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Pluggers, 12/4/14

Pluggers usually focuses on the vaguely cheery aspects of life as an aging, downwardly mobile working-class beast-thing, but occasionally the truly grim undercurrent is made explicit. Kudos to Pluggers HQ for going there with the phrase “a small part of each plugger dies” in the caption. Usually a small part of each plugger dies when coronary blockage stops the flow of life-giving oxygen to various limbs, but the bug-eyed stare this man-bear is giving to the useless stump where an outdated piece of electronic equipment once moldered lets us know that this psychic pain is just as real.

Crankshaft, 12/4/14

Speaking of real pain, Crankshaft is really turning it up this week! Today we’re not even given the glimpse of a punchline, just one of our ancillary characters stewing in agony as his life’s work (which, I should say again, I’m reasonably sure we didn’t even know was his life’s work until this week) dies around him.

Anyway, it’s true that it’s a brutal environment out there for single-screen theaters. Some have been able to make it work by doing special events, live performances, and the like, though most of those are in major urban areas and not decaying rust-belt gloom-towns like Centerville. Still, I have a couple of ideas to improve Crankshaft’s Bald Friend Whose Name I Forget’s business plan: (1) your “nostalgia” flicks probably shouldn’t be widely hated slasher flicks from the early ’00s; and (2) I don’t care if you’re the owner, how about not talking while the movie is playing?

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Mark Trail, 12/3/14

In bygone times, rulers were considered to be anointed by God, and criticism of them was illegal or unthinkable, and so political discontent tended to settle on their counselors. The king is of course noble and good, but he has been getting bad advice from those slippery men who have wormed their way into his entourage! This trope often appears in Mark Trail, too: Senator Baldy wasn’t really in favor of drilling for oil in a national park, it’s just that his corrupt staffer was blackmailing him! That nice lady CEO met an adorable raccoon and put a stop to all the environmentally harmful business plans laid out by her sinister ex-boyfriend! And the cycle of eternal return has brought this narrative to the funny pages again: our brushcut CEO will shut down this project once he sees that the Great Dismal Swamp is really beautiful and was named ironically, in one of those Iceland/Greenland kind of deals; meanwhile, his short-tied underling Mitchum, who has invested his own money in this specific deal in a move that probably makes for an extremely confusing corporate structure, will try to keep the CEO on the path of rapacious profit-minding. Anyhoo, I was going to say something about how this proves that modern society imbues our current corporate 1% with the same semi-divine aura that once was given to kings of old, but then I realized that Mark Trail’s relationship to “modern society” is tenuous at best.

Crankshaft, 12/3/14

Hey, did you know that Crankshaft’s Bald Friend Whose Name I Forget ran a movie theater? I sure didn’t, and I’ve read Crankshaft every day for years! I guess it’s just good narrative practice to introduce something into a character’s life that brings him joy so you can yank it away from him in front of your audience. Today’s strip is particularly hilarious, if by hilarious you mean “cruel.” Yay, your theater is going to be saved, old man! Oh wait no saving it will be expensive, haha never mind, hope you like the taste of leftover popcorn and shattered dreams.

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Mary Worth, 11/27/14

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY! Mary is spending the holiday with her dearest friends: Wilbur, Iris, Dawn, Ian, Toby, and … some dude? Some dude who is definitely not Dr. Jeff. Seems that Hanna Dingdon isn’t the only person finding new love these days!

Also missing from the table is Iris’s supposedly reformed son Tommy. My best guess is that he and Jeff are holed up over in Iris’s apartment, getting high.

Pluggers, 11/27/14

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY! Pluggers would like to remind you that if you serve a frozen pie to your family today you’re human garbage.

Crankshaft, 11/27/14

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY! Crankshaft reminds you that Thanksgiving is a fun time to watch your elderly relatives, who know that they’re going to die soon, bargain with God. Enjoy!