Pluggers has fallen
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/23/25
Last we saw of Truck and Cody, they had agreed to treat each other as honorary father and son and it was all very heartwarming. But here we are several days into Truck and Wanda’s wedding storyline and no sign of Cody! You know who did snag a coveted invite to this shindig, though, is Shorty and the Beanpole. Thank God Truck took my advice and didn’t have them perform, but still. Can you imagine what a dork-ass high school these two twerps go to where they’re earning “so many points” by spending an evening with a bunch of adult roots country Americana Ameripolitan superfans?
Garfield, 9/23/25
I guess I just have to accept that “Garfield watches a vaguely animal-themed TV channel” is just part of the reality of the Garfiverse now, but I don’t have to like it. What kind of cruel management runs this network? They know he’s a cat, he put that right in his entry, so why are they giving him things cats hate? Are they anti-cat? Is this why they were showing pro-dog content the last time he was watching? Garfield, have some self-respect in your media consumption habits!
Pluggers, 9/23/25
“Pluggers are vain about their appearance and that drives them to buy a variety of personal grooming products.” Come on now. Are you even listening to yourself. You should be embarrassed by this. Embarrassed.
90 replies to “Pluggers has fallen”
Muncie explains a few things.
A Plugger complains : Sure, hair, hair, hair, but not one fur growing product.
Garfield-Is this the first time a setting is established for ‘Garfield’?
RMMD-Sorry, kids, come back when you are funny with original material.
MW-We’re gonna need another Olive.
The Plugger narrative is pivoting. Art imitating reality.
RMMD:
“Son, how about if I have my boy do an impromptu version of David Crosby’s ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ for you? — it might give you an idea!”
Garfield: When I was a kid watching Garfield and Friends (late in the series I believe) Garfield was watching a music show on TV and the host plays “The Garfield Rap”
What gets me, is that the host was a cat. Not like Garfield, he was human-sized and wearing clothes.
That was sort of weird. Even today where I since embraced a furry lifestyle, I still find that character bizarre and completely out of nowhere.
RMMD: Book ’em, Lou! Sure, it might threaten your liquor license, but you want to get in on the ground floor. Shorty and the Beanpole are going to be big, big, BIG!
MW: Hello! Olive is a jinx! On land, at sea and in the air, avoid Olive like the plague! (which she’s probably also carrying)
Pluggers: I call shenanigans. No true plugger male would ever buy girlie shampoo. They just rub the same bar of soap they wash their armpits and ass cracks with into their scalps.
RMMD:
“Here’s a thematically appropriate joke for you, Mr. Tyler.”
“Go for it, Parker!”
“How many country artists does it take to change a light bulb?”
“I give up.”
“Two. One to do it, and one to sing about all the good times he had with the old light bulb!”
@Liam: If so, it only took…. 46? Years for them to actually start worldbuilding, rather than solely focusing on the character antics.
Fg: So Mongo has Panthermen too? Do they also have a race of dwarf Bobcatmen and lilliputian Housecatmen?
Pluggers:
It’s always a winning strategy to stick your tongue out when you’re in a hot, soapy shower.
No. No. This is intolerable. Rhino-Man can be drawn in a way that makes him look like the only hairs he has are twelve on his head, but you just wanted to show naked Bear-Plugger. You will not be written in the Book of Life!
It’s hard to pick out a single most disturbing element of today’s “Pluggers”, but I’m going to focus on the little protruding tongue. Why is this bear making the universal cartoon expression for “yummy times” ? He’s about to take a big old swig from that shampoo bottle, isn’t he?
Garfield: Keep in mind that Garfield’s TV is sentient and sometimes literally talks to him.
I mean, one comic…
“Don’t change that channel we’ll be right back!”
Garfield grabs the remote, and the TV starts chewing him out.
So Garfield pulls out a book, and the TV screams.
Pluggers:
Pluggers can’t count to ten to calm themselves down and stop themselves from doing or saying something rash or impulsive, because not a single one of them has as many as ten digits.
Flash Gordon: Flash just had a friendly battle with an anthropomorphic panther wielding a whip.
I don’t know who Mongo’s deities are, but if a furry ascended to Godhood and was assigned by a God council to create whatever world their heart’s desired, that would explain an awful lot.
Yesterday June Morgan said “I’m never glad anyone gets sick” and lady, that is the foundation of your whole job, not to mention existence.
MW: “ARGH!”
Uh, “Talk Like a Pirate Day” was like, four days ago. It’s over, okay? So you can stop with the buccaneer lingo. In this situation, as you and your passengers are about to be dumped out of the gondola a thousand feet above the ground, screaming something like “Oh, FUCK!” or “Holy SHIT!!” is far more appropriate. Keep the “ARGH!” for next September 19.
