Young love (and also pluggers)
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Pluggers, 6/7/26
Look, I know that Pluggers has lost its focus on pluggers being hard-working, blue collar real Americans and now mostly dwells on stuff like “pluggers eat a lot” and “pluggers are old and have mobility issues that significantly degrade their quality of life.” Still, I don’t think we should accept “pluggers exist on several layers of narrative and metanarrative and are slowly becoming aware of that fact.” That’s just not the sort of thing pluggers do or think about! They’re down-home regular beast-people, not characters in a damn Borges short story.
Beetle Bailey, 6/7/26
Pretty sure this is the closest Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC has come to acknowledging that Beetle and Miss Buxley, as young adults in a relationship in ostensibly the modern day, are probably having sex? Things quickly go south right after that acknowledgement, though, thank goodness.
Mary Worth, 6/7/26
“I used to hate myself! But now I’ve done a lot of work and I don’t anymore. When my girlfriend left town to take care of some important family members I immediately assumed it meant she was breaking up with me, by the way! Ha ha, my head is made of wood!”
77 replies to “Young love (and also pluggers)”
Mary Worth:
I would imagine that you would have to go as far back as to Gertrude Stein’s and Alice B. Toklas’ parlor to encounter dialogue as scintillating as this.
Mary Worth:
If I were to deliver a scathing criticism of Plan 9 from Outer Space, would that be a “knock on Wood”? — asking for a friend.
“Pluggers break the fourth wall” is bad but “Pluggers read newspaper comics, on paper” rings true.
Slylock Fox-“You’re not the woman I paid for to come and beat me up,” Slylock says.
MW-And then Tommy will ruin it all by sleeping with Wilbur.
FC-Checks out the hot neighbor who keeps her curtains open.
Blondie:
Dagwood is going to go to work in his pyjamas and get fired for it.
MW – I expected Tommy to be tapping his crotch when they said, “Knock on wood.”
Pluggers:
“Now, why is Slylock Fox saying to that bad guy, ‘I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say…’? — oh, I’ve got it! He’s giving him his Carmen Miranda warnings!”
A big part of Tommy bettering himself, revolved around him discovering The Bible at the end of his Vicodin addiction arc.
I guess either Moy forgot or thought it was “too political” or something.
Beetle Bailey:
Wow. A microaggression in all but the last panel.
FC: Billy eventually makes his way to his mom sitting alone in the kitchen. She asks him if he’s seen PJ anywhere.
“The kiddie pool!”
Mary Worth:
“Never, never, never give up. Well, unless you’re Dawn Weston. I mean, what’s the point?”
— Winston Churchill
BB: Beetle’s favorite movie? Obviously it’s Andy Warhol’s Sleep.
Beetle Bailey : doesn’t have a civilian hat to hide his eyes anymore, and has to use his fatigues cap when in his civvies.
I forget, is that just a faux-pas, or breaking an outright rule about uniform/civvies that he could get punished for?
*************
Mary Worth : Dawn and Tommy immediately become enemies again once they realise one was thinking “Mighty Bosstones” and the other was thinking “Eddie Floyd”
“THAT SONG’S NOT EVEN CALLED ‘KNOCK ON WOOD’, IT’S CALLED ‘THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET’, YOU *ABSOLUTE DUMBASS*”**************
Pluggers : yes, we KNOW that “if the caption applies to you, that means you are a Plugger”, and how it should cause one to panic. I thought that was established from the many times Josh panicked because a Pluggers caption applied to him.
Is “Chill and Cuddle” just “Netflix and Chill”, but you avoid referencing the trademark because it could create legal problems? Or does it imply a lower grade of physical affections, i.e. handjobs?
