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Pluggers, 6/7/16

Here’s a fact that I never get tired of: NCIS, a show whose pitch can be summarized as “what if there were crime … in the navy”, is one of the most popular shows in the country, averaging 20.5 million weekly viewers this past season. That puts it just barely behind Big Bang Theory in total viewership; its two spinoffs are both in the top 20. Yet literally nobody in the TV criticism world cares about it! Think of all the rhapsodic analysis of Mad Men we had to endure over the years. Mad Men had 2.6 million viewers a week in its highest-rated season. If an NCIS episode got ratings four times higher than that, think of all the people who would be fired, immediately!

Anyway, these numbers reveal that NCIS doesn’t actually do that well in the coveted 18-49-year-old demographic, which means that, as today’s panel confirms, its audience probably consists of mostly pluggers. Today’s Pluggers actually successfully surprised me with its punchline, but I still like the one I thought up before I read the real one: “Watching NCIS is plugger foreplay.” It would explain a lot!

Crankshaft, 6/7/16

Time jump shenanigans continue! Look: it’s pre-jump Les Moore, hawking his book about the murdered John Darling, who was the father of his (future, at this point) stepdaughter-in-law! We know, from having secret future post-time-jump knowledge, that this book was a complete flop, which may explain why he’s doing a book signing at a used book store a lady started in her attic, probably without the proper permits.

The Phantom, 6/7/16

Oh, man, I forgot to properly highlight the fact that Judge Parker artist Mike Manley has now taken over The Phantom! He’s showing his adaptability here: the Judge Parker gig has given him a chance to demonstrate that he can draw wealthy, beautiful, chesty women, but The Phantom is and always will be all about the beefcake.

Judge Parker, 6/7/16

Speaking of Judge Parker, it’s good to see the strip fully committing to its shtick of incredibly wealthy people sitting around their palatial compound complaining about how difficult it is to be judged for their incredible wealth.

Six Chix, 6/7/16

GUYS YOU BROUGHT YOUR FRIEND TO A RESTAURANT WHERE CHICKENS ARE KILLED AND EATEN, I DON’T THINK SHE’S THE ONE WHO MADE THE MISTAKE HERE

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Lockhorns, 6/4/16

One of the fun things about the United States is that most people learn some fairly specific aspects of very local history when they’re in elementary school that only later do you find out are not globally important facts. Growing up in Western New York, we made Iroquois longhouses out of papier-mâché, whereas our counterparts in California were building Spanish missions. When covering the War of 1812, our teachers described in vivid detail the way the British had cruelly burned down Buffalo, mentioned only in passing that they would go on to do the same to Washington, D.C., and did not at all discuss that the Americans had done it to Toronto first. My wife, who grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania, got the Whiskey Rebellion, so I’m always charmed to see it get a shout-out in print, which doesn’t happen enough for my taste. It even got cut from the Hamilton musical! Anyway, I guess the point here is that Loretta saw the American Revolution as being just the first step towards knitting together a unified political and economic power out of disparate colonies, whereas Leroy saw many of the British taxes and other measures that sparked the revolution as being evil in and of themselves, not just because they were enacted without the colonists’ consent, and also he’s an embarrassing drunk.

Pluggers, 6/4/16

Pluggers will never, ever get healthier. They will just get sicker and sicker until they blessedly die.

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Crock, 6/3/16

Haha, it’s funny because the patrolmen are dying horribly in flames, miles away from help or rescue or even water! As the fire burns away everything that makes them human, their commanding officers coldly refer to them as “objects.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/3/16

Like many military operations, this started as an attempt to remove something with precision and skill and has now devolved into a test of strength in which someone is probably going to lose a limb.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 6/3/16

Welp, I guess Jeff wasn’t being fired by his therapist earlier this week; he was being told to go back to his childhood home, to get “closure” or whatever, and also just start pulling up the floorboards of his old attic, despite the distinct lack of enthusiasm displayed by the house’s current resident. Meanwhile, in the future, we’re discovering how this actually ties in with his mother’s death: he’s using the decoder ring he’s found to translate a message from his mother, who is in outer space, which is apparently where hell is.

Mary Worth, 6/3/16

Looks like all the girls who were being super mean to Dawn because they thought she was sleeping with her professor are pals with her again because she’s deigned to spend time with them in between dropping Harlan’s name every other sentence, because that’s how human beings work! I am very much assuming that this upcoming showing of X-Men: Apocalypse that Dawn is being lured to will go pretty much like the prom scene in Carrie, except without the revenge via psychic powers.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/16

“Maybe I’m just not very good at school?”

Pluggers, 6/3/16

You’re a plugger if your grandchildren dislike you and flee from your presence the moment you’re distracted.