Family fun
Post Content
The Lockhorns, 1/16/26
I accept that, for narrative convenience, sometimes the Lockhorns need to passive-aggressively try to destroy each other emotionally with some silent stranger there for one of them to rhetorically address. However, in this scenario, Leroy appears to be standing on a yoga mat wearing workout gear and Loretta is standing within earshot in street clothes, which makes it difficult to parse where this void might be situated so that those two facts dovetail with the possibility of some random person wandering by in order for Loretta to quip at her for Leroy’s benefit. You have to assume that Loretta got tired of just walking around the house with that first aid kit and demanded that Leroy accompany her to the sidewalk in front of their house so that they could involve a nonconsenting third party in their kink.
Hagar the Horrible, 1/16/26
A fun fact is that the unique physical features of a golf course as we know them actually mirror the landscape of the game’s birth in coastal Scotland: long stretches of flatland or gentle hills with low grass and very few trees, dotted by occasional ponds and sand-filled hollows dug out by sheep for protection against the wind. Another fun fact is that during the Viking Age Norse warriors carved out an separate kingdom along the coast of Scotland and the nearby islands that lasted for centuries. So I declare this Hagar the Horrible mostly historically accurate, for once! If you ever wonder why Vikings were so eager to sail outward to conquer new lands, just think about the fact that coastal Scotland was their equivalent to Cancun.
50 replies to “Family fun”
Blondie-You have a son who could shovel that driveway.
FC-Daddy will suffer in silence like he does everything else.
MW-“Ian says that he taught Sunny how to eat worms but he won’t show it to me.”
Hagar the Horrible:
“This is great! — we’re on a Viking cruixe!”
Or the Lockhorns pick public places for this? Striped Shirt Woman despairs, wondering, once again, why she came to THIS food court. Then she remembers: it’s for Sbarro. Always for Sbarro.
HtH: In panel one, Honi’s feet must be sticking out below the boat. Maybe it’s sort of a “Flintstones” method of propulsion and she’s walking/paddling them to shore.
It was a grand time out, until the entire family died of cholera. Yay, Dark Ages vacations!
The other woman besides the Lockhorns looks to be a mime doing research on Leroy’s wordless flailing.
Lockhorns: Loretta assures Leroy’s escort that she’s not responsible for reviving him should he have a stroke/heart attack.
Judge Parker has made my day. Look at Alan! “Drink, glare at stuff, drink, glare at stuff – every Goddamn day’s the same!”
Lockhorns:
The random neighbors and acquaintances drawn in strip installments invariably serve as the equivalent of the operators of the headheld “Ettinauer” cameras in Albert Brooks’ Real Life, mute witnesses to the dysfunction swirling around them.
Lockhorns:
“He calls himself ‘John Revolta‘ when he assumes this pose!”
RMMD: ‘Interacting with the kids is female’s work! That’s why I married a female!’*
Luann: Of course, *this* is what will get them to break up; Phil just doesn’t *get* Luann’s *friends*.
JP: Awww, look at that pissyface! We missed you too, Judgey-Wudgey!
*Tip o’ the plastic toupee to Earl Sneed Sinclair
A lot of good Loretta’s wellness day souvenir first-aid frisbee is gonna do when Leroy strokes out.
HtH: It took a few centuries before they learned not to put a golf course right on the ocean. “NOW where did my ball go?”
MW: I still maintain that Sunny is sinister. Whether it’s the abnormal avian cognitive skills or the glowing red eyes, I can’t say.
RMMD: “They didn’t run away screaming and scarred for life, so I could have done better.”
GT: This guest artist is all about LINES. I’ve never seen so many tendons, wrinkles and creases.
9CL: So, when Edda said Polly shouldn’t spend time on the couch, she meant “unless you’re on it naked with a man you met five minutes ago.”
HtH: At this golf resort, the players are so stupid that they launch their balls directly into the ocean. Where are they, Mar-A-Lago?
RMMD:
In today’s second installment, June looks as if she wants to aspirate as if it’s National Talk Like a Pirate Day, but that isn’t until September 19, 2026.
HTH – Who needs a map, you ask? Certainly not you, since there is no one steering the boat and you’re just letting the wind and the currents take you where they will. Since you’ve reached an island that has a golf course, it has become your “vacation island” by default.
Lockhorns – “I mean, look at those ankles. They’re gonna snap like toothpicks any minute now.”
Leroy is unlikely to cut or bruise himself stretching. Rather than a first aid kit, Loretta should have a hydrating drink, a de-fib, or even past CPR training she might comment on. Waiting for him to pass out so that she can put a bandage on him is less “helping” and more “creating an alibi”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’ve never seen a poker player who loves to raise as much Don Abundio”
“Does that surprise you?”
“A little bit”
“The rest of us already folded!”
LH: I know Leroy’s stretching, but the instant I saw that pose I heard “I like to sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a” in my head.
