Silas is lucky the Better Business Bureau only works with flatlanders
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Hi and Lois, 9/19/26
I genuinely love Hi’s distressed facial expression and clenched fists of impotent rage in the second panel here. Damn it, she’s spent too much on this dress … but she’s right! Surely they will be invited to a wedding, some day, and now is the time to prepare! With their rich social life and wide group of family and friends (not depicted in-strip, mostly they just hang out with Thirsty and Irma and occasionally chat with their old neighbor guy, but whatever, let’s assume it exists), this was a smart move to meet an inevitable need. If only it weren’t so darn expensive!
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/19/26
I was trying to figure out what Loweezy’s grotesque facial expression in panel two was supposed to signify. I think she’s squinting, to read the fine print on this coupon? It’s too bad Doc Pritchart isn’t an optometrist in addition to being a physician and a dentist, as the availability of corrective lenses would really improve the quality of life of those Hootin’ Holler residents who manage to live past 40.
Pluggers, 9/19/26
The Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse entered the public domain more than two years ago, Tribune Content Agency, LLC! You don’t have to apologize to Disney for anything! Don’t be a coward! You do have to apologize to us for the off-putting expression on this she-plugger’s face, though, that’s just common decency.
39 replies to “Silas is lucky the Better Business Bureau only works with flatlanders”
MW-“Mary, have you heard about Mary and Ian?”
RMMD-“The meal would have been ready much sooner if someone didn’t drop a dime on our housekeeper.”
Pluggers:
The revelation that Pluggers are Disney Adults has shaken me to my core. What next, a Plugger cosplaying as Donald Duck in his mage get-up from Kingdom Hearts?
Pluggers:
A plugger thinks that “Steamboat Willy” is a sudden jag of nervousness or jumpiness one experiences while on an engine-driven watercraft which uses large paddle wheels.
Pluggers:
Distaff pluggers dress so as to try to resemble their heroine “Madge” the Nail Technician from the Palmolive soap commercials.
Pluggers: From her expression, it seems she nicknamed her personal massage device “Steamboat Willie”.
BG&SS:
“Loweezy, this here No. 2 writin’ implement I’m sportin’ reminds me of a joke: did you hear about the constipated mathematician?”
“Naw, but I bet you’re gonna tell me.”
“He used a pencil to work things out! — hey, Loweezy, why the contorted facial expression?”
Hi and Lois:
I know the big rule about wedding attire is not to wear white to distract from the bride, but frankly a form-fitting little black dress doesn’t seem all that appropriate, either. I think what’s actually going on here is that the Flagstons are exploring erotic findom roleplay, and beneath his shocked expression Hi is enjoying every second of being told his money is being spent frivolously.
In Renaissance Germany, a common method of execution was breaking on the wheel. This generally involved tying the miscreant to a cartwheel and setting about them with an iron bar, but sometimes involved the town executioner picking up another wheel and repeatedly dropping it on them. That’s what it looks like Steamboat Willie is doing here, and judging by her expression Plugger-woman is absolutely into it.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith:
I refuse to believe that Hootin’ Holler has access to the international shipping and trade networks that would allow Silas to sell bananas.
H&L: Whose wedding would that be? Rites of passage are few and far between when you’re suspended in temporal amber.
MW: When this comes to light, Ian won’t be able to help strutting a little. All of Charterstone believed he had a side chick!
PLUGGERS: I’m getting a “teacher who could’ve/should’ve retired fifteen years ago” vibe.
BG&SS:
“Loweezy, don’t forget the lesson I’m sure yer maw taught ya: if’n you continue to project that look of contemptuous chagrin you’re displayin’ right now, your face’s gwin stay like that forever!”
H&L: Lois was inspired by a line from Hamlet:
“Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral [black dress] [will] coldly furnish forth the marriage [fashion].”
MW At this point, the only way to make this interesting would be to reveal that the game of gossip telephone has gone off the rails and Saul hears that Mary and Ian were seen taking off their flesh-suits and cavorting as their true Illuminati Reptilian forms
Luann _Major_ points off for showing what can only be an image of a 20+-week ultrasound, (And they even showed how Toni would have been doing trans-vag at that early stage! Grrr.) Unless what they’re about to do is brainstorm how to handle this magically-growing-too-fast baby, starting with how to determine whether or not it’s a demon child…
Hi and Lois: Hi’s worried expression is due to the idea of attending a wedding with Lois in that black dress and everyone realizing they can’t figure out what that good looking woman ever saw in him.
