Fish fancy? These fish certainly aren’t
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Pluggers, 5/12/25
Man, the facial expressions in this one really make it, and by “make it” I mean “make it clear what a grim marital scene these two will be enduring for the rest of their lives.” Obviously the focus is on how the kangaroo lady is willing to go into bug-eyed urinary discomfort if it means she gets to experience a few more precious minutes spent not watching sports, but don’t ignore the bear man’s hooded eyes: he’s very much aware of what’s going on and is seething that his wife is willing to go to such lengths to stymie his desires. The really sad thing is that this plugger couple has also brought us “bear man wants to watch TV even though kangaroo lady is desperate to leave the house and do literally anything else” and “bear man is going to get kangaroo lady so drunk that she passes out so he can watch what he wants, and he considers this better than sex,” so this isn’t even the most depressing TV-related glimpse into this marriage that this trip has provided us with. Anyway, if the kangaroo lady really wants to keep the TV tuned to her channel while she’s in the bathroom, she could just take the remote with her. Obviously the bear man could get up off the couch and change the channel, but trust me, he is not going to get off the couch and change the channel.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/25
Look, I don’t want to minimize how scary it would be for the police to incorrectly suspect you of murder, but the length of time during which the police incorrectly suspected Augie of murder started when the beat cop showed up on the scene and decided to do as little work as possible and mostly ended when the homicide detective showed up and decided the stalker had been murdered by drugs, and then the whole thing was definitively put to rest when the real murderer called the cops and was like “actually it wasn’t a drug overdose, it was murder, and I, not Augie, am the murderer.” It’s always hard to tell how long things take in the comics but the first part took maybe an hour and I believe the second part was wrapped up by the end of that night? “A while” is really stretching things, is what I’m saying here.
Mary Worth, 5/12/25
The big narrative tension in this storyline is that we know that Belle is a murderous psycho and Dawn suspects but cannot prove that Belle is a murderous psycho, but it’s not clear if Wilbur thinks Belle is completely normal or is ignoring obvious warning signs because he is desperate for sex. I kind of feel like today’s strip points towards option two, as Wilbur does not take the obvious opportunity to have Belle come over to Mary’s apartment for a muffin sesh, indicating that he clearly knows such a scenario would end very badly. However, he’s not smart enough to realize that the arrival of the latest issue of Fish Fancy might lead Belle to realize how emotionally involved he is with his fish, which could be bad news for Willa.
Bizarro, 5/12/25
Hey, how do you think this ghost is going to get that cereal inside his body? Will he just dump it in through one of his eye holes? Will that interfere with looking at his phone? Sorry to dig into the details like this, but we’re all going to be dead someday and I honestly would like to know as much as possible about the mechanics in advance.
112 replies to “Fish fancy? These fish certainly aren’t”
Blondie: I never thought the sight of Dagwood’s scalp would be so unnerving.
Chix (sic):
Trees Trimmed
BushesHedges Cut —You’ll thank me later. -Ed.Mustaches Groomed
Fingernails Clipped
Laser Hair Removal
Garlic cheddar … muffins? We 100% are being trolled.
Pluggers – There’s lots of reasons why Pluggers are Dependable (TM)….
RMMD – They made such a big deal, just cuz he has a sex dungeon in his basement….
MW – I can see the hypno-tits gleam in Wilbie’s eyes….
Bizzaro – So…fat and stupid…even in the afterlife….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: No judging, now. Wilbur ONLY gets that mag for the articles. And The Fishbowl Forum.
PLUGGERS: I’d rather spring for a second TV, instead of dealing with a bunch of UTI’s.
RMMD: “Guess you won’t be bragging so much about your boring old married life now, will you?”
Pluggers I think I’ve got an entry: “Pluggers will pay for a TV the size of a bay window but not for a streaming service”.
RMMD: “Yeah! Though I can’t remember why. Or how it all got resolved. Frankly, none of it made much sense, so maybe better just forget about it”.
MW: Yeah, if there’s one thing you want to eat before a long conversation, it’s a couple of garlic-cheese muffins. Maybe dab some mustard and horseradish on that too. Is it blue cheese? Probably better with blue cheese.
