Man, what a week. What a lousy, painful, dull week of drudgery. I’m not sure much of anything good came out of it. It even bled over into my preparations for Friday Night Fights — I just couldn’t find anything I was real interested in fixing up. So when the week is long and painful, when you know your Friday Night Fights entry has no shot at winning the weekly title, sometimes there’s just nothing you can do but embrace the mediocrity.

So here we go: From the August 2, 2009 edition of Blondie by Dean Young and John Marshall, here’s Dagwood Bumstead doing the same old boring thing.

Okay, that’s quite enough of that. Have a good weekend. I’m going to sleep.

Well, it’s a new year, and it’s time for the first Friday Night Fights of 2011. Let’s jump straight in, oy?

This is from May 2007’s Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #11 by Jeff Parker, Juan Santacruz, and Raul Fernandez. The Serpent Society has engineered some snakes with mind-control venom, and one of them has just bitten Wolverine. His healing factor should take care of the venom before Captain America, Storm, and Spider-Man have to knock him around, right? Right?

Not a bad way to start the year — but let’s keep our fingers crossed for better stuff on the way.

SpaceBooger has called a temporary truce on Friday Night Fights ’til the holidays are over, but that don’t mean we have to stop, right? HECK, NO! In fact, we’d be crazy to let Christmas get away without commemorating it with a little gratuitous violence!

So here’s tonight’s battle: Adventure Comics #82, from January 1943, by none other than Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Our setup: The Golden Age version of the Sandman — after he got rid of his classy trenchcoat, fedora, and gas mask costume in favor of the much-less-stylish spandex costume — and his sidekick Sandy are on the trail of a bunch of gangsters.

The mobsters have a pretty sweet idea — they recruited a broken-down wrestler named Mountain Man Bearde to dress up in a Santa Claus costume at the local department store. Bearde has enjoyed playing Santa and had no idea he was being used by crooks — but now they’ve dragged him back to the store at gunpoint so they can trick the night watchman into opening the doors for him. Sandman and Sandy make their appearance at last, and the fisticuffs get started:

But before the whole thing is over, the dime-store Santa gets his own revenge on the mobsters:

“And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a GOOD FIGHT!”

It’s the last weekend before Christmas, man, and you’ve so good for Santa Claus, you just can’t stand it no more. What better time to bust loose and get wild than your good old-fashioned FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Ya know what we need today? We need robots. We need one valiant, charismatic hero who’s gonna punch the snot out of a robot. And that one valiant, charismatic hero… is an adorable five-year-old with green hair.

From Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!, Volume 5, published in Japan in 2006, with the English translation hitting in 2009, where Yotsuba meets up with the mighty robot Danbo (actually her friend Miura’s class project):

Wait for it…

…Wait for it…

BAM! The Avengers need to hire that girl to take care of Ultron.

Awright, people, you’ve suffered through a long week, and it’s time for your traditional reward — the weekend, long may it reign! And what’s the best way to kick off our weekends? That’s right — with FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes from October 1943’s Police Comics #23 by the great Jack Cole, as the best superhero ever, Plastic Man, tries to unmask a disguised criminal:

Any fight that ends with the bad guy apparently exploding is a fight worth its weight in gold.

It’s already time to kick off another 12 rounds of Friday Night Fights! Let’s get things started with August 2001’s New X-Men #115 by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Tim Townsend, and Mark Morales, as Wolverine takes on a gaggle of “Wild Sentinels.”

Short, sweet, and to the point. Or rather, to the six adamantium points. The ones on Wolverine’s claws. Um.

Anyway, have a great weekend.

Friends and neighbors, we’re at the end of the latest cycle of Friday Night Fights. What’ve we had in the last 12 weeks? Well, we’ve gotten to spotlight battles from Lovecraftian Killer Croc, alternate-future Green Arrow and the Atom, Tabitha Smith and Aaron Stack, Thor (and the winner of that week’s all-blogs contest), Nick Fury, Bruce Wayne, Captain America (another win for me!), another from Cap plus Iron Man, Spider Jerusalem, Brickhouse, Hellboy (another winner!), and Captain Marvel!

So tonight, we’ve got the prize round — I get to post another fight, you get to head over to SpaceBooger’s place (hmm, probably sometime around 9 or 10 tonight), look over the other entrants, and cast your vote for which one of us brought the best battle. Y’all ready?

My entry tonight is from all the way back in September 1973, with Marvel Feature #11 by Len Wein, Jim Starlin, and Joe Sinnott. There are some great comic book matchups all through comic history, but there are few that are as consistently awesome as the brawls between that blue-eyed idol of millions, the Thing, and ol’ Jade Jaws, the Hulk!

Awright, there you got it. Don’t forget, pay SpaceBooger a visit later tonight or this weekend and pick your favorite battles!

Kids, I know what you’re thinking. It’s been a rough week, full of drudgery and stress and chaos, and what you really need to get your weekend started is a bowl of cold oatmeal and the complete “Lawrence Welk Show” on DVD, right? WRONG! You need excitement and fun and relaxation and gratuitous cartoon fisticuffs and… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes from December 1976’s Shazam! #26 by E. Nelson Bridwell and Kurt Schaffenberger, as Captain Marvel gets dragged back in time, along with everyone in Congress. (In other words, a typical day in Congress)

Ya know, I do believe that was Captain Marvel punching out a Tyrannosaurus rex. Does that make this the most awesome Friday Night Fights ever? At least ’til someone manages to shoehorn ninjas, pirates, and robots into the next one?

It’s the beginning of a wonderful Halloween weekend, and that means we’re going to have to make sure tonight’s Friday Night Fights is thematically appropriate.

So we’re going with something from Mike Mignola — specifically “The Wolves of Saint August,” originally published in 1994 and reprinted in Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others. Without further ado, here’s Hellboy fighting a werewolf.

Hope y’all all have a great Halloween, with lots of candy and fun and costumes and bloody human sacrifices to dark eldritch gods. Ahh, those old Halloween traditions are always the best…

I’m short of time right now, so let’s see how fast we can get this one churned out. You know the name of the game, right? If it’s Friday evening, and if we’re all jonesing for comic-book violence, then it’s gotta be time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s fight comes from September 1993’s Icon #5 by Dwayne McDuffie, M.D. Bright, and Mike Gustovitch — Icon has his first run-in with the Blood Syndicate, including the very big and very strong Brickhouse…

And yes, I’m going to have to require all of you to get down and get funky with the Commodores now…