Pluggers don’t wear Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shirts, because it’s not cool to like something niche which everybody doesn’t know about. Unless you think you’re better than other people.
Arlo and Janis: Has Janis discovered DraftKings? Welp, say goodbye to the best modern married couple in the comics. In two weeks she’s gonna replace Tommy Beedie as the Person Who Needs Mary’s Meddling and Muffins star.
Gasoline Alley: With our luck Rufus and Joel will find Kevin Moron’s discarded perpetual motion machine design, make it work, and this arc will never end.
Gil Thorp: I’ll say she’s not even trying! Per yesterday’s strip, she’s still warming up half-assed. Where are the cracking bones, dislocating joints, and rupturing tendons?
Blondie and Gil Thorp together? I just enjoy how the universe lines up sometimes.
FC: Why, Billy? Because your church’s organist is old enough but not cool enough to ever have seen A Night at the Opera. And even if they were, nobody in your congregation would get it.
DtM: Barbers are tested and licensed to use straight razors. Please, Dennis, keep egging him on, and he might decide to do a little practicing for the exam right now.
GT: Whoop-dee-doo, Keri’s found a new white (hah!) whale to obsess over. And proof that *she* isn’t the reason she’ll never get married, it’s always *other* people! Two birds with one stone!
CS: Uh yeah, if we ‘fleshies’ go down, you machines ain’t lasting too much longer either. That’s the problem I always have with these ‘Terminator’ style dystopian stories. They always assume that in addition to sentience, the machines have figured out how to replicate *and* maintain themselves with zero human input. Further, that they are smart enough to do *that*, but not figure out a solution to the world’s woes that isn’t based on the very human idea of ‘kill ’em all and let Hal sort ’em out’.
MW: Gotta say, if we’re already down to Ol’ Man Wynter getting the dirt instead of a week of Wilbur and Dawn agonizing and repeating the rumor back and forth to themselves, this story is going at a breakneck pace (relatively speaking).
RMMD: Dinner will be ready soon, in the meantime keep practicing your awkward extraneous hand gestures!
MW: How much longer does Moy plan to drag this out? Let me guess, Saul tells Dr. Ed, who tells Estelle, who tells Iris, who tells Zak, who tells Keith Hillend, who tells Sonia, who tells the ghost of Aldo Kelrast, who tells Sunny, who tells Toby, who tells Mary.
Snuffy Smif: Silas must be delighted that his coupon trick pulled in one of the three or four residents of Hootin Holler who is actually literate.
Ph: Coming soon from Touchstone Pictures: ‘Honey I Shrunk the Python’! “DON’T EAT ME!!!!”
(Holy shit, that movie was nothing but non-stop nightmare fuel…)
@Lauralot: Work Dr. Jeff in there somewhere, and I think you’ve pretty much got it.
BGSS: Has Loweezy’s jagged, bony, scoliosis-riddled spine always been visible through her clothing? This is a realistic depiction of hillbilly poverty and hunger and I don’t like it one bit.
MW: is there nobody at Charterstone who doesn’t care what Mary and Ian are doing with their nethers? And when does this rumor get to Jeff of the Blue Balls?
H&L: Hi isn’t sad about the cost. He knows at their age it’s more likely to be a funeral.
H&L: Wait a minute: yellow sweater…clenched fist…did the colorist see the opportunity to reference the Arthur meme and run with it?
BG&SS: Loweezy’s winking at her good friend Sugar from No Country for Old Men as he enters the store with a similar coupon.
@The Quiet Man: Dr. Jeff knows Mary doesn’t have sex with anyone, so if the rumor reaches him he’ll shoot it down. Or he might shoot Ian, really could go either way.
MW: On an instinctual level Saul’s dog senses Bite! as they face Wilbur.
In a similar vein, Saul himself senses Bite me!
H&L: Is Lois really expecting to go to that many weddings? Their oldest son is still several years away from that possibility, and nobody in their friend circle is on the market. Unless Irma has dropped hints that she’s finally going to kick Thirsty to the curb.
