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Pluggers, 10/18/19

The point of Pluggers, it seems to me, is that it’s meant to draw a distinction between pluggers and … the rest of the world, defined however you want (liberal elitists? big city folk? the young and the hip?). We might disagree on what exactly those distinctions are, on what communities the plugger community defines itself as not being, but I think we can all agree that today’s panel — “A plugger uses an extremely common slang term in an everyday situation” — is terrible, just terrible, carrying almost no semantic content to speak of. The good news: this means we’ve run out of meaningful things to say about pluggers, and can shut down this strip forever.

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/19

Wow, this is the Dennis the Menace that’s going to be haunting my nightmares! “What if he was your son, George?” asks Martha — his wife with whom, of course, he has no children — while George looks down at Dennis with a sort of detached contemplation. I have so many questions about this! Is this some weird little game they’re playing? Is Dennis already a participant in this fantasy, or do they hope he’ll catch on and play along? Why does she say “your” son instead of “our” son??? I guess the “punchline” is supposed to be turning that back on her — he’s not my son, I just married into him when I married you — but it’s such a weird way of doing it! What the hell, man? Seriously, what the hell?

The Lockhorns, 10/18/19

Honest to God, the first time I read this, I thought Leroy was talking to Loretta, and that he really had missed his trial and was going to jail soon. Which would be good, honestly! He should go to jail, for his crimes!

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Mark Trail, 10/4/19

I don’t exactly blame Mark for not being active on social media, what with it being a terrible nightmare cesspool that broke humanity’s collective brain, but as a guy who has a bit of a social media presence myself, I have a word of advice for Mark: you can’t just join Twitter and then immediately start tweeting about how you’ve got exclusive photos of the yeti, because nobody’s going to believe you! You should have spent years tweeting out links to your boring diatribes about lizards or whatever, in order to build up credibility.

Dennis the Menace, 10/4/19

I’m assuming that this young guy is a relatively new arrival in the neighborhood, and that upon meeting him Mr. Wilson was like “Oh, watch out for the Mitchells … they have too many kids” hoping that the guy would ask how many they have, but he instead he just changes the subject because that’s actually an incredibly weird and rude thing to say to a near-stranger and it made him uncomfortable to hear it, and probably Mr. Wilson repeated it several times and the guy just never bit, and now, finally, despite the new guy’s best efforts, they’ve bumped into each other by the Mitchells’ fence, and Mr. Wilson says, smugly, “There’s Dennis, the Mitchells’ only kid,” and finally the guy has had enough, and he sighs heavily then says this. You’re all with me here? That’s the only logical lead-in to this exchange, right?

Beetle Bailey, 10/4/19

“But he asked for it,” Spc. Gizmo yelled, being dragged from the courtroom after he was found guilty at his court martial for crimes against humanity. “He requested the procedure. He requested the procedure!”

Mary Worth, 10/4/19

Oh no, oh no, the Mary Worth creative team is aware of the concept of “Netflix and chill,” threat level alpha, repeat, threat level alpha

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Mary Worth, 9/25/19

“You must feel like you’re on a roller coaster of emotion, dear! Me, I like to keep it on an even keel. If something bad — or good — happens to me, I use the power of my mind to to smooth that memory down until it’s just one more in a series of low-impact incidents in a calm, orderly life. Feelings are for the young and the poor, I always say!”

Dennis the Menace, 9/25/19

I think we need to admit to our selves that Dennis’s menacing, despite being right there in the name of the strip, is really an an informed attribute — something the other characters claim to believe without any evidence within the narrative to back them up. Today’s panel, in which Mr. Wilson declares “That Mitchell kid is more dangerous than the nuclear arsenals that can wipe out the human race with a simple press of the button! He’s an extinction-level event in red overalls, I tell you!” while Dennis flops goofily around on his lawn, is perhaps the clearest evidence of this yet.