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Pluggers, 6/11/07

Plugger moms are going to kill themselves within the hour … but only after they have the satisfaction of killing their kids first.

OK, that’s horrible, but you tell me what else that facial expression could possibly lead to. This officially is the most horrifyingly depressing Pluggers ever, outpacing even the “Rhino-man plugger hocks his decades-old TV to keep the bill collectors at bay for another week” installment.

Speaking of horrible, I don’t want to take this in a direction that will lead to anyone, anywhere producing Pluggers porn (and if you do produce it I will not link to it you cannot make me) but I’m a bit confused by this plugger mom’s bustline, since I’m reasonably sure she’s supposed to be a kangaroo. Shouldn’t she have a single nipple in her pouch? And shouldn’t her kid actually be a tiny, salamander-like embryo, nestled safely in said pouch leaving both of her arms free? It sure would be a lot easier on her if that’s how it worked, I’ll tell you that.

Gil Thorp, 6/11/07

I’m sorry, I simply cannot abide the hideous claw-hands in Gil Thorp (see also here (where my prediction was totally borne out, by the way, not that it was very difficult) and here). Other than the fact that Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp looks like she’s about the scratch off her Joker-like face in panel three, though, this is pretty nifty. I particularly like the fact that Ponytailed Girl Whose Name I Forget (I Think She Works For The School Newspaper Maybe?) appears to be holding back her friends in panel one, as if they’re so enraged by their coach’s cancer-free state that they’re planning to hold her down and beat some cancer into her.

Thanks to a faithful reader (Uncle Lumpy?) for the new nickname “Yul Brynna” for the newly shaven-headed former Brynna Antenna. Unfortunately, I’m probably never going to get a chance to use it, as she appears to have fled the softball diamond, and, presumably, the greater Milford area, due to her shame.

Mark Trail, 6/11/07

The fact that Sam Hill has been blinded by a high-speed blast of shattered glass and shredded duck viscera flying right into her eyes is awfully convenient — not for her, obviously, but for Mark. This way, he’ll be able to take his new lover back to Lost Forest; because she can’t see, she won’t even notice that Mark already has a wife and adopted son. Cherry won’t notice the new order of things either, of course, because she’ll be ’luded to the gills, as always. Rusty’s electronic ankle bracelet will ensure that he never leaves the backyard pen.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/11/07

Somebody help me out here. The “joke” in this strip is supposed to be that Hagar’s supposedly fierce company of Viking warriors have fled in terror at the mere mention of Attila’s name, right? So, what’s the deal with the tall grass? Have they been killed and laid low in the grass by Attila’s short and stealthy warriors? Does the grass merely serve to evoke the limitless steppe, home to nomadic peoples like the Huns? Is it meant to make an otherwise dull panel interesting, or, conversely, to save the trouble of drawing Hagar’s disturbingly potato-like feet? What? What?

Slylock Fox, 6/11/07

You might think that being a fox detective is glamorous, that it’s all high-profile media events and fancy tea parties and exclusive nightclubs. But be warned: you will occasionally be called down to the trailer park to figure out just who is throwing rocks at whom. It’s probably a good thing that Slylock’s there to keep the peace, as Rachel Rabbit looks pissed, and I have a feeling that her screams of “You’re lucky my bunnydaddy ain’t here!”, echoing throughout the park as she kicks the thin metal side of Chez Rat, would soon be immortalized in a heavy-rotation episode of COPS.

This strip deserves kudos for not going with the classist but all-too-obvious “Reeky Rat obviously lives in filth, and thus would not under any circumstances be engaged in ‘housecleaning'” solution.

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Mark Trail, 6/10/07

Dear humankind,

“Most belligerent animals for their size in the world,” huh? All right, nobody’s gonna mistake us for a bunch of namby-pamby, let’s-all-get-along types, we’ll admit. But do you two-leggers ever think that maybe there’s a reason we’re so belligerent? Huh? Do you?