Pluggers: I do own a couple of Costco tops, although I don’t really do Disney stuff–mostly concert and show shirts, thrift store finds, and a few things I crocheted myself. That may make me more Pluggerish than Pluggers, which is a disturbing thought.
Marvin: Jeff gripes to son Marvin on his hands free cell about having to change a diaper as he waits out a very long traffic jam but seeing as he’s the lone occupant of his vehicle I say “That’s thinking ahead!”
Pluggers: Pluggers think Steamboat Willy is erectile dysfunction caused by cheap waterway attractions.
Hi & Lois: Not to play fashion police, but is it proper etiquette to look sexier than the bride at weddings?
Remember about 15 years ago when someone decided to edit Garfield comic strips to make it look like Jon was talking to himself and going crazy? They called it Garfield Minus Garfield and apparently people thought it was hilarious.
Now we have this Marvin comic about soiled diapers without Marvin actually being shown and nope it’s still not funny.
DT: Okay, I’m willing to forgive a great deal for the sight of Mrs. Kvetchman cursing the heavens like a Yiddish bubba King Lear. I hope she sues the police department for damages.
JP: “Frankly I’d forgotten the strip was named for me. I just assumed it was an allusion to open critique on my behavior.”
Luann: Look, I get it, an accurate-looking ultrasound at this stage would resemble nothing so much as a cashew nut. But this feels like one of those pro-life propaganda bits where they go on about how “developed” the embryo is while showing pictures of a fetus that’s obviously well into the third trimester.
MW: I’m sorry, but these constant cuts to Mary and Ian being all buddy-buddy are starting to get to me. Are we supposed to assume, like Nelly, that the two of them are having an affair so the strip can shake its finger at us when that’s inevitably proven to be not the case? It feels that way, but at the same time the two of them are showing more genuine pleasure in each other’s company than they’ve demonstrated with their respective official partners in years, so any explanation that nothing untoward is happening is going to ring false. Honestly Nelly coming to the conclusion she has is the only thing that makes sense right now.
MW: Congratulations to Karen Moy for subverting or expectations in this increasingly grim turn in what was looking like a fairly banal “gossip is bad” plot. Not one of Mary’s “friends”—not one!—has gone to her to say, “Hey, people are talking shit about you.” Instead, they are all spreading the shit far and wide! Machiavelli asked, Is it better to be loved than feared, or feared than loved? Doesn’t matter here because Mary is clearly neither!
MW: It’s like that classic REO Speedwagon song, “Heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who…”
FC: Thel takes the kids to Saturday morning Temple. “If Billy’s going to blaspheme, let it be to a God we don’t believe in.”
JP: Noting all the yellow-spined books on the Judge’s shelves, I’m surprised Alan is not embarrassed by his …For Dummies series of law books.
RMMD: Sarah engages in polite conversation with her parents and is instantly enlisted to perform chores. Can you blame the boys for only responding to them in mumbles.
Pluggers; Remember in the movie Saving Private Ryan the POS German soldier who they nicknamed Steamboat Willie who shoots Captain Tom Hanks? Well apparently Pluggers also want to be nicknamed Steamboat Willie and they might somehow be even less likable than the German Steamboat Willie.
Pluggers: But mostly it’s cheap made-in-Phillipines knockoffs.
Hi and Lois Lois’s confidence comes from knowing Chip is old enough to be having sex and dumb enough to not be using protection.
Hi and Lois; Now that gay marriage is legal in the United States Hi has been reconsidering his own marriage. He only married a woman because society told him that he had to conform to what was acceptable at the time, Hi looks at Lois so happy in that dress and he isn’t sure if he should tell her he’s coming out of the closet or keep pretending he’s this boring middle age suburban dad when he wants desperately to embrace his true self.
Hi and Lois – Oh, right… someone else’s wedding. Hi would feel reassured by Lois’s explanation, if only she didn’t keep introducing him at parties as “my starter husband.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“You’re the only one I can trust, Polonio”
“You and the rest of the staff are my only real family”
“And we’ll always be loyal to you, boss”
“I think the time is finally ripe to start hinting about his will”