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Pluggers, 4/24/22

When I lived in Oakland, California, there was a plumber’s truck that parked near my apartment building all the time with the business name “KING OF THEM ALL” emblazoned on the side of it. This was in 1999 or so, so it wasn’t a given that every business would be online, but they also had a URL proudly emblazoned on the side, “kingofthemall.com”, and I always thought that whoever was the King of the Mall must have been pretty pissed! Anyway, it’s now the year 2022, kingofthemall.com is an SEO spam site filled with uncanny valley prose written by a machine, nobody cares about URLs any more anyway because now to find out about a business’s hours or contact information you have to look on their Instagram stories for some reason, and Pluggers are here to inform you that if your small vehicle-based business has an even vaguely creative name, you have given up your plugger status no matter how blue-collar you are. Apologies to the King Of Them All, wherever you are.

Dick Tracy, 4/24/22

Gotta respect that Dick Tracy, whose antagonists all have based their entire identity on some weirdo shtick, is willing to engage in banter with said antagonists about said shtick. This is more important to the criminals of Neo-Chicago than their so-called “civil rights,” which is good because Dick Tracy definitely will be violating those.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/24/22

Oh dang, is our hero, the “Street Sweeper,” who apparently built his vigilante identity around his quotidian day job, going to become an super villain? If some guy pissed all over the floor and told me “Hey buddy, you missed a bit over there,” that would do it for me! I wouldn’t take offense at random passersby making fun of my identity, though. That’s just part of the risk of being a superhero, and you need to develop a thick skin against those sorts of criticisms. But the pee thing? Unacceptable.

Mary Worth, 4/24/22

Haha, yes, at last some real Ian drama, which is all I’ve ever craved from this Toby storyline! Were Ian and Helen enemies? Lovers? Enemies to lovers, one of the most popular tropes in the romance genre? Can’t wait to find out!

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Gil Thorp, 4/23/22

Despite having become, late in my life and to my own surprise, a fervent Dodgers fan, at first I was unable to get that worked up about the Houston Astro’s sign-stealing scandal of the mid-to-late ’10s that probably cost the Dodgers the World Series in 2017. After all, surely if it’s legal to for one teammate to try to surreptitiously convey information to another during play, it should also be legal for the other team to try do figure out the content of that communication if they can? Well, it turned out that the Astros were dirtier than that — they made use of the cameras in the reply booth to observe other teams’ signals and sent information via electronic buzzers taped to their own players’ bodies — but I still felt like the whole thing raised some interesting philosophical questions, questions which this brewing Gil Thorp storyline is also going to explore! For instance: if it’s legal for the catcher to use hand gestures to send encoded information to the pitcher, why shouldn’t it be legal for the catcher to instead send that encoded information to one of the infielders, who then encodes that information in baseball chatter for the pitcher, who can’t see the catcher because he’s secretly and tragically going blind? I’m very intrigued, though I assume Gil’s typical response to philosophical questions is the same as his typical response to everything else, which is to say three months of ignoring it followed by a lot of yelling.

Mary Worth, 4/23/22

“She’s in her forties or fifties, medium height, short straight hair … I don’t know why I’m giving you a physical description, that’s not what you asked for! … unless you’re standing by the sink, silently staring off into the middle distance with steely resolve, like you’re thinking of paid killers you can hire … ha ha, just kidding, of course … but what if…?”

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Friends, it’s comment of the week time. That’s what’s happening right now. Here’s this week’s top comment:

“To our fans: We apologize sincerely for last week’s attempt to add action and plot development to our strip. We now understand what keeps true Rex-heads coming back day after day, and vow to continue bringing our biggest fans the content they crave: Buck Talking On the Phone.” –Drew Funk

And here’s your runners up. They’re very funny as you can see!