@The Rambling Otter: Also why do fantasy/alien worlds get the “cool” races?
Even the hate sink races from Star Trek are miles more interesting than “just humans”
RMMD: The other day, one of you mudges’ predicted these two showing up, or at least joked about the idea of them being the entertainment.
I didn’t actually expect this to happen, although in hindsight I probably should have.
We’re going to cycle through EVERY character aren’t we?
Rene Belluso? The Street Sweeper? That guy who killed the stalker? The couple that the stalker was stalking?
(Who I can’t even remember anything about them, they were THAT bland…)
Pluggers: Let’s hope this is a walk-in shower because if there’s a tub we’d have to speculate where the spout currently is.
RMMD “You make sure to have some cake now” is going to be my new favorite phrase for patronizing dismissal.
Garfield This reads like a truly terrible episode of The Twilight Zone.
Pluggers But…I see a lot of hairs there. Much more than 12. Unless…are those not hairs? Is his whole body just covered with weird little ridges? God there is so much about Plugger physiology I don’t understand
MW:
“Ladies, this is no time for us to be practicing swirling scenes for our upcoming turn in the Santa Royale Players’ production of High Anxiety!”
FG: Mongo also has a race of Cheetahmen, but they only compete in the foot races, not personal combat.
GT Jami biked back from Berlin through the fourth wall, with a stop in the Real World to observe the actual extent of his comic world. But nobody will believe him, especially when he says they used to be recognizable human figures rather than messy scribbles.
@The Rambling Otter: [Jotting in little black notebook] Rambling Otter is in fact an otter, or he plays one on TV…
@The Rambling Otter: Let’s hope we’re not close to one of those weeks where the cartoonists all trade strips. I couldn’t deal with the Mary Worth and Judge Parker characters showing up at the wedding.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: And Were-Hawks, they hawk their wares in the concession area.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Is it too much hope that we’re being re-introduced preparatory to them being burned alive in the Great Glenwood Lou’s Place Fire, right? It’s too much.
RMMD: So, I guess that’s supposed to be a shout-out to Gen X actor Corey Parker from (checks IMDb) “Biloxi Blues” and…I don’ know…”Love Boat: the Next Wave.” Y’know, there’s being clever and then there’s just being obscure.
@Ken: I understood Mary had already sent her purple outfit to the cleaners for the wedding—no, wait, she figured she’d only worn it 2,000 times and she could hold off.
DT: It is as if this strip and the previous one could have been cut out or could have been used earlier in the sequence. Again, the new plotter has good ideas but might need some help with the pacing. It should be building with the death of the VC person but it seems to be slowing without any clear cut reason. Shouldn’t all of this background work had been done already?
MW: Please let this be the Wizard of Oz sequence!
JP: OK the spinoff will be Neddy and Charlotte – and over time the antics of Charlotte grow and find a place in the reader’s hearts, and Neddy gets sidelined and the strip becomes Charlotte. Soon we completely forget about Alan, Randy, Sam, April, etc. Only true hard core fans demand to know whatever happened in Norway.
Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks continues his attack against the General’s logistics
The Debate Club and Hillel are gonna give Shorty and Beanpole the most ATOMIC wedgies on Monday morning.
Pluggers: Found your problem right here: “Elsa Auerbach, Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts.” I mean, she’s not even a Southie! She lives next door to Brookline, for God’s sake! (It is possible a bear might wander north from the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, let’s be fair.)
I get the distinct impression that plugger won’t be using the product for its intended purpose, going by the look on its face…
What, Andy Bear is just washing up on his way to get a spinach colonic before he attends his local Hamas rally. What comic strip do YOU read?
Rex Morgan MILF Diver: “”You be sure to have some cake now while I go down to have some pie.”
Also Pluggers: Are any of those shampoos a three-in-one Shampoo/Conditioner/Prehensile Tongue Medication?
@Brad: It’s a hemp-based shampoo, what of it?
RMMD: “Yes, we’re actually looking to hire a funny teenager. Do either of you know any?”
You made me look.
My prediction: Stanley the balloonivator is knocked unconscious. Olive channels her past life as Amelia Earhart to bring the balloon to a safe landing. Go on, try to tell me this is too ridiculous for Moy.
“Pluggers want to eat their shampoo. It looks like guacamole and smells delicious!”
RMMD — “We’re great. We couldn’t have dates for eighth-grade Prom so at least we got some use out of these cumberbunds! Uh, can I get a rimshot?
