Pluggers
A Newspaper Comic begun in 1993 by cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, best known for his comic Shoe. In Pluggers, a cast of animal characters illustrate reader-submitted one-liners about "pluggers" — people who "unceremoniously keep plugging along, balancing work, play and family life." An example might be "You're a plugger when the most expensive piece of clothing you own is an NFL jersey."
It's not commonly known, but the five main characters have names: Andy Bear, Sheila Roo, Carl Rhinowski, Earl Houndstooth and Henrietta Beak. There's no reward for guessing that they are, respectively, a bear, kangaroo, rhinoceros, dog and hen. According to an old version of the now-defunct website, there were once more characters.
The strip can be read here.
Tropes used in Pluggers include:
- All There in the Manual / Informed Attribute: The now-defunct website listed the names and backstories of the various characters. These traits almost never showed up in the actual strip (for instance, Sheila is supposed to be an aerobics instructor).
- Big Eater: Several strips make Pluggers out to be this. One example: A plugger's appetite suppressant is having a Dagwood Sandwich before dinner.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Most of the characters listed in the archived character sheet above have disappeared. A cat couple also showed up in the 2000s, but have disappeared as well.
- The Everyman: Andy Bear.
- Everything's Better with Chickens: Henrietta.
- Kangaroos Represent Australia: Sheila.
- Fat and Skinny: Andy and Sheila, respectively. Sheila is a constantly-bemused straight-woman... straight-flyer?
- Furry Confusion: Since the characters are drawn as anthropomorphic animals, but the ideas used in the strip are submitted by readers (i.e. humans,) the overlap can range from confusing (the bear taking a normal dog for a walk) to disturbing (the hen storing her jewelry in an egg carton).
- Interspecies Romance: Andy Bear and Sheila Roo are married, as are Earl and Henrietta. Even more confusingly, Andy and Sheila have both kangaroo and bear offspring.
- Meaningful Name: "Sheila" is Aussie slang for a woman. And then there's Henrietta.
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: Yes, Henrietta has breasts. One could even argue that a marsupial character shouldn't have breasts, either...
- Outlived Its Creator: As with Shoe, Brookins has kept this strip running for a decade after MacNelly's death.
- Print Long Runners: 17 years as of 2010.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: Seriously, how do you do something like this?
- Running the Asylum: MacNelly originally wrote most of the strip himself, but after fans began submitting their own gags, it was changed so that all the scripts were user-submitted.
- Shout-Out:
- In this strip, the newspaper clearly has a Shoe splash panel on it.
- This strip is a pretty sincere tribute to Paul Harvey.
- This Loser Is You: A strange case, as the traits depicted are supplied by readers of the comic. It may be thought of, perhaps, as Self-Deprecation.