If I wanted to think this much about the 6-7 meme, I would’ve had children
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Herb and Jamaal, 12/3/25
As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Pluggers was insanely on the cutting edge of doing a 6-7 meme joke in the syndicated newspaper comics, the joke being that a child-plugger says “6-7” and an adult plugger says “How did you know?” and the caption says “For many pluggers, 6-7 is the year they graduated high school.” Which is, you know, fine, although it continues to center boomer pluggers and not the vibrant, rising Gen X plugger community. Anyway, I guess we should be taking bets on the order in which other comics will tackle this important cultural phenomenon and in what fashion they handle it. I’m not sure if any of us would’ve answered the first question for Herb and Jamaal with “right after Pluggers,” but for the second one many of us would’ve correctly guessed “incomprehensibly.”
Alice, 12/3/25
I’ve spent literally decades angrily telling comics artists that you can’t just have your characters look directly at the readers and make complaints that you personally have about the world with no other joke or wordplay, but you know what? It happens all the time so clearly I’m wrong and they’re right. Anyway, cars are just too expensive! The manufacturers forgot that the purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. Does every new car need all that stuff?
Dick Tracy, 12/3/25
Oh, yeah, remember how Silver Nitrate is having a hard time in prison? You might think it’s because America’s carceral system is inherently dehumanizing, but maybe it’s because he’s being kept away from his true passion: driving around town in a souped-up funny car with his barefoot sister spraying machine gun fire at random.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/3/25
It’s easy to forget when you read it every day for years, but the title of Mother Goose and Grimm reminds you that the strip was originally situated as being at least kind of a spoof of fairy tale/nursery rhyme stuff, sometimes it makes a half-hearted attempt to go back to its roots. I like how the cow knows in advance how bad this joke is going to be and clearly doesn’t want to be there. Hey, buddy, none of us want to be here, OK?
The Wizard of Id, 12/3/25
Hey, everyone, they did a My Chemical Romance joke in the Wizard of Id, right here in the year 2025! I guess we don’t have to worry about a 6-7 joke from this crew for several decades.
39 replies to “If I wanted to think this much about the 6-7 meme, I would’ve had children”
Alice/DT: When Alice asks “Does every new car need all that stuff?”, she’s referring to things like machine guns and turbochargers and vampire fangs. Alice and Dick Tracy actually take place in the same universe – you can tell because like any classic Dick Tracy character, Alice is a grotesque mutant in a weird romance with moon aliens.
Wizard of Id: [single haunting piano note]
When I was/
a young boy/
my father/
took me into the city/
to read one of the worst comics ever written.
H&L: She’s AI.
MG&G I know it’s easy to forget your initial premise as you write complicated prose, but if you’re making a three panel cartoon, you really should be able to remember that you said “jumped” in panel one, so you can’t act as if you were referring to an airplane flight in panel three.
MG&G – “No, all they had were crappy comics like this one.”
DT: Wait, why does Ozob have a “way bigger budget” than Silver? I don’t know how well being a classic movie-themed villain really pays, but it’s got be more lucrative than putting on cockroach-themed clown shows at county fairs.
I really hate it when Josh reminds me that our age group is becoming Pluggers.
MW: Oh, this has been even better than I hoped it would be. The parrot and Ian glowering at each other, ol’ chinbeard actually harrumphing, Toby desperately trying to make peace… My favorite arc since Also Kelrast!
I enjoy DT helpfully providing a balloon labeled “machine gun.” They need to go the full nine here, though! “Dick Tracy’s Hand!” “Cigarette!” “Thinking Cop’s Chin!” Oh, the possibilities!
Blondie: Dagwood, maybe working for an owner who loses money running a vending machine isn’t the horse to hitch your wagon to.
FC:
“Miss McElfresh didn’t get her gift.”
“Uh, porch…buccaneers?”
Crankshaft: Nothing says “esprit de corps” like a bowling team dressed in a random assortment of mismatched tops.
MW: “You mean pheasant under glass? Sure, honey!”
Zits: Connie and Walt officially become Gen-X.
The despair on that cow’s face, ye gods. “No, Grimm. I was trying to end it all, okay? Why I jumped, the Moon just happened to be there. Thank God I lived, so I could set up the crappiest joke today this side of Intelligent Life. I’m gonna take a bath. You got a toaster around here?”
