Gonna need a good editor to put this Nitrate back together
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Pluggers, 3/30/26
Wait, so we’re saying that pluggers … don’t like sports? Watching the wildly popular NCAA basketball tournament is non-plugger behavior? Pluggers prefer to pore over their financial statements, like a bunch of fucking nerds? Is that what pluggers have come to these days? This is much more shocking than them being poly now or whatever.
Archie, 3/30/26
I have to say that a dark horse for “most unrealistic aspect of Archie comics” is that Veronica, daughter of the most cartoonishly wealthy family in town, attends the local public school with the plebes. That having been said, this is a decent joke, and in my opinion what really makes it is that it’s Archie who’s been assigned the task of delivering the RSVP, despite the Lodges canonically having a butler.
Dick Tracy, 3/30/26
Oh, hey, I guess we know why Silver Nitrate has had such anxiety since he’s been in prison: turns out he’s a snitch! I sure hope none of his fellow prisoners read the syndicated newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy.
161 replies to “Gonna need a good editor to put this Nitrate back together”
Pluggers: Ha ha! Pluggers are too stupid to learn from the mistakes they make every year for the past half-century. Or is it, “Pluggers are too lazy to keep basic organization of receipts”? Or is it, “Pluggers are too poverty-stricken to afford 8 file folders to sort their tax records into”? I can’t seem to work “Pluggers are fat” and “Pluggers are disease-ridden meatbags” into this entry.
Today’s Pluggers makes me wonder if Indiana named a town Pennsylvania, solely for the sake of doing a bit.
DT:
“B.B. Eyes tried to recruit him for an escape…but he was too busy preparing himself to go as Lyle Lovett for Halloween!”
It’s not snitching, it’s revenge for being bothered in the library. Can’t a Nitrate read The Brothers Karamazov in peace?!
Archie:
“What is it?”
“She’s accusing me of looking like Otto Preminger!”
Pluggers:
“Indiana wants me…Lord, I can’t go back there — because I live in Pennsylvania.”
— Commenter Gene J. Jones, channeling R. Dean Taylor
SF: And they both get pneumonia and die, Hilary disappears into the foster care system never to be seen again, comic strip over! Please? PLEASE??
JP: Well screw you too, you little raspberry-haired brat!!
MW: John Long??? Moy, you did NOT have to give this guy a name at this point in the story. You could have just had him be ‘a desperate young man’ for the time being. That’s as lazy and unimaginative a name as… as… Mae Mae!
Luann: I suspect Les was consulting the Love-Matic Grampa in the men’s room for Tara to suddenly be all ‘you rotten, conniving, despicable sweel lil’ angel!’
Silver Nitrate is so anxious, his picture winces when it hears his name.
Pluggers:
Pluggers who are trying to do their taxes are distracted by reading Judge Parker because they observe April Bower engaging in March Madness.
Archie: He shows no favoritism yet obviously he sent her an invitation to detention to which she’s responded. Unlike the rest of the plebes to whom he just points his finger and says; “I’ll see your ass, after school!”
Pluggers: I call foul. No plugger earns enough to require that much tax paperwork. It’s 1040 EZ all the way.
Pluggers haven’t noticed that the IRS stopped taking manually filled in paper forms because God hasn’t granted them the serenity to accept that things change.
“Say, did the entire hallway just change colors for a second there when Archie came by? I knew I shouldn’t have used that Tabasco that expired in 1997.”
Pluggers have medical deductions out the wazoo, which reminds them: they really need toil have their wazoo looked at…
Archie Really thought that was going to be a document stating that Veronica now owned the school, and maybe even Mr Weatherbee’s life, but RSVP, that’s pretty good too.
Oh boy, the Mudges are learning of the delights that is Indiana, Pennsylvania! Fun fact: It is older than the state of Indiana, having already been in existence as a town when it was incorporated as a borough in 1816, the year Indiana was admitted to the union as a state. However if I’m reading the history right, the Indiana territory was organized in 1800, while the Indiana name in Pennsylvania originates with the creation of Indiana County in 1803, so the Pennsylvanians were still somewhat copying the Hoosiers. And California, Pennsylvania was absolutely a rip-off.
MW: The way Mary is rolling her eyes upwards as she says “you’ve been scammed,” she might as well have added “you fuckin’ asshole!” Save your self-righteous smug for your doctor boyfriend or Wilbur, Mary.
Asshole, indeed.
MW – Please tell me that Long is actually his middle name and that his last name is Silver.