Bizarro: Nevermind the cereal, what is Milk²? Is that where you, like, milk the milk to get more milk? Is that what ghosts do?
RMMD:
“Of course, it was tough on him when the police suspected him for a while.”
“Seriously? They did?”
“Maybe it was the string of felony convictions that I found out about for the first time when I looked him up online!”
I can stand Pluggers playing fast and loose with whether Sheila Roo is a plugger… no I can’t. Whenever Sheila is depicted as a plugger I rage. They had Sheila as a plugger who wanted to “live in the fast lane”! Pluggers don’t want to live in the fast lane! Pluggers don’t care! Pluggers really don’t care about Pluggers canon! Why do I care? Help!
Bizarro:
“I wonder if this is better for me than ‘Scream of Wheat,’ ‘Ch-eerie-os,’ ‘Ghostess Cupcakes,’ or ‘Kellogg’s Frosted Wraiths‘ !”
MW: Sooner or later, Wilbur is going to switch to a fishing documentary while Belle is in the bathroom-kitchen, and HE’LL be the one eating Spectral K the next morning.
MW: Does Mary just cook everything in muffin form now?
Bacon and egg muffins for breakfast, fried Splak and onion muffins for lunch, pork chop muffins for dinner…
DT: “Justice, Tracy?”
“We’ll see…but I’m saying no because I didn’t get to shoot anyone this time.”
RMMD: “No, no, no, this plotline’s already fizzled out, don’t try to drag it out even one strip longer.”
DT: By “road out” – that usually means a lot of potholes and a torn up pavement but enough to kill three people? Would have been simpler for “bridge out.” I hope Uncle Piltdown suffers from amnesia and so honestly can’t explain where the money went. Meanwhile the Itemizer insurance guy fades away to San Theodoros and takes the loot.
MW: With Wilbur gone and Dawn alone in the condo, Bats will strike! Again, hoping that a Three Stoogesque series of events prevent her from dicing and slicing Dawn into bite size pieces. And that Dawn ends up running to Mary’s door screaming for help – with the ending being Mary and Wilbur seeing a crazed Bats slashing wildly with a knife.
RMMD: It was quite a night and next day. The stalker arc ends, Kelly and Niki’s arc began and end. TIme must move differently where Rex lives.
GT: High school coaching is a cutthroat business. One would think anyone even players and students assaulting another coach would elicit some sympathy.
Bizarro:
Out of curiosity, if you’re a ghost, why would you have what appears from the labeling to be only “2”% milk? I mean, are you afraid that if the fat content of the milk you drink is too high, you might get heart disease and die?
MW:
“Hello, Wilbur…I made a batch of muffins this morning from a recipe published by David Byrne. They’re called ‘Psycho Killer’ muffins. Do you have time to come by my place? I would like to share them and talk to you!”
Bizarro: I’m kind of fixated on “Milk [Squared]” — wondering if it’s supposed to mean anything, of if it’s just one of those random things that “Bizarro” likes to toss in, like the flying saucer or the upside-down raven losing his top hat.
MW: Just spitballing here but if I’m a homicidal maniac the focus of my rage would shift to whoever in nearest proximity has just eaten a garlic-cheddar concoction.
@Pozzo:
It was his way of working a K2 in, by using the K in milk. Pretty clever. As to *why* the K2’s (and O2’s) who knows!
MW: I would love to see what Father of the Year tells Mary about how he’s “exploring” his relationship with Belle, trying to justify his not so secret fetish of having two women fighting over him. “Yes, I know that Dawnie’s my daughter but her body count is looking like a war memorial ever since she started living with me.” That’ll make Mary have to remember that she’s holding his advice column hostage.
I can’t help reading Wilbur’s “Oh, Hi, Mary!” in Tommy Wiseau’s voice.
Oh, Hi Mary! Belle is naht a homocidal maniac! She is NAHHT! You’re tearing me APART, Mary!
