Just make coffee at home, guys! It’s cheaper!!!!
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Pluggers, 8/15/26
I’m a guy who does not like fancy coffee drinks but I also have limitless disdain for self-righteous “Hur hur I went to the fancy coffee drink place and ordered a plain black coffee to blow their little minds” boomerisms, so mostly what I want to focus on in this panel is that the son plugger looks terrible. Like there’s an ongoing Pluggers tension over whether “plugger” is a category with a complex and ever-changing socioeconomic definition or just a synonym for “old and busted,” and today’s panel is definitely landing on the latter. I guess we’re supposed to think of “That’s my boy” as meaning “That’s my boy, he’s the same kind of reactionary as me,” but it really looks more like he’s saying “That’s my boy, he really looks like shit.”
Herb and Jamaal, 8/15/26
So, uh, Jamaal joined a cult, I think? Must be difficult for Herb, with his best friend and business partner joining a cult. We can forgive him for being a little catty about it!
40 replies to “Just make coffee at home, guys! It’s cheaper!!!!”
Pluggers:
“It sure is fun having a famous guy like Wilford Brimley as my dad!”
Pluggers:
You’re a plugger when there’s no objective reason to wear a hat, but you nevertheless wear one in a transparently lame effort to accessorize.
Mary Worth:
“Ceci n’est pas Brandy, la caissiere du supermarche.”
— Rene Magritte
Crankshaft: You wanderers are 40 yards from the fair’s gate. Only by the grace of God have you fools not recreated the end of Greed in a parking lot with a temperate, fertile, late summer climate.
DtM: Nice trompe-l’œil here. If you look at the fence, you think Mr. Wilson is much closer to the frame than Dennis, but if you watch the stream from the hose, it appears to be going sideways to hit him!
FC: “Not enough of a wave to distract a young couple who had everything to live for, Jeffy. The big distraction arrived the middle of next May.”
H&L: Celebrating an ordinary sized flatscreen–is this their first one? Not quite–that failed prematurely–sort of. In one awful minute Thirsty lost his parlay and discovered that those old CRTs were a lot more durable than he gave them credit for.
BG&SS: I know from twee farmer’s market goods. It’s things like bonsai pumpkins which make city slickers like me wonder if the town really is full of sustenance farmers and not just the biggest moonshine racket in the state.
Pluggers: He is your boy; he’s got your hair. Well, hairline. And your seething hatred of anybody who wants just a little more out of life.
RMMD:
“I’ve got it! — let’s sweet-talk Mud Murphy into visiting the Morgans’ house and then hogging the restroom for three hours!”
Crankshaft : Mindy didn’t mention that “FAIR THEE WELL!” was usually followed by three full hours of shambling about the parking lot, swearing, until her family finally found the car (by process of elimination, due to there only being a half-dozen cars left in the parking lot from everyone else having left).
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Herb & Jamaal : “An open mind is like a fortress with its gate unbarred and unguarded”, huh?
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Pluggers : the cartoon : Pluggers are happy to see their children grow up to become exactly like them
the caption : Pluggers are sad to see their children grow up to become exactly like them
Which is it?
Pluggers: Millennial hipsters were notorious for wearing stupid hats, growing thick beards, and drinking weird elaborate coffees, so it makes sense that Gen Z hipsters would pivot the other way. The modern hipster sets himself apart from the mainstream by drinking boring coffee, wearing stretched out golf shirts, and shaving his face in rebellion against his moustachioed father. The hats he wears are as stupid as ever, however.
H&J: Free Mad Libs game for you: “I’ve always admired Jamaal’s ability to have an open ____. But the problem with people who have an open ____… is there’s always someone ready to come along and fill it… with their ____.”
Dinette Set: Comics artists, if you ever use the word “cents” in cursive, please PLEASE form your letters carefully. I’m not going to say what I read that banner as originally, but I will say I thought that word described the Dinette Set characters perfectly.
The tension between the two definitions of “plugger” is easily resolved. Holding reactionary attitudes leads to premature aging, in face, body, mind, and clothing.