Pluggers: March Madness for Pluggers is when they come out of hibernation and their annual hormonal heat cycle kicks in, and they spend one month fighting other males and furiously rutting with any equally hormonal mate who comes within sniffing distance, before heading out to find a den and mark new territory.
Archie: Canonically the reason that Veronica’s father sent her to a regular school, was to humble her, hanging out with regular teens, so that she doesn’t grow up into a snob (it didn’t work but at least his heart was in the right place)
Dick Tracy: I wanted to say he was pouring coffee, but is that… Milk? Does Dick have an old-timey milk jug in his fridge? For milk related purposes?
@Baja Gaijin: My interpretation is “Pluggers pretend to be working-class when they actually have complex
inheritancesinvestments that require something behind H&R Block and a 1040EZ form.”MW: It took me a good fifteen seconds to realize that “Long” was a last name as opposed to a modifier for “escapes.” And why not tell us his name from the start?
DT: “Silver nitrate spoke to me” sounds like the sort of a thing an alternative medicine person would say before inadvertently giving themselves chemical burns.
Pluggers: Doesn’t Gene J. Jones sound like a side-character in a superhero comic?
(Just thinking here)
Archie: Miss Grundy is missing her true calling as a quick-change artist—unless her private interactions with Mr. Weatherbee necessitated her quickly changing her skirt before Archie caught them in flagrante.
“Gene J. Jones” is such a Stan Lee names! And he put the name of a state as the name of a city! Clearly someone who is faking his identity to cover his many, many crimes, but still feels the urge to contribute to “Pluggers”!
Also for the sake of Suspension of Disbelief… I’m genuinely surprised that Archie actually managed to deliver the letter unscathed.
@Lauralot: The better question is, why are we following any of these characters at all? This is another Keith Hillend story, where Karen Moy summons dull characters into existence for Mary to… well, let’s just say “interact with,” because meddling might actually have been helpful in this case.
And if the story ends with “I let you get ripped off because I knew someone in Cambodia needed your money to escape a horrible situation”, I will smash something tasteful.
MW: Those security tracking labels on the soles of John Long’s shoes are certainly a space-saving improvement over the gigantic rover balloons that were previously used to retrieve escaped prisoners.
The only basketball-related madness Pluggers have is when they go ballistic trying to explain to their grandchildren that it is racist there are not more white players in the NBA
Wary Morth:
“Now, with all the experience I’ve gained, it’s time to begin a career of scamming on my own, where I get to keep all the money!”
JP By the time April and Randy show up, the writers will have completely forgotten that Charlotte was a preK/K kid when they left less than a year ago – will Randy and April be confused by their practically-grown-up near-teen’s mature reaction to their absence?
RMMD Got it, so: “motel customers getting room service” = just one cook, I guess the cleaning staff brings the orders to rooms, “two customers at a time plus room service” = cook can still handle it, need a waitress to deal with tables, but “more than two = THREE customers plus room service” = cook overwhelmed and needs a sous chef. Maybe this is the world’s most disorganized cook… or there are a LOT of dr*gs involved and he can’t stand having food requests harsh his mellow more than once or twice an hour?
Mr. Weatherbee’s look tells me he’s joined the mob. “She’d better be there, or she’ll wind up sleeping with the fishes.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: Oh, it’ll definitely end that way. How else could Mary claim any responsibility in her victory lap? She can’t exactly brag to Dr. Jeff that someone indirectly freed an enslaved person by ignoring her advice.
Archie – Kudos to Mr. Weatherbee for using Cathy’s trademark index-finger-to-the-sky to emphasize his point. I was kind of hoping for an “ack!” when Archie told him it was an RSVP.
Moose, a violently possessive young man who savagely beats the other boys into an inch of their lives for even talking to his girlfriend, Midge, is never seen getting punished despite being a clear and present danger to the male students of Riverdale High. I don’t know why Veronica is being sent to detention but be prepared to face the most expensive lawyers you will ever come across in your life, Weatherbee.
***
Pluggers create enough paperwork for their taxes that it piles up from the floor to almost reach the top of their desk. For the love of God, will someone please save pluggers from themselves?!?
Dick Tracy: If this winds up recapitulating the greatest scene from the early-aughts HBO series Oz, where David Johansen gets cornered by two rival gangs in the prison library and winds up dying of a heart attack, I will say that the strip is on its way back to gruesome glory. I mean, a little, anyway.
Gene J. Jones and John Long sound equally made-up. They’re both way too generic.
