Monday fast takes
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Dick Tracy, 11/24/25
“Can’t believe this clown would rather cut people’s brake lines for money instead of building elaborate funny cars for the mafia. Nobody wants to work anymore!”
Pluggers, 11/24/25
Not sure if the joke here is “pluggers are lazy and listless, and look for ways to postpone even the simplest chores as long as possible” or “pluggers shit a lot, and messily.”
Mary Worth, 11/24/25
Wait, does Toby think Sunny’s entire species was smuggled over the border from Mexico, only to die en masse in a trucking accident? Can’t believe I’m just now putting this together, but is she, like … dumb dumb?
Shoe, 11/24/25
It was 51 years ago! That’s actually a pretty easy fact to look up.
48 replies to “Monday fast takes”
I’m CRUSHED the artist added “Root” to Dick’s bottle, clearly at the last minute. Dick’s a beer-with-lunch guy, not a $2 bottle soda guy! Christ, next you’ll tell me he voted for Mondale!
But was it Real Nixon, now Bird Nixon? Or Shoeniverse’s Duck Nixon, who was president until a year ago. Keep pimpin, Biz!
Real Plugger bears are way too cheap to buy Charmin. 2-ply is too high-falootin’ anyway.
Toby’s TV show enters its second hour of some jack-off laughing. Or, the Tonight Show, since Carson left.
He’s just saying that because Andy Bear is stingy with his wiping. His underwear is a Jackson Pollock nightmare.
Shoe: Bird incels really commit to the lifestyle.
DT:
“Those are awfully long arms of yours in today’s first panel, Buford! — has Rex Morgan checked you out for Marfan’s Syndrome?”
The tragedies known as Halloween TP Incidents make Pluggers weep.
MW: The smuggler went mad from all the backseat driving from the talking parrots
(squawk!) Turn right…no left…you’re following too close….go faster…slow down…I’m hungry…I gotta pee…(squawk!)
and drove off Aldo’s leap.
MW:
How exactly is it that Mary can discern that Sunny is doing “pretty well now,” and what are the telltale signs? — has she managed to squeeze ornithology classes in between her meddling and her baking?
MW:
Since there were three baked muffins on Mary’s plate when she arrived at Toby’s doorstep on Friday and there appear to be at least five now, I wonder if Toby maybe has tabletop wax muffins the way some people display wax fruit.
DT ‘Bogart and Ozob’ sounds like a lost Beckett play.
Congrats, Pluggers, you managed to outcreepy the Charmin Bears.
MW That has to be the greatest into dialogue box in the history of this strip. The only thing that would have made it better is if their conversation afterwards was completely unrelated.
Shoe An entire geological age ago, before the rise of the humanoid avians as a dominant species? You can just say “it’s been a while.”
Pluggers:
If one is supposed to “write what you know,” I wonder what that says for Mr. Joseph.
Sadly, too many Plugger marriages break up when a “cheap but thin” is paired with a “thick but soft” TP buyer.
DT: Tracy is willing to show some solidarity with the working-class small-town cop by sharing his $4 vending-machine-sandwich lunch, but he insists on washing it down with a $5 artisanal soda. That’s why they call him “The Dick”.
MW: The way Sunny is partially blocking Toby’s view of the TV, does she actually believe that he is part of the show?
“Oh, Sunny! Don’t talk that way to Ross.”
MW: Mary and Toby fail to observe that Sunny has stopped laughing. After only a few minutes listening to the two women chatting, the expression on the parrot’s face, with his beady eyes squinting under a slight feathery frown and his beak pressed firmly shut, indicates that Sunny has quickly read the room, figured out what life at Charterstone will hold, and resolved that at the first opportunity he’s going to make a break for it, QUALITY PELLETS notwithstanding.
How crushing it must be to be lonely, in a world where Shoe gets dates.
@Bob Tice: ‘All the better to point at you with, my dear Dick!’
@Bob Tice: Not to mention, it could all be a big co-winky-dink that this ‘accident’ happened and Sunny turned up in the park. This bird could still be a missing pet for all we know. Too bad there isn’t an animal expert in this strip, who works in a building that literally says ‘ANIMAL’ on it, that could offer some advice and guidance on what happens when animals randomly appear.
RMMD: GASP! It’s the stalker’s identical twin brother! They liked to tag team their stalkees, and when the twin heard that his dear brother had died in the line of stalker duty, he swore revenge! He’ll annoy and pester Blondie to death if it’s the last thing he does!
…Or it could just be Augie Doggy Ding Dong Daddy. ‘I finally finished grading those papers, can we go ahead with the sex know?’ [puppy dog eyes]
MW: So, if breaking Federal law isn’t going to be the plot conflict here, it must be Ian.
RMMD: DING DONG! It’s Summer’s work friends, come to take her to a BAR, where she can attract a NEW (psycho) man! Wheee!
GT: I’m surprised Mr. TMI announcer didn’t say, “Once married, but now she likes chicks!”
SHOE: So, Tricky Dick was the last President to get his motor running? Unsettling in SO many ways.
