Gloomy Saturday
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The Lockhorns, 8/23/25
Look, I don’t know how they can make it any more obvious that the Lockhorns are millennials. Today’s panel deploys one of the most joyless ways to hammer the point home, just having Loretta doing a marginally cool catchphrase from 2010 or whatever. Is she going to talk about heckin’ doggos next? Will Leroy extol the epicness of bacon? They’re not even antagonizing each other today. Remember when this strip was about how much they disliked each other? We need to recapture that spirit, and if that means shifting the Lockhorns further down the timestream to the unmoored nihilism of Gen Z, I say do it.
Hi and Lois, 8/23/25
Thirsty, no! Liquor before beer, never fear … beer before liquor, never sicker! I guess he’s already sick, though. (His sickness is the serious disease of alcoholism.)
56 replies to “Gloomy Saturday”
H&L: RIP, Thirsty: Local Alcoholic and Sperm Donor. Send tiny liquor bottles in lieu of flowers.
Lockhorns: Leroy is wondering just how much debt Loretta put them in with this shopping spree.
MW: The best part of this is that Evy is refusing to make eye contact with Olive. Either she knows her self absorbed spawn will make her burst into flames or she’s discovered the very lucrative life insurance policy that pays her negligent parents half a million dollars if the brat croaks.
Never mind the Lockhorns – does Thirsty’s love of craft beer and gin make him a millennial?
Hi and Lois-“My name is Thirsty and I’m an alcoholic.”
FC-Just be quiet, Dolly, and enjoy the view in front of you.
MW-“I had to do something.” Telling the lifeguard would be doing something.
The ideal Lockhorns strip. One partner’s happiness always comes at the expense of making the other miserable.
H&L – Hi hints that Thirsty drinks too much. Thirsty is oblivious. Oh well, he tried.
Lockhorns:
Leroy pretends to read a blank sheaf of paper to avoid any form of communication with Loretta.
MW: As predicted, Ed is made to be the bad guy for not being happy about his budding narcissist doing something stupid and it’s up to her
groomerenabler“kindred spirit” to use her gaslighting powers to convince these negligent parents that Olive is so special and unique that she can do whatever she wants.RMMD:
“Who wants to know?”
“No, no, Townshend and Daltrey could care less. But I want to know.”
H&L: I need Thirsty to be drawn with red nose lines. Because I’m a traditionalist.
MW: Mary’s expression in Panel 1: “Please don’t sue me for negligence. Please don’t sue me for negligence. Please don’t…”
RMMD: Yeah, they’re related. That identical puce skin tone.
DtM: No locks on his bedroom door? No bars on his bedroom window? These people just BEG for it.
9CL: So Edda and Amos are mortified that Alistair saw them kissing??? The people who have publicly besmirched every public pool within ten miles? Not to mention the piano, which they’ve turned into Ground Zero.
H&L: Hi laughs as his friend needs to down a beer before the shaking in his hands subside enough to hold a cocktail.
Rex Morgan, Mysteriously Disappeared: Holy shit, it’s Mud Mountain (ahem, excuse me, *Fergus*) Murphy’s wicked doppelganger! Seriously, with this constant reusing of character designs everyone in this strip is merging into one standardized lump of blah…
@MKay: You underestimate Mary’s gaslighting powers. Not only will she convince the Taylors to pay for a first class ticket back home but she’ll also get to take Olive to Charterstone for a “special” sleepover.
MW: Mary’s expression in P1 only makes sense if you realize she’s saying her lines like a robot from a 50’s sci-fi movie.
H and L:
“The gin and tonics are the inspiration for our strip name, Flagston! — I get buzzed from the potables, and then I sport wind-blown sediment from face-planting in the turf of our course!”
“No. Don’t say it, Thirsty.”
“Yep. ‘High’ and ‘Loess‘ !”
MW: How dare Ed imply that special, remarkable, gifted, amazing, dear Olive not use her gifts. Get with the program, Ed, and start lavishing the praise and attention that the psycho little narcissist insatiably desires.
Hi and Lo: is this place named “The 19th Bottle”? For shame, patrons shouldn’t be served more than 15.
MW:
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mommy, Daddy and Mary, I’m going to go visit Vicki in the next room over and waterboard her!”
@astroboy: I’m starting to see why there aren’t a lot of children under the age of nineteen in Mary Worth. The kids who genuinely have problems are treated like bratty lepers and the actual spoiled brats are coddled and enabled to the point of raging narcissism.
FC: A melancholy Thel laments the absence of ejection seats from San Francisco Rickshaws.
I often think about BoJack Horseman’s mnemonic, “Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear, don’t do heroin.” Presumably Thirsty doesn’t even have BoJack’s pretension of having that much of a code to protect his health, but is content to sink further into oblivion with whatever means present themselves to him, with friends and family showing no reaction when he flaunts his addiction to them in an ongoing cry for help, and nothing but his own apathy to prevent him from looking for stronger stuff than alcohol – until the day when it’s no longer going to be enough to keep him from dwelling on the wreckage his life has become. Haha, comics!
