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Pluggers
Funky Winkerbean, 9/3/10
Ho ho ho, Cayla, game, set and match! You will never defeat Susan in your battle for Les’s gloomy heart now! Only she understands that special blend of grief, narcissism, and self-importance that is the most powerful aphrodisiac for him. I’m surprised the two of them aren’t just going at it right there on the table in panel three.
Pluggers, 9/3/10
Well, well, well, coastal elitists. You may enjoy sitting around your fancy condos and talking about Russian novels and Italian cinema while drinking fine French wine, but pluggers know a little bit about something that you might have forgotten about at that fancy Ivy League school of yours: good old-fashioned American toilet paper. Advantage: pluggers, with their simple, down-home common sense and their clean buttholes.
Speaking of coast elitists, I’m heading off to New York for Labor Day weekend! Don’t worry, I’ll bring my own TP. New comics on Monday, or maybe Tuesday!
Luann, 8/27/10
Most of you read today’s Luann in the paper (we’re all still reading the comics in the paper, right?) and then poked at the URL at the bottom of the third panel with your finger a few times, remembered that we don’t live in the future yet, and went about your day. A brave few of you went online to hear “Hey Boy” in all its glory, planning on putting it on your Facebook and Twitter and totally leveraging the Luann brand across social networks, only to discover that embedding was disabled for some reason, almost as if the creators were worried about people putting it on their websites and making fun of it. And yet they didn’t turn off comments, which is great, because it meant that we were rewarded with this most ultraserious comment about a terrible rendition of a dumb song from a comic strip that has ever been posted on the Internet, from “PalatinPorteau”:
The lyrics were about what I’d imagine a teenage girl like Luann to write in a poem, but the production values were not impressive. If you’re going to have such a breathy vocalist, you need to balance that with music that doesn’t sound as if Quill said, “well, if you’re not going to sing any stronger, then I’m not going to back you up any firmer either. Oh, and forget the bass, I’m taking that with me and I’m leaving right now.”
There is literally nothing I can follow this up with, other than a brief note that the lyrics “one of us is bustin’ free” is of course accompanied by a drawing of Luann in a bathing suit.
Apartment 3-G, 8/27/10
Ha ha, at last, the dark heart of the current Apartment 3-G storyline is revealed, and we see the terrifying psychological warfare that the I Dressed In The Dark politburo uses to force its will on the hapless contestants. How much do you really love your long, flowing hair Lu Ann? Do you love it so much that you’re willing to see Tommie and Margo tortured? Actually, based on all the simpering she’s been doing, she probably does. I don’t think she particularly likes Tommie and Margo much anyway.
Pluggers, 8/27/10
Oh, please, we all know that pluggers have the local pizza place’s number memorized. Sometimes they’ll call when they not even hungry, just lonely, just because they need to hear another human voice, which explains a lot about their waistlines.
Dennis the Menace, 8/25/10
It seems at last that Dennis has found something truly menacing to do: serve as a self-appointed eugenicist enforcer. “Miss, did you have authorization from the Central Hereditary Bureau to bear that child? I can tell by looking at you that your genome is suspect.”
Gil Thorp, 8/25/10
Gil Thorp has managed to find something duller than golf in real life or golf on TV: golf in the comics. Yes, I know we’ve been talking about golf in the strip all summer, but the last few … days, I guess (it seems like years) have been taken up by an actual single golf game. It’s been so boring that Torrey is well aware that most of the readership has dozed off, and is attempting to poke them to wake them up in the first panel. The person I really feel for is the behatted multi-chinned dude in the first panel. You can tell he’s all excited about his big Gil Thorp cameo! Wore his best Hawaiian shirt and everything! Too bad it’s in such a snooze-inducing strip.
Mary Worth, 8/25/10
Why is Mike surrounded by a halo of distress in panel two? Does he fear that his father is going to die of massive liver failure right there in front of him, and he’ll be responsible for disposing of the gin-soaked body? Or is he disgusted that the old man is satisfied to go to his grave without having tracked down Richie’s killer, thus becoming a failure at officially everything?
Pluggers, 8/25/10
Pluggers know that the chances of their working up the energy to have sex with one another will be improved if they can’t see each other.