Let’s start with the food angle. You know if you’re on a road trip, you sometimes say, “Oh, I don’t want to wait to get to Nashville to have dinner, let’s eat at the Sbarro at the next rest stop”? Well, imagine if the consequences of not stopping weren’t just getting hungry and cranky, but frickin’ droppin’ dead. And then, imagine that, instead of getting a baked ziti in a plastic container that you can easily take out to your car, you have to kill and eat an undersea bug the size of your head! Probably one with stingers or something. A frickin’ bug! And once you’ve eaten it, you’ve just got to start running (or swimming) around looking for more bugs to eat.

And then there’s the way you get treated. “Oh, look, how cute, your babies have formed a shrew-chain as they desperately cling on to your tail for dear life … oops, I just crushed them all to death with my enormous freakin’ foot!” And don’t even get me started on the freakin’ cats. “Hi there snoogy snoogums! How’s my sweet fluffy girl? Did you have a nice day outside? Awww, did you bring me a prize? You did! You brought me the corpse of an innocent shrew, who never did anything in its life to hurt you! Oh, look, it doesn’t seem to have any visible wounds — you must have batted it around until its internal organs were mashed to putty! How cute! Now let me take the body away and throw it in the garbage!”

It’s this kind of demeaning attitude that leads to a prevalent anti-shrew attitude in law enforcement agencies around the world. So, yeah, belligerent? Maybe we’re a little freakin’ belligerent. But maybe we’ve got some good freakin’ motivation.

Sincerely,
The shrews

P.S. We poop in your cereal boxes, FYI.

Apartment 3-G, 6/10/07

I mainly ran this so we can all continue to enjoy Margo’s bitchtasticness. Today, we see that her reluctance to go see her dear friend one-third of the rent for her apartment in the hospital may be more than a knee-jerk Margoism; she’s obviously just gotten collagen injections in preparation for Eric’s return from wherever it is he’s jetted off to, and she probably doesn’t want to go out in public for a few more days.

I do have to say re: panel five that I am getting a little weary of everyone being so stunned to find Tommie at the hospital. “So we’re at the emergency room and OH MY GOD THERE’S TOMMIE, WHO IF WE HAD SPENT MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES TALKING TO HER THE FIRST TIME WE MET WE’D PROBABLY HAVE LEARNED THAT SHE WAS AN EMERGENCY ROOM NURSE AT THIS VERY HOSPITAL!” It’s possible that, in a desperate attempt to get people interested in her, Tommie actually tells everybody that she has a much more glamorous career, as a CIA spy or Queen of Norway or something. It’s also possible that she’s so boring that nobody ever even makes it to the typical “so what do you for a living and where do you do it” part of that first conversation.

Tommie’s shock at seeing Alan is perhaps a bit more understandable, since he long ago swore a drunken oath to leave the evil metropolis of New York and all it stood for behind. Plus, he appears to be wearing eyeliner.

Mary Worth, 6/10/07

This may be one of the most horrifying Mary Worths ever, and not just because Vera looks like one of those soul-searing Margaret Keane paintings in panel five. We’ve watched Mary slowly break Vera’s independence and will over the past few weeks. Yesterday we saw saw the catharsis that came when she completed her Worth-appointed mission. Today, the upper level of her conscious mind seems to indicate that she yearns for freedom again, but her glassy expression and final thought — return to the programmer for further instructions — tell us that she’s still in the puppet mistress’s thrall. Of course, we all know that, now that Mary has convinced Vera to do the exact opposite of what she’s wanted to do for so many years, the innocent girl holds no more appeal to the meddling biddy; once Vera returns to Charterstone, Mary will just crack open her skull and feast on her brain, then have Dawn Weston post a “sublettor wanted” ad for Vera’s apartment on Craigslist.

Panel from Cathy, 6/10/07

I try to keep everyone’s exposure to Cathy to a minimum, but I do feel this panel is worth noting, because the phrase “Someone needs to relax! Let’s assemble a backyard gazebo!” is actually kind of surreally funny out of context. I’m pretty sure if you shaved Irving’s head and put a polka-dotted mumu on him, he’d be Zippy the Pinhead.