Lockhorns: my first question would be, what is going on with Loretta’s legs? My second: was there a joke here?
@The Quiet Man: “one standardized lump of blah” – you just summarized all of RMMD, and JP to boot.
Lh: “I traded in my teeth for all this cool stuff!”
H&L: As if we needed another sign of Thirsty’s raging alcoholism, just look at how much he managed to drain down between those two panels…
Ah, I see Hi and Thirsty are enjoying drinks at the city’s best non-Euclidian strip club, the 19th Hole. They’re going to see some real Love-craft up close!
RMMD:
“Your family is from Illinois’ largest city and likes steak, right?”
“Yep. The Mortons of Chicago!”
@Needless Exposition: @astroboy: It’s all done through implication, though. Ed starts to say what every reader is thinking, and what every other character in this shitshow desperately needs to hear. But Karen Moy puts the mute button on Ed, so the tummy-brained idiocy can continue as she wants it to. It denies his criticism its necessary context. It makes the line “how could you risk your life like that?” sound like “how dare you try to help another person!” It implies ignoble motives on Ed’s part. I call this technique “aborting the audience surrogate.”
Phantom:
[Random Expendable Soldier #1 to Random Expendable Soldier #2]: “I fear The Ghost Who Wears Lycra!”
MW: Mary, her eyes drifting out of focus, smiles as the drugs she had pilfered unseen from the cabinet beneath the exam table begin to take effect.
CS: The better question is, why the hell did you let him in? If there’s one thing security guards in Westview need to protect people from…
Luann: So Les enjoyed the spa day, but he didn’t enjoy it correctly, so Tiffany is mad.
Frazz: What the hell was even the point of this?
Dustin: No, Dustdad, *you’re* the “food baby”.
@Needless Exposition: Fortunately, with the average age of Mary Worth readers* somewhere upwards of 80, very few of them will be using the strip as a source of parenting advice.
* As opposed to Mary Worth haters, a much younger crowd that includes us, and about 80% of the commenters over at Comics Kingdom.
H&L: Thirsty’s got this under control, Hi! He’ll have another beer *after* his gin & tonic. You know what they say — “Liquor in the middle, fit as a fiddle.”
MW:
“Your mother and I appreciate your powers of prognostication, Olive, but if what we refer to as your ‘GIFT’ has the eighth letter of the alphabet added to it and then gets scrambled to become ‘FIGHT,’ then you have to say, ‘The H— with it’! ”
“Huh?”
MW: Ed, Evy, you should be proud of your daughter. She almost drowned doing something stupid and unnecessary.
DT: the ME is right. Until the authorities capture the zap zap death gun they won’t know if it is one of the many other unrelated zap zap death gun murders.
GT: ok – sending up a flare for help. Last panel got knocked down and now on balcony ? Did strips get run out of sequence? Was this suppose to run after the clothing store one?
RMMD: please let this guy live jazz and despise country music!
But what if you alternate beer and liquor? Do they cancel each other out, or does it go with whatever you had last? (Asking for Thirsty, because you know he’s going to find out one way or another.)
H&L: Thirsty, no! You know the drinks at the golf club bar are WAY overpriced! You can get drunk at home!
L’horns: The Lockhorns are millennials and yet they live like a ’50s sitcom couple, with Loretta spending the money Leroy earns while demonstrating her ineptitude at cooking and driving. This leads me to believe Loretta is part of the tradwife movement, which honestly makes me hate the Lockhorns more than all their domestic bickering.
Lockhorns: I, for one, am glad they’re taking a break from bickering at each other. It reminds me of the days when Lady taig doesn’t chase me around the house while wielding a frying pan.
HnL: “It’s a good thing we started early, so I can enjoy more of these.”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
On Crankshaft : this strip would work better if the Jeff&Pam were behind bars, with the implication that security is only asking Cranky where his car is so they can escort him and his family to it and off the premises.
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On Dustin : Also, it’s not because you, DustinDad, had a big meal on this specific evening; you ALWAYS look this ballooned and bloated.
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On what was accomplished by this Frazz storyline : Frazz graciously let Mrs Olsen have a W for once, after making a huge spectacle out of her casually saying she believed she could improve at running faster than he could recover from an injury. (Both textually and metatextually)
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On Luann : what I’m thinking is that they already had a “black nerdy girl who’s the love interest of one of the two losers who live in a playhouse in their parents’ backyard”. Is the idea that unlike Bets, Angie is a “good” character?
FC: The driver is thinking about how he used to be a relief pitcher for the Giants, and now look at what he’s doing…
MW: Oh, Evy is well into her third Xanax.