“Pluggers love bacon.” Considering Pluggers are also animals, does that make them cannibals?
Luann: So Luann’s friends stumble across her canoodling in a car with a man, and don’t have the good sense to leave her alone? And neither Luann nor Phil told them to piss off?
Dustin: Panel 1 should have triggered an awful flashback sequence, where Dustmom thinks about all the men she could have married instead of this insufferable schlub. Talk radio is tough to get into, especially if you’re a woman. She’s WAY more successful than he is.
CS: Panel 2 is a better punchline than Panel 3.
Alice: I take it back! Please put the hat back on, Mr. Bowtie! For the love of sanity, put the hat back on!
DtM: Ah, so Alice intentionally serves Dennis terrible food. Well, menaced, Alice, well menaced indeed!
MW: Did Mary actually do any meddling in this arc? Unless the syndicate omitted a strip where she she sneaks in and strips the wires on the Christmas lights to start a fire, it seems like everything just sort of resolved itself without any of her muffins & maxims (the name of my new RPG btw). Anyway, I feel kind of cheated.
yLUANN: She’s in the driver’s seat (literally as well as figuratively) so guess it’s her car. Well, that allows “Bill” to spend more on his luxurious penthouse, eh?
CS: If it’s so slippery, why aren’t Ed and daughter also falling?
FRAZZ: Can relate. Not that I broke a leg or hip last time, but I haven’t put on my inline skates for two years and tense up even thinking I should.
JP: Now what six-year-old wouldn’t want to spend time with a Grandpa like that? Too bad Ned will have to leave her there
MW: next up, To-Be queries Crustacean if he’s now also ready for a Ba-Be.
PLUGGERS: Bacon too!?! Andy must be at a wedding.
Cultural expropriation is not cool, The Lockhorns. Leroy ought not be doing a haka unless that lady in the stripes is a Maori elder.
Lhrs: Loretta stands by with her First Aid Frisbee, which she can biff at Leroy’s head if he loses consciousness.
HtH: I was trying to look up whether vikings did indeed use maps, and the second result that google spat out at me was a reddit thread on “did vikings engage in homosexuality?”. I didn’t click on that link, so I’m going to assume that they navigated via a crude sextant made of two penises.
Hagär the Horrible: According to http://www.shetland.org/visit/viking_golf_tourism, “Britain’s most northerly golf course is run by the Whalsay Golf Club at Skaw on the rugged northern tip of this busy fishing island off the east coast of Shetland. The view is an epic panorama, but you may be distracted from your game by gulls, skuas, seals and porpoises in a blood frenzy attacking unwary travelers in open boats.” So far (panel two), this tracks.
Hägår thè Hørrïblé:
Cartoonist:
1. Looks at tiny clip art ship.
2. Pastes in Horrible family.
3. Briefly wonders where their legs are supposed to be, if they’re dangling in the water and Hagar and Family are propelling the ship, Flintstones style, with their feet.
4. Even more briefly considers redrawing the whole thing.
5. Decides “eh, it’s just Hagar, who’s even going to notice?”
6. Reaches for beer. Those Netflix shows aren’t going to watch themselves!
@Banana Jr. 6000:
@pluggers
Not unless they’re pigs too.
@Charterstone: Dune: A role-playing game, set in the world of Mary Worth? I am intrigued. What is it, a GURPS expansion?
@Ukranazi Stepan: Well, Pluggers definitely are pigs.
Blondie If it bugs you that much, there’s no Y-chromosome requirement to operate a snow shovel.
Luann Of all the many things to be annoyed by in this strip, it’s “art class” that gets to me. It sounds like an afterschool KidCare or Community Ed thing where they practice plasticine sculpting before being allowed the *real* stuff (air-dry clay, or for the better Community Ed, actual clay!). Even somebody taking a handful of disconnected community college classes wouldn’t have an ongoing “art class”, it’s would be so-and-so “from [college] – I took Contemporary Art 101 with them and they continued in the Art program”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
…Whalsay Golf Club at Skaw on the rugged northern tip of this busy fishing island off the east coast of Shetland.
Was watching the show Shetland last night and a paramedic told a cop he couldn’t question the victim because they had to get him to the hospital quickly. Is that a Scottish thing or a creeping Americanism?
Lockhorns-Loretta doesn’t want to miss out on watching Leroy dropping dead from a heart attack.
Luann-A theory. Luann and all her friends are mentally challenged people just portrayed to be functioning people.
BB: Plato’s pretty good at this meditation stuff. He’s levitating.
Now Hagar bode in the burg of the Scotlings,
reader toleratéd, and long he paced the comics page,
now with the son, since his father had gone
away from the world . . . .
Opening lines of Hagar by Seamus Heaney
There’s a lot to like in today’s Hagar the Horrible! The way the family has piled into their 80-man longship like it’s a station wagon is my favorite conceit, but Hamlet’s tennis racket, the bird’s confusion over the golf ball, the shared joy on the faces of the family. All very charming!