Pluggers, 8/24/10
Well, here’s a sentence that I never, ever thought I’d have reason to type: I learned some interesting stuff from Pluggers today! A “clip joint” apparently is a bar where patrons are lured in, sometimes by the promise of adult entertainment, sometimes by pretty ladies asking passersby to come party with them; generally speaking the ladies have a drink or two with the poor mark and then slip out, at which point the victim discovers that the drinks were hundreds of dollars apiece (should have asked before ordering, bud) and there are some large, burly men there to make sure that he pays. This scam is or was popular in the mostly plugger-free locales of London and New York. This delightful factoid about the world’s seedy underground has really made my day, so, thanks, Pluggers! I guess pluggers don’t get hustled into these establishments because it’s pretty obvious that they don’t have any money to steal.
Mark Trail, 8/24/10
Longtime Mark Trail readers know in their bones that something is off about Stepfather here, so the fact that he’s so blithe about letting his wife’s little girl keep a tick-ridden wild animal as a pet sets off warning signals that some deeper horror is in the offing. “Why are you here, Trail… is it about my fence? Are you worried that I’m building a giant hunting enclosure, and that I’m going to have some of my rich buddies come and shoot little Lucky here and leave him to bleed to death, right in front of this adorable little girl? Is that what this is about? Because I can’t confirm or deny that at this time.”
Family Circus, 8/24/10
Big Daddy Keane is allowing himself a little smile because he now has another solid vote in favor of Operation Sell Jeffy, Or, If There Aren’t Any Takers, Just Give Him Away. All he needs is one more vote for a majority — and really, it shouldn’t be too hard to trick PJ into waving his little arm in the air at the right moment.
Mark Trail, 8/19/10
Oh, look, the hideous little girl in the current Mark Trail plot has named her new deer-pet “Lucky!” I’m pretty sure that most of the wild animals who are taken out of their natural habitat and forced to amuse their hideous human overlords end up being named “Lucky” — there was of course Lucky the Beaver, and I’m pretty sure an injured goose that Rusty adopted was given the same name — because the cruel god of Mark Trail has a nasty sense of humor.
Mary Worth, 8/19/10
Wow, did I ever underestimate this storyline! It seems that Dr. Mike’s dad was could never take Mike’s calls not because he is a sad, shame-filled drunk, but because his mission of savage revenge occupies his every waking moment. I absolutely love his determined striding away from his family in the panel two flashback — “Well, kid, you’ve had eight or so years to help me track down Richie’s killers, and you haven’t done a damn thing. I’m through with you!” His shaking and sweating in panel one is not a result of the DTs, but rather because he can barely contain his anxious need to go to some seedy underworld club and start busting heads until he gets answers.
Pluggers, 8/19/10
Oh, come now, we all know that the only thing pluggers hate and fear more than elitist college education is the Orient.
Pluggers, 8/11/10
You have to give Pluggers a little bit of credit for coming up with a half-assed excuse to rerun panels (“Spotlight on readers who have nothing better to do than send in tons of Pluggers ideas!”); some cartoons just rerun strips in no-assed silence, which speaks to a certain lack of pride of craftsmanship. Anyway, as a professional comics-reader, it’s interesting to keep track of how my own immediate, visceral reaction to a panel can change from month to month. For instance, when this panel first ran back in May, I apparently was moved to write some weird diatribe about awkward sentence construction, Jewish stereotypes, and plugger sex. Whereas today, I just laughed a cynical laugh, because it’s obvious to me now that point is that pluggers are cheapskates who’ve never given anyone a tip in their lives, and plugger wife here dies a little inside every time they sneak out of the diner without leaving anything on the counter, and now Mr. Plugger is making a big joke about it. And certainly he’s not going to do anything nice for his wife, who just has to take care of him for free, without expecting any sort of reward, even emotional rewards, ha ha! You might want to keep an eye on those scissors, buddy.
Dick Tracy, 8/11/10
Considering the important social function served by the morgue in the corpse-lousy Dick Tracy universe, it’s no surprise that the building’s facade features enormous letters that presumably light up at night, so people know right away where they should be dumping the bodies.