Archive: Pluggers

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Hi and Lois, 2/11/13

You might think Hi and Lois’s art is simplistic, but it can really convey a lot of emotional depth. For instance, panel two shows just what a crushing psychic burden it is for Hi to even consider caring about other people’s family relationships or personal lives. And panel three shows Lois’s numb horror at the emotional desert her husband seems happy to live in.

Apartment 3-G, 2/11/13

“It’s me, Claire! Don’t sugarcoat it. You know I’ve been waiting for years for Margo to finally die and set me free of her tyranny! Is she conscious? Can I finally tell her what I really think about her without fear of retribution?”

Pluggers, 2/11/13

When pluggers duct-tape cardboard sheets over all the windows, they say it’s so the gummint mind-control rays can’t get in, but really they’re just sick of seeing how filthy their house is.

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Pluggers and Dennis the Menace, 2/4/13

Yup, it’s true: somethings “just happen,” no matter how much you’d like them not to! Take nudity, for instance. Some people are just “born that way,” and by “some people” we mean “literally everybody, every single person ever is born completely naked, with their genitals just out there for anyone to look at.” So filthy! So disgusting! So hard to understand. Eventually, we get old enough to understand the concept of shame — “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” — and we look back at our early, exposed days in horror, but we can’t blot them out with a crayon, no matter how hard we try. The Fall of Man, Dennis: that’s the most menacing thing there is.

Apartment 3-G, 2/4/13

I had a good laugh over the idea of a generic “Manhattan General Hospital,” but it turns out it’s a real thing! Or was. Was a real thing. It merged with Beth Israel Medical Center, in 1964. So I’m assuming that these nurses in their archaic caps are looking for Tommie to warn her that she’s fallen victim to some kind of space-time wormhole and she needs to be very careful not to alter the course of history based on her future knowledge, lest she cause universe-destroying paradoxes.

Mark Trail, 2/4/13

Look, Rusty, you’ve finally gotten to go on a fishing trip with Mark! Too bad it’s a “working trip,” which means you’ve got to scramble around taking pictures for Mark’s article, in violation of all child labor laws! Also, you’re probably going to be kidnapped by “Catfish”, FYI.

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Family Circus, 1/28/13

Ma and Pa Keane — and, for that matter, Billy — are suspiciously absent in this filthy, ill-mannered breakfast scene, in which Jeffy is balancing his toast on his knee, Dolly is emitting some kind of fluid from her left arm, and PJ is just stone cold rubbing his ass on the table. Where are the elders? Have they and their tyranny finally been overthrown bloodily by the younger half of the Keane Kompound’s population? Is the “morning” on which this breakfast is being eaten actually a metaphorical new dawn of freedom, and it’s really 5:30 p.m., because now nobody can stop Dolly, Jeffy, and PJ from eating whatever they want whenever they want?

Herb and Jamaal, 1/28/13

Oh, Herb and Jamaal, you’ve had more than eight years to think about what you’ve done wrong, and still haven’t figured it out.

Pluggers, 1/28/13

You know, I live only a few blocks form one of the U.S.’s most competitive universities and see smart, upscale young students going to the store or to restaurants in their pajamas pretty much daily, so this isn’t just a plugger thing. It is true that pluggers are incapable of figuring out how to set up Netflix, though.