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Pluggers, 4/5/18

Are you an ordinary biological life form made of meat and bone? Are you trying to transcend those limitations by festooning your flesh-shell with baubles made of gold or jewels? Well, pluggers are way ahead of you. Pluggers are enhancing their bodies with metal and machinery, to become something greater, something powerful, something more. I honestly did not anticipate this new direction for Pluggers, but I am very much here for it.

Dennis the Menace, 4/5/18

Your mother is a young woman, Dennis, and probably sees her still-young child as a reflection of her own youth. Letting her know that you, who will almost certainly outlive her, already feel the icy breath of mortality on the back of your neck is menacing indeed.

Family Circus, 4/5/18

“What’s her angle? Is she plotting against me? Against us? Are we in a blood feud with grandma? I’ve been waiting for this day all my life.”

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Family Circus, 3/28/18

So all week Family Circus has been doing a “Daddy’s boss is coming to visit!” storyline, which has featured Ma Keane in particular in just a state of constant anxiety about, I guess, the state of the house and the presence of four unruly and (let’s be honest) unattractive children. Her level of freakout seems WILDLY out of proportion to the actual situation, and today’s panel — which would make next to no sense if you didn’t know the context — even more so. Like, can Ma Keane even hear what Dolly is saying from this distance? Does she really think her husband’s boss is going to insist that, now that a five-year-old child has invited her to stay for dinner, the Keanes are honor-bound to feed her? Honestly the only way this all fits together is if Thel has been suspecting for years that Big Daddy Keane was having an affair with his boss, and in this panel he’s just gotten finished telling her that they’re running off together, tonight.

Judge Parker, 3/28/18

Hey, remember Toni Bowen, the network news’s main reporter on the Spencer-Driver beat, who brought America both the “Neddy has violated OSHA rules in so many ways” story and the “April is a international criminal, just not the way everyone thinks” story? And then she got fired? Well, she and Sam have bumped into each other down at the supermarket, and the sexual tension is palpable! The only question remaining is how exactly April, who’s still Randy’s wife and is keeping remote tabs on him via his own security systems and is also a literal assassin, is going to assassinate Toni, to death, until she’s dead.

Dennis the Menace, 3/28/18

I mean … I guess I’m not married to the Dennis the Menace brand, but I still think it’s a little late to pivot to an “old people do the darndest things” model, even if the readership is like 90% old people at this point.

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Family Circus, 3/23/18

The image of Jeffy wandering cheerfully around the house, having somehow gotten access to a dangerous implement like a hammer, is of course something you don’t forget, so I was pleased to find justification for the déjà vu I felt seeing today’s Family Circus panel: this is basically just a zoom-in on a panel from six years ago, though I accept that the original art is probably much older than that, dating from an era when it was socially acceptable to just leave blunt instruments lying around the house where your toddlers could find them. Anyway, the 2012 version featured Jeffy offering to “play doctor” with Big Daddy Keane, by which I mean threatening to smash his kneecaps with a hammer; in today’s installment, Jeffy announces that anyone who tries to reduce the volume of his ruckus will get a hammer to the face.

Pluggers, 3/23/18

One of the most dangerous times for any monarchy is when the monarch dies, especially if there’s no clear successor in place, or if the heir to throne is hostile to the old king’s courtiers and advisors. There are at least two famous historical monarchs — Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, and Numerian, a Roman emperor who briefly reigned towards the end of the chaotic third century AD — whose deaths were kept secret for weeks by their ministers until a succession to the throne that suited those ministers’ liking could be arranged, with their royal bodies left to rot unburied in the meantime, which is a thing that occurred to me for no particular reason when I read today’s Pluggers.

Six Chix, 3/23/18

OH NOTHING MUCH JUST A MAN’S FACE TWISTED IN AGONY AS HIS VERY MIND DISSOLVES INTO A CHAOTIC FLOOD OF PURE MATHEMATICS

HE SCREAMS OUT NUMBERS AS HIS PHYSICAL FORM TRANSFORMS INTO ABSTRACT INFORMATION, AND A LADY IS SMILING AND CHATTING ON THE PHONE JUST A FEW FEET AWAY