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Pluggers, 4/26/11

“Recession” — pluggers hear that word on the TV news or talk radio, sometimes. Seems like it has something to do with the fact that there aren’t any good jobs around here, they guess, not that there were any good jobs for years before the news people started saying the word so much. Anyway, there’s something about the word — or maybe it’s just the way people say it — that makes pluggers think about their own lives, and how none of it worked out the way they should have. “Recession” rolls through their heads every morning, as they stand in their crappy little bathroom and stare into their dingy little mirror and think about how they had hoped not to live in this town anymore by the time they grew up but they still do and every time they see one of the laughing morons they went to high school with at the 7 Eleven or the Arby’s or whatever they die a little inside. They think about how the people on the radio said that they should be grateful for their shitty job, because of the recession, but really they’d be pretty happy if they got to work and found that the place had burned to the ground, or even that they had been just been fired for no good reason. Their little ritual in front of that dingy mirror gets a little bit longer every day. Those radio people will stop talking about the recession someday, but pluggers will keep staring into the mirror and thinking all these terrible things, every day, until they die.

(Wait, this is some joke involving “recession” and “receding,” about the dog-man’s baldness? Ha ha, come on, pluggers don’t know any of the parts of speech of Latin verbs!)

Dick Tracy, 4/26/11

How I’m interpreting Special Officer Pencil Mustache’s comments in the first couple panels here: “Dick, based on your bizarre story and your well-known penchant for brutality, I’m going to guess that you just summarily executed Flyface and the Fifth, but acknowledging that would lead to a lot of paperwork for me, so, eh.”

Mary Worth, 4/26/11

Oh, boy, it turns out the “Dawn is a technology addict” plot didn’t end abruptly — it didn’t end at all! Instead, Mary Worth is tackling its most ambitious project yet: a sprawling, multi-character arc all based around the theme that technology is the Devil’s work. Liza, your patient could have died while you were playing Scrabulous on your unusually large smartphone! I can’t wait until Wilbur is called in to implement kite-based therapy.

Momma, 4/26/11

Has anyone ever wanted to see a real bedroom love scene in Momma? No? Well, too bad, this happened anyway.

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Marvin, 4/9/11

Never mind whatever kind of baby HUAC Marvin’s got going on here; why do the infants to his left bear an expression of heavy-lidded ennui, while those to his right have eyes opened wide with horror? Given Mavin’s love of sitting in his own foul-smelling feces, I think we can say with some certainty which way the wind is blowing here.

Archie, 4/9/11

Never mind Archie and Jughead’s inane banter — what exactly is Random Second Panel Gal looking at on her tablet device? It’s a given that all the ladies in Riverdale are hot for our feckless protagonist for no reason anyone can ever identify, so I suppose it’s not out of the question that someone developed an Archie app. Still, I weep for the waste of programming time it would represent.

Momma, 4/9/11

The Hobbes children are so traumatized by their upbringing that their mother’s face haunts even their masturbatory sessions.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/8/11

Rex Morgan plotlines are actually pretty varied, but in many of them there comes a point when the wacky ancillary characters get in over their head and the Morgans have to bail them out. Inevitably, Rex uses this occasion to act like a put-upon dick. Panel three today, with Rex’s best “oh Lord, the humans and their problems, why can’t I just be left alone to read my newspaper in absolute silence” expression yet, should as far as I’m concerned be hanging up in every art museum in the world.

Mary Worth, 4/8/11

“That little girl with bone cancer who needs her pain meds in Room 287? Fuck her! I’m living in the moment.”

Momma, 4/8/11

The title character in Momma is a cruel, passive-aggressive narcissist, whose parenting style is so monstrous that there’s absolutely no question as to why the her children are so dysfunctional. But the strip has one saving grace, which is that it’s always clear that she’s very, very depressed.

Jumble, 4/8/11

Silly math teacher! You have to go to work every day to try and fail to inspire a group of sullen, hateful teenagers with your love of the beauty and wonder of mathematics. No amount of coffee will make your soul whole!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 4/8/11

“So if you’re drunk, I’m thinking we could have a pretty good time.”