James A. — Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Well, that explains plugger noses, ears, and eyebrows. And here I thought it was just a natural consequence of aging.
***
Didn’t Truck just meet whichever one the ginger-haired kid is once in a park? And nobody thought to question the invitation? Is Chris Hansen waiting just outside the door? Calm down, folks. He just wants to be a father figure.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: As a former resident of Brookline I agree. Jamaica Plain is the kind of town where aging hipsters do “punk aerobics” and hold porch parties with live music. Elsa is just trolling the Plugger readership.
I call shenanigans on Pluggers. Jamaica Plain, which is a neighborhood in Boston, has demographics (per Wikipedia) of “By the turn of the 21st century, the neighborhood had attracted a large community of college-educated professionals, political activists and artists.”. That is pretty much anti-Plugger territory. This is clearly an attempt by those self-same college-educated professional artistic political activists to stage a hostile takeover of Pluggerdom.
The Purple Void is the number one 21-and-up club in the greater Tri-City area! Available for weddings, funerals, Rotary Club meetings, and teenage vaudeville acts!
Although Olivia failed to predict the weather upsetting the hot air balloon, the situation did jog her into recalling her past life as a balloonivator and thus she took over the landing and again saved the day.
Or alternate ending, she used her animal whispering to call in some California condors to fly them to safety.
I thought today’s obviously-wrong Pluggers was a secret message to activate a terrorist sleeper cell. Remember when that was a thing?
MW: Olive falls out of the gondola and but is saved by Dr Jeff flying by in his biplane.
“Whoa! where’d you come from? Heh, heh.”
Pluggers. Um, no. They’ve been using the same inexpensive, unglamorous brand of shampoo for decades. With their personal care products, they stick with legacy brands long after those products became tired jokes among millennials.
@matt w: This was 100% my thought too. The whole setup is a “Pluggers are bald” joke, and they drew the hairiest of all the Pluggers?
9cl: Edda’s talking out of her ass again.
@The Rambling Otter: I… I am never going to be able to read Flash Gordon the same way now. Question: when the animal people of Mongo age, do they turn into Pluggers?
MW: “You be sure and have some cake now, okay?”
Truck giving the loser sign with his right hand as he says this kinda undercuts the good vibes.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Rex Morgan, surveying the critically burned and injured: “Eh, sometimes people die.”
@Dmsilev: That is the second-greatest hazard of drawing a daily comic strip when you have no ideas of your own and rely on your readers. The greatest hazard is of course that the readers don’t have any new ideas, and you endlessly recycle the same few themes — “pluggers wear old clothes”, “pluggers are decrepit”, “pluggers eat odd foods”, “pluggers take a lot of meds”, …
@Dmsilev: Along with “Pluggers are fat” and “Pluggers are old,” it seems like “Pluggers are affluent suburbanites who style themselves as salt-of-the-earth blue-collar workers” is one of the strip’s constants.
Pluggers: Andy hopes growing out more hair will make him appear larger and help him win fat bear week which, no coincidence, voting starts today.
@Dmsilev: You know what? I am HERE for a hostile takeover of Pluggers. Since no one even knows what a plugger technically is, or what its culture would be, we can make it anything we want! Move over Reed Hoover of Dallas, TX, we are the Pluggers now.
Don Abundio, translated:
“You’re paddling very hard against the current, Don Abundio!”
“But aren’t we still drifting downstream?”
“Just a little”
“But I assure you there is nothing to worry about!”
[Sign: DANGER – MUNICIPAL WATER INTAKE]
@Ken: Too bad though that Amelia Earhart flew planes, not balloons (that we know of)
-CRASH!!!-
Pluggers: Look, either Pluggers are so slovenly indifferent to their appearance that they regularly wear the remains of their lunch on their clothing, or they’re so desperately insecure about their appearance that they’ll do anything to fight the ravages of time, but you have to pick a lane!
RMMD: I love how Truck deflects the question of “Beanpole and Shorty” booking their act at a hardscrabble dive bar. “Gee, I don’t know if Lou would go for that. Either he’ll laugh in your face or he’ll book you just for the amusement of watching truckers and bikers throw beer bottles at your weird little neo-vaudeville act, but hey, you won’t know until you ask him. In the meantime, have some cake!”
Rex Morgan, MD: “Do you think Lou would ever book a teenage comedy act?” “NO!…idea on that one, kids.”
Garfield: So, is it common knowledge that Jim Davis is from Muncie, or do I just know that because I live pretty close to Muncie?
Pluggers: I feel like there are other types of ineffective Growth Products for Men that pluggers would be more likely to be scammed by.
