Archive: Pluggers

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Pluggers, 2/7/14

Writing a blog post about the daily comics pretty much every day for more than nine years has honestly given me quite a bit of sympathy for cartoonists who have to come up with a fresh variation on their basic gags daily, so I’m willing to forgive the bizarrely convoluted caption to this cartoon (would you be a non-plugger if you said “no” but then your granddaughter didn’t follow-up with this question? why does your granddaughter get to determine your plugger status?). I’m not willing to let the extremely and unjustifiably smug expression on the plugger-grandpa’s face slide, though. What exactly is going through that man-dog’s noggin? “Heh heh, look at this little girl, her life on earth so brief to this point that she doesn’t really understand the concepts of social and technological change over time. Why, all of existence is just one continuous present moment to her! It takes years of experience as a plugger to understand that life is a slow transformation of the world and your place in it, until one day you wake up and the things young people take for granted are baffling and scary, and everything makes you angry and confused. She’ll learn some day! Oh, she’ll learn!”

Six Chix, 2/7/14

It’s hard to tell because it’s so crudely drawn, but I’m thinking that bear is looking a little miffed. “You know, I have lots of opinions on ways we and our clients can work together to add value to both companies’ offerings. But, yeah, sure, just call me in when you need someone mauled. HEY, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE, I CAN HEAR YOU TALKING ABOUT ME.”

Hi and Lois, 2/7/14

Hey, Ditto, at least your sister has a normal name she can use! At least she isn’t named after a primitive means of reproducing printed material that went out of vogue in the 1980s! You’re playing with fire here, Ditto.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/18/14

Having been so long isolated from the mainstream of the U.S. and global economies, Hootin’ Holler has de facto become its own alternate currency zone.

Pluggers, 1/18/14

The crushing sameness of their dull, long, disappointing lives has numbed pluggers to the point that they rarely change facial expressions anymore. But they still need to occasionally groom the hair that continues to thrive even while their souls shrivel.

Mark Trail, 1/18/14

“Hey, wait, why are you shutting the door? Why are you locking the door? Why doesn’t my key work in the door anymore?”

Lockhorns, 1/18/14

Welp, looks like I’m pretty much the same age as Leroy Lockhorn, time to go weep endlessly somewhere!

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Family Circus, 10/29/13

You can criticize the Mommy and Daddy’s decision to keep the Keane Kids forever bottled up in the Keane Kompound, with the resulting stunting of their psychological, intellectual, and physical development obvious in every Family Circus panel. Still, you have to marvel at how even in their stunted circumstances, their imaginations soar. Sure, they’ve been denied contact with any biological texts outside of Genesis 2:20, but that hasn’t stopped them from coming up with their own charming and whimsical explanations for what they observe of the natural world. What would their parents say if they could hear their precious children’s simple just-so story? Probably it would involve scouring the Kompound for hidden radios to try to stop any further knowledge of “Halloween” reaching the children.

Funky Winkerbean and Pluggers, 10/29/13

Haha, it’s Tuesday a day of a week, so here’s a couple of comic strips making ham-handed jokes about Facebook! Rachel (her name’s Rachel, right? it’s actually remarkably difficult to find a complete list of Funky Winkerbean characters online) is trying to engage Funky on how he’s coping with Cory, his disappointment of a son (stepson? I’m honestly kind of pleased with my inability to pull up Funkyfacts from memory), being deployed in Afghanistan. As you can tell from Funky’s disgusted facial expression, he doesn’t want to talk about it! Yesterday he claimed that he’s never been on Facebook because “I’m an adult” (fun fact: the average age of a Facebook user is 41). Today he expressionlessly make a joyless sup-pun about how Skype, another technology he can’t be bothered to deal with, allows soldiers in a war zone to still feel connected to loved ones back home, and perhaps hold onto a little bit of their sanity. As long as those loved ones aren’t Funky Winkerbean, anyway! Funky has no desire to learn about fancy screen-phone whosits. Funky is also incapable of feeling affection for another human being, so what would the point of talking to him even be.

Pluggers, in its typical way, is taking a much simpler route to a laff. Whether you’re talking about a scary “web site” on the computer thingie that we guess we have to look at if we want to see the grandkids’ pictures now, or an actual physical book written by nerdlingers who think they’re smarter than us, “facebook” makes us sleepy! Zzzzz.

Archie, 10/29/13

How terrifying must it be to be poor, simple Archie Andrews? Imagine being so acutely aware of your own intellectual limitations that you live in constant terror of your mind being erased by some awful cerebral event, but too dumb to know what what such an event might feel or sound like!