Plugger: “…so anyhow, that’s what I told the barista, and she said ‘ok’ and made me a black coffee. End of story.”
H&J: “Not me! My head is so jam-packed with weird little monologues that I can barely even hear the people around me. I’m so isolated from the world that I forgot what a punchline is supposed to sound like…”
MW: I am now convinced that this entire week was just to reset the characters, the problem being that there was no thought put into it beyond “get Brandy back with Tommy”. So we get today’s ghastly filler dialog with everyone saying things that everyone else at the table (plus the readers) already knows, since it’s all been said (twice!) already this week.
I would be happy to be proved wrong, preferably by a several-week flashback where we see what happened to Brandy in Florida and what she found about her family, but this is Mary Worth. It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
The older Plugger will realize to his horror that he won’t merely die soon, but that his son will absorb his body and literally take his place,
Pluggers: That’s fine and dandy, aside from Starbucks black coffee tasting like motor oil.
But maybe that’s just me, maybe I just personally don’t like black coffee.
Not IDEAS! The horror!
@Bob Tice: RMMD: I’m expecting their next idea for a “con” will be arson, given the level of sociopathy on display.
Even Pluggers get bored listening to Pluggers.
@Schroduck: schedule/meetings
Pluggers: “A Plugger’s ‘Pumpkin Spice’ is eyeing the spiced pumpkin pie his wife placed out on the windowsill to cool”
MW – I missed Tommy so much. So much I never called. And I didn’t text, though I can’t remember if this strip has come far enough along to have recognized texting as a viable means of communication. I just showed up out of nowhere, knowing it would blow Tommy’s no-sense-of-object-permanence mind.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – They’ll final have their brainstorm for their next move when they see Revenge of the Nerds and hear Booger repeatedly say, “Let’s blow the fuckers’ house up.”
PLUGGERS: I make my coffee at home, I drink it with my morning pills, and then spend the next two hours “recycling” it. Pin on my Plugger badge.
GR: The Thorp kids are drawing flies, because Keri has decided that bathing is pandering to the patriarchy, and well, Jami’s just a pig.
DtM: George, you DO know that Dennis gets his ideas from your wife, right? She’s been gunning for your life insurance forever!
RMMD: ” Rex! Call the police! Someone stole our garden gnome!”
MW “I missed Tommy so much! But if I had communicated with language in any way – speech, writing, Sign – before finishing those woven swamp grass vests, the family curse would have been *permanent*. I couldn’t let them be pelicans forever… But I also I couldn’t wait to get back to Tommy, so when I tossed the vests on my relatives and they became human again, I said ‘yes’ to the sorcerer’s ‘do you wish to be home’ and found myself in Santa Royale without the time to send a text! So I ran to Tommy as a surprise because I just *had* to explain in person!”
MW: Dawn is slowly transforming into a bobblehead.
Msg got lost, here’s a repeat.
yBETTY: If you wanted the luxury soap, you should have said so. No means no and yes means yes.
CURTIS: No knight in shining armor needed. Does this prove that a skill once mastered will some day be of use?
JP: Writers should decide. If you create a character to be likeable and relatable, don’t show her becoming a police ssessive jerk.
RHYMES w ORANGE: Stop it, Mom! Your kids misbehavior had only the tiniest part in that hurricane on the other side of the world. I will not allow you to scapegoat them and scar them for life.
6 CX: Here, though, a youthful sense of omnipotence gets rewarded.
PLUGGERS: What are you complaining about Josh? Pluggers has finally returned to its “roots”, and that’s sanctimonious, faux-folksy Boomer-ism! I’m so excited about this return to form, I might go out complain about tattooed vegan college girls with blue hair who have the nerve not to dress for the male gaze (the hussies!) in honor of this momentous event.
Toxic masculinity is drinking too hot, bitter coffee you don’t like to prove you don’t need any fun or variety or pleasantness or sweetness or gentleness in your life. I’m thinking Plugger-son looks so terrible because he’s never married, because in 2026 most women know better than get involved with this, and he’s 50 years old and refuses to learn to cook or clean for himself. But the important thing is he’s got Father’s approval!