@Drew Funk: We should ask Sid.
Hey Sid!! Your clients in Flash Gordon (assuming they’re your clients?) when they reach their “golden years” do they leave that comic and get gigs in Pluggers?
Am I to assume that Andy Bear was once a young, fit, Mongonian fighting machine?
@Liam:
Terry Beatty gets up from his chair and walks away from the strip….
@Vanya: I read that as “Former President of Brooklyn”
I need to sleep soon…
Other Comics:
Mandrake the Magician: Is Mandrake in full reruns, or is it a Jack Elrod Mark Trail situation where he just reuses plots from years ago and edits them so Lothar isn’t talking in jungle pidgin, and they just missed this Earth Day strip plunked in the middle of September?
Six Chix: Tuesday Chick made me laugh today. Not with the main joke, but TATTOOS on the arm was a funny detail.
Gil Thorp: Gil Thorp is still at the top of my GoComics feed. I hope Neil Rubin and Rod Whigham are enjoying their retirements.
Six Chix – These kids today, with their ironically meta tattoos! They deserve to be afflicted with talking cats that pee on everything.
Rex Morgan – Josh isn’t the only one who is thanking God that Shorty and Beanpole didn’t perform.
Mary Worth – Stevie Wonder could see this coming, but somehow Special Olive’s tummy brain missed it. Olive and Mary need to resume their bragging discussion about how special they are. The hot air from their blathering will take the balloon above the storm.
9CL – The creepiness of this didn’t even register for me, because I was so distracted by the appalling artwork. Lolly’s right arm looks like it was transplanted from an ape. I seriously wonder if anything is wrong with Brooke.
@The Rambling Otter: I was the one who predicted at least Shorty turning up and comically interrupting the ceremony, but I was wrong that they’d turn up to delay our next glimpse of Rex, given that he showed up yesterday. Ah well, can’t win them all…
JP: Actually Neddy, why don’t we start over never?
Are we SURE we wouldn’t rather see what’s been going on in Norway? I’m guessing CIApril has made her miraculous escape by now and has taken over CIA Safehouse #129657 and is living it up with Sophie n’ Reena. ‘Daughter? What daughter? Introduce me to that hot barista friend of yours!’
@Drew Funk:
On Garfield being set in Muncie, Indiana, USA : I think this is knowledge you stumble upon, your mind completely absorbs it, you treat is as something perfectly natural to know, and then you’re put in a situation where you discover that most people have no idea.
One thing I DON’T know is if Garfield shares a setting with Knights of the Dinner Table, or if the latter has said the former is fictional in their setting************
Pluggers : this is actually another case of “Caption makes joke about Pluggers being completely hairless due to being old and bald and mangy, art depicts Andy Bear, who is famously COVERED IN HEAD-TO-TOE WITH DENSE HAIR”. The idea is that Pluggers have a bottle of shampoo for each individual strand of hair they have left, but someone realised that outside of people with Alopecia Universalis, most Pluggers would have AT LEAST double digit strands of hair left (eyebrows, eyelashes, nose hairs, those weird hairs that grow out of their warts…), without realising that owning double-digit bottles of shampoo is… ostentatious, I wanna say?
**************
Luann : so, we’re supposed to see Bets as lazy and disorganised because she’s still tired from pulling an all-nighter organising the event they’re going to? Also, they shouldn’t have one of the things that Bets does that stalls them being taking a shower, I mean, I *THINK* the reason we saw Gunther in three different outfits yesterday was to imply that he DID take one, but in under a minute? Nah, in my mind, though Gunther and Les have opposite worldviews on almost everything, “Showering (ever
y day) is optional” is one thing they agree on.9CL: Should I comment or should I not, should I, should I not… sigh. Impossibly long diving board with Edda’s impossibly long legs and her body in an impossibly stable position, and Alistair recognizes her kooch?
If the top of his head is hair, the rest of him is mold? That i could believe.
“A Plugger’s plumbing snake is Andy Anaconda, the local handyman they call to clear fur clogs out of the drain every few days.”
Rex Morgan, MD – Cultural critic Paul Fussell coined the term “Prole Drift” to explain how the middle class, in times of economic decline, will adopt the culture and values of the working class in an attempt to rationalize their reduced buying power and cultural clout. In the world of Rex Morgan, MD even the merely rich are seeing their clout falter, and hence they have embraced roots country, though they attempt to rebrand it Ameripolitan to give it a sheen of urbane sophistication.
We’ve seen this before, where the strip once gave away boats to the already rich characters in the strip, but now have made blue collar markers like free pickup trucks the spoils of being the main character in a storyline.
