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Lockhorns, 4/29/10

You’ve probably wondered: what would be a fouler expression of marital loathing than Loretta killing people and cooking them to feed to her unsuspecting husband? Hiring someone to dig up mouldering corpses from the graveyard, which she then cooks and feeds to her unsuspecting husband? Yeah, that sounds about right. Thanks goodness for his discriminating palate!

Crock, 4/29/10

Usually I’m annoyed by comics that just present two or more characters standing around describing things rather than actually depicting the action. But I have to say that I would much rather see two poorly drawn Legionnaires looking at a white square while standing in a mysterious numbered tube than see a new bride and groom being pelted with bloody chicken viscera in a scene of unimaginable horror, so big thanks to Crock!

Mark Trail, 4/29/10

Cherry has apparently decided that the root cause of the Trails’ terrible sex life is Mark’s terror of sensuality of any sort. Before he can be expected to serve as a satisfying sexual partner to her, he must first start from square one and “work on” himself — possibly while Cherry watches.

Marmaduke, 4/29/10

In I Samuel 18, we learn that the young David, in order to win the hand of King Saul’s daughter Michal, had to provide as a bride-price 100 Philistine foreskins. In order to ascend to the dignity of Demon-King of Earth, Marmaduke must prove himself a more gruesome killer than even the Biblical patriarchs.

Mary Worth, 4/29/10

Mary’s thought balloon today begins The Smuggening, which is crucial, as she can only effectively meddle in the lives of others from a place of superiority. “I also grew up poor, and yet my condo unit isn’t cluttered with stacks of boxes! Hmm, how sad that not everyone has my fortitude of character.”

Pluggers, 4/29/10

Pluggers have nowhere in particular to go and nobody to see, so why not show up for appointments 45 minutes early? The nice lady at the doctor’s certainly can’t leave the her desk, so if I say things to her while I’m waiting, she’ll probably have to talk to me!

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Pluggers, 4/15/10

Let us pause here for a moment to talk about Mr. James Todd Smith, aka LL Cool J! Do you know when Radio, LL Cool J’s first full-length album, was released? 1985! For you pluggers who are bad at math, this was 25 years ago. (His first single, “I Need A Beat,” came out a year before that! It sold more than 100,000 copies!) To put that in perspective, in 1985, the year Radio was released, Joan Baez celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of her first album. Can you imagine some Reagan-era plugger saying “Wait, Joan Baez is some kind of protest singer? I thought she was your aunt’s hairdresser!” They would be laughed at! They would not parade their lack of pop-cultural literacy in a newspaper comic feature!

And don’t try to say that “Oh, it’s OK for someone to have literally never heard of LL Cool J, because he’s one of those hippity-hop artists, with the baggy pants and disrespectful attitudes.” You know, I’m not an aficionado of, for instance, contemporary country music, and could not identify by name or tune a single song by the band Rascal Flatts (a band whose career is a mere 11 years old at this point). But if in the course of casual television watching I happened to encounter the name of this band, I would not say, “Rascal Flats? Isn’t that the salt desert in Utah where they test the rocket cars?” And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t smugly send this anecdote into some sort of Bizarro-world elitist version of Pluggers; instead, I would be reasonably embarrassed about it.

In conclusion: LL Cool J is a 42-year-old man with a fairly high-profile career that is a generation old. He is so integrated into the entertainment mainstream that he now stars in America’s second-highest-rated broadcast TV crime scene investigation franchise (the ultimate origin of this strip, I suppose). You have in fact heard of him. His name is not the name of a ranch in Montana.

As a side note, this is the same plugger couple we saw yesterday in happier times. Clearly the garage cleaning and/or the post-garage cleaning mealtime and/or “garage cleaning” didn’t go so well, and now we find them in their usual position: bear-husband wedged into his recliner, drunk and belligerent, and kangaroo-wife sticking her snout into a magazine, desperately trying to pretend she can’t hear him.

Apartment 3-G, 4/15/10

Disappointed as I am that this Apartment 3-G storyline seems determined to not end in a hail of bullets (as certain other plots we could mention did), I do have to admit to being intrigued by this twist, in which an exasperated Margo has now been tasked with hiding a major piece of evidence from a crime scene, getting her sexy fingerprints all over it in the process. All indications really do point to the idea that Martin and Margo are so long accustomed to Bobbie’s actual diagnosable insanity that they have just learned to accommodate it and no longer see it as unusual or shocking. Threatening us at gunpoint? Ha ha, that’s our Roberta! No, we don’t want the cops nosing around, because they might start asking questions about all the people that she actually shot, whose bodies we helped to hide.

Blondie, 4/15/10

It’s well known that Mr. Dithers runs his company like an Orwellian police state, where employees are encouraged to constantly monitor one another for disloyalty. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s installed spycams in every room of his headquarters. Dagwood’s co-worker, who fears even mentioning the existence of the omnipresent cameras that haunt his every moment, has been reduced to the state of quivering terror expected by his sinister overlord; Dagwood, in contrast, has adopted an air of open defiance, like the true hero of liberty and freedom that he is. We will never forget you, Dagwood, even after you’ve been dragged out back for summary execution!

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Mary Worth, 4/14/10

Oh ho, compulsive shopping, everybody! That’s what this Mary Worth storyline is about! Compulsive shopping at comically misspelled stores like “Maisie’s” (which is totally not at all related to Macy★s Department Stores, a brand that would never encourage its customers to spend beyond their means, ha ha, please don’t sue us). When all is said and done here, Mary might look back on this shopping expedition with a bit of guilt, but probably won’t because she lacks self-awareness of any kind.

By the way, Bonnie, I recommend that you take Mary up on her offer and formulate your own ideas on how she can help you break out of your terrible shopoholism. Any treatment plan she designs on her own will involve gathering her friends to berate and insult you until you kill yourself out of shame.

Apartment 3-G, 4/14/10

Sad as I am that this plotline will apparently end without a single shot being fired, I do sort of like the casual way Martin has taken advantage of Bobbie’s distraction to disarm her, almost as if this is a scenario that played out dozens of times during their marriage. In fact, it would be extra hilarious if he went upstairs and informed Gabriella that he and his wife had rediscovered the spark in their relationship and that his proposal to her was hereby retracted.

Margo, meanwhile, has presumably dozed off on the floor, just as she did as a kid when Roberta would get all pill-happy and gun-crazy. Doesn’t hanging out with our parents always bring us back to our childhood behaviors?

Mark Trail, 4/14/10

So not only has former blond Adonis Buzz Miller been turned prematurely white-haired, but now Senator Pimphand, who once sported a dignified grey mane that belied his propensity for violence, has now subsequently rediscovered the russet locks of his youth! I think that we may be onto something very big here: Senator Slaps-a-Lot is actually stealing the life-energy of his constituents, like poor Ranger Miller. This vampiristic misdeed will make Senator Other Senator’s little Endangered Species Steakhouse operation look like small potatoes.

Crankshaft, 4/14/10

I have no idea what Jeff’s terrible lopsided facial expression in the final panel is supposed to denote. I’m guessing it’s “Oh my God, I am physically incapable of not making terrible unfunny puns, please, somebody stop me, I hate myself so much,” but it may also be “I am so high on prescription drugs — which were, uh, ‘in the water supply’ — that I cannot feel my face.”

Pluggers, 4/14/10

Deep down, pluggers know that they cannot replace their long-lost intimate life with their spouses with eating, endless eating, but that won’t stop them from trying.