@Hibbleton: Kind of a coin flip – Belle’s rat poison coffee – Mary’s garlic-cheddar meadow muffins….
Bizarro: “Wow, just imagine if breakfast cereal had spooky names! Wouldn’t that be funny and bizarre… hold on, I’m getting some news. Huh, a whole line of them, you say? Well, is there a ghost themed one? Oh, there is. Oh well. If I draw enough of my random hide-and-seek gimmicks, no-one will pay attention to the joke.”
Pluggers: Fahrenheit 451 predicts a future where TVs are literally the size of walls, floor to ceiling. Do Pluggers live in the F451 universe? It would certainly explain why none of them ever seem to have read a book.
Look, if Red Lobster has anything to go by, garlic cheddar works in biscuit form, particularly drop biscuits. It absolutely loses anything that makes it taste good when put in a cake like consistency because even savory muffins still have the same texture as sweet muffins. The crumbly texture of the biscuit works far better for a savory flavor.
Pluggers: Bear man never has this problem. When he has to go, he just whips it out and goes in the old coffee can he keeps next to his chair.
RMMD: “It was tough on Augie when the police suspected him for a while. But he’s used to it. Turns out all three of his previous wives died mysteriously.”
MW: If Belle finds out Wilbur visited another woman’s apartment on the sly, she’s not going to be happy. And if she ever finds out what they talked about, Wilbur, Mary, or both of them are going to wind up on the front page of World Weekly News.
Bizarro: Yeah, I don’t think ghosts eat, so this doesn’t make much sense. But, hey, it got Piraro through another day, and when you have to crank out 300-some of these every year for decades, you’re bound to have a clunker now and then. (For those of you wondering about the 2 on the milk carton, google Piraro Hidden Symbols.)
@Cleveland Mocks: Quick, Dawn, tell Belle where your dad went!
Bizzaro: “Every ghost needs a rich breakfast filled with radioactive Potassium (K)-40 for a healthy glow”
—General Mills (deceased)
MW: I refuse to believe that Karen Moy is making a reference to The Room here. Mostly because I refuse to believe that Karen Moy has seen any movie more recent than Casablanca.
RMMD: In fairness, while Augie was under suspicion of murder for less than an hour, this strip’s main defining trait is pure tedium. It’s a miracle that he, Summer, Kelly, the police, and the old man didn’t all drop dead from the stress of Something Actually Happening. Surely there are laws in Glenwood preventing this kind of mild excitement!
Pluggers – Has Sheila forgotten that she can control Andy with Ice Cream?
Mary Worth: One might think garlic cheddar muffins are an obviously made-up food-like substance, like Mary’s “vegan lasagna” or her “salmon squares.” Sadly, a quick check of the internets makes it clear that there are many recipes for such things. However, most of these sites appear to be the kind filled with sunny, personal commentary that straddles the line between sentimental crap and AI-generated sentimental crap. In other words, exactly like Mary herself, there’s a whole lot more menacing going on than just Belle and her knives, Savior Machine Mary will not be displaced in Santa Royale by some parvenu human from Tampa.
Bizzaro: At least have the decency to go with “Boo Berry,” Jesus God.
MW: Given developments in today’s strip it’s definitely worth it to wonder about who Belle’s target will be moving forward…will it remain Dawn? Will Belle’s jealous fury move on to Mary in one of the most misplaced homicidal rages of all time? Or will she move on to Willa, as Wilbur is about to be revealed as some kind of fish pervert (again)?
All great options but in the business of serving MW the comic, where nothing happens at least not quickly, it’s either not looking great for Willa, or some secret fourth option…
One of the Pluggers Josh observes is from Ohio, another from Massachusetts, today’s is from Pennsylvania. All over the nation, Pluggers are willing to fight to the death rather than individuate and watch TV in separate rooms, like any sensible retiree. Say, between a bear and a kangaroo, who do you think would win a death match anyway, and could we see it in a single panel?
Positive remarks! I liked the joke in Six Chix and Fish Fancy magazine is also funny.
King Features mug? I never thought of Bizarro being so ass-kiss-y.
