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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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Curtis, 9/6/26

Curtis is one of the few strips that does generational discourse that in my opinion truly gives both sides their due, which is one of the reasons I think it’s a good comic strip. Like, Greg is right! Fast food restaurants used to have a much more vibrant color scheme, and as our society’s general aesthetic has become more muted, they’ve become as bland and corporate as everything else! Also, they don’t have to appeal to children as much anymore because today’s adults grew up on fast food themselves and don’t need to be convinced to go there by their kids’ whining, and these things all really say a lot about society. But also, Curtis is right! Who wants to hear this crap? Who has the time and energy for this kind of rumination? Who needs to talk about all this when we could be enjoying a couple of delicious [squints] bobo-combobos?

Beetle Bailey, 9/6/26

It really bothers me that Sarge starts out eating pizza from an open box sitting directly on his bare legs and at some point falls asleep with the open box on top of his blanket. Like what happened between those two panels? Did he get chilly mid-meal, tuck himself in, but continued to chow down on the pizza, then eventually dozed off? I do, however, appreciate the various facial expressions on offer in the final panel. Beetle and Killer look genuinely pleased to offer the cookies to Sarge, whereas Plato and Rocky seem grimly resigned to their task, which is to use those jugs of milk to murder him in some way, possibly by drowning.

Crankshaft, 9/6/26

That’s right! To this pizza-serving AI, all the human customers at Montoni’s are nothing more than a mob of flesh! Weak, pathetic flesh that can be easily sliced to ribbons by its built-in laser. Clumping together in a mob just makes the flesh-bags easier to target!

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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