Is there a less plugger sport than tennis? Cricket, maybe
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Hagar the Horrible, 9/30/25
Hagar is the protagonist of this strip, so we usually see things from his perspective, and I have to admit I never really tried to figure out what his crew might think of him. Indeed, his warriors do most of the fighting and dying in their various raids, but Hagar (perhaps already relatively well-off, as minor gentry?) gets the lion’s share of the booty and uses it to take his wife and favorite lieutenant to white tablecloth restaurants while they settle for scraps. Anyway, the way the guy in the back answers Hagar’s question implies that he’s contemplating the choice between asking Hagar for more money and spending that money on fancy food, or skipping several steps and simply eating Hagar directly.
Beetle Bailey, 9/30/25
I guess the point of this strip is that the U.S. Army isn’t just an office job, but rather a calling, and even the least of our brave warfighters might find themselves deployed at a moment’s notice wherever necessary to protect America’s people and interests. Unfortunately, by taking a phone call from his mother, Beetle has violated every opsec rule and revealed the location of his unit to the enemy, and will be killed by a drone-launched missile in approximately seven to nine minutes.
Pluggers, 9/30/25
I’m genuinely digging this plugger’s facial expression here. It’s not “Ah, another way in which my body is failing as I slowly decline towards death,” as you might expect. No, it’s sharp and genuine alarm. “Tennis elbow? But … I don’t even play tennis. Who’s been playing tennis with my elbow?”
Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/30/25
Mother Goose and Grimm: this is clearly a single-panel joke. You are 100% allowed to do single-panel jokes! You do them all the time! It’s also a very bad joke, but if you kept the proper structure, it would at least take up less of our time and cognitive energy.
69 replies to “Is there a less plugger sport than tennis? Cricket, maybe”
Mary Worth Mashups: Where are the dogs running to? Linked are three destinations. Which is most hilarious?
HtH: What’s with the guy’s eyes in the lower right? He’s totally trying to pull focus.
Pluggers:
You’re a plugger when a flannel shirt is your fashion piece de resistance.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“Man, I wish Mom would let me look like a Jackson Pollock painting.”
Phantom2040: This new comic looks like a reimagining of what Mara Llave: Keeper of Time was supposed to be like, before Alex Segura abandoned it.
Hagar the Horrible:
“…and I’ll bet your restaurant food is made on Viking stoves!”
That dalmatian haunts me. Is it a painting within the strip? Why doesn’t it resemble ANY other character? Is it staring into my soul and inwardly laughing maniacally at what it finds there? I’m pretty sure the drawing just blinked at me, just so I know it’s watching.
I’m disappointed at the miss of Occam’s Razor today – he’s going to cut Hagar open, and eat the food that tumbles out. Vikings!
HtH Yeah, it’s a shame how some viking bands are all about the money nowadays, not just the love of rape and pillage.
Pluggers I think these days they call it ‘Pickleball elbow’.
Hagar covers the mouth of the usual wisenheimer in the front row. “What do you think I’m made of? (Don’t answer that!).” but can’t reach the malcontent in the back —found later with a poleax in his head.
HTH: Once every thousand years, a red-headed Scandinavian will shout “Money, Money, Money!”. The prophecy has been fulfilled.
MG&G: I like the tension of the two panel structure. You wish your mom what?!?! Never died? Never got knocked up by a dalmatian and broke up your family? Never bought that hideous taxidermied dog corpse?
Pluggers: Three hours after a Plugger finally figures out how to do age verification on a porn site:
Beetle’s unit is almost certainly “in the field,” meaning largely pointless training at some wretched range, pretending they’re really doing something from Tuesday morning to Thursday night or so. So answering Mom’s phone call won’t get Beetle killed. This is unfortunate, for both us AND Beetle.
We’re all gonna quit laughing when a xenomorph explodes out of that dog’s arm. Or laugh harder. Day’s young.
HtH: Apparently, the Communal Pile of Pillage system has hit a snag.
RMMD: Many thanks to Wanda, for taking this creepy old fart off the dating circuit.
MW: A passing dog whisperer helps: “I can hear them! They’re thinking, ‘Olive! Olive!'”
