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Pluggers, 1/15/15

Philosophical question: are there young pluggers? Probably not. But: are new pluggers being formed as pluggerism-susceptible youth age into a plugger-appropriate range? Even this seems unlikely, as pluggerism seems founded not just on old age and cantankerousness but on a fairly specific nexus of cultural consumption. What I’m trying to get at here is that pluggers are dying, going extinct, never to be replaced. And those surviving pluggers are going to become more and more acutely aware of their thinning numbers, and eventually will eventually spend every waking minute haunted by the grim specter of their own death. The next decade or so of Pluggers will be amazing, in other words.

Crock, 1/15/15

If I had to guess, I’d say this was an awkward attempt to graft the hip and in-the-news term “hack” onto a strip that never depicts characters using computers and that indeed takes place in some ill-defined but definitely early-to-mid-20th-century past. But still, by giving the title character the sinister power to access and alter his men’s very minds, this “joke” has made Crock more terrifying than he’s been for years.

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Marvin, 1/10/15

You know, sometimes, when it comes to Marvin, I feel like something of a scold. I mean, the poop joke has a long and honorable tradition across cultures. I like poop jokes. I make poop jokes. So why does the constant steaming stream of poop jokes in Marvin make me react with such humorless horror? I think today’s strip answers that question pretty well, which is that they’re not funny, and are actually pretty revolting above and beyond the whole poopiness aspect of it. Like, does anyone anywhere enjoy the image of a baby gleefully shoving brown (brown!) food down his maw while thought-balloon-boasting that he’s shitting at the same time? Do grandmas chuckle and cut out this strip and hang it on their refrigerator, because they like the image of organic matter going into one end of a human and coming out the other in a sort of awful continuous flow? No. I’m guessing no. I’m hoping no. Please, please, let the answer be no.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/15

“Haw haw! No, but seriously: we’re going to keep on murderin’ each other for no good reason, just like the biblical patriarchs.”

Pluggers, 1/10/15

I have a hearing aid, and one of the best things about it is the ability to turn it off. I’m not deaf and this doesn’t envelop me in a cone of silence or anything, but in public situations when I’m hearing conversations I don’t want to hear, it just kind of takes the edge off, you know? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that having hearing deficits is no picnic, but you always have to look on the bright side, and having an excuse to willfully misconstrue sexual advances from pluggers is a very, very bright side.

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Heathcliff, 1/9/15

For a town where sanitation is so important to the local psyche that it has inspired a local simian trickster-god, Westfinster’s trash situation is actually kind of out of hand. Nobody ever seems to actually put their garbage inside bags like civilized people; instead, organic matter is just packed into metal cans and apparently left there long enough to become a more or less homogenous slurry. Today we see that this repulsive garbage-goo comes in brown and green varieties, possibly as a result of an ill-advised attempt to implement a composting system.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/9/15

Clovis’s main schtick in this strip is to be the third-string character who has a rocky relationship with his wife, but I find today’s strip particularly poignant. His marriage may be troubled, but at least his wife hasn’t strayed — and yet he actually looks distraught by this fact. Perhaps something as obvious as an affair would be what was needed to convince them to finally give up on their painful union; mere emotional incompatibility isn’t enough, as much as it’s destroying them emotionally.

Momma, 1/9/15

Today’s Momma features the usual Momma-Francis infantilization routine amped up to truly uncomfortable levels and manages to slip a fart joke in as well, but at least we can give thanks for the fact that breast-feeding was out of vogue for middle class families when Francis was a baby.

Spider-Man, 1/9/15

OK, fine, it was probably a little harsh for me to say it was stupid for Spider-Man to go around fighting crime with his cell phone on his person, since smartphones are incredibly useful objects for communication, wayfinding, and tracking down info fast. But still, the practical question remained: where would he keep his phone in his skintight costume? Well, today we learn the answer! (He keeps it right next to his balls.)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/15

“Only good things have happened to me so only good things can happen to me! I’m on a nonstop rocketride to the moon, emotionally! For a little kid, I sure never have heard of what happens to characters in Greek tragedies who exhibit hubris!”

Pluggers, 1/9/15

You’re a plugger if one of your Facebook friends died more than a year ago but nobody’s bothered to tell you.