Pluggers – Rhino-Man reads this and thinks about the size of that television and what that could fetch at the local pawn shop, though given how TV prices have plummeted, he is barely making what he got in 2006 in nominal cash, let alone adjusted for inflation.
Rex Morgan, MD – Summer’s measure for what is tough on men is influenced by Rex Morgan, who has been absent from this this lazy plot about stalking and murder. Honestly, the worst Augie is going to have to go through is the DMV to get the title for the truck, unless the family of the stalker sues to get it. They probably won’t, because the real message of this plot is that in the Rex Morgan universe, the real sin is putting forth any effort to get what you want, be it stalking a date, or getting revenge.
Mary Worth – Dr. Jeff is going to have to gas up his yacht either for a fish funeral, or to dump a body.
Bizarro – I know this comic does those dumb “Easter eggs”, but in the case of their “K2” turning the milk into Milk² ™, it makes me think of a pretentious artificial milk startup in Silicon Valley that will have been the reason this person died, but they are too bought into the cult of it to admit it, even in death.
Belle could literally serve Wilbur a dinner of Filet of Willa, plated on the defaced picture of Dawn, and Wilbur would still sit there with that dopey grin on his mug, dreaming of doing butt stuff.
Bizarro – As a nearsighted person, I can always tell when the idea for a cartoon originated with temporarily misreading the words on a food package. Future Bizarro breakfasts will include Foisted Flakes, Rice Kindles, and Foot Loops.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Good afternoon, Maestro. I just saw your paintings at the art museum”
“I congratulate you on capturing the rare beauty of your model!”
“She’s my wife, sir! You wish to commission a painting of her?”
“No. A life-size sculpture, preferably inflatable”
JP: Your hat??? Ahem, it’s called a mortarboard. We’re guessing you didn’t finish magnum cum anything. Now before you leave, don’t forget to return your dress to school management.
GT: Ouch, faux pas! I hate when that happens.
CS: The new hiree spent a half hour listening to Ed and couldn’t take any more.
Mary Worth: I once knew a woman who passive aggressively dealt with her husband having an affair by feeding him fart-inducing foods like boiled cabbage before he went out at night “to choir rehearsal.” So, kudos to Mary for actually battling Belle with Wilbur’s garlic breath, instead of just bitching about her, like some people.
RMMD: Michelle(?) can only seethe internally at Summer’s utter obliviousness to how badly “being a suspect” could have been if they’d exchanged skin tones…
GT: I despise Designated Villain crap writing, and Mimi vs Gerads really highlights it here. It seems to go over the heads of the Thorp writers that Gerads can be a nasty jerk AND the Thorps can be worse. Let’s see – Gil totally undermines the rehabilitation of the assault-the-coach student by recruiting him to intimidate his victim at games. Yeah, let’s tell the kid that he’s doing good by trying to instill fear and panic, that can’t possibly go wrong.
Now let’s look at Mimi here. Totally approving that dick move of Gil’s. But she’s designated as Good, so bringing up Gerad’s trauma is Just Fine. Of course, this would be consistent with Mimi being a big jerk – she went off to explore her sexuality while still married rather than deal honestly with her marriage dying, and how that was affecting both her kids. A good writer might have explored how that fallout could have been influencing Keri’s anorexic tendencies as a way to get some control over life. A decent writer would at least not try to make us root for Mimi.
Dang it, that one got caught up in moderation.
Bizarre – the version I heard as a kid was that a ghost breakfast was Ghost Toasties and evaporated milk.
Pluggers: Yield and stream, Sheila.
Bizarro: Dead kids these days read their phones instead the cereal boxes. Sigh.
How to tell you’re in a medical office. There are three things on the wall – an anatomical chart, an advert for a drug with a long list of side effects in four point font, and a Terry Beatty calendar, featuring the Terry Beatty signature every day!
MW-Wilbur’s coming home with his fish porn.
Blondie-Poor Dagwood. He’s never been accidentally hurt at work. All his injuries have been deliberate.
MW-Mary just throws anything together she has lying around and calls them muffins.