Pluggers: You believe Pluggers are more interested in basketball than tax paperwork. I sat with my mother for four hours sorting out (most of) her tax paperwork. We are not the same.
If that’s the case, his name should be John Dong, not John Long.
@Pozzo:
Weatherbee: And on another topic, our new transfer student from Scandinavia, Lucky Eddie is also sleeping with the fishes.
Grundy: What did he do?
Weatherbee: Nothing, he’s just a weirdo.
Also Dick Tracy: “Frickin’ stainless steel carafe, filled with wholesome 1% milk, not vodka, I could shoot a guy in the face…” “Internal monologue, Dick.”
Pluggers desperately search for a way to deduct the massive amounts of toilet paper they buy each week.
“that Veronica, daughter of the most cartoonishly wealthy family in town, attends the local public school with the plebes.”
Theory: Riverdale is small enough that it can’t support a private school and the public schools, and the Lodges, having been the wealthiest family in town since its founding, consider it a point of pride to keep everything going, so the local government services, including the public schools, are actually pretty good quality.
(Also, any families with “disruptive” kids are quietly given large sums of money to move elsewhere)
@Tom:
“(Also, any families with “disruptive” kids are quietly given large sums of money to move elsewhere)”
Moose and Reggie?
MW: H___y and scammer finally meet through Mary when pornstar Johnny Lo-o-ong seeks out his favorite fluffer, Wilbur Weston.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: You legit made me go back to check to see if the Plugger depicted was Andy Bear.
March Madness for Pluggers is about remembering whether you file in your strawman persona or real name, where to put the purple wax seal that invalidates the power of the IRS, how to claim capital gains on your redemption account, and finding the red pen you use to cancel UCC debts. You don’t want your SovCit buddies in the militia to laugh at you, do you?
@matt w: And Indiana, PA is the hometown of Jimmy Stewart, which gives the opportunity for this:
“Gene’s tax paperwork isn’t in his house, it’s in Bill’s house!”
MW: The “fraud den”? Were Moy and Brigman unable to think of anything better, or did they run out of room in the text box?
Hopefully they’ll focus on “John Long’s” escape, because Mary and Harv’s “Fraud!” “Not fraud!” routine has already worn out its welcome.
DtM: So Dennis is the sole child in the world who’s given the devil’s screen and hasn’t fallen into the “rat pushing bar for pellet” dopamine cycle?
Tune in next time, when he’ll be the first person to have read an EULA.
Zits: will Jeremy return The Scarlet with pages stuck together?
@Ken: It feels like an old N.E.S. game where every name forces the writer into an eight-character limit. Help MARYWRTH and HHART rescue JOHNLONG from FRAUDDEN! For great justice! Conglaturations!
Archie-Veronica has been very naughty and needs to be disciplined.
Slylock Fox-Slylock then arrests Smitty on false charges of balloon theft.
MW-H-rvey, your bank should have told you that you have been scammed. It’s such a shame that you had to hear from an acquaintance.
Archie: It would be funny if the butler showed up for detention. He would say something like “Miss Lodge was otherwise engaged,” and then sit at a school desk and read the British soccer results or something. Hey, after (checks) decades of reading Archie comics, the things just write themselves!
Dick Tracy: Why do they still have pictures of their favorite prisoners on the wall of their conference room? They can’t be wanted posters, since these people are in jail. Are they just for decoration, or as motivational art to go with the “Hang in There” swinging-kitten poster? And what ever happened to short prison haircuts, anyway?
Pluggers: Don’t tell pluggers that you can do your taxes on a computer with helpful software and submit them electronically, and it’s a lot easier, and this has been available for 20 years — it’s funnier if they don’t know!
Gassed Up Alleycats: Is Walt going to use the bible to claim he’s Methuselah?
@Ken: Considering that Rupert Holmes made a more complicated “escape” than this guy, I kinda hope we don’t. (“Now how am I going to get out of this exotic and bizarre country? Maybe I’ll ask the people of that condo complex two blocks down? That’s like, the American consulate of this place, right?”)
ARCHIE: This is how she handles her dates with Archie so I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised.
Pluggers: I was assuming that Pluggers, being of retirement age, shouldn’t have an overly complex tax profile. but then I remembered they’re probably working at least two jobs to supplement their meager Social Security check, as well as paying off enormous amounts of medical debt, so…yeah, this tracks.
DT: “Sorry, it’s just the silver nitrate talking.”
Dennis Minus Menace: Dennis feeling up Bo Peep behind Woody’s back?!? Highly menacing!!!
