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Pluggers, 9/7/26

This year, my 80-year-old stepmother fractured her hip badly enough to need a replacement, and although “hip replacement” sounds very dire, the hip is a large but simple joint and the whole procedure was remarkably easy: it’s an outpatient procedure and she was up and walking again in just a few days. A few years ago, a friend of mine in her 40s fell and hit the ground just right to cause a similar fracture, but her situation wasn’t so simple: the doctors told her that normally with that kind of injury they’d do a hip replacement, but the people who normally have that kind of injury are old, and they don’t think an artificial hip would last through the full lifetime of someone in their 40s, so my friend had to endure months of painful, immobilizing recovery instead.

Anyway, the idea that decisions about certain medical procedures have to take into account the projected lifespan of the patient is one I think about a lot. Like, yeah, it’s great that the sort of people who are most likely to need a quick and easy hip replacement are the same sort of people who don’t have to worry about whether that artificial hip will last more than a couple decades. And obviously it’s great to be told that you don’t have to go through the annoying process of doing a colonoscopy anymore! But I don’t know if I’d be quite so excited to learn that “Enh, you haven’t developed colon cancer yet, and if you start to do so at this point it almost certainly won’t be the thing that kills you.”

Marvin, 9/7/26

I really enjoy how upset everyone looks in this comic. Obviously the joke is that Marvin’s grandpa is like “Wife no cook food? Where food come from if wife no cook it?” (with the implication that in this context he is as helpless as a small pet dog), and that’s a classic sitcom-style bit. But Marvin’s grandma isn’t happy about this either! She thought writing the apartment newsletter would be a fun lark and a way for her to connect with her community, but instead it’s eating up time she’d rather spend caring for her family!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/7/26

“They kept saying stuff like, ‘What’s that lump on your head,’ and ‘Is it supposed to be hair? Because it doesn’t look like hair’ and ‘We’re moving out because the lump on your head has bad vibes.’ Good riddance, I say, and that’s coming from both me and my head-lump.”

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Beetle Bailey, 9/5/26

Look, sometimes your partner is going to float some specific sexual kink — voyeurism, say — that you’re not on board with. How do you let them down gently? Many sexologists suggest deploying a terrible pun, which is widely recognized as the least erotic form of wordplay possible, as a good strategy to break the tension.

Dustin, 9/5/26

Gotta hand it to Dustin’s little friend here: obviously Dustin’s dad is the sort of guy who loves to rant about how the kids today with the selfies are ruining society, but is also a huge idiot who can barely work a phone, so by posing this question he was guaranteed either an entertainingly out-of-touch diatribe or a humiliating admission like this one.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/5/26

Oh, cool, the scam twins have been denied their chance to commit a major felony to avenge their uncle, so now they’re going to commit a major felony to get revenge on their uncle! This will be extremely fun, if it ever happens, which I’m sorry to report it almost certainly won’t.

Mary Worth, 9/5/26

oh no oh no where is Mary’s left hand where is Mary’s left hand

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Mary Worth, 9/4/26

Nelly Feneley has been spending all week seething about how terrible everything is these days, but we’ve been wondering how this would intersect with Ian and Mary laffing it up in the car. Well, here’s your answer! Nelly has decided that Ian and Mary are having sex! That sounds horrible, of course, but remember, Nelly thinks everything around her — food, dogs, the Charterstone condominium community — is bad. And what sort of sexual relationships would you think might occur in the worst of all possible worlds? Mary/Ian, right? Mary and Ian doin’ it on the reg would be a sure sign that you were living in hell, wouldn’t it? That you were being tormented with this knowledge by a wrathful God, for your many sins?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/4/26

Ah, well, it appears that the scam twins, having been repeatedly stymied in their attempts to make something interesting happen in Glenwood, are going to leave town. At least they’ve learned something, though, right? Well, no. But they’ve made an impression on the locals, and maybe taught them a thing or two? Also no.

Crankshaft, 9/4/26

A sassy pizza robot with a built in laser: another thing that syndicated newspaper cartoonists think is AI, but isn’t. But this might end with Ed Crankshaft being killed, with the aforementioned laser, so I’m willing to see how it plays out.

Shoe, 9/4/26

Ha ha, comics sure have changed over the years! In the early days of this strip in the ’80s, the punchline here would be about the Perfesser watching girls in leotards on his TV and getting horny. But now it’s in 2026, and the punchline is about how he has crippling depression.