Phantom: Hot bunking with a wagon load of rotting corpses? Bet Melody Mare is really glad she doesn’t have to truck Savarna’s stinky carcass around any more.
@Liam: Lucky Eddie must be devastated, you couldn’t get fish porn in Viking era Scandinavia
Edit: That I know of.
@Astroboy:
(As soon as Wilbur arrives)
Mary:
Some people… some people like cupcakes
Exclusively, while myself, I say,
There is naught nor ought there be nothing
So exalted on the face of God’s grey
Earth as that prince of foods… the muffin!
9CL: So now the mother and grandmother are slinking off to read a sleazy sex education pamphlet together?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I would have said something about General Mills lawyers getting involved, but it’s long been confirmed by us commentators that no-one cares about copyright infringement in comic strips, or really anything for that matter, seeing whatever the hell Brooke gets away with in 9 Chickweed Lane or Pibgorn.
Bizarro: Have none of you heard of milk isotopes? I know that science isn’t taught in the schools anymore, but I thought that was common knowledge.
mark trail – pizza bites !!! cant you make anything interesting like garlic chedder muffins !!! plus did my copy of fish fancy come in the mail ?
Fish Fancy Subscriber List
Wilbur Weston, Charterstone
“Lucky” Eddie, Norway
Claude Manx, Pluggersville
Heathcliff, Grand Duchy of Heathcliff
Prince Eric, Atlantica
Odysseus, Ithaca
@Astroboy: Nice! that does fit!
MW: Belle is just going to scratch out the fish’s eyes. Wilbur won’t notice.
Pluggers: I guess Pluggers don’t communicate anything. That’s sad. Even something simple like, “Don’t change the channel please, honey. OTHERWISE, I WILL FUCKING MURDER YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!”
Bizarro: The sheet is a physical object, and the main selling point of Spectral K is that the flakes pass through physical objects. A box also comes with its own spectral spoon.
@Needless Exposition: That was my initial reaction–that Mary was alluding to garlic cheddar biscuits but is convinced all hand-held pastries qualify as “muffins.”
FC: Lost in the dumb joke is Jeffy and PJ levitating themselves to be nearly eye level with a wall calendar.
FC: Love the expression on PJ’s face. He’s just going to indulge Jeffy’s stupidity and silently judge his brother.
Dustin: When the target is Ed Kudlick, I’m A-OK with someone delivering a demeaning joke.
I see Plugger Bear and Plugger Kangaroo are watching the movie Spotlight. No, not the 2015 film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into sex abuse in the Diocese of Boston which won an Oscar for Best Picture, but the 2019 movie that just features a spotlight shining for 215 minutes of blinding headaches which nevertheless took first place at a film festival for moths.
Luann: Oh, they know the reason, Luann.
CS: What a fresh take on, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!” The only thing that would have made it better is having Pam say it.
9CL: I think it’s time to take Grandma to the care facility Mrs. Horner resides in.
MW: I assume Fish Fancy is an allusion to Dog Fancy and Cat Fancy, magazines designed to appeal to cynophiles and ailurophiles respectively. Both ceased publication well over a decade ago, so even by Mary Worth standards this is a horribly dated reference.
Pluggers today implies that Pluggers have only a single television set, and that they have no other screen-based devices upon which to view movies and/or sports. Since it’s firmly established that Pluggers are a) cripplingly poor and b) slow to adapt to new technologies and paradigms even when it would be to their benefit, I’m going to say this tracks.
RMMD: You know what would be even more boring than the previous arc? A week of office small talk about the previous arc!
MW: I’m hoping Belle is able to have Wilbur charged for the string of murdets she has committed. Seeing Wilbur handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a police car would be delightful.
@Liam:
MW-Mary just throws anything together she has lying around and calls them muffins.
Ha haaaaa!
“Here, Wilbur, try some of my barley and eggshell muffins.”
“”Mmmmmmmm, these are great!!”
@pugfuggly:
Bizarro: Yo dawg, I heard you liked milk so I raised milk to the second power to make it even more milky.
