Neither the kids nor the olds are all right
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/26/26
Well, a week was about all the time we could spare to dedicate to Augie’s grim determination to never feel a moment’s excitement about anything that isn’t an absolute certainty, so now we’re moving on to … ugh, fine, it’s Buck and “Shorty and the Beanpole,” Glenwood’s favorite neo-vaudeville double act, I guess. You get a sense of how deep these kids are into this lifestyle by the way Corey reflexively says “the ceiling” in response to his father’s question. There’s no joy, no whimsy on his face: he just says it automatically, the way a tennis player at the top of their game would lob a serve back at you without a second thought.
Dustin, 10/26/26
God, look at this kid’s expression in the second panel. He is extremely excited to be on the verge of learning a fun fact from Dustin, which is one of the saddest things you could possibly say about a child with his whole life ahead of him.
Pluggers, 10/26/26
You know who doesn’t have his whole life ahead of him? This plugger! He’s stuck in that beanbag, and he’s gonna die there, soon!
41 replies to “Neither the kids nor the olds are all right”
MW: I think there are enough of us to form a class action lawsuit due to the eye pain and emotional damages caused by reading “Toby and Ian renew their love for each other.”
RMMD:
“Well, as you can see, I’ve already decided, boys! — I’m going as graph paper!”
Pluggers:
“Honey! — do an Internet search for ‘hydraulic crane rentals.’ Quick!”
Pluggers: At the time of discovery, the plugger’s remains were so thoroughly decomposed as to have fused with the beanbag fabric. His legacy lives on through true crime podcasts and YouTube videos, which is arguably worse than being forgotten entirely.
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
My guess, based on the poster for The Cocaonuts in the second panel, is that these two are going to go as a couple of the Marx Brothers. Groucho and Harpo are the obvious choices, but as these kids are weird vaudeville hipsters there’s a chance they’ll go as Gummo and Zeppo to make sure no one recognizes who they’re supposed to be.
The Rex Morgan narration box asked “Who shall we drop in on next?” and then didn’t wait for an answer. Rude.
RxMD/FG: FG just wrapped up a travelogue of Mongo in one week, twice if you include Sunday. By the time we finish with Glenwood, Flash, Jr. will be kicking Ming off the crumbling cliffs of the Genesis Planet.
Luann: does the math Easter Baby, still tracking.
yCurtis: That explains the pumpkin spice candy canes gathering dust.
yPhantom: “But honey, it’s our ‘bedtime’!” “I told you there would be no more phrasing.”
yGT: Gil thinks the other soccer moms will blame Sandy and Sandy. Gil forgets how soccer moms think.
Plugger jolts out of a chair saying ‘what have I done?’ is probably when most people quickly leave the room.
Dustin: Even sadder is Dustin, who is able to enjoy an idyllic fall day doing nothing and yet feels the need to lecture his young hanger-on about basic science facts.
Pluggers regret so many of their life choices; this is simply one of them.
RMMD: Damn, Beatty really doesn’t want to have to write about the Morgans, does he? “Let’s see, we’ve looked at the Harwoods, Mudgus and Maena, Summer and Augie…oh, Buck Wise and his family! We all want to know what’s going on with them, right?”
Dustin – as someone who _teaches_ “why we have seasons”, you kid are about to get _such_ a disappointment. The axis tilt *doesn’t* change, so “stopping” it is, well, already done – and the cause of seasons!
Dustin:
Is it just me, or is Dustin hanging out with this kid a lot lately? Normally I’d complain about this, but today he expresses a desire for an eternal autumn that inevitably leads to a global ecological disaster and mass extinctions, so he’s more interesting than he first appears.
Pluggers: And you may find yourself — in a broken old dog-man body
And you find yourself — stuck in a beanbag chair
And you may say say to yourself, “My god! What have I done?”
Same as it ever was…
Pluggers: What have I done? Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
Become a slobby old dog who has just trapped his buns?
Have I flopped down too hard and is my naptime so soon
I didn’t expect to fall asleep until noon
The howl in my den that nobody hears
Here where I squirm through the turning of the years.
C’shaft: Look, Skip, if you’re asking, “So, you won an essay contest in high school, huh?” this interview is not the hot scoop you think it is.
GT: Admittedly I wouldn’t know because a) I live in an area with ample local pro and college sports options and b) I don’t care enough about the subject, but do high school games get television broadcasts? And do those broadcasts attract sports bar crowds?
JP: Oh great, now we get to spend a week on Neddy’s self-pity party.
MW: Who wouldn’t start a rumor about you, you gossipy old nag?
SH: “I KNOW that, but thanks for the exposition for anyone new to the strip!”
@made of wince: I dunno, Pluggers always strike me more as a Javert type. Call me when one is about to throw himself into a river because the rigid morality he’s adhered to all his life has just been thrown into doubt.
Rex Morgan: “And we are ultimately going to decide on costumes that suck.’