JP: Of all the things that an actual child of Charlotte’s age would not say, this is perhaps the one she would not say the most.
Luann: Remember, kids, when someone lies to you because they’re trying to get into your pants, you should take it as a compliment!
MW: Good job giving John Long a surname that could be either European or Asian, further confusing where exactly this fraud den is supposed to be.
@Hibbleton: “Fluffer” sounds like a term for a Furry Pimp.
MW: “Cambodian dragging on… John Long.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: THRILLHOU doesn’t appreciate you mocking him (You can make it up to him by buying him Bonestorm or go to Hell!)
MW: Wasn’t John Long a 70s pornstar? I thought he died of AIDS years ago.
It would have been funny, if after scaling the wall, he ends up at the Charterstone Pool party.
Like in the show Undergrads, where Gimpy’s computer was being hacked. After he leaves his dorm room, the hacker leaves her room at the same time, and reveals that their rooms are right next to each-other.
BB: I thought we’d left “Julius is a fairy” way behind, along with “Miss Buxley is a bubblehead who spills out of her clothing.” Yet here it is, back, sigh.
Blondie: This IS a shocker! Blondie doesn’t make gravy from scratch?
Dustin: What, no insult? I scrolled down to the final panel fully expecting “The weather forecast is irresponsible, JUST LIKE DUSTIN.”
JP: Hey, Chesty Neddy is back! This could be a good week, after all.
LUANN: “Now that I realize I can get you to stupidly risk your own life to appease me, I realize I kinda like you. Funny how the timing worked out of that, huh?” (giggles coquettishly)
Hey, kids, let’s learn some fun facts about Silver Nitrate! Did you know it explodes when exposed to ethanol? That it’s toxic but can be used to cure gonorrhea? That it’s a skin and eye irritant? That it’s a snitch who will soon be bleeding out in the library, dying somewhere between the graphic novels and the law books? Silver nitrate; don’t eat or drink or trust it.
@TheDiva: Today’s strip is a good example of how Plugger is too broad a label. The “lower middle class work-until-they-die” Pluggers wouldn’t have complex tax returns. Only the “upper middle class trying to pretend they’re regular people but aren’t” Pluggers would have complex tax returns. And today’s submission is from Indiana, PA, which is a small, rural, and not especially wealthy locale. So I think Gene J. Jones just outed himself as a fake Plugger.
I eagerly await the beginning of the Plugger civil war. Hopefully with lots and lots of casualties.
@Guillermo el chiclero: You’re thinking of John Holmes. Alongside Long Wang, Hung Well, and Enormous Genitals.
Phantom: “And don’t bother getting dressed.” After midnight tete-a-tetes in the Colonel’s private lair? This is pretty fucking suspicious, Patrolwoman; I’d bring along a sidearm and a chaperone.
SFx: I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am finding Smitty’s belly tee extremely disquieting.
Zits: Next week’s assignment is “Billy Budd,” Jeremy. Unspeakable filth!
FC – Jeffy: She’s worn out trying to memorize two lines of a poem? And they think I’m a moron.
PJ and Barfy: We’re the brains in this outfit.
Thel: She’s worn out, but she’ll spend all evening repeating her version of those two lines, probably saying something like “choppin’ down the bunny’s tail” over and over. Where did I put that new bottle of vodka?
S4th – Hmph. That wouldn’t bother Frazz and the lady teacher. Maybe you two would tolerate it better if you insulted someone else behind their back while you ran.
Pluggers – Pluggers hate the basketball March Madness. They’re pissed off when those basketball games preempt Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
JP – Horsie picture – check. Condescending, snotty child-speak – check. This can be remedied by a bonkus to the conkus.
Rex Morgan – Yeah, keep hiring so that every customer has their own personal server. That’s exactly like every restaurant I’ve ever been in.
BLONDIE: You can either hang up the phone now or listen to your husband getting pummeled by the boss at the other end.
Luann: I’ve been to a climbing wall a couple of times, and there is NO WAY they are letting ANYONE scamper up a wall without a harness on. Les would be getting drop-kicked out the front door right now.
JP: Charlotte may be precocious, but tact clearly isn’t amongst her strong suits.
GT: “Marty Moon here. Finally admitting that he doesn’t really work, Gil Thorp goes back to school today to try out for the golf team. It’s not looking good based on that form.”