@TheDiva: “Oh, hi Mary!” is the clue that Mary caught Wilbur looking at his ichthyophilic whacking material. At night, Belle satisfies his kink by dressing as a carp. The two’s meeting was an accidental encounter at Sea World, where she mistakenly assumed she was the motivation for his boner.
@Cleveland Mocks: barley muffins is a name for beer.
@Professor Well Actually: Barley Muffins is a name for an agrarian stripper.
C’shaft: Psychiatric hospitals don’t use straitjackets anymore, but apparently some correctional facilities do. I assume this means the wild-haired lunatic was trying to violently murder the oblivious Crankshaft after realizing, a la Frank Grimes in The Simpsons, that everyone else was bizarrely blind to his dangerous incompetence.
DT: Poor Dick. After all that, no violent shoot-outs. His only hope now is that Mr. Piltdown is a vegetable and smothering him with a pillow can be passed off as a mercy killing.
Dustin: I joke a lot about Dustmom hoping her husband’s refusal to adopt healthier habits will send him to his grave sooner rather than later, but maybe I’ve been going about it all backwards–maybe Dustdad is deliberately trying to force his body into a breakdown. Either he is released from the pain of living, or he goes on permanent disability and becomes a burden on his wife and children the way they’ve been a burden on him all these years. Either way, he wins.
GT: Is this kind of like the double standard where if a man sexually assaults a woman it’s horrible, but if a woman assaults a man it’s comedic?
MW: How long do we think Mary has been lurking around the mail room, waiting for Wilbur to show up? Although I guess she had to make her muffins first. Maybe she woke up early, made the muffins, and then dashed down to the mail room to lie in wait.
Garlic Cheddar Muffins, maybe Wilbur will bring one back home to feed to Belle, killing her instantly. I mean, I believe that one of us suggested the idea that Belle was a vampire some time ago?
Bizarro: I’d’ve thought the most important thing for a ghost eating cereal is to use expired milk.
DT: I want the dead Horrocks Bros. to become continuing characters. They should be tiny and have wings and they should advise Tracy and the others on important police matters.
Phantom: Propose marriage, dude. She’s a single woman of a certain age and she’s desperate.
9CL: Don’t worry, Gran isn’t going into a nursing home. She’s going to Vienna to have constant geriatric sex with a WWII Anschluss veteran who owns a huge hoard of 1930s Nazi pep pills, aka methamphetamine.
(See the book BLITZED: DRUGS IN THE THIRD REICH. They were selling these things in rolls, like Lifesavers. From newsstands. To housewives.)
@Cleveland Mocks:
JP- And don’t forget to turn in your rented gown and combination lock for your gym locker. Those paper scrolls with the ribbon we handed you aren’t real and we’ve still got your actual diplomas.
MW: Folks, relax!! That “Fish Fancy” mag isn’t any foreshadowing of actual danger or harm to Willa! You know that Willa’s contract was not renewed, and she hasn’t been seen in the Weston household for months! Well, we don’t know exactly *where* she is, but we’re assured she’s in protective custody… we think. This is just a cheap attempt by The Ladies to inflame the audience by a subliminal suggestion of potential mayhem to a Beloved Pet. Don’t fall for it!
———
Hey, Intern – has Melody Mare made any headway in finding Willa yet? Yeah, this may be more urgent than we thought.
@Sonneta: Mary knows from her surveillance of Charterstone that Wilbur doesn’t get out of bed before noon, so she’d have plenty of time to press the garlic and age the cheddar for her muffins.
Bizarro: If your mornings as a ghost are going to consist of eating Brand X cereal and scrolling on your phone,
A: You got pretty effectively beaten down by life in the 21st century.
B: It would be nice if your etheric postmortem body at least had opposable thumbs.
Notice Mary specifically said, “Talk TO you”, and not ” Talk WITH you”,in other words “Shut up and eat a muffin!”
@Professor Well Actually: barley muffins is a name for beer.
@Voshkod: Barley Muffins is a name for an agrarian stripper.
Ha haaa! Barley Muffins is the name of a really lame emo band?
