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Pluggers, 7/10/15

I had a little difficulty parsing the text of today’s Pluggers — it’s actually a pretty good example of why I’m O.C. (Oxford comma) for lyfe. There was a brief moment where I thought maybe “Beltone and the Scooter Store” were a wacky morning DJ duo on the most old-person-friendly radio station around. In fact, they are, respectively, an apparently perfectly respectable hearing aid manufacturer and a company that manufactures mobility scooters that went out of business in 2013 after being having perpetrated upwards of $50 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. In other words, even Pluggers’ old-people cultural references are several years out of date! But the overall theme of today’s panel still stands: the U.S. Postal Service largely exists as a marketing tool for companies that try to make money off the elderly.

Mark Trail, 7/10/15

“Yes, we can afford this expensive office in a Manhattan high-rise because unlike literally every other print publication on the planet, Woods & Wildlife Magazine is insanely profitable, thanks to one thing: boat explosions. Our readers can’t get enough of them! So I don’t care what that wife of yours says, you’re going out on that boat, and if it doesn’t explode on its own, you make it explode, do you hear me?”

Heathcliff, 7/10/15

I spent a lot of time trying to relate this joke to the octopus having eight tentacles and Heathcliff having two feet and that adds up to ten, but then I realized that two of the octopus’s tentacles are being held aloft like arms and then also I checked with my perennial beginner surfer wife and she told me that the whole point of “hanging ten” is that all your toes are off the board, which is exactly what we’re not seeing here, so you know what? Screw you, Heathcliff. Screw you.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/15

“The reunion…! The one … foretold … in prophecy!” I have no idea where this is going but I’ll bet it’s gonna be pretty grim!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/9/15

“Howdy boys! You all no doubt are vaguely familiar with the story of Noah’s Ark from the sermons I preach that you sometimes pay attention to! Just as the calm seas are nothing compared to the World Flood, so too was the Ark in a whole different class from the simple sailboat you built. Speaking of floods, I’ve been delegated to tell the residents of the Holler that they’ll be experiencing their own biblical deluge soon! Specifically, the good people at Maxelon Energy Corp. will be building a dam that will transmit cheap, abundant energy to flatlanders for hundreds of miles around, with the small downside that Hootin’ Holler will be entirely submerged under the resulting artificial lake. But don’t worry! Just as God provided for Noah with the Ark, Maxelon will provide for the Holler, with a series of trailers that will be available to rent at low prices just above the new water line. Go on, tell your parents! You have 72 hours!”

Dennis the Menace, 7/9/5

Mrs. Wilson is right to gasp: by suggesting that Dennis has a serious chromosomal abnormality, Mr. Wilson has gone too far this time — too far. He’s said something she can never forget, and thus, just by standing there staring dumbly into space, Dennis has menaced their decades-old marriage.

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Slylock Fox, 7/8/15

There’s a lot about this strip I find perfectly reasonable. It makes sense, obviously, in a world where predator and prey animals both recently found themselves suddenly sapient, that whatever social structures the earth’s new rulers borrowed from vanished humanity or created anew would have difficulty weighing a new morality against some citizens’ need to eat. It’s reasonable that our two police officers — a plant-munching rabbit and an omnivorous bear — wouldn’t have much sympathy for the hypercarnivorous wolf. It also makes intuitive sense to me that wolf would cast off his clothes before reverting to his animal nature and devouring a pig who, in theory, is his equal in the new dispensation. But the smiles on the faces of those other pigs? “Better him than us,” they seem to be thinking, and it chills me to the bone.

Mark Trail, 7/8/15

I do remember what happened to that boat, Cherry. It blew up, and it was awesome. Are you trying to deny another exciting boat explosion to Mark Trail readers, Cherry? What kind of monster are you?