Saul: “They want tapenade!”
MG&G — Yeah, all the cool kids near me are getting “random spot” tattoos! It’s the new thing!
BB — Looks like Beetle’s mom is calling from the 1990’s.
Plugger (really) thinks; “Sure it hurts like hell but there are no vital organs in my elbow so it’s not fatal (wipes brow) Pheewww.”
MW: Saul and Eve jump into their sedan and speed after Max and Greta, down the highway, onto two-lane streets, one-lane roads, and rough, unpaved trails until the two dogs, tongues lolling and panting heavily from the exertion of running 45 miles into the wilderness, finally stop beneath the tall pine tree that is supporting the balloon. Max and Greta take advantage of the tree trunk to do their business. Saul and Eve shake their heads, chuckle at the antics of their two pets, put the weary dogs back into their sedan, and drive home.
CS: Is Crankshaft going to tell “Batton Thomas” he sucks? Dear God, somebody needs to.
B. Bailey: Beetle standing on the edge of a crater proves that the servicemen of Camp Swampy are good for something. The Army now knows how close they can drop a bunker-buster bomb to a bivouac of soldiers “working remotely” without fatalities.
Rex Morgan MILF Diver – How will Truck react when he discovers that Wanda is not a virgin?
JP: Oh no… *NO!* Buckle up everybody! Neddy’s going to Norway, and she’s taking the raspberry-haired brat with her! Tell Reena she needs to dye her hair red, so the transition of this strip into a quippier and even more stupid version of ‘Totally Spies!’ can be complete…
MW: I realized I left Wilbur out of my little speculation yesterday, and with the HWAD immediately jumping into their Simpson-Mobile to give chase I guess we won’t see the adorable little newsboy. BUT! There’s still time for them to run Wilbur over as he wanders into traffic during one of his ‘Wilburman!’ fugue states.
RMMD: ‘Yeah, throwin’ that shindig shore made me hungry! Why don’t you change into your waitress uniform and rustle me up some grub before we retire to my suite at the Glenwood Motel. I hear they finally fumigated the rooms so you won’t need to worry about bedbugs nesting in that there hair helmet of yours!’
Mother Goose and Grimm: Some days, simply for the good of the artistic spirit, you feel like drawing a dalmatian. Other days, also for the good of the spirit, you feel like copying and pasting the dalmatian layers on your Cintiq. Those times are what we know as “Tuesday.”
Curtis: Can’t let continuity or conflicting actions get away with a joke.
GA: Just fast forward to when one of the legacy characters tosses his ass out of the diner.
MW The beyond-cellphone balloon crash is conveniently at the side of a road for the car? The dogs can run as fast as a car so Saul and Eve don’t catch up??
Pluggers: Tennis elbow, hah! Now do the one about pressure sores on your coccyx because you sat in your recliner watching NFL for too long, instead of playing tennis!
@The Quiet Man:
On Judge Parker turning into Totally Spies : Shouldn’t NEDDY be the one to dye her hair blonde so she can be the Clover, while Reena gets to be Alex?
Charlotte is a pretty bad Sam in “actually the only intelligent one” terms, but for the “is the one who constantly gets brainwashed turned stupid/evil”, her being a naïve child fits?
Also Pluggers: Young men around the world armed with tissues, lotion and an inexhaustible supply of high-quality Japanese videos know that there is more than one way to acquire tennis elbow. And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go and devote myself to a life of prayer and repentance, for no particular reason.
@Lord Flatulence: So the strip is predicting that within 15 years there will be anthropomorphic killbots, and also that they will completely suck at their job. I believe it.
Hägar the Horrible: One of Hagar’s men smiles to hear this witty retort. Another snaps to sudden, ravenous attention, and a third appears to have lost his mouth somewhere between panels one and two. But it’s the two whose expressions don’t change that really seal it for me. They could care less about class struggle, or about literally eating the rich. They’re just there, doing what needs to be done. It could be manning the oars of Hagar’s knarr, it could be some light axe work, whatever. It beats the plow, or getting tossed in the peat bog as a ritual sacrifice, kind of.