@BeckoningChasm: Blondie: I never thought the sight of Dagwood’s scalp would be so unnerving.
The sight of any part of Dagwood is unnerving.
@Cleveland Mocks: I’m thinking folk rock.
@ScienceGiant:
I’ve never see the double contraction I’d’ve before. I like it!
Pluggers: I guess I’m not pluggerish enough to switch from a perfectly good classic movie to a bunch of guys sweating over possession of a ball.
@matt w: #8: Sheila is only a plugger by marriage. She’s the least pluggerish of the pluggers. She’s neither fat, nor old, nor medically decrepit, nor stupid. She’s only poor because she’s married to Andy and whatever he brings home.
Pluggers: “Pluggers are so scared of their spouses’ emotionally inconsiderate behavior that they’d rather die of a ruptured bladder than endure it” is not the whimsical romantic situation that the people making this comic seem to think it is.
Mary Worth: Oh my God, Mary is actually proactively trying to help instead of just giving vapid, shallow advice from a distance? Pigs are flying and fat ladies are singing and hell is freezing over!
@treetown: I
Perhaps they are building a bridge over a segment of the road that dips low parallel to a creek. The car could easily go off the edge and crash hard.
At last, the story is winding down to a conclusion. Next we can see what the “real” Dick Tracy is about to investigate.
@Peanut Gallery:
Abundio se sorprende al encontrar al modelo más delgado de lo esperado porque la pintura le suma 10 libras.
Could have just said, “You’re a plugger if you’re still watching live TV.”
At some point I see a diaper in her future.
Pluggers: Hey, let’s give a shout-out to Charlotte Kemerer of Greensville, Pennsylvania for that chilling cry for help. We love ya, Char! and speaking of, if any of Ms. Kemerer’s loved ones or well-wishers or really just anyone currently around the Greensville area has a free minute you might wanna swing by with a wellness check real quick just for funsies!
@Peanut Gallery: I’ll give you million Green Stamps to sleep with your wife!
@The Rambling Otter: Personally I would love to see Belle have a normal reaction and bite into the muffin, spitting it out and crassly asking, “What the HELL is this!? No wonder you morons can’t taste the rat poison in your food!”
Look. I don’t usually go for shared universe theories when it comes to the comics page, but when I see a Plugger couple in their living room sitting in separate unfacing armchairs, a part of me can’t help but wonder if they’ve maybe killed and assumed the home and lives of the Bumsteads in the post-animal uprising timeline as depicted in Slylock Fox.
Thematically related if not narratively, we also have two characters, one in goggle-eyed horror, the other just completely shut down, sitting inches from the TV, bathed in its blue light in an otherwise totally dark space. What is this of not the emotional yin and yang of Shoe.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
More like disposable thumbs, am I right? Thank you, thank you; I’ve been here all week.
Mary Worth – This entire story has established that Wilbur is thinking with his little head, and that takes precedence over any concerns Dawn has. Today, however, he’s distracted by food. That knowledge seems like it could be a powerful weapon in the right hands. I guess I have to give Mary credit for figuring it out.
9CL – Omigod! It’s hideous, Nazi boinking Grandma! How long has it been? This is a humanoid who tells everyone about how much she and her opera singing Nazi boink. Heck, if Kiesl were there, they’d be boinking on that couch in front of Juliette. Yet she’s shy about discussing “personal” matters and gave younger Juliette a pamphlet rather than talking with her. Yeah, sure.
@pugfuggly: Re Pluggers – She’s crossing her legs trying not to pee. Don’t mention “streaming..”
@Cleveland Mocks: Re Pluggers – Yeah, but when he has to poop, he has to get up and go to the woods.
Bizarro: Honestly, if I become a ghost and it turns out I can still eat, I’m basically going to be Slimer from Ghostbusters. I’m not going to think “What’s a healthy breakfast cereal for ghosts that’s low in sugar and good for the digestive system?” I’m already dead! Who cares?
DT: Oh, the suspense. Will Piltdown be able to answer all Dick’s questions, or will he be in a coma and Dick will just have to say “Well, I guess that’s the case wrapped up and we’ll simply never know why they thought stealing the body made any sense at all.” Depends if Costello’s come up with anything yet, I guess.