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We’ve got some running around to do this afternoon; I’m hoping to get Sunday’s strips up tonight, but, in case I don’t, I thought I’d get the CsOTW out of the way now. Here’s the top comment, which just about sums up the week’s drama.

“Remember the world before the Internet? I remember it as a time of innocence, when it would never occur to us that somewhere, someone is beating off to Slylock Fox.” –Rocky Jones

And here are the almost-made-its — a big list, this week.

“So really the nickname Clambake has little to do with an actual clambake and more to do with the fact that you can’t get him to shut up. One imagines that the people who gave him his not-all-that-meaningful moniker could have come up with something a little more accurate, like Gumflap or JesusChrist,SomeonePleaseHaveThisMan’sVocalChordsSurgicallyRemoved.” –Hannah

“If a saw-toothed hairdo guy in a Punisher t-shirt can hang with a purse-carrying kid wearing a bellhop hat, then why oh why can’t we all just get along?” –Trotzenbonnie

“Golly, if the words ‘come-hither expression’ don’t apply to the look on Jamaal’s face in the first panel, then I just don’t know what. But I wish they didn’t.” –Keg of Curd

“Like most of the recent FBoFW plotlines, the tale of Liz’s turn as a bridesmaid will be half drearily predictable bullshit and half character assassination. You’ll see the ultimate conclusion looming ominously from a mile away but will still be surprised at how unlikable the characters have become.” –Trilobite

“GODDAMMIT JUDGE PARKER IS STILL ON THAT ONE DAY” –Gabe

“Beasley, I am ashamed of you. You are a government employee with a strong union backing. You should have responded as follows: ‘I save the special deliveries for your wife, you colic-haired mutant.’ And then when he swings at you, you mace him to suit your whimsy.” –Sunny Mel Blatherscythe

“Meanwhile, the squirrel reads the backstory blurb in utter disbelief. ‘Oh my paws!’ he cries, ‘In a single sentence they’ve summed up five weeks of this crazy strip.'” –Proteus

“I keep coming back for the coveralls that the villains must wear by law in Mark Trail. Not since the Cylons in the original Battlestar Galactica, with their ping-pong ball eye, has a villain had such a useless yet consistent prop.” –King Folderol

“My God, the only thing stiffer than the characters in Mark Trail is the dialogue — it’s like watching two mannequins attempt innuendo written by a five year old. I’d make a joke about the stiffness and Mark’s penis, but let’s face it: neither of those … things in this strip seem to have genitalia.” –GG

“What’s wrong, Tommie? You’re white as a sheet exactly the same skin tone as me!” –Josh Millard

“Gabriella is off her meds again. Tommie’s an angel for happening to work in a hospital, Alan’s an angel for — GASP! — having a key. Maybe the doctor’s a unicorn or something.” –commodorejohn

“If Shawna-Marie walks down the aisle to anything other than the theme from Car Wash, I will be bitterly disappointed.” –Dingo

“Hmf. A sandwich buffet for Shawna-Marie’s rehearsal dinner. The bride gets cream, but the coffee gets 2% from the Loeb’s on Bathurst.” –Uncle Lumpy

“Margo’s hair is perfect, but she’s got bedhand.” –Edgy DC

“Q. How many Clambakes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A. Why, back when I was in the Negro Leagues, the white players usedta sneak into our locker rooms and bust all the lightbulbs. But we wouldn’t let it get us down. We’d let our bats speak for us. It’s important to keep your eyes fixed on one socket and keep twisting, no matter what kind of lightbulbs life hands you. [The days of practice roll on … and so does the lightbulb story!] And remember when it seems darkest, just pull your head and keep doing it. Did I tell you about when I played with Sockless Bob Farlon and Red ‘Blue’ Green? I recall one time I ate a sandwich, and it was really good, but I didn’t know what was in it. ‘What’s in this sandwich?’ I asked everybody in the room. Folks called me ‘Sandwich’ for a while there. But back in 1952…” –The Spectacular Spider-Brick

“But Professor, if we wait till morning, maybe Lu Ann will be dead, and then I won’t have to go at all.” –flotsam

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