Blondie Cookie shows how this generation of students has found new ways to spend more time and effort to cheat than it would take to actually do the assignment. Not snarky about the comic, just about the world…
@Charterstoned: So we’re not going to be treated to the sight of Saul climbing the tree and carrying Olive, Mary, and Stanley down to safety?
@But What Do I Know?: I like to pretend that there’s a time gap between Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois so Beetle can still be a PFC while his sister Lois (that’s Lois’s mom!) is the mother of a high school junior.
Phantom: As much as it would suck to have your face branded with a skull tattoo when the Phantom punches you out, I guess it would suck more if you were the other guy on duty who simply has his face ripped off by a wolf and is left to die in the dirt.
MW: If it was possible to punch a comic strip in the face, I’d punch this comic strip in the face.
9Cl: I’m on vacation so I won’t harp on my pet peeve about how men don’t cross their legs while sitting at the edge of a pool. It would just be a waste of my relaxing time.
@astroboy: I don’t want to punch this strip so much as I want to sit Karen Moy down and ask her what she was thinking. Who in the hell is this story for? Nobody wants to see a story about a narcissistic, boring Zoomer with delusions about their own special-ness. And we’ve had to see it twice now. Olive is exactly what the comics page spends most of its time mocking. Especially Dustin.
MW: so, the balloon came down within running distance of a dachshund’s legs – it should be close enough to be seen, right?
It’s all fun and games trying to decide if Hagar is middle management or a CEO until you recoil in horror realizing you just watched him literally wipe a man’s mouth off his face.
***
The two panel structure would have worked so much better if the first was just Grimm looking at the dalmatian and the thought bubble being restricted to the second panel. He’d still be an idiot for thinking a bunch of random dots would be a cool tattoo, but the strip would have been less annoying.
MW-And bring the spray bottle with you.
FC-Butter the side that’ll fall on the floor.
MW:While still under Olive’s mind control, Max stops and starts humping Greta. Moy smacks her own forehead with her palm; “D’oh! I forgot about puberty.”
HTH- um Hagar, your crew “went viking” just for that reason, and as the head of a viking band, you are responsible for distributing hack silver as a payout to your crew. Once you get known as Hagar the stingy, good luck finding anyone who’ll sail with you.
@CanuckDownSouth: Google AI says
“Dachshunds can run at surprising speeds of 15-20 mph for short bursts, although some exceptional individuals, like Nugget, have been recorded at over 21 mph in competitive events. This agility is thanks to their strong build, flexible spine, and powerful legs, which were developed for hunting small animals. While agile and capable of bursts of speed, their short legs and long bodies mean they may not have the stamina for long-distance running and require monitoring to prevent overexertion.”
I’m guessing Moy did exactly as much research as I did (5 seconds of typing a single query into Google, then reading the almost definitely inaccurate AI summary), except that she didn’t read to the end of the paragraph which unsurprisingly notes that a wiener dog is not exactly the first choice for marathons. Especially back-country marathons.
Hth – It was a rhetorical question….
BB – It’s gonna be a butte today, ma….
Pluggers – Wiping my ass elbow….
MG&G – That’s cuz yer mom is a real bitch….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
FC: It may seem old hat, but sometimes there’s something warm and comforting in an old standby.
Jeffy is an imbecile.
Chix (sic): I like this one
Hagar the Horrible – I wonder is Swedish born IWW labor musician Joe Hill based his famous song “The Preacher and the Slave” (famous for the lines “You will eat, Bye and bye, In that glorious land in the sky”) on an oral tradition from agitated Vikings who were tired of being promised Valhalla dining halls while their dining rooms in Midgard were bare.
Beetle Bailey – With all the brass in Quantico to meet with Pete Hegseth, Lt. Fuzz has taken the opportunity to show some initiative and take Campy Swampy out on a mission. Gen. Halftrack, already regretting that a night of drinking ends with the Secretary promising to inspect Camp Swampy, is going to find his most of his base dead, and will have to Weekend at Bernie’s Camp Swampy with the few survivors.
Pluggers – 90% of Pluggers knowledge of anatomy is learned from injuries they cannot rightly figure how how they got.
Mother Goose and Grimm – No one thinks of Dalmatians as tattooed, and if Grimm should feel uncool before one it’s because of the fact they are stereotypically the dog fire fighters use.
