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Pluggers, 2/4/17

Pluggers today made me realize that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a house of worship for non-wedding-or-funeral-related reasons — long enough that it never occurred to me that the same people who infuriate me for blithely texting throughout a movie (WHY WOULD YOU PAY $16.50 A TICKET TO SEE SILENCE, A QUIET AND EMOTIONALLY GRUELLING CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE FROM A MASTER FILMMAKER, ON ITS OPENING WEEKEND, AND THEN BE ON YOUR PHONE THE WHOLE TIME? YOU’RE A GROWN-ASS ADULT! YES, I CAN SEE YOU!) also do it while they’re at church, to the extent that beleaguered clergy have to beg parishioners to put their gizmos in their pockets for just a little while, for pete’s sake, just how flight attendants have to specifically point out that you can’t vape in 30,000 feet over Nebraska or whatever.

And, while my irreligion probably differentiates me from most pluggers, I do have to say that as a person with a hearing aid I very, very strongly related to today’s panel. Like, the ability to turn a hearing aid off is easily one of the top five best things about having one. It’s not that I can’t hear with it off, but … well, it’s sort of like when you open a beer right when you get home from a hard day’s work. Your problems don’t go away, but it takes the edge off, you know?

Shoe, 2/4/17

I know it’s something I harp on a lot, but the emotional disconnect between the jokes and dialogue in Shoe is one of my favorite bizarre things about the strip! Usually this takes the form of the patented goggle eyes of horror in reaction to a punchline, but today’s strip gets even more intense. “Roz, I need something to release all this tension I have” is mildly concerning in isolation; but when accompanied with the Perfesser’s bug-eyed stare, it seems like the last thing you hear a guy say before you become the first victim in his multi-state killing spree.

Mary Worth, 2/4/17

Oh my God, Iris just told Zak she loves him … in German! Safe in the knowledge that sweet, dim, uncultured Zak would never in a million years understand it! This is a delight because it’s a move she chose to make wholly predicated on her boy-toy’s ignorance, but it makes me sad because it probably means she’s going back to Wilbur when he blows back into town. Hopefully he hasn’t picked up any nasty Antarctic venereal diseases!

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Six Chix, 2/1/17

I’ve always been fascinated by how cultural images become detached from their origins and eventually become just bits of iconic flotsam in our collective consciousness. Like, skeletons have been associated with death for most of human history, for obvious reasons, but then in the West we started putting a hooded cloak on our skeletal death-figure, and then we started forgetting that our skeletal death-figure had a full body beneath that cloak, as the skull-face faded out of his representation. So that’s how we get cartoons like this, where a dentist is staring into the empty void where a face should be, not seeing flesh or a skull or even the back of a hood, just an infinitely dark emptiness that goes on forever, a yawning portal into the not-life that awaits us after our demise. The dentist seems remarkably unfazed by it, to be honest! Dentists have seen some shit, man.

Pluggers, 2/1/17

There are plenty of Pluggers panels that demonstrate that pluggers feel all the sorts of anxieties the rest of us do, from the financial to the familial to the creeping existential. I have to assume, then, that at some point in this joke’s history, the line was about “plugger performance anxiety.” Get it? Because usually that phrase involves inability to get an erection, but here it’s about peeing in a cup, because pluggers gave up on sex long ago. While usually I endorse complete freedom of expression in the comics, I can’t say I regret an editorial decision that spared innocent newspaper-reading Americans everywhere from thinking about the boners that these downwardly mobile exurban beast-men may or may not have.

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Mark Trail, 1/30/17

Last week’s Mark Trails were a between-stories palate cleanser that depicted a noble woodland creature (a bear) in search of a meal, which I didn’t post here because they were kinda dull. Today’s Mark Trails is about another noble woodland creature (Mark Trail) in search of a meal, which he’s having handed to him in a huge, steaming stack, and I’m posting it here because it’s amazing. That pile of flapjacks is hypnotic, and it’s totally worth violating the 180-degree rule between panels one and two to keep them in the same spot in the frame, focusing our attention on them and emphasizing the fact that nobody in the room can take their eyes off their pancakey deliciousness.

Meanwhile, Rusty wants us to know that he enjoys pancakes too. Tough shit, Rusty! Did you narrowly escape an exploding island anytime recently? No? Then how about you sit there in blessed silence and let Mark methodically and manfully devour that entire heap of griddled delight in peace.

Mary Worth, 1/30/17

Hey, remember when someone wrote into “Ask Wendy” with a professional dilemma that blatantly mirrored the Iris-Zak-Wilbur triangle? Mary told the questioner they should make a list of pros and cons for each of their options. Well, looks like that didn’t work! Looks like Mary’s whole professional advice-giving style is bullshit. Looks like Wilbur’s gonna have to come back from Antarctica and CLAIM WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY HIS, by which I mean his advice column, but probably Iris will end up back with him too because this strip always makes a list pros and cons for every potential narrative resolution and inevitably settles on the least interesting option.

Pluggers, 1/30/17

Usually when Pluggers presents a plugger’s version of some common phrase, it’s supposed to be a simpler, down-home alternative to some fancy pants elitist institution. But the “discount double-check” is a service offered by State Farm to its car insurance customers and advertised in heavy rotation during NFL games, so this cartoon is … confusing? Do pluggers not use car insurance, because only a bad person would have a car accident, probably because they’re listening to rap music? Or does State Farm cater to effete city dwellers? It’s got “farm” right in the name, darn it!

Dennis the Menace, 1/30/17

I mean, I guess that’s what they call it when you try to leave the Cheesecake Factory without paying and sprain your elbow as security wrestles you to the ground!