B. Bailey: Nice of the artist to leave a visual clue as to what Beetle meant by “tagging” the wall.
“You are a Plugger when you realize that comic strip is talking about you”. A Plugger realising that the Pluggers comics is talking about Pluggers is probably the right tail of intelligence for Pluggers
“You are a Plugger when you realize that comic strip is talking about you”. They said “that comic strip”, but doesn’t specify which. Is it “Gearhead Gertie”? Pluggers probably love NASCAR. Or “Blondie”? Pluggers love to eat. Or maybe it is “Marvin”? Pluggers shit themselves and are horrible people
Wait. A few days ago, Tommy had worked at Freda’s for “over a year” Today he has held down a steady job for “several years”. At this rate Tommy will have been a silent partner for the Freda’s franchise since its inception.
@Bob Tice: Or the Algonquin Round Table. Dawn’s definitely no Dorothy Parker, but there’s something about Tommy that reminds me of Harpo Marx.
Mary Worth: The program has been pretty much the same ever since Bill W. introduced the idea of “one day at a time” around 90 years ago. But Tommy seems to have changed that to “knock on wood — y’know, let’s just hope for the best, okay?” I’m pretty sure that’s not what they actually mean by “California sober,” but whatever works!
Pluggers: Sea-green walls, a polka-dotted purple chair, an orange lamp, and a painting so small it must be real? That’s no plugger, it’s some retro-resort design buff out in Palm Springs. If any media is talking about him, it’s the canceled TV show “Mid-Century Modern.”
Beetle Bailey: “I got a bottle of wine to go with your favorite movie. It’s just a zinfandel — the girl at the wine store had never actually heard of Full Metal Jacket.“
Beetle Bailey:
It’s a good thing Miss Buxley was there to stop Beetle from vandalizing that wall, he might’ve defaced that priceless Keith Haring original.
@BigTed:
[Beetle Bailey’s favorite movie is Full Metal Jacket]
Nah, I’m thinking obscure Pauly Shore vehicle In The Army Now is more up to Beetle’s speed/tastes.
Or maybe Damon Wayans’ Major Payne.
Danny DeVito’s Renaissance Man?RMMD: Oh, that’s right. I’d hoped the Mae Mae arc was nearly over, but I’d forgotten about Mud. Well, it shouldn’t be more than three months real time (two days in the strip) before he proposes, then the rest of 2026 will be devoted to wedding planning, with a side story where Doug gets Mud to provide live music for the cafe. We may even have a Rex sighting mid-2027 — the cake at the wedding should draw him out again.
Pluggers:
This might be the most pointless Pluggers yet. As far as I can tell, the joke is “You’re a plugger if the comic strip Pluggers describes you”, which is essentially equivalent to “Pluggers are pluggers”. Not satisfied with its continuing broadening of the definition of “plugger” to the point of meaninglessness, the strip has now degenerated into tautology.
“that comic strip”? C’mon, Pluggers, are you too afraid to call out Ziggy by name?
Crankshaft – Is Lillian having a revelation? Like at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with the picture of the party?
DT: The bad guys should be long gone by now – if the local TV can give out an estimate of the value of the loot. And Tracy despite a great opportunity (car crashing into Double Up and Beedy Eyes) showed great restraint in not opening fire. But there is still more to the arc so there is still hope.
Judge Parker: Just spit it out Judge, you want a divorce!
Mary Worth: The two simulacrums are glitching. Time for a reset!
Phantom: The art remains first rate – whether it is a B-17 or a sailing ship. While the plotting and premise maybe at times thin, the art remains superb.
Slylock: Max and Slylock are roommates like Holmes and Watson? It looks like the wolf was sleep walking in his PJs.
@Ettorre: Yes, and it being the comics, by “handjob” they mean “a firm handclasp as you watch the TV, possibly allowing the shoulders to touch”
@Anonymous: The Mary Worth demographic went immediately to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca.
@treetown: Judge Parker: Just spit it out Judge, you want a divorce!
A great wave of relief washes over Katherine, who thought he was heading for “Darling, I think we should have another child.”
