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Archive: Pluggers

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Just as well we were spared the net-flix wordplay

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Pluggers, 10/28/17

One of my favorite Pluggers attributions is “Lots of Pluggers Everywhere.” I just love the image of it, you know? Pluggers all over America encountering the phrase “online streaming,” in dribs and drabs, years after most people understood it. Maybe they’re asking their adult kids how they watch TV shows on they days they aren’t broadcast. Maybe their husbands got talked into signing up for the fancy new cable package and they’re trying to figure it out. They hear the phrase, and then they think — well, that just sounds like … you know! Hey, you know who would love this? They tap “pluggermail@aol.com” into their Windows XP PC. And at Pluggers HQ, the messages start coming. First a few, then more and more. Eventually it’s a mighty flood. Eventually, it cannot be ignored.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/28/17

Oh, hey, it looks like the art forgery plot and the domestic violence plot are gonna be the same plot! The whole thing hinged on Buck’s kid having a keen memory of the specific cruel putdown his abusive ex liked to use for him. This story is is grim as shit.

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Blast from the past

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/22/17

Faithful readers! Do you remember the backstory on Rex’s hapless pal Buck, introduced to the strip more than four years ago? Well, he came into Rex’s practiced because his — wife? girlfriend? — Doris “accidentally” shot him in the head with a nail gun, and then Rex and June went over to have dinner with him, and it turned out that during his cheerleading past Rex and Doris hooked up, and then later in the dinner Doris got real blotto and passed out at the dinner table, and then … I never covered how this plotline ended? Clearly she and Buck broke up before she managed to successfully murder him, though. Anyway, it’s definitely true that violet domestic abusers often escalate after a relationship is over, so, uh, kudos for realism, I guess?

Pluggers, 10/22/17

Pretty sure “in a collision after your husband gets distracted because he’s horny for another car” is in the top ten Most Plugger Ways To Die.

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Manimal weekend

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Pluggers, 10/21/17

Oh, hey, remember Elam, the extremely unappealing guest character who served as a sexual rival to Rufus in Gasoline Alley a few months ago? Well, I don’t think I ever made it clear at the time, but he was obviously based on Jack Elam, an actor who mostly played villains in westerns and gangster flicks in the ’50s and ’60s. Anyway, is there any particular reason why this guy, who died in 2003 and never intruded into my consciousness until July, is suddenly popping up everywhere? Are we in the midst of some Elamssaince to which I’m not privy? I guess we should follow Occam’s Razor and accept the simplest answer: that the there’s a pretty wide overlap between Gasoline Alley’s readership and the set of people who submit things to Pluggers.

Shoe, 10/21/17

It’s a funny world when you wake up one day at the age of 43 and realize that you spend quite a lot of mental energy, as part of your job, parsing the body language of a couple depressed middle-aged bird-men killing time in sad bar, isn’t it? Life is definitely a rich tapestry in that respect. Anyway, in panel one I kind of like — no, “like” isn’t the right word. Let’s just say that I respect the work that’s been put into Shoe casually leaning towards the Perfesser as he taps out his cigar ash, creating a little bubble of intimacy as he asks about his friend’s romantic life, and clearly expecting the answer to his question to be “Sex. Sex is how it went.”