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Pluggers, 2/13/24

Wow, I feel like the backstory that lead up to today’s Pluggers is even grimmer than usual. Chicken-lady is thrusting this inoffensive but uninspiring plate at her husband, her facial expression seemingly indicating that she’s drunk or angry or confused or maybe all three, belligerently telling him he can shove it up his ass if he doesn’t like it; dog-man’s eyes are wide with shock, as he gingerly reaches out to grab the plate before she erupts. The way they’re both standing in the middle of this room implies that he’s going to take the plate somewhere else, as they retreat to different corners of the house to have dinner in wounded silence. Take it or leave it! Ha ha!

Shoe, 2/13/24

A fun fact is that Shoe and Pluggers were created by Jeff MacNelly, who worked for much of his career at the Chicago Tribune, so I guess it makes sense that Shoe would be a Cubs fan, even though we’ve seen no evidence that sleepy Treetops is a bird-world analogue of Chicago or that baseball even exists in the bird-ruled Shoeniverse. This also just could be something the doctor is saying passive-aggressively, though; if he doesn’t have the nerve to tell Shoe not to smoke cigars in his office, he definitely doesn’t have the nerve to tell him that his high blood pressure has been caused by all those cigars he smokes constantly.

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Six Chix, 2/7/24

I said my piece a while back about why I’m not the biggest fan of cartoons about hell, but you know me: I can’t resist looking at a comic and thinking about the world-building, even in cases, like this one, where the world is hell. I’m kind of intrigued by the fact that the dude on the left here has one puff of chest hair on his otherwise smooth torso. Do the souls of the damned continually regrow their body hair, only to have it burn painfully off now and then as the temperature of the hellfire varies at random?

Pluggers, 2/7/24

This is a pretty subpar Pluggers in the sense that the plugger in the panel isn’t contributing to an overall joke or even giving us any new information over and above what’s in the caption. Feel like the dog-man should either be saying something jokey like “I want you to have my Lawrence Welk albums if I don’t make it” or just going all out with “They’re going to gut me like a fish, Bob! No, I’m not going to calm down!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/24

“Your nephew? Your nephew!?! You’re telling me that if your sibling has a son, that person is considered part of your family, and there’s even a special word you use to identify them? Holy shit, this changes everything.”

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Mark Trail, 1/31/24

Having helped a bunch of guys get in touch with their emotions via fishing, Mark is now being dispatched on a much more dangerous mission: finding out what exactly the local authorities in Utah are doing with those wild horses they’ve been rounding up. Are they sending them to run and play at a farm upstate? No, that’s how we got into this problem in the first place. Anyway, this plotline better end with Mark punching Justin Shirley, director of the Division of Wildlife of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, while shouting “Soylent Horse is made of horses! You’ve got to believe me!”

Mary Worth, 1/31/24

Say, let’s go see what’s happening in Mary Wo–no. Gross. Absolutely not. I’d rather read about the horse murder.

Pluggers, 1/31/24

Pluggers are dying, do you hear me? Why am I the only one brave enough to say it? They’re dying! They’re all dying!