H&J- pretty interesting monologue for a d trip who has the Reverend drop by frequently to opine.
LUANN: Uh-oh did someone mix the publishing order of the strips? Because this one really looks like it should have happened before the ones about Toni railroading her career
LUANN (2): It would be funny if it turned out that Toni wasn’t actually pregnant after all and had to go back to being “almost as important” again. (But somehow *less* so, because she foolishly rearranged her schedule before conformation. Whoops!)
LUANN (3): I love that this whole arc has been everyone being way more invested in the state of Toni’s uterus than Toni is, with her almost seeming like a passenger being chauffeured around in her own storyline (as it should be, because she is the birthing vessel now, even though Toni is “hormonal” enough to act as if her “thoughts” or “concerns” actually matter, like get with the program, girl! Stop harshing on everyone else buzz with your silly worry about your dwindling career prospects and focus on what’s really important, like how other people react to your pregnancy! Oh my Gaw! I bet Luann is going to freak! Tee hee!)
What A Frazzhole!: …”No, the Magnavox Odyssey™, who says video games need be fun?”
PLUGGERS: Plugger Jr.: “Just give it to me black…just how I like my men!”
Pluggers:
While parents understandably want their children to inherit their values, they can’t expect them to be completely immune to society’s changing mores. We laugh at pluggers for being reactionaries, but we can actually see a healthy attitude regarding this matter on display in today’s panel: the plugger is so pleased that his offspring prefers plain black coffee over fancy liberal-coded drinks that he’s willing to overlook that the child can still effortlessly rattle off the elaborate name of one such devil’s brew, whereas in his day words like “espresso” and “mocha” would have filled him with confusion and contempt.
Society appreciates you doing your part and choosing to recycle Bob.
“I’ve always admired Jamaal’s ability to have an open mind… Though it is too bad that all that material falling into his open mind has piled up on top, giving him that weird pear-shaped head.”
H&J-Jamaal is open and Herb wants to fill him. Got it.
RMMD-A flaming bag on the Morgan’s porch.
MW-“Must resist urge to cut brake lines,” Dawn mutters to herself.
@2+2=7:
On Luann, point 2 : though this would be the ideal point to ABORT this storyline
(sorry not sorry), I don’t think the Evansii are going to take it. Celebrating the strip’s anniversary with the birth of Bwad & Toni’smutant hellspawnchild is just too tempting for them, I’m assuming.(But yeah, “OOPS SHANNON JUST DREW ON THE PREGNANCY TESTS WHILE SHE WAS UNWATCHED, TONI NOT PREGNANT” would be hilarious)
On Luann, point 3 : I personally believe this section of the “TONI PREGNANT” storyline probably only exists because people complained about that Toni being a firefighter was an important aspect of her character, but the strip was seemingly actively ignoring it. Kinda like how I believe that Bets only came back after GOING AWAY FOREVER after the “Bets & Gun go Camping : The Graphic Novel”, because people who didn’t buy the graphic novel joked that Gunther had actually murdered Bets, and THAT was why she was gone and Gunther got so touchy when asked about it.
@2+2=7: On Point 2 – Normally I’d agree that this is where those Masters of Misdirection would pull something like that, but allegedly Greg has already publicly said they aren’t backing out of this and Toni will indeed give birth. I don’t think he or Karen are sophisticated enough to pull off a fakeout on the level of contradicting public statements.
Herb & Jamaal — Splitting inspirational poster lines into four panels since 1989.
6 Chix: Whatever drug the cartoonist is taking, I’d like some.
@Pozzo: Tomorrow’s strip takes on ‘A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste’ (will take 8 panels for Sunday)
Pluggers – That’s harsh Josh… I think the Plugger’s kid looks pretty good for being a dog-chicken hybrid.
Pluggers: I like froo-froo sweet coffee drinks just fine, and I disdain performative masculinity. I drink my coffee black because I’m diabetic and I love coffee. Does that get me banned from Pluggertown, or does it make me the mayor?