Garfield – You never see Heathcliff waste his time watching bland, mind-numbing TV that insults him. If a station pulled this on him, you’d see Heathcliff go on the warpath against the station airing it. That is the difference between the two orange comic cats.
Pluggers – The joke clearly can’t be that they only have 12 individual hairs, since they show a bear. This means that Pluggers have been tricked into buying different shampoos for each type of hair based on where on the body it is. Someone at Head & Shoulders realized you could exploit the song Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. along with the Animal-Peoples other parts, into a suite of products to sell for more profit than an all-in-one shampoo and body wash.
@Guts Dozier:
Yes why would this Plugger be making that expression when he’s alone in the shower while spreading a slippery-looking liquid all around his palm?
“Yummy time” indeed!
Anyway, enjoy that delightful imagery that’s popping up in your head, now, everyone!
I’d been wondering about Garfield, too. Knew Davis was from Indiana, no idea it was Muncie-specific. Any other details, here? I basically know Muncie from people joking how much it sucks.
Pluggers: ….. are in denial of the mysterious phenomenon that transformed the world’s population into grotesque animal people. “I’m still human! You can’t tell me otherwise! Look I only still have twelve hairs, twelve!! Hahahahahaha!!! I’m human! Human!!!”
(as he’s being taken away in a straightjacket)
Pluggers: Sounds like we’re all agreed, the only way the artist could have screwed this up more would have been to use one of the chicken characters?
MW- ” The weather started getting rough, The tiny aircraft was tossed. Ir not for Olive’s special gifts the Balloon would be lost!” But seriously, with an arrgh and an oof all they have to do is throw that friggin’ air conditioner overboard and gain some altitude. Problem solved.
C’shaft: Yeah, I tell you, those triple-As are really hard to come by.
DT: It may seem odd that Dick doesn’t know where his own meeting with the prime suspect in this multiple homicide case is supposed to be. But hey, he just figured out how to search an internet database; it’ll take a while for him to work his way up to Google Maps. Baby steps, you know?
Dustin: You know, if someone told me he broke his glasses playing tennis the first thing I would assume is that he got hit in the head with the ball. Secondary possibilities include tripping and falling onto the court, or a doubles partner with no sense of personal space accidentally backswinging into his face. I wouldn’t be all “How get hurt in tennis? Tennis not manly violent sport! Brain hurt from the no make sense!” the way Parker and Kelly seem to think is natural.
Luann: Hey Gunther, maybe if you took on some duties beyond picking out your stupidest costume and getting coffee, Bets wouldn’t be working until 3am the night before your big event, oversleeping and running late, you ever think of that?
MW: So far the danger has consisted of 1) an improperly secured window AC unit, 2) a dog owner who can’t tell when his own pet is agitated, 3) a girl going swimming at the beach despite posted warnings combined with a lifeguard who does not notice someone has gone out swimming despite posted warnings and 4) a hot air balloon operator who has gone on radio silence with the ground crew who could inform him that the weather is starting to turn and he should come down. Maybe Olive’s real power is that she attracts incredibly stupid people.
@Liam
RMMD:
“Hey, kids! Got any old-time comedy?”
“I can no letta you in until-a you say ‘swordfish’ .”
“That sucks. How about some Ritz Brothers?”
@ValdVin: If I had a password system, it would be “Open Says-a-me!”
But that’s just me.
Andy Bear does have twelve protruding hairs on the top of his head.
It must be sad, to have a body full of fur, and still end up with a combover…
RMMD- I see in the second panel someone finally adjusted inflatable Wanda’s head. Is Cody back with the “stuff ” yet? Everybody’s starting to think he ripped them off. Maybe he got busted.
Rex Morgan: It’s bad enough when Beatty tries to write middle aged and old people and makes them sound like aliens trying badly to pretend they’re hunan, its even worse when the same happens with anyone below the age of 45.
Pluggers: If you’re trying to make a bald joke, maybe don’t have the plugger be an animal famous for having a bunch of fur and fluff so that the gag and imagery doesn’t become nonsensical.
@Drew Funk: Part of the issue is that the generation that is aging into Pluggerhood doesn’t write to the comics anymore. They can go on Facebook (or if they’re really well-off, simply buy their own social media venues) to rant about affronts to their “blue-collar suburban affluence.” (Why do you think their are so many online conspiracies about the Illuminati “lizard people”, after all?)
@Liam: Jim Davis has always presented himself and his fictional creations to the world as residents of Muncie, Indiana, though his operation is actually based in the nearby hamlet of DeSoto.