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Pluggers, 10/16/09

Guys, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been spending a lot of time on Pluggers this week — but how could I not, as it’s been so hilarious and poignant by turns? The work week ends with a real emotional wallop: a devastating look inside a wholly dormant plugger marriage. It’s hard to know where to even begin with this: the utter absence of sexual passion being the punchline of the little switcheroo joke; the idea that you would attempt to speed your spouse’s unconsciousness so that you could be alone with the television’s icy glow; the vision of a portly bear-man sitting on the couch, silently watching infomercials or Cops reruns, his kangaroo-wife drunkenly passed out next to him with wine stains on her tattered robe, and the bear-man thinks, “You know, I’m lucky! I’m really, really lucky!” It makes the apocalyptic paranoia of the cold war look downright cheerful.

Mary Worth, 10/16/09

I will never apologize for dwelling on Mary Worth as long as I please, however, especially when it focuses on fraught scenes like this. Adrian may be marrying a vegetable, or a corpse, but Scott will be Dr. Jeff’s son-in-law, do you hear me? He’s given his blessing. There is no turning back.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/09

I have no idea what this little interaction is supposed to be about — perhaps this woman is a cancer survivor with many Feelings to Process? At any rate, she seems to have decided that Les is creepy and weird and she doesn’t want him touching her, which pretty much makes her my personal hero.

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Gil Thorp, 10/15/09

Let’s give some credit where credit is due: Good on Marty Moon, for hauling himself out of the gutter! It wasn’t easy, being fired from his own public access cable show, but it’s only a few weeks into the season and he’s already graduated from his broadcast-quality wooden box to television, or at least something that requires cameras of some sort. (Maybe he has a YouTube channel now?) Or, well, at least I think that weird blob at the middle left of the first panel, hovering just above the nameless Mudlark gingerly checking for head injuries, is supposed to be a camera. If it isn’t, why are Gil and Marty looking at some off-panel third party in panel two, rather than at each other? I suppose that could just be because of their seething mutual disdain, but why does Marty appear to be wearing some sort of toupee? You don’t need a hairpiece for the radio.

Mary Worth, 10/15/09

Oh my goodness, what secret bedside task must Dr. Jeff perform to resolve this tragic drama? Will he:

• Gruffly demand that Scott not die because “God damn it, someone has to marry Adrian! I’m tired of seeing her mopey face and dumb bowl cut every day!”
• Tearfully beg Scott to admit that “your father talked about me, right? He knew that he meant the world to me? That I never forgot him? Please, I need to know!”
• Use the magical healing powers he learned in “medical school,” which no other employee of this hospital attended.
• Ever so gently lift Scott into his arms, so that he can reach underneath him and feel around for his wallet.

Pluggers, 10/15/09

Why, it’s day one of entries from a new generation of tech-savvy pluggers! Today we learn that such pluggers wake up screaming every night, haunted by visions of fiery atomic death.

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Pluggers, 10/14/09

Oh my goodness, it’s lucky for all of us that pluggers are honest, simple folk who don’t want to make a fuss and certainly don’t go out and “protest injustice” like some kind of God-damned hippie, because otherwise this news would cause every small-to-midsized town in Real America to go up in flames, consumed by riots that make the 1999 Seattle WTO protests look like a garden party. In fact, our spokesdog looks distinctly nervous, as if he’s going to read this communique as quickly as possible and then flee back inside Pluggers HQ so that he won’t be pelted by vegetables. Use the devil’s e-mail? What do you take us for, communists?

Ha ha, I kid! It’s well known that an elite segment of the plugger population has mastered 20th-century technology; now it appears we’ll be getting entries exclusively from these folks until this whole Post Office to-do is worked out. It will be an interesting anthropological study to see if we can detect any difference in the content of the submissions. For instance, will there be fewer cartoons about the difficulties of picking up AM radio broadcasts and more about how none of these newfangled Websites seem to work with Netscape Navigator 4?

(By the way, if the post office where your P.O. Box is closes down, can’t they just forward your mail to your new P.O. Box? Am … am I missing something?)

Mark Trail, 10/14/09

Hey, Sideburned Poacher Dude, I know it’s literally impossible for any character in Mark Trail to refrain from verbalizing his every thought, and I know it’s pretty shocking to see someone who you did an extremely half-assed job of killing still alive, but there’s no need to shout, OK? Mark and Bob are close enough to see your word balloons emerging from the bushes! It’s like you want to get punched in the face!

“HOW DID HE STAY ALIVE?” is now my new go-to exclamation of surprise at the unexpected appearance of my enemies, by the way. “God, look at him … breathing … digesting … refusing to die … how does he do it?”

Curtis, 10/14/09

You know, I give Curtis a lot of crap for being almost unbearably corny — as it has for the last two weeks, say, as Curtis’s dad has complained about someone stealing his delicious tuna-fish sandwich every day from the work fridge, and Curtis has plotted vengeance against those who would harm the Wilkins clan, stealthily replacing today’s sandwich with one made out of cat food. But by God, this strip has some craft. I have to admire the three panels of Curtis’s runaway panic manifesting itself physically — pupils dilating, sweatballs flying, and his finally his lunch attempting to escape his gullet with a mighty BLORK! as he desperately clutches his throat to prevent vomit from staining his beloved red sweatshirt. It made me laugh, even if nothing about the actual plot did.

Blondie, 10/14/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because Alexander’s “girlfriend” is a prostitute!