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Pluggers, 10/4/17

Do you guys know about Just Watch? It’s a great site where you can plug in pretty much any movie or TV show you can think of and it’ll tell you which of the innumerable streaming and paid download sites out there has it available. (There are probably tons of others, but this is the one I use.) Anyway, I plugged Gunsmoke into it and found…

So I immediately take back all the unkind thoughts I had about Older Dog-Man here. You’ve hit the jackpot, buddy! Your meticulously catalogued collection of videotapes, kept secured in your locked Gunsmoke Closet,represent a resource more precious than gold in the plugger community. Of curse, videotape is an analog medium, and with each viewing the tape degrades, so you’ve got to be smart about rationing wholesome Western entertainment. That’s why you have to make sure that your fellow pluggers pay a price that reflects both market demand and the irreplaceable nature of the resource before you allow them to sit enraptured and watch 333×480 black-and-white imagery flicker across the flat-screen TV that your nephew, after much coaxing, finally hooked up to your wheezing old VCR. He doesn’t get a cut. You sent him $5 for his birthday every year until he turned 18. And you dutifully hit “Record” on the tape machine every night at 11 for years when they still played decent syndicated TV on that UHF channel that’s all half-hour commercials for kitchen stuff now. You’ve earned this.

Lockhorns, 10/4/17

Even see a comic that just seems really stuck in a specific time period, like the Lockhorns with its sort of early-to-mid ’60s suburban vibe, and think, “You know, this strip should really get in touch with a more modern set of cultural touchstones if it wants to stay relevant”? Well, be careful what you ask for, is all I’m saying.

Marvin, 10/4/17

Wait, does Marvin’s dad think that women … don’t use toilets? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems this strip has yet to fully explore all of its characters’ terrible and wrongheaded ideas about urination and defecation.

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Six Chix, 9/30/17

I find crows a little uncanny, what with their keen intelligence and ability to recognize and remember human faces. So I’ve always been a little averse to learning too much about their ways, lest I freak myself out even more about them, but today’s Six Chix finally led me to fatefully Google “what do crows eat?” Because … what is that the crow is scarfing/ripping/tearing/shredding/mutilating in panel two there? Remember, the coloring is done by the syndicate — it doesn’t necessarily represent the artist’s intent. It sort of looks like a pile of leaves but then it also kind of looks like the gutted body of another bird, right? Those are little bird feed sticking up from the end of it on our right? As the nice bird-feeding lady looks on in horror? Anyway, turns out “crows eat frogs, lizards, insects and anything else they can catch and swallow. They’re also known to eat carrion.” After that, I decided I was ready to give in to full-on bird horror, so I Googled “will crows eat other crows,” but I only got as far as “Crows occasionally murder each other for reasons that mystify scientists” before I decided, you know what, I’m not actually emotionally prepared for this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/30/17

We joke a lot on this blog about the true meaning of menace when it comes to this strip, but really: is there anything creepier than someone — especially a child — doing something destructive and manifestly not in his own best interest, for impenetrable reasons of his own, with a smile on his face? At this point I’m just hoping that bucket is full of water that came out of the faucet, if you catch my drift.

Pluggers, 9/30/17

I feel like this panel is cheating by giving us a plugger definition not just in the caption but also in a word balloon? Anyway, you have to respect the fact that, no matter how many folksy aphorisms you jam into the text here, this panel still looks like a couple guys cruising for erotic e-stim play partners in the parking lot of the Dillard’s out on Route 78 that closed down in 2011.

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Mary Worth, 9/25/17

Hi everybody, I’m back! Huge thanks to all who contributed to the fundraiser, and huge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for being a hilarious guest blogger as always! (I’m still giggling at “But his contract done restricted his wanderings to the premium content offerings from the Tribune Content Agency, LLC.”)

I’m glad to be back, though, and not least because I got here just in time for Dawn to hit her emotional nadir. We all know that Dawn’s true purpose in the great tapestry of life in Mary Worth’s universe is to be as demonstrably miserable as possible. Whether she’s mope-masturbating to Game of Thrones, or staring forlornly at one of the Renaissance’s most famous dicks while thinking about her ex-boyfriend, or, as in this case, stumbling disheveled out of her apartment after what I assume is a 24-hour long mismatched-sweatsuit-clad crying jag to grab a fistful of carrot muffins and then retreat to the nest of blankets she’s made for herself in the middle of the bathroom floor, Dawn is at her best when she’s at her most pathetic.

Crankshaft, 9/25/17

Oh, man, looks like Crankshaft is in for a tough decision that he’s going to have weigh against his moral code: what will allow him to be more of a dick to more people, siding with labor or management?

Pluggers, 9/25/17

Pluggers know that the opiate of today’s masses flows through electrical wires and broadband pipes, and they’re doing their part to help keep the spigot at full blast!