MG&G: The presence of a (for certain values of the term) realistic-looking Dalmatian has me wondering what kind of breed/mix Grimm is. His body suggests a pug or shar pei, but his head shape is more in the labrador/retriever mold and his ears look like a cross between a greyhound and a rabbit. Maybe he’s hoping tattoos will distract people from the weird Frankensteinian composition of his physique.
Pluggers are caught in a vicious cycle of being in pain because they’re inactive, which causes them to be more inactive, which causes them to be in more pain etc.
With regards to the question in the post title, I would say that polo is even less of a Plugger sport. But that’s only because I don’t believe there’s a pony Plugger who could be one of the mounts. Or, truer to the strip, a broken-down ex-polo pony who is one step away from being sent to the Far Side’s horse hospital.
According to Americans I’ve met who know absolutely nothing about the (actually incredibly energetic and frequently quite dangerous) game of cricket and can’t be bothered to find out anything, it *is* a game of non-American pluggers.
@Baja Gaijin:
No 2 is by far the best.
RMMD: Say, is that an Edsel parked behind Truck and Wanda? It has the distinct horse collar front grill.
FC: Butter it on the crusty edges. That ought to keep Jeffy occupied all day.
@Dmsilev:
Ah, but that adds even more emotional impact, as Greta reaches the tree, collapses, and dies. It will be just like Farley’s death in For Better or For Worse, except stupid.
Every now and again, you see a hint of military reality in Beetle Bailey. Today, they’ve seized the high ground! Good job. The ghosts of Jomini and Clausewitz nod approvingly, while the shades of Patton and Kesselring curse them for not digging in on the reverse slope. High ground’s great, guys, but artillery remains the Queen of Battle, and the sons of Saint Barbara, from Mehmed the Conqueror to Freeman McGilvery to Marshal Zhukov are slavering to turn your position into a churning sea of mud and flesh.
C’shaft: “What’s with the old geezer who’s the main character? The guy’s got to be at least in his nineties by now and he’s still holding down a job? And who told you mixed metaphors was funny?”
Dustin: Very telling how the punchline is “Dustin is broke/cheap” and not “Dustin is buying jewelry for a woman who he’s only had brief casual contact with (if that) and whose name he probably doesn’t even know, a move that suggests at best a complete ignorance of proper social behavior and at worst a disturbing and obsessive limerence.”
JP: They’ve totally told Charlotte her grandmother moved to a farm upstate, haven’t they?
MW: Five minutes later, the rescue comes to a screeching halt as both Greta and Max are flattened by a semi truck on the interstate.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
I’ve only recently discovered cricket. My wife was getting up at 4:30am for work and I started watching it live from Asia. Most of the stereotypes arise out of traditional red ball. I believe a lot of Americans would enjoy T20.
WTF with Ma Bailey’s phone? What is that little antenna doing there? Why does she not have a normal rectangular cell phone like everyone else? Now I’m going down a ridiculous rabbit hole from “maybe they drew this in 1990 with an eye to recycling it 35 years later” and all the way to “maybe his mom is on MARS!” (Nor can I make sense of her collar — is that some man’s idea of feminine attire? “Don’t ladies look like, um, flowers or something? Better give her some petals!” Sheesh.)
Pluggers: To answer the question, I suggest polo.
Lockhorns: Loretta shouldn’t be embarrassed. At least this time Leroy’s doing it at a ballgame instead of the opera.
Zits today begins a documentary about tech bros. It’s amazingly true to life.
H&L: “Pooping, voiding, and shedding” aren’t in Dawg’s DNA?
FC: For minor tasks like this my Dad told us, as kids, “It’s less work if I do it myself”.
MW: “Olive’s message”? Did I miss some Morse code, semaphore waving, or smoke signals?
@TheDiva: Semi truck?
You underestimate Saul’s ability to wreak havoc driving over 40mph for what I can only figure is the first time in years.
CS: I’m guessing that Batton’s picking up the tab for all the times these two go out for pizza. Why else would Skip require 6 (and counting) interviews for his story? In return, Batton gets to ramble on and on to a guy who looks like he cares, but is actually only interested in free lunches.