@Weaselboy: The important thing is that you realize that his first name ain’t “Baby.” It’s Trixie! (But it’s “Ms. Janet” if you’re nasty though. Which Mr Hart certainly is since he’s obsessed with a “woman” just because she sent him a few pic of her big AI-generated boobies his way.)
@Banana Jr. 6000: How dare you ignore famous Roman actor Bigus Dickus.
Pluggers do like sports, they just prefer the NFL and NASCAR
RSVP is a funny acronym, because 75% of it is “s’il vous plait“, which is just “please” and does not convey any useful information. Répondez is the only part you need, the rest is a useless peacock tail!
Nancy: today’s sign that it’s time for a legacy strip be put to bed. Permanently.
Most recent new artist Caroline Cash admits in Sunday’s strip that she’s already run out of ideas and began a journey to the home of previous most recent new artist Olivia Jaimes.
Wary Morth II:
So how, sans passport or money, is Trixie planning to get home after the Great Escape from his pig butchering scam centre/prison in Myanmar or Cambodia?
Whoa, did someone change the settings on the AJGLU-3000? Today’s strip is actually solid.
@UncleJeff: re: Caroline Cash: Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a self-depiction of a young new female cartoonist wearing a pinafore or a frilly apron with a hair ribbon and a pair of Mary Janes? Is there a Union stipulation that they all come to work in overalls, stomp boots, motorcycle jackets, and chains?
A Plugger’s interest in March Madness might be rooting the Final Four to include the service academies, or rooting against whatever college that Newsmax is currently accusing of spreading a woke mind virus.
DT – “Silver nitrate spoke to me. It said it wants to go back to being called ‘lunar caustic.’ I think that’s pretentious.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Let’s get that cute waitress over here again”
“You’re still ogling that waitress? We’ve been here an hour! Surely you asked me here to discuss some business!”
“No, I just like having an audience…”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
It’s a good thing Mary doesn’t give a shit about anything happening in southeast Asia, so that’ll never happen. (Remember when Jeff got his “dream job” healing underprivileged kids in this region and Mary went there and almost literally dragged his as back to the States, cause no way was her man going to work in some filthy “third-world” hovel sense of “fulfillment” be damned, because that’s just how compassionate and considerate Mary is? Of course, that requires us to still pretend like John Long is in another country and not at, like, the rival condo complex down the block.)
@Ukranazi Stepan:
“…anyway, I won’t bore you with the details of my miraculous escape from the country…”
DTM: “Video games are okay, but there’s nothing like the feel of a real toy.”
…said no kid ever.
JP: Wouldn’t it be nice if Moy didn’t take the easy route and Charlotte wasn’t portrayed as a “wiser than her adult caretaker” precocious youngster.
Plugg: This is getting a little too close to home. I literally just got back from delivering all my tax paperwork to my tax service, when I saw this strip. Fortunately most of the stuff is downloadable now, which our Plugger Dogg-Mann doesn’t seem to know. Or perhaps it’s not an option in the Pluggerverse.
@Hibbleton: The Andy Griffith Show comes from a different era, when (harrrumph!!) kids respected their elders and get off my damn lawn.
The “Dumb Dad” trope seems to have ramped up in the 1980s, to such an extent that producers got embarrassed and began to dial it back within the past few years.
@Voshkod: I was referencing a 1970s classic comedy movie, but it wasn’t Quest For The Holy Grail. And I got the order wrong: Hung Well should actually be first. (Someone, please, tell me you got this reference.)
@2+2=7: Very true. But Mary’s lack of interest in anyone outside her immediate circle, and the fact that $200,000 is a very survivable loss for anyone who can afford to live in Charterstone, won’t prevent Mary from being the self-appointed hero of the story. It’s all she ever does, really.
MW: John Long just ran right up a vertical wall and jumped off the top, right? There was no climbing at all. I withdraw my earlier criticisms about this “fraud den” being nothing like the real ones in Southeast Asia. This one is like nowhere on Planet Earth.
MW: I’m leaning toward the idea that the pig-butchering scam is located in the US. Not in Santa Royale, of course, they’re too… too nice for such things. But it might be in the nearby town of Goleta, which could lead to John “Trixie” Long meeting Harv’s estranged daughter. The Plot-O-Matic-2000 will then engage and we’ll have a summer wedding.
LUANN: There’s a guy named John Long in MW who could show you two pathetic crawling losers how wall-scaling should REALLY be done.
@The Rambling Otter: Pluggers: Doesn’t Gene J. Jones sound like a side-character in a superhero comic?
_____________________________________
You can calls him Gene, or you can calls him J. but you don’t havetas calls him Jones.