Unlike The Lockhorns, they also didn’t skimp on backgrounds and included basic amenities like a horizon. Are Leroy, Loretta, and Miss Stripes all calmly falling to their deaths or what?
MW: Okay, just hear me out. This story about Sunny has had no real conflict, nothing to grab our attention, really—certainly nothing that Mary herself had any role in resolving, and she never even made seed muffins to welcome Sunny into the Charterstone community—so I think we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop. What if—and it’s just a thought—what if Sunny is actually a Spirit Bird and is the reincarnation of ALDO KELRAST, and the conflict is only now about to commence, and MARY is the target?
DtM: Dennis ups his game with some well-timed sexual innuendo.
He continues: “I hear Dad really likes your muff–ins.”
I don’t know who that woman is that Loretta is talking to but I am beguiled by her choice to wear skin tight fishing waders in lieu of separate bottoms and boots. With a horizontal striped top and a mismatched purse? This fashion forward gal is bound to be the belle of the ball. Or yoga studio. Or group therapy session.
***
The trajectory of that golf ball makes me wonder if Vikings are no longer around mostly because their lack of awareness of people swinging clubs a few feet in front of them.
@Liam:
Luann and all her friends are mentally challenged people just portrayed to be functioning people.
If that’s the case, and I desperately hope it is now, the only way this strip can end is with Brad DeGroot shaking a snow globe of his childhood home, down the block from a school, Weenie World, and a fire station.
It’s happened. Josh has gone soft on golf.
Edge City (CK edition): “This is swell! We’ll just pay someone to do Carly’s schoolwork, all the way up through her undergrad degree! Gives her more time for drinkin’ and fuckin’!” This is one of the reasons we have Trump.
BF: Tomorrow’s Adventure: If god is good, Blonde Friend goes home front he ‘70s Store with twelve brand-new muu-muus. No tight bell-bottom hip huggers or platform shoes, please. Hot pants and the “bra-less look” are RIGHT OUT.
JP: I hope this isn’t going to be just another remake of “The Secret Garden,” but it sure looks like we’re heading for “young girl finds a way to melt the heart of a bitter old man”.
Contrary to what some may think, the letter S isn’t spelled with a leading E.
@Ken: I’m hoping for more of a Talky Tina scenario.
HtH: While golfing would imply Scotland “vacation island” suggests something warmer and more idyllic. Now, while the Vikings never made it as far as the American tropics, there is ample evidence of raiding through the Mediterranean, and Norse trade routes went as far as Baghdad. Therefore, I propose that today’s strip takes place off the coast of Sicily (or Siqilliya, as it was called during the Muslim emirate of the time) and that what’s whizzing by them is not a golf ball but a bit of shrapnel from Etna’s latest eruption. This might defeat the purpose of the joke, but since when has anyone read Hagar the Horrible for its humor?
L’horns: The premise of the joke depends on assuming Loretta would actually come to Leroy’s aid in the event of a medical emergency, rather than watching him die while making a pithy comment to any other bystanders in the vicinity.
Shlockhorns – There’s low-T and then there’s no-T….
HtH – Mind the water hazard….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
“If you ever wonder why Vikings were so eager to sail outward to conquer new lands, just think about the fact that coastal Scotland was their equivalent to Cancun.”
Sounds like the joke about how English/British colonialism was really just a search for decent weather.
Dustin – Luann: did the creators discuss their plot lines? Car Hanky Panky ended up in both.
Dick Tracy – Yellow trenchcoat, check. 2-way wrist radio, check. 0.45 automatic pistol out, check. Jaw clench set on maximum, check. Looking good Tracy! So is the villain of the arc going to simply start shooting and get himself/herself killed without plot, motive or clues?
GT – Again, nice art. Line work is excellent. The onamatopeia is actually NOT needed. The artwork really sells the story. Keri made a jab step and dribble to her right and whipped a pass to her left to the cutter, who takes the ball, elevates and floats in for an easy two in the paint! Another small comment is that consider lightening up on the inking or use shadings of red on the uniforms. It looks like the uniforms are black with red lettering? Thank you again for a great job and really bringing some of the original spirit of the strip back with well, good art about high school sports!
JP: Okay, setting up Alan to have the delirium tremors when Charlotte arrives! Meanwhile Neddy gets caught up checking on her phone that she forgets to pick up Charlotte on Monday. She gets roped into some adventure in Norway looking for CIApril and we never see Charlotte again, until we do.
Phantom: Well, see, General Chum maybe a egotistical, cold, ruthless exploiter of people, tyrant, and all around bad guy, but he does love dogs! IF he had a pack of corgis all would be forgiven! The Jungle Patrol would be his pals and the Striped Butt guy would be a close confidant.