Pluggers – Pluggers have a growing paranoia that can only be drowned out by playing Fox News at top volume.
RMMD – okay, an actress famous enough that a tv show was doing multiple segments about her decade-long absence suddenly appears on social media revealing her whereabouts. Whereabouts that said TV show had been willing to pay a substantial fee to discover. But the locals show up for autographs and absolutely zero press arrives? This bugs me deeply. Also, keep this going, I never realized how much I disliked Rex and no matter how irritating the other non-Morgan family cast members are I wouldn’t complain if none of them ever appeared again.
At least we didn’t get an angle that would shown that the Plugger was reading a comic about a Plugger reading a comic about a Plugger reading a comic…That’d be too much to handle before my coffee.
Tommy has NOT held that job for “several” years in strip time. If he had that would mean Dawn’s been in college for nearly a decade.
MW You know Dawn, its one thing when someone makes a self-deprecating joke about the tenuousness of their state of sobriety, its another when your barely-friend jumps in to agree. “Haha, it’s true: it’s only by the grace of God that you’re not relapsing right now! It’s funny ‘cuz you’re weak!”
MW “knock on wood! shoot, c’mon one more try to get out of this time loop, *something* happened, our ice cream flavours switched and your job history memory changed, *surely* there’s some kind of escape possible” “let’s see – which Mary platitude incantations to try this time?”
FC Interesting that it’s updated enough to show a flat screen TV, but “help fix the car engine”? With the computer-controlled tightly-built engines these days?? Why couldn’t it be switched to “help change the engine oil”?
Pluggers It’s now what you think: the comics is Mark Trail and Bear Man is finally learning what goes on during hibernation.
@MP: Dawn is majoring in aimlessness-studies like Luann and I could totally believe she’d spend a decade getting random credits that never add up to a degree
MW: Aww, isn’t that cute? They can work that into the wedding vows!
BB: Classic Nice Guy passive aggression. I’m going to smile just a little more, the next time Sarge reduces Beetle to a pulp.
@CanuckDownSouth: I disagree. Beetle Bailey characters FUCK they just can’t show it on newspapers, as Walker demonstrated: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/ten-hut_x-rated_beetle_bailey_comics/
PLEASE LET DAWN AND TOMMY GET TOGETHER AND STAY TOGETHER. They are so bland and this would be the absolute funniest thing to happen and hopefully lead to stories of the caliber of the Wilbur getting wasted at dinner story line. Cannot wait to see Wilbur constantly and awkwardly bringing up Tommy’s past drug use all the time.
@Ken: And as I recall Jared the Sad Nurse was practically a dead ringer for Harpo.
@Ken: Katherine’s not out of the woods yet. There’s still the prospect of formally adopting Shan- er, Charlotte. After all, it’s not like CIApril n’ Randy are coming back anytime soon, right? Right?? *RIGHT*?!!?!
CS: So just who was the shutterbug who was taking all these damn pictures? Lillian? Some schmoe Eugene hired for the night? Film alone wasn’t cheap in those days…
‘Shaft: In her William Wilson moment, Lillian realizes she never had a twin sister. Every evil thing she’s ever done to Lucy she’s literally done to herself. With the scales finally fallen from her eyes, she sees Eugene for who he is, the neighbor’s Alsatian.
Mike Calloway of San Diego, California is the first officially documented Plugger.picked up the newspaper this morning, and realized That Comic Strip was talking about him.
A Plugger realizes his neighbor submitted an entry to Pluggers in his name.
“Hey, I don’t even have hemorrhoids.”
(Plugger caption) ‘Pluggers don’t need a gym to feel the burn’.
Mary Worth:
“Dawn, I admire you so much that Im going to get my hair cut again, to make it just like yours!”
[Readership]: “AAAAAAAGGHHH!”
MW: Not only is Tommy clean and sober, he now possesses of super power that allows him to change vanilla fro-yo into chocolate fro-yo! The story arc probably has him going on America’s Got Talent.