Dustin: “I picked out the name ‘Abomination’ for your little bundle of joy.”
Please, like that’s the only reason Crankshaft has been brought into security today.
Dustin: Tired of waiting for cardiac arrest to do its job, Dustmom has fed her husband a xenomorph larva.
JP: “Dad, I’m eight years old and you and mom have been dealing with this crap for pretty much my entire life. Just tell me you want me to hide from the bad people without sugarcoating it!”
MT: No, no, no! The proper format is “Oh hai Mark!” C’mon, Jules, if you’re going to reference The Room do it right!
MW: Ed is like Frank Grimes in The Simpsons: he’s the only one who recognizes how truly bizarre this whole situation is and his inability to make everyone around him see it will drive him mad and to an early grave.
RMMD: So Jonah made his desire to not have a relationship with the spawn of his father’s infidelity perfectly clear, which honestly is his decision and his right, and as a result he’s been dismissed by Lorna as “difficult” and had his wishes blatantly ignored by Cody, who doxxed him and has now shown up at his house. If you ask me, “What the heck are you doing here?” is a very measured response under the circumstances–I would have gone with “get the fuck off my property before I call the cops.”
Luann: “How’d you get me leveled up so fast?” “Thanks to your credit card and about $250 of in-app purchases, duh.”
CS: “Someone stole his blue ribbon, and he’s hoping to fuck that person up.”
9CL: Next time, put Alistair in the (non-sex) dungeon!
I find it hard to believe that Thirsty drinks cocktails instead of demanding that they directly hook him up to a bottle of vodka with an IV.
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That expression on Loretta’s face is definitely someone who has finally lost her grip on sanity as the void keeps expanding and all that’s left in existence with her is that chair, a piece of paper, some empty bags, and goddamned Leroy.
Beetle Bailey: And by “candy” he means …
Shlockhorns – Thank heavens! I barely beat the tariffs….
H&L – Beer…And Liquor…Gets You Drunk…Quicker…Burma Shave….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Hi and Lois:
Thirsty: Nothing like a cold beer on a hot summer day!
Hi: You know you’re going to die of alcoholism right?
Thirsty: At least I’ll die happy!
The Lockhorns: Identifying Leroy and Loretta as Millennials is all fun and games, but I draw the line at transmogrifying them into avatars of my son’s generation. Having characters that I have always thought of as older than myself as stand-ins for people younger than me violates the generational order, upends the sacred principles of comics time, and frizzles the few remaining synapses I have not tinged by dementia. The old mock the young, that’s the way it’s supposed to work, dammit!
Loretta’s really hairy legs definitely jive with the millennial ‘natural hygiene’ movement.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: When reality eventually implodes upon itself, through mind-bending paradoxes, we can blame the Lockhorns.
Hi and Lois: Ah, gin and tonic, the drink famously created to make doses of the anti-malarial quinine palatable to British soldiers occupying India, being consumed by white middle-class men on a golf course that is no doubt situated on unceded tribal land. Colonialism comes to the comics pages, with a dash of water, sugar, lime and liver disease.
@The Rambling Otter: This is the most sensible thing I’ll hear all day, I think.
@Lord Flatulence: I seriously just had a wake-up call.
I need to get some things done now :3
While not an alcoholic, I really should break my bad habits regardless.
Lockhorns: Leroy thinks, “Damn, I’m going to have to expand the garage AGAIN to find room to store all this junk.”
The Lockhorns
Loretta’s got the trick—needles under Leroy’s skin.
No confession, no ledger, no words like “account.”
She smiles, drops it light, offhand:
Best.
Sale.
Ever.
Each syllable a drum hit,
each hit costing him more than cash.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Adding, the biggest barrier to consider the Lockhorns Gen Z is their distinct lack of tattoos. (As Millennials, their lack of shame-filled former Harry Potter fandom.)
Family Circus: Thel wistfully looks at the rickshaw driver’s ass, remembering those days before Bil when she could have any hot piece of ass with just a well-placed jut.
Forget the alcoholic overtones, it’s clear from this close-up of Thirsty that he’s completely missing his right eye. Perhaps he doesn’t have any eyes, unlike most comic strip characters embodying this visual trope. Personally, I could see Thirsty coming from some sort of cave-dwelling species that stopped developing eyes in the womb, but now I can’t unsee him constantly making clicking noises with his tongue in order to get an echolocation-based “view” of his surroundings (all the better to help him locate flying insects and avoid bug zappers).
@Hibbleton: I think the artist (Hoest?) is trying to suggest that she got all scratched up at the wherever the sale was taking place. Look at her hair — it’s drawn messier than usual. Not a great job of suggesting Loretta was involved in some sort of discount retail scrum (no torn clothes or black eye), but when you’re knocking these out daily, do the best you can.