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Archive: Pluggers

181

In these times

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Luann, 3/3/26

Look, man, I get that comic strip time is in some ways just an insurmountable problem for strips where the characters don’t really age, but the way you get around this problem is by just kind of ignoring it and not by having your character mention the impact that an important historical event that happened 25 years ago had on their career journey. Is Brad in his mid 40s now? Is Luann a period piece that takes place sometime before 2012 or so? Does Luann take place in an alternate universe where 9/11 happened in, like, 2019? Those are the three options, and you brought this on yourself by being specific, Luann.

Mary Worth, 3/3/26

“That’s just the way of the world these days! No doubt she’s spending her time convincing a much older man that she’s his girlfriend and getting him to send her intermittent Venmo payments. That’s the 21st century for you!”

Pluggers, 3/3/26

BIG NEWS: Pluggers have heard about ChatGPT and they think it’s for … finding mayonnaise? We might have to consider shutting down human society and technological advances entirely until we can figure out what’s going on.

221

The North of England was a Yorkist stronghold, not sure if that’s relevant

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Andy Capp, 2/24/26

Honestly, there’s just a lot to enjoy here in today’s Andy Capp. I like that Chalkie is taking the opportunity in the middle of the game to roast his teammate for deservedly getting beat up, and I like that the quizmaster is doing such a half-assed job that he just asked an open-ended “when” question about a series of interrelated conflicts that stretched intermittently over multiple phases over 16 years, or possibly 32 years. I love that we learn that the winner of this thing will take home cold, hard cash, which explains why Andy, not really known for his enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits but always short of beer money, is participating, and also means that, given that we know the questions have answers that will be easy to dispute, it may give rise to a further scrap tonight.

Mary Worth, 2/24/26

Look, I’m not saying that I have perfect gaydar, or that gaydar honed in the real world would be at all functional in the Mary Worth universe, but I do want to say that when a dapper elder gentleman with an ascot arrives in a new community and tells the local nosey women that he’s a widower, and then when he realizes that excuse has passed its expiration date blurts outs “I have a girlfriend named, uh, Trixie, but you wouldn’t know her, she goes to a different school” at their approach, there’s reason to believe he may be dissimulating to a certain extent.

Pluggers, 2/24/26

Ha ha, it’s funny because eventually you get to an age where you retire but just keeping your failing body alive feels like a full-time job! PLUGGERS!

231

The comments don’t actually make sound, that’s a metaphor

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Mary Worth, 2/23/26

Yes Yes! YES!!! We did it, we endured the parrot storyline and its aftermath and have been rewarded by a near-forgotten Mary Worth plot-shifting staple: a pool party! And this pool party features an exciting new character: a dapper widower whose year-long period of mourning is now over so it’s once again legal for him to speak to a woman. “I wonder how he’s doing,” Toby says idly. “I wonder what he thinks about parrots. I wonder if he has more money than, say, an English professor at a second-tier state university. I mean, you don’t go around wearing an ascot in public because you’re poor.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/23/26

I feel like Dennis the Menace may be spending too much time on Dennis insulting his mother’s cooking and harassing his elderly neighbor and not enough time exploring the reasons why the Mitchells are apparently bouncing from denomination to denomination. It seems like Alice in particular is on a spiritual journey and Henry is getting sick of it. “Look, I don’t care if we’re Presbyterians or Unitarian Universalists or snake-handlers or whatever,” he told her, “but I’m not coming until you settle on one.”

Pluggers, 2/23/26

There’s a lot to think about here. My initial instinct was that this plugger had to be at home — pluggers don’t work in front of a computer, they have real blue-collar jobs that involve, like, tools or something — and so this plugger has come home from a hard day’s work and is exemplifying proper life-work balance by dozing off while reading the headlines on Yahoo! News. But then I began to suspect that, in our fallen, post-industrial age, even a plugger’s professional life is dominated by the glow of a screen, and so this plugger is supposed to be “working” and after eight hours of this will head home to watch sports from his recliner, where he’ll also fall asleep. Which interpretation is correct? Sound off in the comments!