PLUGGERS: My mother used to buy things; shoes, paper towels – and say it was her “lifetime supply.” OF COURSE, we asked her what our options were if she ran out and was still above ground.
Please tell me that Ozob’s specialty was modifying cars so an entire mob hit squad could fit in a tiny VW Beetle.
DT: This new Fast and Furious movie looks… whatever the opposite of lit is.
Pluggers: I actually think the Charmin bears would be less annoying if they wore trucker caps and flannel.
Shoe: Today’s strip is about a bird that once had sex with Richard Nixon, or possibly Agnew or Kissinger.
Man, that’s one “Pluggers” strip that could stand on its own, without a caption. In fact, they should just go ahead and market the t-shirt.
@Bob Tice: How would you know the difference between wax muffins and the kind Mary brings?
One of the purest pleasures I’ve known in my life was living next to a grocery store that sold toilet paper in 112-roll packs. Surely one of the major tenets of the Plugger lifestyle is buying things in bulk, and a storage room full of TP is much preferrable than a roll with 1000 sheets of paper thin enough to tear if you breathe on it?
From the look of it, Pluggers get their adult toys at Sam’s Club, and that is all I am going to say about that.
Dick Tracy: A table that could seat six in the break room is frankly incredible. How big is this place? How many people want to have Doritos and a small-batch root beer at the same time?
[Checks funding levels for the Neo-Chicago Metropolitan Police Department]
Oh.
— Psalm 10:16-18, MARY WORTH International Version
MW It’s the Miracle of the multiplication of the Muffins, folks! (Gospel of Meddle, 5:1)
Also possibly Mary demonstrating her reality-warping powers as the plate has transformed into a bowl.
Shoe: This is genuine. My parents are always asking me things I then have to look up on my phone instead of doing it themselves.
DT: Who made those sandwiches? Mary Worth?
Pluggers: If anyone looked at me the way bear guy is looking at that toilet paper, I’d start running.
MW: This storyline could go two ways and the suspense is not killing me. Toby could fall deeper into the delusion that Sunny is the lone survivor of his South American species and on arrival in another continent has gained super powers, or the trauma of the truck crash will build up an insufferable ennui in his soul leading to a premature death and funeral that all of Charterstone must attend.
Next week in Pluggers: “Pluggers are so old, they don’t even buy 1,000 sheet toilet paper anymore.”
Wait. Are the butt-obsessed Charmin bears Pluggers? Are they nudists? Can back-to-nature types even be Pluggers? What’s going on?
Mary Worth: Forget the Amazon parrot nonsense, we have a giant head in panel two! A giant, floating head, very menacing!
Uh, I’m being told it’s on the TV screen. Nothing to see here. Carry on.
FC:
“Mommy, Billy also belched, farted, and scratched his balls —but I’m pretty sure he got that from Grandpa.”
PLUGGERS: With trucker work drying up and the plant closing, Andy is resorting to trying to get work as one of the Charmin Bears.
I’m pretty sure a bear with toilet paper is infringing on a trademark, Pluggers.
***
Parrots and Toby, putting the P.T. in P.T.S.D. (Parrots, Toby’s Sure Dumb).
***
Bird Richard Nixon: “I am not a rook.”
@Guts Dozier: That’s why they call him “The Dick”.
___________________________________
DON’T LOOK ETHEL!
MW-Come, Toby, let Mary feast on your sadness.
Slylock Fox-It’s the fire Slylock kicks Max into.
RMMD-It’s the Ding Dongs I ordered!
MW-“And you, Toby, how are you doing since Ian left and will return in a week or two?”
FC-“From you! I learned it by watching you!”
PLUGGERS: Pluggers publish their Covid-era comics five years too late. (So expect a sick burn about tariffs by 2033)
Gasoline Alley: Wait, they got eggs from the Chicken Pluckers convention? The poultry biz is different there somehow.
Luann: “You’re not only incapable of cooking Thanksgiving dinner, you can’t even provide the vessels for cooking it” is a hell of a message, Grandma.
FC: What is more odd: Billy watching football and drinking beer, or BDK being a couch potato who only drinks cola?
SHOOET: The story is told of a soldier in the Korean War, who was put into a coma by an artillery shell blast in 1953. Sixteen years later, in April of 1969, he awakens, looks out the window of his hospital room, and sees the flag at half staff. He asks the nurse why. She tells him Eisenhower died last week. “Oh, no!” he says, “That means that [grawlix] NIXON is president!”
@The Quiet Man: The Wicked Stalker of the West! He’s worse than the other one!
@A Grave Mind: The artist didn’t put the word “ROOT” on that bottle of 12% ABV Imperial Stout; Tracy did.
How far off is the panel where a Plugger is depicted enjoying his bidet? Really sorry for sharing this though (and, indeed for having it).
@Kyle: THOUGHT
Shoefly — Yes, I remember my last date well. We were shacked up at the Watergate Hotel when she said she had to go look at some plumbing. Never came back. . .