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Hey kids! Do you know where mom hides the good scissors? Are you waiting for the day when you’ll graduate from adorable malapropisms and overactive imaginary scenarios into full-on murder? Why not announce it to the world — in t-shirt form?

Yes, merchandise displaying the excellent graphic above, which was created by faithful reader Wille Thompson, is available for purchase at CafePress. As usual, I’ve put a few starter shirts in the store, but if you’d like to see this logo on some other product — shirts, hoodies, mugs, what have you — just e-mail me and let me know.

Also! Another fab blog for your delectation! Plugwatch 200X is another in the ever-growing roster of Blogs That Focus On One Comic Every Day. Blogger JLR takes every day’s Pluggers and transforms it into a little mini-short-story that brings the longing and loss of the cartoon out of the subtext and into the forefront. It’s as if you crossed Pluggers and Funky Winkerbean and put the result into textual form. I just discovered this blog this week, but it hasn’t been updated since November; however, there was a brief notice posted earlier this month that the blogger was struck by personal tragedy. Still, said blogger says that more are coming soon, and even if not, the archives are great.

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Mark Trail, 1/23/07

Hmm … “Mark, this is Dick … the beaver we trapped is back!” Oh, close enough. Welcome back into my heart, you crazy beavers! All is forgiven!

I love Mark’s goofy, heavy-lidded grin in the final panel. “Yeah, that Dick … he’ll shoot a beaver, all right … no warning … those kids should be worried … he’d shoot the kids too … Rusty and … the other one … the little girl … what’s her name … oh, Christ, I am so wasted.”

Gil Thorp, 1/23/07

Ah, it’s another fabulous Gil Thorp crowd scene, this time brought to you by M.C. Escher. The Lady Mudlarks’ five fans are in full effect, showing their apathetic love in the center of the yawning, featureless abyss that is the Milford gymnasium. Lisa’s mom, who is usually right, apparently thinks that only her patented wacky Mussolini impression will get this crowd fired up. That having failed, in panel two she manages to bend the nature of reality itself, and Blondie McBuzzcut looks up in confused terror as she manages to get her arm in front of his face in defiance of ordinary spatial dynamics.

Speaking of panel two, Person Of Indeterminate Gender Wearing A Fur-Trimmed Jacket And Hat Even Though He Or She Is Inside is back! It’s good to see that Lady Mudlark fever is chronic, if not infectious.

I might be more hip to the nuances of the thrilling “But…” in panel three if I were more intimately acquainted with the meanings of high school basketball referee hand signals. But all in all, I’m pretty glad I’m not.

Spider-Man, 1/23/07

Spidey’s been in the midst of a wholly uncharacteristic crime-fighting spree this week, but don’t worry: it’s just a cover-up for his usual whiny marital angst. I’m not sure how you pronounce “?”, but I can guess why he’s trying; I don’t think any member of the actual criminal element has used the phrase “plugged nickel” in, well, ever.

Pluggers, 1/23/07

No. No. If some aspect of being a plugger is contingent on being literate, then … everything I know about how the world works is meaningless.

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Apartment 3-G, 1/19/07

You know who I hope is at the door? Fun Tommie! Yes, the reason Tommie’s been so boring is that, due to a freakish space-time anomaly, she was split into “Dull Tommie” and “Fun Tommie,”
with the former being the one we’ve been watching all this time. As to where “Fun Tommie” went, she’s been boozing and screwing her way up and down Manhattan for most of the last three years, and is finally coming back to take a nap.

Sadly, it’s actually no doubt Gina at the door, come to say something rude and then flit off. Or a boring dark-haired white guy in a blue suit to sweep Tommie off her feet. YAAAAWWWWNNN.

Beetle Bailey, 1/19/07

I think the coloring gnomes are finally forcing the integration of the comics by any means necessary. First TDIET sees its first ever person of color, then suddenly Killer becomes black. We shall overcome!

One Big Happy, 1/19/07

So, as this freezing family trudges ever-deeper into this endless, inescapable forest, who are we betting on being the sole survivor of the inevitable descent into cannibalism? Dad would be the early favorite, since he’s the strongest and a nominal authority figure, but don’t count out Ruthie: she’s scrappy, has a low center of gravity, and is completely batshit insane. Joe — poor surly, none-too-bright Joe — doesn’t really stand a chance.

Marmaduke, 1/19/07

Wow. When Maxi Light and Power celebrates another profitable quarter at its next shareholders’ meeting, and they honor everyone who helped bring the company stock price up another six percent, I hope that, along with the CEO who broke the union and cut unnessecary expenditures on power plant safety equipment, this nameless poodle, who repeatedly and selflessly submitted to sexual slavery just so Maxi’s crack staff could read this damn meter, is singled out for public recognition.

Pluggers, 1/19/07

“You’re know you are really a plugger?” Wow, and I thought this strip’s “Plugger’s/Pluggers” problem earlier this week was bad. Presumably this is meant to distract us from the “content” of this “joke”, which boils down to “You know you’re a plugger if you have a child when you’re relatively young and then live for another sixty years or so.”