Pluggers – The only sure things in a Plugger’s life are morbid obesity, death, and taxes.
@White Rabbit: I use HR Block, and this year for the first time uploaded all my PDFs to their site. The representative thanked me, but since their software doesn’t automatically populate the tax forms from the uploads, he still had to enter everything by hand!
Did anyone else notice that John Long (Tommy Beedle?) stopped to shave while climb/jumping over the wall?
Pluggers – Pluggers are forced to have multiple streams of income after a lifetime of voting against their own interests, like stable jobs and pensions.
Archie – Is Veronica acting with sarcastic malice, or merely out of habits of the upper crust? Either way, solid Archie joke.
Dick Tracy – Silver Nitrate would have escaped, except for the fact that he was only part way through book 2 of a really good 9 part fantasy series, all of which were available in the prison library.
LUANN: does this qualify as a “meet cute” (since they previously were wearing protective shells)
MW: my advice to escapee John Long: do NOT go to police as they doubtlessly know about the facility and may be paid to return absconders. Instead, go to his consulate.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #71: Well, nice nice to know that after John Long’s wiener went south he can still find gainful employment in the IT field.
John Holmes fun fact: Holmes left strict instructions that after his death his wife was to inspect his nude body right before cremation to make sure it was intact. He was afraid his famous member would end up in some collector’s bell jar.
Curtis: Wasn’t there already a whole storyline where it turned out Mrs Nelson was a pianist at a nightclub or something? Or am I getting confused with the Kwanzaa story about the little girl who nobody noticed was a little girl?
EC: Hmm. I work from home a couple of days a week. And I quite like cooking. And I still generally save prepared-from-scratch meals for the weekends. I guess Abby has more energy than I do.
But hands up anyone who thinks that if Len were working from home, he’d be preparing elaborate meals in between his work? Anyone at all?
FG: Okay, right now I’m strangely charmed by the idea Bok has landed in a crofting community in the Mongovian counterpart to Scotland, but I reserve the right to be irritated by it later depending on how it goes.
MW: TFW you suddenly realise this character should probably have a name other than “Trixie” in inverted commas, and you accidentally fixate on the last word in his thought bubble.
Pluggers: I’ve probably said this before, but when I was younger, I read strips like this about the agony of going through reciepts and filling in tax forms every March and thought “Ha ha, cartoonists are so used to the self-employed lifestyle that they have no idea most people don’t have to do this!” And then I learned that in America, they kind of do, which continues to baffle me. Every April I get a letter from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs confirming that my employer has given them their cut of my salary, and a letter from Highland Council saying they’re assuming I’m in the same council tax bracket as last year since I haven’t told them otherwise, and direct debiting that amount. That’s it!
RMMD: Chef is concerned that if they start hiring more kitchen staff, they might be the fussy sort who point out a backwards baseball cap isn’t actually a hairnet.
SH: So… either after all that time we’ve spent on “Gill can probably score from outside the stadium if he wants, but we have to pretend he can’t to be sporting, as long as we don’t actually lose,” Gill’s decided “Sod it,” or the opposing team also has someone with supernatural shooting skills, which would make the game actually fair. And in the Holbrookverse, things not being slanted in favour of the Designated Heroes is basically the same as being stacked against them!
Blondie: Dithers pulls out another contract with the pages stuck together.
“Then I assume these mash notes are your wife’s too ……Sorry.”
@TheDiva: #58: He’s probably doing a lot of contract work going by the stack of 1099 forms.
@Horace Broon:
You forced me to look up crofting, and I need a drink after about half the Wikipedia entry. Last time I was so dryly baffled was when I tried to understand cricket. Well played, Britannia.
Not snark about a current comic, but rather about a comics-related dream. I dreamt I was some minor character in a Mark Trail plot-line wherein Mark and Doc Davis were being such jerks to Cherry that she decided to climb a tree dressed in a bear costume. A bear mistook her for a rival and mauled her to death.
I think I read Comics Curmudgeon too frequently.
Baby Blues – That’s not too many halves, because all those categories could overlap. But I doubt his accuracy anyway.
@Ukulele Ike: Burying the lede here. This is the first-ever verified sighting of former Nancy artist Olivia Jaimes, and in her home dimension no less.