Weird. I’ve tried submitting a comment twice now, edited I case there was a problem word, and neither is showing up.
MW: What’s the opposite of a lobotomy? Because whatever it is, Tommy has had it as shown in his expression in the next to last panel.
Chix (sic): If she had her way (Damn censors), Patrinos continues:
(Clueless boyfriend): So you want sex?
“No! That’s not it!
@Hibbleton: And with the Alsatian by her side, she watches in silence as the bombs planted throughout the town by her devoted followers* explode, initiating the Burnings and ending Society as we know it.**
*Those two creepy twin girls and that woman whose cooking Crankshaft is always insulting.
**The Batton Thomas Interviews continue unaffected, naturally.
MW: I love Tommy’s expression (and the circles around his eyes) in the penultimate panel. “I sure did… made a bunch of money too. Hmmmm. Hey Dawn, wanna try something fun?”
“Fab Fro-Yo” sounds like the name of one of Vanilla Ice’s black friends in Cool As Ice.
Married Wurst: “Knock on wood–ouch!! Boy, smacking knuckles into my head actually hurts since I had my thick, long, luxurious hair chopped off!
@The Quiet Man: JP: I wouldn’t think Alan and Katherine could adopt Charlotte — didn’t April and Randy say they wanted Neddy to have her?
Oooo, that might be how legal drama gets back into JP — a custody battle! And won’t it be fun when Neddy’s has to explain how April and Randy let them know? “Well, after we beat up this Russian guy, he showed us a video on his phone. No, I don’t know how to find him — I haven’t seen him since he escaped the storage unit and stole Alan’s car “
JP: “You can’t get nervous every time I step out or leave your line of sight. Anyone can drive to Malmart and forget to put their pants on.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: It’s Tommy. The big head signifies the little head.
Brewster Rocket, Space Guy: I don’t regularly read this comic so I’d appreciate it if someone could explain why the robot suddenly has nipples once the toast pops up?
I fight pirates, smugglers, poachers, and other assorted criminals in the jungles of Africa. It is a mantle that has been passed down for generations. I thought I was a legendary hero…but I guess I’m a Plugger?
@The Quiet Man: Didn’t the dance halls have wandering photographers who would snap pics throughout the evening and offer prints for sale at the end of the night?
Being John Plugovich
Crankshaft: Who’s the time-traveling hipster wearing his hat indoors during the Big Band era?
Blondie searches her memory for the last time Dagwood tore his clothes off racing to the bedroom with such a look on her face.
H&L: You have no bassist. You guys really want to make a commercial go of it as a Doors
covertribute band to your age peers, or did you all grow too old for Kidz Bop ripoff acts and are trying to sell this for Pluggers who’ll relive their youth?Hagar exists in a strange location on the time and space continuum. Enough peaches in Scandanavia that you can buy a pie in any store, packaged in the waxed cardboard box, but they have yet to discover butcher paper.
BG&SS: Hootin’ Holler also exists in a strange location…time and space…etc. Can anyone more informed about grilling than I am tell me if there really exists grilled fried chicken?
Pluggers: I appreciate the detail that this plugger is reading the so-called “comics” in thoughtful, mirthless silence. Which, let’s face it, is how we actually do read them.
BB: There are many unrealistic aspects to this comic that I could point out, but I’ll zero in on the fact that Beetle tucks his polo shirt into his jeans. You know, like a nerd.
MW: “We need a name that will help our froyo place stand out from the competition. How about Drab Froyo?”
“Nice, but I have something even better …”
Mary Worth;
In tomorrow’s installment, Dawn and Tommy begin debating the properties of the Higgs boson. Hilarity ensues.
Pluggers – You’re a plugger when you don’t understand why a “furry convention” isn’t just called a “convention.”
Beetle – When Beetle said “Let’s tag this wall,” he didn’t mean with paint. He was inspired by the “whiz” graffito. (You don’t even want to know what it would mean to “FEETCH” a wall.)
