There have been a few glaring omissions in the newspaper comics world over the past few days.

The more serious one is the loss of Cul de Sac, one of freshest, funniest comics around, which will go on hiatus for three or four weeks while creator Richard Thompson goes through a course of physical therapy for his Parkinson's Disease. In his usual gracious way, Thompson finds something funny in all this:

I've only been in for an evaluation, but the therapy largely consists of big, exaggerated movements and sweeping silly walks that will so embarrass your body that it'll start behaving itself, I hope. Also I'll learn ten ways to defeat a mugger by falling on him.

The gap may not be noticeable to those who don't look to closely, as Thompson will rerun some older Cul de Sac strips during the hiatus.

The other one is just a one-off, and just in one paper, but it has caused a bit of discussion: The Cleveland Plain Dealer declined to run Friday's Non Sequitur, deciding that a blank space would be less offensive to the readership than the comic that Wiley had submitted. That appears to be a miscalculation, as most of the commenters at the Non Sequitur page of GoComics.com and at the original link are more offended by the editors' decision than by the comic. Also more offensive: A Mutts cartoon about all snowflakes looking alike, a Speed Bump cartoon (go to 1/13) featuring two witches cooking babies, and most of the actual news in the Plain Dealer.