@Ken: Santa Royale isn’t too “nice.” I mean Mary’s neck of the woods, with it’s scenic
mosquito hatcherynature trails is, of course, but don’t forget parts of the city are like 90’s Compton. (Did we forget the Great Santa Royale Dug War that ripped a warehouse apart? Or Dr Corey’s run-down clinic sitting on Cracked Plaster Lane? Or the downtown area which is still gentrifying? I mean Tommy’s white trash friends might be snorting it up right outside the compound for all we know.)MW Interesting to know that parkour / Ninja Warrior has now penetrated so far into the global culture that any random scam-center slave can expect to be so practiced at the sport that after weeks or months of confinement, he can still do the Warped Wall climb – and on the first try!
Gasoline Alley-And so we enter the third week of Walt dreaming of the sweet embrace of death.
Marmaduke-The occasional virgin sacrifice.
REX MORGAN M.D.: I love how optimistic Pompadour is about the ease of quickly hiring people for his cafe. And why shouldn’t he be? I’m sure there’s some high-end clothing magnant willing to sacrifice her billion-dollar fashion empire for a hash-slinger position just waiting in the wings!
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): Also, I’m not a brilliant successful motel owner like Mr. Pompadour there, but…if you want to get your cafe “poppin'” (Everybody run! Rex Morgan M.D. is trying to get all “street” on our asses!), wouldn’t you concentrate on getting guests to come to the motel first, since that’s pretty much the only people who are going to be eating in the cafe? And even that’s a stretch, since this strip has made it excruciatingly clear that there is obe restaurant everyone in town goes to (Did Wanda disassemble her diner and take it with her when she went on her honeymoon or something?) Is that why Mud is suddenly so eager to choke down the watery runny eggs that only the finest chef at a 1-star motel can prepare instead of eating at the place he’s always eaten at?
@A Grave Mind: I just checked the Wikipedia page, and I honestly found it pretty confusing myself. The short version is “tenant farming in Scotland”. You don’t really need to know the details of the various Crofting Acts or the difference between a croft and a baille.
@DAS: I am so relieved to learn I’m not the only Mudge who has dreams like this. I once had one where I was suddenly told they were bringing back Apartment 3-G, I was the new writer, and the first strip was due tomorrow.
@Horace Broon:
#104. PHANTOM– Oh, so that’s Bok! I thought it was the beginning of a new arc based on a restyled Daredevil.
Though just a comic character I respect this woman so much. Alone, elderly, vulnerable, she responds to a well dweller’s presence with courtesy and probative questions rather than fear and threats.
@Dr. Larry Erhardt: Granted, but how many cartoonists would you recognize if you passed them on the avenue? For all I know Olivia is my next-door neighbor, with Batuik on the other side and McEldowney across the street. And Moy moonlights as a busboy in the neighborhood tavern.
(Is that a “#1 Grandma” mug?)
@Activist: Also, he’s stepping out of the well in horns and a tail. If this woman really were a Scottish crofter she’d assume Auld Nick’s come for her mortal soul at last.
DT: Dick Tracy is so straight-laced, he determinedly pours his drink out in a precise, vertical stream.
@Activist:
*117. FG: I should have said we were talking about Flash Gordon
@The Rambling Otter: Dick Tracy: I wanted to say he was pouring coffee, but is that… Milk? Does Dick have an old-timey milk jug in his fridge? For milk related purposes?
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From the look on Dick’s face, that milk has been in the MCU fridge since the FDR administration.
@Activist: I figured it out. Hey, I hope he’s not too hungry after all those adventures. He should have packed a Bok’s lunch.
@Ukulele Ike:
#123 FG: Ike – giggle
MT: I really liked the lizard yesterday. Can’t we forget this story for a few days and follow the lizard?
@Liam: I can’t quite believe it, but after doing the same to scrapbooking, purchasing local eggs, and cat ownership, GASOLINE ALLEY is managing to ruin even Hell.
FG: Ew. Now my water’s going to taste like Dragonman sweat.
@Horace Broon: #116:
“and the first strip was due tomorrow”
No sweat. Just slop it through. It can’t be any worse than the current artist.
@A Worthy Foe: Given that J.L just ran right up a vertical wall like Fred Astaire in ROYAL WEDDING, I suppose pausing halfway up to shave wasn’t that much of a feat.
MW: “I’ve waited for this chance for so long.”
“What’s that, John Long?”
“No, I said it’s so long.”
“It? Then it’s Dick Long?”
“No, that’s my brother. Call me John.”
“Long John, but not Long Dick.
“I didn’t say it was long. Just so long.”
“Only so long ? Long John? Dick Short?”
“No, Rick Short. He was an infielder for the Washington Nationals for a little while.”