FC: Ah, the smug smile of a preverbal infant who realises his siblings have set a very low bar to clear when it comes to developing language skills.
FG: “He looks like an older version of me. So either he is an older version of me, or he’s someone else who looks like an older version of me.” This is why Zarkov normally does the thinky stuff.
S4th: That’s a very good question, Hil, and I wish I knew enough about the relative significance of genetics and environment when it comes to psychotic breaks to answer it.
Bizarro:
“More coffee, hon?”
“Better not. You know how it goes right through me!”
Is anyone else having trouble accessing the seattletimes site? I was on it after midnight, but this morning I got a message that the site is unavailable.
It’s been an ordeal lately to try to read the comics. I think I need a new Kindle, because it constantly loses the internet connection, and it freezes up a lot. However, I got the site unavailable message when I tried it with my phone.
Bizarro: Our buddy Casper here isn’t actually using his phone to doomscroll like we do. He’s draining the phone’s battery to give his hand corporeal form enough to hold the spoon and to then house his cereal in some form of stomach. He doesn’t need a mouth because that portion of his deceased person is ethereal.
C’mon its like you guys don’t watch Ghost Bros or Spirits Unlimited or whatever the hell those shows are called, where The Science is all VERY CLEARLY spelled out.
@Roxanne Lucille Jones: We’ve seen this scenario before. Unfortunately, being the Buttress’ captive was not the hot porno premise Horace Piltdown had imagined.
@Violet: The paint adds 10 pounds? I guess that explains the whole “Rubenesque” thing!
@Dennis Jimenez: There’s no cheapskate like a rich cheapskate.
@I speak Jive: Seattle Times seems to be functioning again after being “unavailable” for a while this morning. You’re right that it’s becoming a pain to read the comics now. Recently ST has gotten “stuck” on some comics that don’t reload for a week, and then resume. I’ve been able to access most of them on the USA Today comics section. After all those decades of reading only the comics that ran in my print newspaper, I suppose I should be willing to accept a little “inconvenience” to have such a variety. But it’s annoying when things don’t work as they should. Life is difficult enough already. ;-)
@Arabella: Thanks! I just checked, and it’s available.
I didn’t know about the USA Today site – good to know for future reference.
I started out reading the comics on the Houston Chronicle site – how long ago was that?
Pluggers: I honestly have no idea how to change channels on my TV without the remote control. I can remember when you could do that with a big knob on the front of the TV, but those are long gone. Now, of course, I change channels on the cable box, which might have a power button on the front panel, I don’t know. It stays on internally all the time anyway, in case it has to record something or get a software update or download the channel programming information. I’ve been told by a guy who wrote software for cable boxes, that it was good to turn them off overnight once in a while, so it would know you weren’t watching and could carry out its housekeeping chores without interfering.
@Auntie Velvet:
“That’s strange. He always has a second cup of coffee in the spirit realm.”
This ghost strip has made me think way too much about the evolution of their graphical representation.
Somehow, the fact that a kid on Halloween will wear a bed sheet with eye holes cut into them to simulate their traditional floaty, misty, cloud-of-smoke appearance has evolved into “real” ghosts themselves wearing sheets with eyeholes cut in them. And this “sheet” is more like a skin, and is so thick that the cut edge could actually be measured with a ruler. Is this part of the ghost’s body? Or is it, in effect, wearing a ghost uniform?
Are ghosts really this concerned about branding?
I just want to say that if I die but can still eat cereal, I am going to eat a lot of Golden Grahams and Cap’n Crunch. Why would I eat Colon Blow when I can have all the sugar I want?
Pluggers: My wife still sometimes kicks me for being skeptical of the desirability of DVR service when it first came along. Now I couldn’t imagine life without it, but apparently Pluggers still can.
@I speak Jive:
The only trouble I have with the site is having to reload the page to get the comments to come up.
My favorite cereal is Ghost Toasties.
@Violet:
Got the reference!