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Pluggers, 10/16/09

Guys, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been spending a lot of time on Pluggers this week — but how could I not, as it’s been so hilarious and poignant by turns? The work week ends with a real emotional wallop: a devastating look inside a wholly dormant plugger marriage. It’s hard to know where to even begin with this: the utter absence of sexual passion being the punchline of the little switcheroo joke; the idea that you would attempt to speed your spouse’s unconsciousness so that you could be alone with the television’s icy glow; the vision of a portly bear-man sitting on the couch, silently watching infomercials or Cops reruns, his kangaroo-wife drunkenly passed out next to him with wine stains on her tattered robe, and the bear-man thinks, “You know, I’m lucky! I’m really, really lucky!” It makes the apocalyptic paranoia of the cold war look downright cheerful.

Mary Worth, 10/16/09

I will never apologize for dwelling on Mary Worth as long as I please, however, especially when it focuses on fraught scenes like this. Adrian may be marrying a vegetable, or a corpse, but Scott will be Dr. Jeff’s son-in-law, do you hear me? He’s given his blessing. There is no turning back.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/09

I have no idea what this little interaction is supposed to be about — perhaps this woman is a cancer survivor with many Feelings to Process? At any rate, she seems to have decided that Les is creepy and weird and she doesn’t want him touching her, which pretty much makes her my personal hero.

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Gil Thorp, 10/15/09

Let’s give some credit where credit is due: Good on Marty Moon, for hauling himself out of the gutter! It wasn’t easy, being fired from his own public access cable show, but it’s only a few weeks into the season and he’s already graduated from his broadcast-quality wooden box to television, or at least something that requires cameras of some sort. (Maybe he has a YouTube channel now?) Or, well, at least I think that weird blob at the middle left of the first panel, hovering just above the nameless Mudlark gingerly checking for head injuries, is supposed to be a camera. If it isn’t, why are Gil and Marty looking at some off-panel third party in panel two, rather than at each other? I suppose that could just be because of their seething mutual disdain, but why does Marty appear to be wearing some sort of toupee? You don’t need a hairpiece for the radio.

Mary Worth, 10/15/09

Oh my goodness, what secret bedside task must Dr. Jeff perform to resolve this tragic drama? Will he:

• Gruffly demand that Scott not die because “God damn it, someone has to marry Adrian! I’m tired of seeing her mopey face and dumb bowl cut every day!”
• Tearfully beg Scott to admit that “your father talked about me, right? He knew that he meant the world to me? That I never forgot him? Please, I need to know!”
• Use the magical healing powers he learned in “medical school,” which no other employee of this hospital attended.
• Ever so gently lift Scott into his arms, so that he can reach underneath him and feel around for his wallet.

Pluggers, 10/15/09

Why, it’s day one of entries from a new generation of tech-savvy pluggers! Today we learn that such pluggers wake up screaming every night, haunted by visions of fiery atomic death.

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Crock, 10/10/09

Oh, hi Crock! Thanks for stopping by to help serve as a cautionary example in my “how not to tell a joke” clinic! Here are some quick pointers:

• “One end of a phone conversation” jokes are tricky! You have to structure it such that it seems kind of natural, but the reader still gets all the information they need to piece together what’s going on. In fact, how you parcel out that information, revealing unexpected tidbits in interesting ways, is often at the heart of the sequence’s humor! Having the one person whose dialogue you can read or hear simply repeat back what the hidden interlocutor has just said sort of kills the magic.
• However, once you’ve established that we the readers can’t hear the person at other end of the phone conversation, and thus the person we can see will be supplying the dialogue for both participants, don’t change up the rules by supplying jaggedy word balloons out of the telephone’s earpiece. It’s confusing.
• Fat people tend to be spherical or oblong, rather than linear.
• A comic that consists of three panels of some dude talking on a phone against a grey background is not particularly interesting visually.

But hey, at least your punchline didn’t make light of torture or slavery!

Mary Worth, 10/10/09

“Of course, when I say ‘right behind,’ you have to keep in mind that the Earth is a sphere, and thus any seemingly straight line will, if you follow it long enough, simply bring you back to your starting point. In that sense, I’m roughly 25,000 miles behind you, which, on the vast scale of the entire universe, is barely any distance at all. I do concede, however, that by the mundane terms in which we usually view our day-to-day existence, I could more accurately be said to be ‘right in front’ of you. But our relationship is much more elevated than that, isn’t it, Jeff?”

Spider-Man, 10/10/09

Ha ha, we all think that the Sandman has mended his ways, but … the monster is forcing his innocent daughter to watch Jay Leno! Does this madman have no decency?

Marvin, 10/10/09

This week-long plot about the fact that it smells bad when you poop in your pants has climaxed with Marvin being punched in the face, and thus I take back anything bad I may have said about it.