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Pluggers, 4/26/11

“Recession” — pluggers hear that word on the TV news or talk radio, sometimes. Seems like it has something to do with the fact that there aren’t any good jobs around here, they guess, not that there were any good jobs for years before the news people started saying the word so much. Anyway, there’s something about the word — or maybe it’s just the way people say it — that makes pluggers think about their own lives, and how none of it worked out the way they should have. “Recession” rolls through their heads every morning, as they stand in their crappy little bathroom and stare into their dingy little mirror and think about how they had hoped not to live in this town anymore by the time they grew up but they still do and every time they see one of the laughing morons they went to high school with at the 7 Eleven or the Arby’s or whatever they die a little inside. They think about how the people on the radio said that they should be grateful for their shitty job, because of the recession, but really they’d be pretty happy if they got to work and found that the place had burned to the ground, or even that they had been just been fired for no good reason. Their little ritual in front of that dingy mirror gets a little bit longer every day. Those radio people will stop talking about the recession someday, but pluggers will keep staring into the mirror and thinking all these terrible things, every day, until they die.

(Wait, this is some joke involving “recession” and “receding,” about the dog-man’s baldness? Ha ha, come on, pluggers don’t know any of the parts of speech of Latin verbs!)

Dick Tracy, 4/26/11

How I’m interpreting Special Officer Pencil Mustache’s comments in the first couple panels here: “Dick, based on your bizarre story and your well-known penchant for brutality, I’m going to guess that you just summarily executed Flyface and the Fifth, but acknowledging that would lead to a lot of paperwork for me, so, eh.”

Mary Worth, 4/26/11

Oh, boy, it turns out the “Dawn is a technology addict” plot didn’t end abruptly — it didn’t end at all! Instead, Mary Worth is tackling its most ambitious project yet: a sprawling, multi-character arc all based around the theme that technology is the Devil’s work. Liza, your patient could have died while you were playing Scrabulous on your unusually large smartphone! I can’t wait until Wilbur is called in to implement kite-based therapy.

Momma, 4/26/11

Has anyone ever wanted to see a real bedroom love scene in Momma? No? Well, too bad, this happened anyway.

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Apartment 3-G, 4/25/11

In a bold departure from the usual Apartment 3-G fare, the current male guest star, Dan Diller, is not a sandy-haired clean-cut young white man, but is rather a sandy-haired clean-cut young white man wearing an obviously fake beard and wig. Thank goodness non-wigged/bearded but still sandy-haired, clean-cut, and white Rick is here to keep us anchored to what we understand to be A3G reality! In addition to being a clean-cut young man in a suit, Rick is also apparently pretty relaxed about telling everyone about the mental health practitioners he’s seeing. Of course, this strip’s only known therapist is notorious quack Professor Ari P., and one assumes that he’s already blabbed to anyone who will listen about Rick’s depression/anorexia/borderline personality disorder, so there’s no point in keeping a lid on it.

B.C., 4/25/11

So the bird has covered the turtle with … sexy feathers? So a bird will have sex with the turtle? Or maybe another turtle, which will be aroused by the feathers? I’m kind of beginning to worry about B.C., to be perfectly honest.

Pluggers, 4/25/11

Even total strangers are pretty psyched about pluggers’ impending death!

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Dennis the Menace, 4/24/11

Let’s start Easter with a little bit of theology! In the throwaway panels, Dennis appears to flirt with a rejection of the idea that a human institution is necessary to mediate between humanity and God. Nevertheless, upon actually going to church, he proceeds to taunt Mr. Wilson over the latter’s spotty attendance over the year. Mr. Wilson fumes nastily over the wrath that Dennis will encounter on the Day of Judgment. The conundrum thus proposed seems to be: Whom would God favor? One who, like Dennis, offers worship to the Lord in the approved fashion, only to go home and wreak all kinds of devilish mischief; or one who perhaps does not take communion that often, but who at least upholds the divine commandments, if only because of his sullen refusal to leave his house or do much of anything else? Mr. Wilson can take comfort in I Samuel 15:22: “And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” Since the obedience under discussion here was a divine order to exterminate the tribe of the Amalkites, this should dovetail nicely with that killing spree one assumes the tightly wound Mr. Wilson has planned.

Gasoline Alley, 4/24/11

Speaking of theology, our minister here should perhaps spend more time working on his metaphors, as I don’t think it’s really a good idea to compare God to the collapsing airline industry, which has cut back on the little perks of flying, charging nickel-and-dime fees while cramming ever more passengers into aging aircraft; the monopolistic utility corporations, which belch pollution into the air while jacking up electricity rates; or to prescription medication, often rushed to market by profit-driven megacorporations with deadly results. I guess people like greeting cards and scotch tape alright, though, right? I mean, not enough to worship them or anything, but still.

Dick Tracy, 4/24/11

If you were somehow worried that the new author-artist team behind Dick Tracy would downgrade our daily dose of violence of horror, I think you can rest easy now. Baddies vaporizing cops while declaring that they love “roast pig” isn’t even the most unsettling thing on display today; that honor of course goes to the terrified medical personnel fleeing whatever nightmarish creature longtime Dick Tracy fixture B.O. Plenty (reading Spittoon Quarterly, God bless him) has sired on his poor wife.