@Anonymous: They’re interchangeable as far as I know (I’ve never watched an episode, to be honest). Sophie’s already blonde, Neddy’s already brunette, so Reena (as the token minority) would have to be the one to change, otherwise she’s out of the strip and where else would she go? Mary ‘Olive, Wilbur ‘n Pals’ Worth? Rex “Ameripolitan” Morgan? Gil #$)%ing Thorp? I suppose she wouldn’t have to actually dye her hair, just shave bald and wear a wig.
The raspberry-haired brat will be the person our ‘heroes’ have to help to defeat the monster of the week. Maybe the ‘big bad’ behind all this CIA nonsense could actually turn out to be our old pal The Buttress (secretly working with Sourpuss McGee) and she has some sciency ray gun that turns them all into whatever fetish the cartoonist wishes to indulge that week.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, will you take me for a ride in your cute little car?”
“Hop right in, my dear”
“This is nice, but… I need to ask you something…”
“Haven’t we been driving in an ever decreasing circle for the past hour?”
[Sign: ROAD OF THE DAMNED]
You’re describing me pretty well.
DT – “What sort of pop culture allusion will we throw into the mix today, Tracy?”
“Would you believe… A Get Smart reference?”
[Tomorrow: “That’s the second biggest green-goo-powered death ray I’ve ever seen!”]
Beetle Bailey: The only way this joke actually makes sense is if you assume Beetle’s mom is so senile that she’s forgotten her son joined the military and he doesn’t feel like correcting her, which makes this more sad than anything.
Plugger: This plugger is discovering, to his horror, that his arm has begun to develop a mind of its own and is slowly taking control of the rest of his body in his sleep. Pretty horrifying!
Mother Goose: OH MY GOD WHY DID THEY DRAW THE DALMATION LIKE THAT WHAT IS THAT THING AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
DT: ? Ok since the VC is out of the way, this is really the first time Diet Smith Enterprises (Industries) can actually test the magic gel ?
MW: OK – so is the twist going to be that the dogs get away, but find Olive, Mary and Stanley, and the tracking device in their collars is what alerts the search teams, not that innocuous huge canvas and plastic colorful bag in the middle of a green background.
JP: Do another time jump. The Ditzy girls split up – one stays on in Norway becoming involved with Axel running teh cafe. The other comes home to live the life of a lady who does lunch. Neddy and Charlotte have bonded and go on wack adventures. The Judge is up to a bottle a day. But the ranch is doing well, having added a corn maize, petting zoo and their own baked donut bakery to with a small cider mill. Soon only truly die hard types (the type who can recite all fo the people who have drawn Nancy) will recall the whole spy fiasco.
MW- As luck would have it, Max peed on that very tree just the other day. Greta got a good whiff of Olive’s butt when they first met. So yeah, I’d say they got this, should be a cinch. This storyline went to the dogs long ago anyway.
@TheDiva: Well, that is kind of true.
Sometimes I see a type of little people, who despite being adults still look like they’re still kids.
But usually when I see these people, they tend to be covered in tattoos. I think they’re trying to make a statement which is “I’m not actually a kid! Take me seriously!”
It’s kind of sad actually. Poor people.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: 20- Or that she’s covered with biker tattoos.
Curtis: “Since these are modern times, here’s a money order for seven dollars fifteen cents.”
I don’t know which negates “modern times” more effectively: “money order” or “seven dollars fifteen cents.”
*Puts on amateur historian hat* Likely, Hägar would take twelve shares for his men’s one each as the chief of a small longboat. But here’s a funny part, such a boat would would commonly take a crew of at least 50, desperate men and women willing to go raiding in unknown lands to fight starvation (we’re ignoring the many vikings who worked as honest traders here) and we have very occasionally seen Hägar leading groups that large. But today his crew seems to be six, and that’s more than usual. If almost all the people following him die on every trip, the few who make it home should be very wealthy – one share of eighteen is certainly much better than one of 60 or 70. While Hägar himself of course luxuriates on a big farm with serfs to work it for him and maybe a small army to protect it, they should at least own some land and be able to eat out occasionally, guy who’s missing every other tooth.