“Short Nationals. Then, Long Giants?”
“No, it’s John Long. For so long.”
“This has gone on too long. So, John Long, so long.”
“Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right so far.”
“So far??? I DON”T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: You’re thinking of John Holmes. Alongside Long Wang, Hung Well, and Enormous Genitals.
Stop posting for even a little while, and people forget all about you.
@Anonymous: Pluggers do like sports, they just prefer the NFL and NASCAR
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Gearface Gertie is a Plugger?
@GarrisonSkunk: Can’t be. She has a flatscreen that isn’t in the pawn shop.
Gil Twerp: “This is all about Me! Me! If she can be a sassy waitress, I can be a golf teacher! Remember, just shake it into the hole!
@Hugh G. Rection: It was a reference to Kentucky Fried Movie.
@GarrisonSkunk: Gearface Gertie is a Plugger?
Gertie somehow has family members in her life despite being completely insufferable, and forces her own narrow preferences onto the rest of the human race at every possible opportunity. So that’s a big “yes.”
@Anonymous: #78: But when they do watch the NFL, they bitch constantly about how woke it’s become and how the no hit rules and concussion protocals have turned the players into pussies.
@GarrisonSkunk: This really calls for a comment about Beth not wanting to have kids.
@Ken: Goleta! That means the whole scam operation is run by that little girl who never got her rainbow swirl ice cream. Soon she will have her revenge! She’ll have enough money to buy all the rainbow swirl ice cream in THE WORLD, bwah hah hah hah…
That’s a tall order, as Goleta is famous as the Rainbow Swirl Ice Cream Capital of the World. More rainbow swirl ice cream is manufactured there than anyplace else in the universe.
@Banana Jr. 6000: It was a reference to Kentucky Fried Movie.
My mom doesn’t let me watch filth like that. The Rections are a respectful family.
Late to the game:
Slylock fox: Smitty is not interested in winning the race. He is smuggling stolen helium which is now in short supply world wide.
Late Thread Cuisine: Japan makes more than just seafood. See? Food.
@Baja Gaijin: Someone found a way to recycle confetti, I see.
@Baja Gaijin:
It has colored sprinkles, I’ll give it a try.
SPECIAL TO SCRATCHY SCROTUM: Whatdya think about this insect repellant/masturbatory aid?
@144 Dr. Pill: Good one.
@145 Deadly Goon Bugs: Don’t sprinkles belong on cupcakes, not sandwiches?
@Baja Gaijin: Sprinkles are OK on ice cream sandwiches. But if that is an ice cream sandwich, I have to add that bread is not OK for ice cream sandwiches. It’s confusing, I know.
@148 Peanut Gallery: Nope, not an ice cream sandwich.
@Baja Gaijin: sprinkles belong on Fairy Bread – never tried it, not really a Canuck thing, but if cinnamon sugar toast works, so should Fairy Bread and this sandwich looks like an interesting example. Bonus points if its pinkish tint comes from being a sweeter bread with fruit puree in the recipe like Hawaiian guava bread.
Pluggers are too lazy to label their frustration smoke bubbles “The Urge”.
@150 CanuckDownSouth: DING DING DING DING DING! We have a winner! It’s 7-11 Japan’s take on Fairy Bread, an Australian treat. The source of color for the “cherry blossom pink bread” isn’t stated. I’d guess is that it’s not from fruit puree.
@Peanut Gallery: @Baja Gaijin: Sprinkles are OK on ice cream sandwiches.
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Sprinkles, the Dick Tracy villian?
@GarrisonSkunk: Sprinkles, the Dick Tracy puppy.
@Baja Gaijin:
Everything is better with sprinkles.
@Deadly Goon Bugs: I’m not sure about steak… or chicken noodle soup… (:
Sprinkles is Sparkles’ dog. Don’t ask what she calls the cat.
@Baja Gaijin: What a relief. I was thinking it was slices of raw fish (because Japanese food) covered with sprinkles (because Japanese food).
I feared fish or dried eels or, like, placenta was involved here, because Japanese, this “Fairy Bread” thing sounds pretty okay.
@Ukulele Ike: From spending too much time on Radio Spirits on Sirius/XM I know the smart-ass kid was a staple in 40s and 50s radio comedy. Virtually every show had one, and Jack Benny had Dennis O’ Day in that role.
DT:
“He began to irritate me after a fashion, so after I was through extracting all the information I thought I could reasonably get from him, I said, ‘Hiyo, Silver! — away! And off he gallo0ped.”