Sunday morning toons: Special "Refusing to Comment on an Ongoing Investigation" Edition

Is it me, or is this spring going by awfully fast? Less than three weeks until the first day of summer.

Well, let's not waste any more daylight:

We'll start this week's toon review with Daryl Cagle's round-up, where the big, fat, pitch begging to be slammed out of the park is the release of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new belatedly-tell-all book. McClellan, whose single talent--the ability to stay robotically on-message no matter how preposterous, even dada, it becomes--served him well during his time at the podium and now he's finding that a promotional book tour calls for much the same skill set.

p3 Picks of the Week: Nate Beeler, Mike Lester, Walt Handelsman, Dan Wasserman, Gary Brookins, Richard Crowson, and Matt Davies.

The p3 Nail on the Head Citation goes to J. D. Crowe for, well, you can figure it out.

Getting your geek on: Last weekend, NASA's Phoenix lander successfully touched down on Mars and began emailing vacation pictures back home. This event did not escape the toon world's notice, although a surprising number of artists concluded that the story was actually about the Clinton campaign--a state of mind frequently shared by the campaign itself, I'm told. Kudos and a Vulcan salute to Jeff Parker, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, and Peter Bromhead.

And for those of you who know that the question of life on Mars was actually settled in 1948, here's the first screen appearance of Marvin the Martian.

By the way, did you know that Marvin's image is painted on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity? Mmm. Yes. Isn't that lovely?

And returning to McClellan for another moment, Ann Telnaes summarizes the White House response to his book.

Jack Ohman separates the wheat from the chaff in this week's "Kennedy" stories.

Opus has an existential crisis. (Salon Premium.)

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer celebrates the limitless adaptability of Americans (click to enlarge):