“Say, young lady, you ever heard of a movie called Weekend at Bernie’s? Because you’re going to wish your future husband had that much respect for you.” –Needless_Exposition

“Before I go … I just have to see the old high school again … Ah, just as I remember it! A functional but uninspiring building surrounded by dispirited young people! There’s one now! I think I’ll walk up to her and say some disturbingly vague things that’ll make her uncomfortable! Gee whiz, what a time travel adventure this is!” –Joe Blevins

“When Crankshaft says ‘420 blaze it,’ he’s referring to his most recent arson death toll.” –jroggs

“Well, if you didn’t think anybody was dressing up like comic book characters and patrolling the streets, then one guy doing it, sort of, with a broom, technically qualifies as ‘more so.’” –Effluvius Erratus

“Buck doesn’t have to ask which news story Rex is referring to. It’s the comic book one. It has to be the comic book one. There is literally no other reason Rex would text Buck.” –Ace

“Rex puts two ‘-‘s into his texts to indicate separate but related clauses instead of just one, or a comma, or nothing. You have to admire a man committed enough to pedantry that he’ll access the punctuation panel on his phone’s keyboard while texting his dumb friend about an idle thought he had while watching some stupid news story. This is what he went to med school for.” –Truckosaurus

“I like how it looks as though Ian is raising his glass for a little cheers to his wife’s infidelity. ‘You’ve taken on a young lover? How European. Santé!’” –pugfuggly

“The hot cocoa is what gets me. I hear ‘he was saved by an elderly couple,’ I think they pulled him out of the path of a speeding car or something. But this panel tells me that he went to their home and raided their wine gasoline cellar in full view of their blonde … roommate? niece? … and then decided to reject their help? Tonsils, buddy: drink the cocoa, take the money, and borrow your benefactor’s babushka as a disguise. You’re only making it harder on yourself.” –els

“Don’t make his mistake, Matt. It’s not too late to change your name to something stupidly obvious. Let’s see. Cowlick? Tsunami Hair? Giant Eye? The Monocle? You’d need a monocle for that one, of course.” –Voshkod

“Dustin’s dad’s favorite bit is shrugging and pointing to his ‘World’s Okayest Lawyer’ mug as his clients are dragged off to jail. He’s the office jokester, to be sure!” –jenna

“The true menace is Dennis boasting to the working-class-coded Gina about the privilege of his father’s white-collar job.” –matt w

“That is the lamest, most unrealistic depiction of a man shoveling snow that anyone has ever seen. With that kind of technique, Your Friendly Neighborhood Snow Removal Man is gonna freeze to death before he even finishes his own walk.” –Inspector Gotcha

“Greg Wilkins took the outdoor job for the smoke breaks. Priorities, man.” –Uncle Lumpy

“Toby, I’m going to teach you the basics of academia. The students are the enemy. Administration is the enemy. Your colleagues are the enemy. The founding bodies are the enemy. And yet you must go to bed with the enemy to do anything. So just apply to this job the experience from our marriage.” –Ettorre

“You know, Toby, on the continent the only proper way to eat posole is a la nez, as I’m doing here. Here you try it. Where are you going?” –Little Blue Bicycle

“Throwing up in the car while the DMV guy is going off on ‘rap’ music.” –propserdave, on Twitter

“You’re extremely comfortable with your laziness when you choose to sleep next to the edge of a cliff, unworried about rolling over in your sleep since that would involve a minimum of effort.” –nescio

“Kudos to Snuffy for actually protecting the Earth by sleeping on a large patch of what appears to be coal, or maybe he’s floating on an oil patch. Either way these fossil fuels aren’t going to be used for energy. Just the opposite, in fact.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“Catch the size of that fridge in panel one! Even assuming Ian and Toby are short-statured, that thing’s wall-sized, enormous. What do they keep in it? Posole? Salmon loaf? The bitter remains of a love gone cold? Helen Moss’ frozen corpse? (Wine. It’s filled with gallon after gallon of Ian’s favorite boxed wine.)” –pastordan

“If this strip really wanted to shake things up they’d shave Ian’s beard and, I dunno, have him record a YouTube video called ‘It’s only natural for students to want to fuck their teachers’ to launch a Jordan Peterson-esque career arc.” –ArtOf Wargames, on Twitter

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