing she'd done would have made him stay, not even plastic surgery." Connie is still hurt by Peter's insistance on how she should look, so she keeps dying her hair blonde.

Angie, Montreal, QC

Rachel,I think you should read the sentence with a different inflection (I added a word to give it that) and you'll find it has a different meaning. "That rat wouldn't have stayed (EVEN) if she'd had plastic surgery." -Meaning, Peter was not against artificial beauty enhancement. He was just so bent on leaving that, no matter how "perfect" Connie looked, he would have found fault with her looks. -Just my take on it.

Lonette A, WI

Love your strip--just missing all the "old characters" and story line--any possiblity you could just do a once a month or every now and then--revert back to the old strip/update of what every one could be doing?

Joy, Little River, SC

Sunday's comic strip (April 19), seems to live in the same fantasy world that most white middle-class women live in. It's a world where women and girls are allowed and even encouraged to maintain some sort of perceived godlike pacifistic female superiority over men and boys (whom they, in turn, perceive exclusively as war-makers and as lower sub-human forms of life). It's got nothing to do with the real world outside that bubble.

In the real world of history, women have been renowned war-enablers, mothers in ancient Sparta told their sons to come home on their shields or not at all. It's fairly safe to assume that in the Middle East today, a similar maternal mindset often endures. And in the real world of history, maternal leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, were only too glad to have men die in combat in order to enable them to accomplish political goals.

In contemporary 21st century America, in the barrios and in the "hood" and in the "sticks", the families are entirely mother-centered because dad is usually not in the picture at all. Yet the overwhelming maternalism of that world doesn't seem to be a pacifistic influence at all. In that world, young men and boys are likely to be fighting each other, not with fists and sticks, but with knives and guns. I know this because I work in the criminal justice system and I see these young males in chains and their mothers in the audience, who generally collar me, demanding to know exactly what it was that their little angels did wrong. That's life in the real world. Matriarchy is an enabler of violence, not a deterrent to it.

Grizzlie A, Fresno, CA

STRIP DATED 4-19 ENDS THUS:"YEA, IF IT WAS [sic], THERE'D BE A ZILLION SOLDIERS WITH NOTHIN' TO DO"

Think of PM Margaret Thatcher and Mia Goldimir [sp]of Israel or those wonderful female warriors in the old testament, one of whom beheads a general after she got him drunk. ... We get tired of these old feminist mantras. Mrs. Thatcher is one of my all time heroes,along with the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

Long live Hagar and Helga, Loretta and Leroy and B.C. and ... "thems" is Pork and Beans. Respectfully yours, Charter Member of that Vast World Wide Conservative Conspiracy [Men, only--of course]

Donald Z, Esq., Grand Rapids, MI

I just loved your comic strip dated 4/19/09 regarding mom and the children playing war games. It is "so a mom thing" to do. It would be nice if we could really end the war so easily.

Kay, KC

Hi! I love your strip and have for years. I am on Facebook and I love the strip today 4/20/09 - do you have a way to share your strips on Facebook or should I just link to your page? But then I'm afraid it wouldn't take friends to the exact strip I like... Let me know what's the best way, thanks!

Carolyn T, Lagrangeville, NY