@TheDiva: Javert always was my favorite!
SPRING EXPECTATIONS! They’re pretty great.
– LUANN: Brad will get new candy and toys
– JUMP S: Nicole and (Clarence?) will continue to grow the family
Because these are comic characters, I hope one of the newborns will have an impairment that requires special parenting or medical treatment. That would realistically touch many families.
PHANTOM: Both men should know a change of plans is not likely. If they haven’t already devised a plan B, an over-confident power-hungry person double downs when his plan is blocked.
Dustin: I was today years old when I first thought to myself, “Wait – tilted on its axis in relation to what? Floating in space?”
I’m sure some astronomic Mudgeon will explain this forthwith.
RMMD: that’s Beanpole? I honestly thought it was Sarah Morgan.
MW: Increasing paranoia is often an early sign of dementia.
Phantom: As a non-ironic fan of the strip, I am cringing at the thought that, before this arc concludes, it will switch to K-Pop Phantom Demon Hunters (to attract a younger audience). Complete with QR code that takes you to the downloadable video game.
The Plugger Dog Faced Man is exclaiming “What Have I Done” because he realized that he also just shit himself.
I don’t think the artwork in Pluggers gets enough credit. I appreciate the expression of total confusion on Dog Faced Man, his crossed eyes and mouth hanging open. It’s hilarious and brilliant. I hope that someday when AI takes over the world and humanity is destroyed that these Plugger comics are preserved.
Pluggers: This being Halloween week, I read this as a Tell-Tell Heart pastiche. Bear-Man is inside the beanbag, and Dog-Man is sitting on it desperate to silence the beating heart.
Phantom: “Jeeziz, sailorboy, not in front of the supercriminal, huh?”
GT: What….the….hell…is going on in panel one? A traveling country-western revue?
@lynn (spent a whole year sitting in front of Tod Lauer, actual astronomer, in homeroom but look what good it did me): The Earth orbits the Sun. That orbit defines a plane. The tilt is relative to that plane.
GT: Those budget cuts are really showing. The football players have to double up as cheerleaders. The reason they’re wearing leggings is because they refuse to shave their legs.
Dusted — To quote Shakespeare, “If all the year was reading Dustin, the jokes would be as tedious as the rest.”
That was me–no, I haven’t switch to But What Have I Done? Not a Plugger!
I am not a fan of Pluggers installments that confront me with the fact that I am, in fact, a Plugger. I dread the day I look into the mirror and discover that I have transformed into some kind of horrible anthropomorphic walrus.
That Plugger looks like he’s less distressed about getting up from the beanbag chair than he is remembering his tour of duty in Vietnam.
If you’re going to have just that much of the face showing in a background picture, you want it to be Stan Laurel. If it was Oliver Hardy with his moustache people might get the entirely wrong idea of Corey’s proclivities.
***
If it wasn’t for their declining memories, pluggers would forget that their failing bodies no longer allow them to have any joy or comfort without potentially deadly consequences.
Why is the Beanpole kneeling? (Or is Shorty standing on a platform?)
The format in the first panel of RMMD is bothering me more than it should. If there was going to be nothing else they may as well have centered the text.
@made of wince: Darn you, I sang along in my head. COTW material right here.
Rex Morgan, MD: Ah, yes, two children running their Halloween algorithms on a tablet. Alboorithms? Alghostrithms!
Anyhow, normal kid behavior! Happy Halloween!
RMMD: Jeez, these two dorks again?
CS: Jeez, these two dorks again?
Dustin: Jeez, these two dorks again?
Luann: Jeez, these two dorks again?
MW: From the way Toby’s eyes are cast down in P1, I guess we’re supposed to infer that she’s got both her hands clasped around Ian’s manhood. Fair enough, but a second panel, all black, save for a word balloon saying; “Renew me! Renew me!” would have brought the scene to its natural conclusion. Instead we abruptly cut to a scene of Mary in bed questioning her public image while reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.
A jinn appears and grants the kid’s wish. “The Earth’s axial tilt is now fixed at 23°,” she says. “Oh hey, do I get a wish too?” says Dustin, eyeing the scantily clad air spirit with obvious intentions, but no, she explains she only grants one wish in ten generations. Two months later, when the Earth’s orbit around the sun shifts the season to winter, Dustin gets really mad.
@TheDiva: Damn, Beatty really doesn’t want to have to write about the Morgans, does he?
The weird part is he has no trouble introducing new characters, like Mae Mae and the doublemint twins. Doing something interesting with them afterward — that’s another matter.
@lynn (spent a whole year sitting in front of Tod Lauer, actual astronomer, in homeroom but look what good it did me): Just to add to what Ken at #27 said, the stars are so far away that they don’t noticeably shift relative to where we are in the orbit (there’s this thing called parallax but’s _super_ tiny), so you can think of the plane and the axis directions as being relative to the distant stars. So we always have the North end of the axis pointing (almost exactly) at Polaris, the Pole Star