Bizarro: Steals a joke from History of the World: Part I
I expect Blondie will have Elmo make a 6-7 quip about 48 years from now.
@Batiuk’s Attic: Are you of the mindset that Pluggerism is determined by age and age alone? That a newspaper comic or a newspaper comic blog host (by your own admission ) determines your inclusion in this made up genre?
FC: Did Thel give the gift to some random passerby or are school kids delivering packages to supplement their lunch monies now that paper routes are a thing of the past because that certainly isn’t Billy.
“I can’t worry about that now, Wizard, the Falkland Islands have been invaded!”
RMMD-Autumn is also a Mary Sue.
FC-Miss Mcelfresh needs to open that in private. It’s a special gift from Mommy.
@Will: Every now and then I see a bird in a pose that makes me think “why did it take so long to realize they’re dinosaurs?” Kudos to Brigman for that second panel with Sunny in the classic T-Rex stance, and an extra shout-out for Ian’s resemblance to an orangutan.
Yes, I killed the yesterthread! (triumphant war cry)
BCN: Pretty accurate adaptation so far, all things considered…
C’shaft: Tom Batiuk is really, really proud of that “Margo Lanes” thing, isn’t he? He’s this close to having a character say, “Hey, did anyone realize the name of this bowling alley, ‘Margo Lanes,’ is almost identical to ‘Margo Lane,’ friend and confidant to the classic pulp fiction character The Shadow? Boy, I’ll bet the guy who came up with that must have a deep knowledge of popular culture and a sharp sense of humor!”
DT: “Criminals all have the same mindset.” Do they, though? I mean, practically every hood in Neo-Chicago has their own gimmick or personality quirk or vocabulary tic. Do you honestly think, say, Double-Up and Rikki Mortis are coming from the exact same headspace?
Dustin: And now we se why Dustdad was so eager to have some quality time with his son: he’s certain it will end in a blood sacrifice.
GT: Wow, sounds like a great game! Wish we could have seen it, instead of watching Gil’s steadfast refusal to jump on the AI bandwagon again.
JP: “…But then I realized that making Charlotte happy would require a lot of time and attention I’m prepared to give, so can you move in with her?”
Luann: Why would an exam be scheduled for early January in the first place? It’s the top of the semester; even assuming this is a year-long course it’s very likely they’d be starting a new unit rather than doing any kind of cumulative review. Forget not knowing how colleges work, does Clan Evans know how any kind of school works?
MW: “We’d better be having poultry tonight, is all I’m saying.”
Phantom: The Ghost Who Knows the Importance of Word-of-Mouth Publicity
RMMD: Really? “She has a different hair color and job and that makes her completely different”? And somehow that makes everything OKAY? I was expecting this to be stupid, but sweet baby Jesus…
Today’s Alice reminds me of a recent joke. “Cars have too many new features. All I wanted to do was back up, and it showed me a movie of someone being run over.”
H&J: The “6-7” meme is itself incomprehensible by design; is Herb and Jamal ironically missing the point by complaining about its incomprehensibility? Or, by making an incomprehensible joke about it, have they reached the apotheosis of its absurdism?
Alice: I struggle to believe that cars in the Alice-verse are that expensive. I mean, they’d just be made out of vague abstract shapes like everything else in this comic.
H&J – So…this is the hand I eat with, and this is the one I use for wiping my ass….
Alice – Consumers forgot that capitalism is about getting the money from out of their pockets….
DT – Ah, yes – all criminals are the same – and clearly identifiable by the shape and bumps on their skull….
WoI – If you want a friend in Id, get a pocket pal…preferably a Lisa Ann Fleshlight (TM)….
Adios Amigos, DJ
BF: So far the position seems to be “liquor taster.” No wonder Blonde Friend thinks she’s found her dream job. With any luck she’ll be able to branch out to pastry, candy, and fancy coffees.
Alice : Oh, I get it! This is why she gets “abducted” by aliens all the time; they’re not kidnapping her, they’re giving her a lift!
*********
Herb & Jamall : so, this is assuming the “6-7” thing is equivalent to the “Love-Hate” thing from Night of the Hunter?