MW – “I used to hate myself. It took a lot of work to get where I am now. Now I merely dislike myself. And more importantly, I hate everyone else.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“This course has some huge sand traps”
“I noticed!”
“You need a caddy?”
“No, thanks”
“I brought a camel train”
BB: “Come oooooon, let me destroy property and/or the environment for you! It’s my love language!”
MW: Dawn and Tommy know that, as supporting characters in the Worthiverse, their good fortune and happiness are entirely dependent on contrived circumstances outside of their control, and can only stave off misfortune through worn folk rituals. Or in this case, dorky “humorous” allusions to folk ritual.
Pluggers engage in circular reasoning.
Thank the gods, I’m not a plugger. Comics strips have never been about me. Except maybe Garfield. Mondays, amitrite?
Oh no…
***
Miss Buxley is so woke she won’t even let Beetle vandalize a wall I think the comic is trying to say? I don’t know, I think I need a plugger to explain this one to me.
***
Tommy’s made of wood, but he’s trying to become a real boy. Dawn’s a Weston though, so she’s just a lost cause.
@Anonymous: “The Wackiest Ship in the Army”?
Popeye: Even if you’re not into this strip, you gotta read the throwaway panels. I don’t think they make enough Neosporin to ease the sick burn the witch just inflicted on Popeye.
Winston Churchill is the opposite of Tommy. Churchill was an alcoholic and morally questionable, but he did great things for humanity. Tommy is a recovering addict making amends, but he achieved basically nothing. There’s a reason we have some many movies about problematic anti-heroes and not bores!
C’shaft: Could Harry Dinkle possibly be related to this man whose name is only one letter off of his and who basically resembled him in every way, because our town operates on the same rules of genetics as the Back to the Future universe?”
Dustin, the strip that dares to ask, “What if this timeless kids’ joke was pointlessly violent and cruel?”
FG: “The aliens are free from our loyalties and dogma…which is why it’s perfectly okay if they impose THEIR loyalties and dogma on us!”
RMMD: “Unfortunately Doug’s cafe now depends on my fame for success, so now I’ll be stuck in a cycle of endless self-promotion and public appearances in addition to the demands of my new working-class lifestyle and…wait, why is this a happy ending again?”
Beetle Bailey: Is Miss Buxley putting on weight? I mean, the drawing’s probably just off-model, but her face looks heavier today. Any changes in daily strips are notable, and messing up a detail that might make her less sexy (to an audience that finds line drawings sexy)? That’s unheard of! It must be significant!
Is… Miss Buxley pregnant? On the same day the strip first references “Netflix and chill,” we start seeing changes in her physiology! And she’s super sensitive? This is DEFINITELY the start of a pregnancy storyline!
Oh wait. Her mouth is sliding down her chin in the final panel, and she looks a bit like Popeye. Off-model it is, then.
@richardf8: They did, and I guess the one at this place hit the jackpot that night because Eugene was able to pay them to snap what appears to be several dozen pictures of him and NotLillian. You could probably stack them up and make a flipbook of their whole date, there’s so many!
PV: this is getting to be like the “begat” section of the Bible. It’s too early in the morning to figure this out.
(The song Val is singing would later be ripped off by Plant and Page as “The Immigrant Song” without attribution or royalties).
Doonesbury: my local dead tree omitted the Sam Altman joke in the throwaway panels.
(I did enjoy the rest. The grads got a more meaningful commencement speech than many I’ve heard and their parents got a reminder of the cynicism of higher education these days)
@Peanut Gallery: “whiz graffito”?
Is that like the cover of “Who’s Next?”
@UncleJeff: Exactly. Keith Haring sez, “Don’t whiz on the Radiant Baby!”
DOONESBURY: The saddest part is that everyone was probably staring at their phones all along, and didn’t hear a word the man said anyhow.