*********
Sally Forth : is chiding her daughter for getting every reader’s hopes up.
**********
Wizard of Id : I wonder how likely it is that the Wizard was initially singing “CRAWLING IN MY SKIN, THESE WOUNDS, THEY WILL NOT HEAL” before the editor nixed it. A non-zero chance, I assume.
Mary Worth Proposed Future Panel: Thanks to commenter Ken for the idea. I hope we see this panel in a real strip, real soon.
Juggs Parker is back! Keep it going, Manley.
MW “Charming avian ways”? Which one — squawking at 6 a.m. or crapping on your blazer?
FC Assuming this present intended as a holiday gift for his teacher, it’s either a really heavy floral arrangement or a really big “World’s Best Teacher” mug.
Dustin Wait till you get to the rules for zones of control, kid — “Wait, what? I have to attack your legion?” [Note: I have no idea if Caesar’s Legions has zones of control. It was an Avalon Hill game so I’m just guessing it did.] [Oh, you want complain about set up? Try playing France 1940.]
“You tell me.” said the cow, jumping up towards the moon and crapping on Grimmy’s head.
JP: “I wanted bring Charlotte back because Alan needs somebody to sign for booze deliveries and bring him fresh ice seven or eight times a day, but look. Just keep her, okay?”
“No peanuts, but I can tell you the Earth is flat, the Moon landings were fake, and our reptilian overlords are hiding the truth from us all!”
“Oh, great, you’re a cowspiracy theorist.”
@Schroduck: you would think that doing classical art pays better but that’s not always true!
It turns out that I am responsible for 6,7*. Mid-semester I was looking at some old lecture notes, and I found the following text
“Point out that this stage mirrors reactions 6,7 except that what allows ATP formation to be feasible (i.e. the generation of the super-high energy phosphate can have a delta G-0 that is not too positive that jiggering rxn concentrations won’t allow it to go forward) is that water is removed in step catalyzed by enolase”
I apologize for the inconvenience my words have caused.
* I am responsible for many trends. I was carrying around a water bottle before it was cool. I wore newsboy caps backwards as a parody of the then current “wearing baseball caps backwards” trend when I was in middle school in the early 1990s.
@Anonymous: On S4th, indeed. The characters die in this obviously haunted house*, the strip blessedly comes to an end, and Ces can devote his full time to finishing running Judge Parker into the ground, and THAT strip blessedly comes to an end. It’s a win-win, so yes, Sally, YES!!!
*Which will turn out to just be Ted’s freeloading brothers, I’m sure.
Edge City (GoComics edition): Will Carly’s great-great grandmother Rose end up Queen of the Wobblies, or dead in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?
(Also, Grandma uses vegetable oil instead of chicken fat for latkes? It’s a shonda!)
Blondie When the cartoonist is so out of touch with the real world that they’re unclear about what “vending” means.
Phantom Uh, the one running off wasn’t marked – that guy is out cold on the ground, presumably with brain damage, and will be lucky to be able to speak normally in the future let alone tell about this encounter. That mask restricting your vision so much you can’t tell apart two people with peach and milk chocolate skin tones, O Stripey-Butt?
Wizard of Id: I’d point out that there was a decidedly non-emo cover of “I’m Not OK,” released in 2020 by Not Ur Girlfrenz, but I’ve no doubt that the original by My Chemical Romance is right on the edge of the newest music the Parker/Hart Legacy Comics factory is aware of.
MW: Sunny eyes Ian and adopts a vulture pose, and using his ventriloquist skills, imitates Toby with a promise for a GREAT DINNER. Sounds to me like IAN is on the menu.
The Wizard of Id:
–“I’m not okay, you wear me out!”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered emo!”
–“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered 1980s alternative comedian Emo Philips!”
–“In my town, there is a raincoat under a tree. In the sky, there is a cloud containing the sea.”
–“*Sigh… He’s discovered 1970s electronica artist Brian Eno!”
–“Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss me, love, I’m bleeding inside.”
–“Uh, oh, this one’s really serious… He’s discovered weirdly famous art-singer and band destroyer Yoko Ono… and he’s got her on vinyl!!!”